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How major US stock indexes fared Monday 7/3/2023

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Stocks drifted higher Monday as momentum slowed on Wall Street following a powerful rally to start the year.

The S&P 500 edged up 0.1%, rising to its highest level since April 2022. The Dow rose less than 0.1%. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.2%.

Tesla rose after it said the number of vehicles it delivered during the spring surged from a year earlier. Much of the rest of the market was quieter. The U.S. stock market closed at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time and will remain shut Tuesday in observance of Independence Day.

The cobblestoned banks of the Seine served as the stage for Chanel’s fall-winter runway show and celebrated the soul of Paris.

Roger Federer has received a standing ovation of 1 1/2 minutes from spectators and Princess Kate as he entered the Royal Box at Centre Court during a brief ceremony honoring him for his men’s-record eight singles championships at Wimbledon.

Nathan Collins has become Brentford’s record signing after completing a transfer from Premier League rival Wolverhampton.

The Princess of Wales had the best seat in the house on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Kate took her place in the front row of the Royal Box right next to Roger Federer.

On Monday:

The S&P 500 rose 5.21 points, or 0.1%, to 4,455.59.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 10.87 points, or less than 0.1%, to 34,418.47.

The Nasdaq composite rose 28.85 points, or 0.2%, to 13,816.77.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 8.05 points, or 0.4%, to 1,896.78.

For the year:

The S&P 500 is up 616.09 points, or 16%.

The Dow is up 1,271.22 points, or 3.8%.

The Nasdaq is up 3,350.29 points, or 32%.

The Russell 2000 is up 135.53 points, or 7.7%.

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July 3, 2023
Workers strike at major Southern California hotels over pay and benefits

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Workers picketed major Southern California hotels Monday after walking off the job during the July Fourth long weekend to demand better pay and benefits.

The strike by bellhops, front desk agents, room attendants, cooks, servers and dishwashers began early Sunday in Los Angeles and Orange counties just as summer tourism ramps up. Employers accused the union of failing to negotiate.

Members of Unite Here Local 11 voted last month in favor of authorizing the walkout. In addition to higher wages, the union wants improved health care benefits, higher pension contributions and less strenuous workloads.

Thousands of hotel workers in Southern California walked off the job Sunday, demanding higher pay and better benefits in what the union is calling the largest strike in its history.

Six thousand workers at a key supplier to Boeing are ending a brief strike after ratifying a new contract with Spirit AeroSystems.

Hollywood actors may be days away from joining screenwriters in what would be the first two-union strike in the industry in more than six decades.

Frustrated by an “appalling counterproposal” earlier this week, the head of the union representing 340,000 UPS workers said a strike is imminent and gave the shipping giant a Friday deadline to improve its offer.

“We deserve to get better pay because we do work hard. We clean fourteen rooms a day. Sometimes we do a little more,” said Eleida Manzo, housekeeper at JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles. The single mother of three said she makes $25 an hour.

Contracts expired at midnight Friday at more than 60 hotels, including properties owned by major chains such as Marriott and Hilton. The strike affects about half of the 32,000 hospitality workers the union represents across Southern California and Arizona.

Osiris Gaona, a phone operator at InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, was joined on the picket line by her husband, 15-year-old son and 7-year-old granddaughter. They will march again Tuesday, the Fourth of July, she said.

“We are hoping to send a message to the owners of all the hotels,” Gaona said. “We are asking for a pay raise because it costs so much to live here in California, especially in LA.”

The walkout comes amid holiday celebrations and a major anime convention in Los Angeles. The union, on its website, urged guests to “not eat, sleep or meet” at the striking hotels, where temporary employees were hired to cover for the striking workers. But it wasn’t immediately clear whether the strike resulted in guests checking out early or lacking services.

It’s the latest action by a restive labor movement in California.

Hollywood writers have been on strike since early May. In March, the giant Los Angeles Unified School District was shut down for three days by bus drivers, custodians and other support staff. Los Angeles teachers supported that strike and then reached a deal on their own contract without walking out. Oakland teachers went on strike for more than a week, and slowdowns occurred at the big ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach before West Coast dockworkers reached a tentative settlement in June. Actors also may strike.

Brenden Gallagher is a striking writer who on Monday joined the hotel picket line.

“We’re all workers. Workers are in the same struggle. Very often it’s the same billionaires that have investment interests in hotels and in media. If you work for a boss, you are working class. You are a worker,” he said.

The soaring cost of living in greater Los Angeles is a significant problem for hotel workers, according to the union.

Last week, a deal was reached with its biggest employer, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles, which has more than 600 union workers. Union officials described the tentative agreement, which provides higher pay and increased staffing levels, as a major win for workers.

Talks with other hotels — including the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons Regent Beverly Wilshire and Anaheim Hilton, near Disneyland — were at a stalemate. A coalition of more than 40 hotels involved in talks accused union leaders of canceling a scheduled bargaining session and refusing to come to the table. The hotels have offered wage increases of $2.50 per hour in the first 12 months and $6.25 over four years, the group said.

“From the outset, the Union has shown no desire to engage in productive, good faith negotiations with this group,” the hotel coalition said in a statement Sunday. “The Union has not budged from its opening demand two months ago of up to a 40% wage increase and an over 28% increase in benefit costs.”

The work stoppage had been anticipated, and the properties are “fully prepared to continue to operate these hotels and to take care of our guests as long as this disruption lasts,” said Keith Grossman, a spokesperson for the coalition.

Another housekeeper at JW Marriott, Bellen Valle, said a $5-an-hour raise would give her a substantial boost, and finally allow her to take her daughter to Disneyland.

“That’s gonna help me a lot. A lot. I can see the difference in my check,” Valle said.

___

Associated Press writers John Antczak and Christopher Weber contributed.

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July 3, 2023
The aftermath of mass shootings infiltrates every corner of survivors’ lives

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CHICAGO (AP) — More than a year after 11-year-old Mayah Zamora was airlifted out of Uvalde, Texas, after being critically injured in the Robb Elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers, the family is still reeling.

Knocks on the door startle Mayah into a panic. The family is skipping Fourth of July celebrations to avoid booming fireworks. An outing to the Little Mermaid movie requires noise-canceling headphones.

Since 2016, thousands of Americans have been wounded in mass shootings, and tens of thousands by gun violence, with that number continuing to grow, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Beyond the colossal medical bills and the weight of trauma and grief, mass shooting survivors and family members contend with scores of other changes that upend their lives.

A French far-right figure behind a divisive, and hugely successful, crowdfunding campaign for the family of a police officer jailed in the killing of a 17-year-old that triggered riots around France announced on Tuesday that he’s closing the account which topped more than 1.5 million euros.

The holiday takes on a different meaning for the Illinois community this year.

A 40-year-old killed one man in a house before fatally shooting four others on the streets of a Philadelphia neighborhood, then surrendering along with a rifle, a pistol, extra magazines, a police scanner and a bulletproof vest, police said.

Police in Kansas now say 11 people were hurt over the weekend when a gunman opened fire inside a Wichita nightclub. Meanwhile, a St.

Survivors talked to The Associated Press about the mental and physical wounds that endure in the aftermath of shootings in Uvalde; Las Vegas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, during a July Fourth parade last year.

UVALDE

Mayah suffered wounds to her chest, back, both hands, face and ear, and needed so many surgeries her parents said they stopped counting. The family relocated to San Antonio, where Mayah spent 66 days in the hospital and still needs care.

“Her hospital bill is insane,” said Mayah’s mother, Christina Zamora. “It reaches close to $1,000,000, maybe over,” not including rehabilitation, follow-up visits and counseling.

A year later, Christina and Mayah’s father, Ruben, said they don’t know what bills will be covered by insurance. When Mayah was discharged, they realized one parent needed to stay home to care for her.

Christina quit her job. The relocation separated the family: Ruben works seven days on, seven off in Uvalde. Mayah is terrified to return to Uvalde.

“It’s heartbreaking when your little one can’t enjoy the things that she did before, and all these other kids are able to do,” the elder Ruben said. “It tears you up.”

COLORADO SPRINGS

Ashtin Gamblin was working the front door at Club Q in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19 when a person armed with a semiautomatic rifle shot and killed five people and injured 17 more, including Gamblin.

“I was shot nine times. Five to my left arm. Twice to my right arm. Twice to my left breast. Both of my humerus were shattered. So two broken arms,” the 30-year-old said. Six months later, “my right arm is still fractured. My left hand, we’re still working on function.”

She has battled with health insurance, the hospital and worker’s compensation officials to figure out who would foot the $300,000 medical bill.

Gamblin also no longer felt safe in her apartment, where she could sometimes hear gunshots outside. She bought a house in a quieter neighborhood: “a house I wasn’t prepared to buy,” she said. “I bought a $380,000 safe space.”

Half a year later she is not mentally recovered enough to return to work.

“I just can’t be there… I don’t feel safe going to the grocery store. I don’t feel safe being in public,” she said.

So far in 2023, nearly 400 people in the U.S. have been wounded in mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. And 140 people have died in mass killings this year, which is on track to surpass 2019, the deadliest year on record for mass killings since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University.

LAS VEGAS

Tia Christiansen had worked in the music industry for more than 20 years when a gunman unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history at a Las Vegas music festival she helped organize in October 2017.

The shooter rained gunfire from the windows of a high-rise casino hotel into an outdoor concert crowd, killing 58 people and wounding more than 850.

Christiansen was scheduled to be at the festival that day. But she felt ill and stayed in her room, two doors down from where the gunman fired.

“There was actually a moment when the gunfire was so loud that I literally instinctively ducked and put my hands over my head because I thought that the walls or the ceiling would come crumbling down,” Christiansen said. “I completely reconciled my life and thought, ‘Am I ready to die?’”

She was physically unscathed. But her life turned upside down. After the shooting, she worked a few more festivals, until she “had a complete, total breakdown on site crying.”

Christiansen, who is based in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, turned to spending. She bought a new bed to try to find more comfort and relied on delivered meals to avoid leaving her home.

“The financial aspect of it is crushing, absolutely crushing,” she said.

Now Christiansen is part of a mentorship program for the Everytown Survivors Network, which connects thousands of gun violence survivors to resources and aims to end gun violence.

HIGHLAND PARK

Leah Sundheim, 29, was a night manager at a hotel in Las Vegas when she got “the worst phone call you can ever receive.”

Her mother, Jacquelyn Sundheim, had been killed at a shooting during Highland Park’s 2022 Fourth of July parade, along with six other people.

“That flight home broke me,” Sundheim said.

She then moved back to Highland Park to be close to her father.

Mass shootings cause a variety of trauma, she said. Her experience is different from that of her aunt and cousins, who were sitting next to Jacquelyn Sundheim when she died.

Whichever type of trauma survivors experience, she said, “it shatters the sense of security that you have in the world.”

___

Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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July 3, 2023
Driverless cars are driving San Francisco crazy — ‘They are not ready for prime time’

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A street was blocked for road work in my San Francisco neighborhood this month, with a worker holding a large STOP sign to direct traffic.

A white car did as instructed, stopping in the middle of the intersection and blocking traffic at the four way intersection. No one was in the driver’s seat and there were no passengers, nor any training drivers — it was a Cruise driverless car, one of many that have flooded streets in the city in the last two years.

The public works employee holding the sign was flummoxed as how to get the car to move away. After several minutes, the car slowly backed its way out and crossed the street, but ended up on the wrong side. After another 10 minutes, it managed to pull itself together, get in the right lane and drive down the hill.

Most San Francisco residents can tell a similar story. The growing driverless car fleets in San Francisco are both a fascinating glimpse of science fiction come to life and a scary example of how Big Tech and auto companies have run roughshod over a congested city, with technology that really isn’t ready yet and little regulation to keep it at bay.

Now, the problem is coming to a head. San Francisco public officials have had enough, and are speaking out about safety threats ahead of a hearing next month that could let companies expand into larger fleets of fare-generating robotaxis.

“They are not ready for prime time,” San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson told MarketWatch in an interview.

“They have run over our hoses, they have blocked our fire engines from going on calls, they have just blocked our vehicles from getting down streets where there is a possible fire. They have just done a multitude of things. We had to break the window of one once because we could not get its attention,” Nicholson said.

While the average citizen can laugh at the stalled cars in city streets, the vehicles represent a major impediment for first responders. The San Francisco fire chief believes they put the city’s firefighters and residents at risk.

“Response time matters — a fire can double in size in a minute,” she said.

Aaron Peskin, president of the city’s Board of Supervisors, said there have been 66 incidents in which driverless cars interfered with first responders this year. But the city has little control over the cars operated by Cruise, a unit of General Motors Co.
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and Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc.
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Both companies already have Department of Motor Vehicle permits to deploy a driverless passenger taxi service, a process Peskin described as “Kafka-esque.”

“You have this thing where the DMV colluded with the industry to redact information that otherwise was public,” he said, referring to the result of a lawsuit Waymo filed last year against the DMV to keep its crash data private, arguing that it held trade secrets. “The funny thing is it’s not like San Francisco is trying to say ‘let’s put the genie back in the bottle.’ We are trying to ensure that our streets are safe. They have become too congested.”

Both companies are seeking to expand their operations into fare-generating robotaxis in San Francisco, leading to a crucial meeting of California’s Public Utility Commission now slated for July. Waymo is seeking to begin passenger robo-taxi service in the city, while Cruise is seeking to expand its passenger robo-taxi service to the entire city, 24 hours a day, and remove exclusions of steep hills and roundabouts, deploying 100 vehicles. Helpfully for the companies, one PUC commissioner appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 is John Reynolds, who was managing counsel of Cruise until 2019.

Resistance is building locally and nationally. Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a nonprofit in Washington seeking more regulation and data transparency on autonomous vehicles as part of its mission for more highway and road safety, said it was “illogical and irresponsible at best, and dangerous and deadly at worst, to go forward with any expansion until the significant problems have been resolved.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA) wrote letters of protest to both company’s applications. In May, the SFMTA said that since it wrote its first letter in January, “new hazards from driverless AV operations in San Francisco have been reported, and general public complaints about driverless AV operations have increased significantly.”

In May, a Waymo vehicle hit and killed a small dog that was off leash, while a test driver was at the wheel, in what the company said was an unavoidable accident. In June, a Cruise vehicle with no driver started to enter a mass shooting scene in the Mission District, and a video on Twitter showed a police officer yelling to get the car removed. Cruise said a lane was open for emergency vehicles and that its car did a U-turn and pulled over. In April, five Waymo cars stopped and blocked traffic in the Balboa Terrace area, in dense fog, a big problem for the vision systems.

The letters note that both Waymo and Cruise have “committed numerous violations that would preclude any teenager from getting a California’s Driver’s License.” The SFMTA also calls out the PUC for relying on the DMV for approvals, saying that its draft resolution to approve expansions of both companies is an attempt to “deflect rather than exercise the Commission’s duty to protect public safety.”

Waymo said it has been working with public safety officials and provides them a phone number to reach Waymo directly in the event that one of its cars stop. Cruise said it is proud of its safety record “which is publicly reported and includes millions of miles driven in an extremely complex urban environment.” Both companies have over 30 letters of support for their plans, from a range of groups including many representing the disabled, such as the National Federation of the Blind of California.

“It’s because of the donations,” Peskin said.

But the city’s fire chief Nicholson said there needs to be more from the companies than PR statements and lessons on how to stop their vehicles.

“They really need to sit down with us and figure out a solution,” she said, adding that when the fire department is in the middle of putting out a fire or rescuing victims or dealing with a health emergency, “to have to handle one of their vehicles, it’s just ridiculous.”

As is the case with many new technologies, history does tend to repeat itself.

Chris Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University and co-director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) said that as part of work he has been doing with Ford Motor Co.
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he has been researching ethical and legal issues associated with automated vehicles. These same issues came up when the first automobiles started to arrive on public streets at the turn of the 20th century, clashing with horses and buggies.

“You go back and look at the debates when the car came out,” Gerdes said, and “there were a lot of debates around should these things be allowed on the road, should they be allowed everywhere? These questions that are coming now were asked about cars back in the day. They can block the road, they can scare horses. Is this something we want to have on the roads? Is it even legal for them to be on the roads?”

But there is a need to demonstrate that driverless cars are compatible with existing laws and the uses of the roads, he said. “The question becomes at what point do these isolated incidents add to up to danger, to what extent do these compromise the city’s priorities or mobility and traffic flow.” He said they need to compare the autonomous-vehicle data with that from human drivers.

The SFMTA provided comparison data in its letters of protest. According to the SFMTA, based on data filed with the NHTSA, Cruise’s injury crash rate is estimated to have been 506 injury crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) between June and November, 2022—approximately 6.3 times the 2021 national average, which is 80 injury crashes per 100 million VMT. Waymo’s injury crash rate is estimated to be 104 injuries per 100 million VMT, approximately 1.3 times the national average, the SFMTA said, when looking at the same period.

“The collision rate from that small fraction of Cruise driverless operations appears to exceed the collision rate for human drivers,” the SFMTA said in its Cruise letter. For Waymo, the agency said it recommends the commission expand on the findings with a more thorough analysis. “Within the complex driving environment of San Francisco city streets, we must conclude that the technology is still under development and has not reached this goal,” the SFMTA said in its Waymo letter.

Some in San Francisco are hopeful the delay of the PUC meeting to July 13 is a good sign that the commission is listening to more input from city officials. In its letters, the SFMTA and the San Francisco City Attorney hint at the next step they could take, noting that the PUC “must conduct an environmental review” of Cruise’s and Waymo’s expansion plans, because its actions could cause environmental impacts. What goes unsaid is that the city could seek to compel such a review with a lawsuit.

Peskin said he has received letters from former employees of the companies saying that autonomous robotaxis are, as the fire chief said, “not ready for prime time.” The workers said they had signed nondisclosure agreements that kept them from saying so publicly. Peskin suggested it could end up like the tobacco industry’s whistleblower case.

“We would rather work with them than waste taxpayers’ money on lawsuits,” Peskin said, adding that the companies could continue to test their cars with test drivers — an option that is not likely to be acceptable by the companies seeking to make money from their big investment.

“San Francisco is the perfect place to test them,” he said. “But they still haven’t worked these kinks out.”

The city of San Francisco is beaten down at the moment, thanks in part to its past close relationship with tech. As the downtown core suffers from the departure of the tech workers that defined it for the past decade, city officials are doing what they can to ensure that the technology some of them created does not become the next hated addition to the city.

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July 3, 2023
Tesla beats 2nd quarter estimates with deliveries of 466,000 vehicles

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Tesla Inc. delivered a record number of vehicles in the second quarter, beating market estimates after the electric carmaker increased discounts and incentives, the company reported on Sunday.

The Elon Musk-led electric vehicle manufacturer delivered 466,140 vehicles in the three months ended June 30 and produced 479,700 vehicles. The second quarter of 2023 marked the fifth period in a row when Tesla reported a higher level of vehicles produced compared to deliveries.

Analysts on average had expected Tesla to deliver 445,000 cars, according to analysts polled by Refinitiv.

Tesla delivered 254,695 vehicles in the year-ago quarter.

Deliveries are a carefully watched number by Tesla shareholders and are the closest approximation of sales disclosed by the company.

Tesla said total production rose 85.5% to nearly 480,000 vehicles in the three months ended June 30, from a year earlier.

The company delivered 446,915 Model 3 compact cars and Model Y sport-utility vehicle, as well as 19,225 of its Model S and Model X premium vehicles.

Tesla increased discounts for vehicles to a $1,600-to-$7,500 range and made all of its Model 3s eligible for full federal credits of $7,500 starting in June in the United States.

Earlier this year, Tesla cut prices globally by as much as 20% after missing Wall Street delivery estimates for 2022.

Tesla is expected to achieve record sales yet again in China, its second-largest market after North America, despite competition from market leader BYD.

The company said it will post financial results for the second quarter after the market close on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.

Earlier this year Ford Motor
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and General Motors
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as well as fast-charging equipment makers agreeing to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS).

Tesla
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shares closed at $261.77 on Friday ahead of the second-quarter deliveries report.

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July 2, 2023
Wider than websites? LGBTQ+ advocates fear broader discrimination after Supreme Court ruling

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A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado Christian graphic artist to refuse to work with same-sex couples has LGBTQIA+ people across the country worried about just how far the consequences will reach.

The high court’s conservative majority sided with Lorie Smith, a designer of wedding websites for heterosexual couples who argued that a ruling against her would force writers, painters, musicians and other artists to do work that is against their beliefs. Opponents warned that a win for Smith would allow a range of businesses to discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.

“We’re treading into some weird territory as people. We’re starting to become the ‘Morality Police,’ and that’s not freedom as far as I am concerned,” Dallas Lyn Miller-Downes, a queer visual artist and activist based in Portland, Oregon, said Friday, hours after the court’s 6-3 ruling. “What I am scared of is that this goes beyond the art. Where do we stop with this?”

One of the court’s liberal justices wrote in a dissent that the decision’s effect is to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and that it opens the door to other discrimination.

In Topeka, Kansas, where several dozen people gathered Friday for a transgender rights rally, Kirby Evers, a 31-year-old bisexual Lawrence resident, said the ruling will make people more comfortable being openly rude or using slurs, particularly to trans people.

He called the Supreme Court “compromised by fascists,” adding, “They’re going to do as much destruction to our Constitution as possible.”

Raiden Gonzalez, a 22-year-old gay Salina, Kansas, resident participating in the rally, said he’s regularly gotten looks over how he walks and talks — and brusque treatment in stores and school, even occasionally from teachers.

“People in the LGBTQ community should be scared of this,” he said.

Miller-Downes said the ruling feels like just another way art is being used as a weapon against the queer community — with drag artists banned in some parts of the country and LGBTQ+ customers at risk of being banned from artistic businesses in others.

“Art should inspire people, heal people and start conversations. We should be known for how we love, not who we exclude — that’s a morality I can stand behind as a Christian and an artist,” Miller-Downes said. “We need to, as a society, celebrate businesses owned by marginalized people so other marginalized people, queer people, know where to get help.”

Legal analysts on both sides of the issue have said the decision is narrow and won’t apply to most businesses. Jennifer C. Pizer, the chief legal officer for Lambda Legal, said in a statement that the ruling applies specifically to businesses that create original artwork and pure speech, and then offer that work as limited commissions.

Still, she said, the ruling continued the court majority’s “dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the Nineteenth Century.”

Sarah Warbelow, legal director at Human Rights Campaign, said Friday’s ruling does not dismantle the public accommodations laws that protect people based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 22 states.

Those states can still enforce their nondiscrimination laws for employment, housing and buying goods that are not highly customizable with speech, she said. For instance, someone preparing for a same-sex marriage could still buy a wedding gown customized with colors.

But Warbelow said the ruling also opens the door to businesses being allowed to discriminate against people for reasons other than sexual orientation, like religion.

Many conservative religious leaders welcomed the ruling, including Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing.

“If the government can compel an individual to speak a certain way or create certain things, that’s not freedom — it’s subjugation. And that is precisely what the state of Colorado wanted,” said Leatherwood.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ+ acceptance in the Catholic Church, said the decision “dangerously allows religious beliefs to be weaponized for discrimination.”

“Religion should be a tool to help unite people across ideological lines, not cause greater isolation into camps that oppose one another,” he said.

Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from Blackwood, New Jersey, has been active in seeking to increase acceptance of trans people in the Catholic Church. She said the justices who made the “extremely disappointing and concerning” ruling were “naïve” to think the decision wouldn’t lead to discrimination against other groups as well.

While some small businesses could use the ruling to stop serving some customers, they should be aware that there will be repercussions, said Gene Marks, owner of The Marks Group, a small business consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

“If you’re a business and you’re going to turn down customers just because they’re different or your religion doesn’t support their style of life, fair enough, but it’s going to be a loss of revenue to you not only from that customer, but also from their friends, their family, their community,” he said. “And it can also be potentially bad press regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.”

___

AP journalists Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; David Crary and Mae Anderson in New York; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this story. Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

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July 2, 2023
Passengers were stuck because United Airlines canceled their flights. The CEO took a private plane

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United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby apologized Friday for hopping on a private plane to get out of the New York area earlier this week while thousands of United passengers were stranded because the airline canceled so many flights.

“Taking a private jet was the wrong decision because it was insensitive to our customers who were waiting to get home,” Kirby said in a statement issued by the airline. “I sincerely apologize to our customers and our team members who have been working around-the-clock for several days — often through severe weather — to take care of our customers.”

Kirby concluded by promising “to better demonstrate my respect for the dedication of our team members and the loyalty of our customers.”

A bill to extend internet gambling in New Jersey for another five years is in the hands of Gov. Phil Murphy following its approval by the state Legislature.

A bill to let Danish offshore wind energy developer Orsted keep tax credits that it otherwise would have to return to New Jersey ratepayers was approved by the slimmest of margins in the state Legislature Friday afternoon.

New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has signed a $54.3 billion budget. It boosts spending 7% over last year.

Officials and residents of several New Jersey shore towns say the state’s law decriminalizing marijuana use is having an unintended effect: emboldening large groups of teenagers to run amok on beaches and boardwalks, knowing there is little chance of them getting in trouble for it.

Kirby caught the private flight from Teterboro, New Jersey, to Denver on Wednesday, when United canceled 750 flights — one-fourth of its schedule for the day. That figure does not include flights on United Express.

United has canceled nearly 3,000 flights this week, with the largest number at its Newark Liberty International Airport hub in New Jersey, which was hit by thunderstorms for much of the week.

Kirby blamed disruptions in Newark last weekend on a shortage of Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers. He said in a note to employees “that the FAA frankly failed us” by reducing the rate at which planes could arrive and depart the airport, where United is the dominant carrier.

Canceled flights left United planes and crews out of position, hobbling the airline when bad weather hit on Sunday, Kirby said.

As United continued to struggle throughout this week, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department includes the FAA, said on Twitter that airlines had recovered from the storms “with the exception of United.” He drove home the point by including a bar graph that compared United’s cancellation rate with the rest of the industry.

United’s operation has improved since midweek. The percentage of canceled flights fell from 26% on Wednesday to 18% Thursday and 8% through Friday evening, according to tracking service FlightAware. However, even on Friday, United was on pace to lead all U.S. carriers in canceled flights for a seventh straight day.

United vowed to fix its operation in time for the July 4 holiday weekend, which promises to be a hectic one at the nation’s airports. More than 2.7 million people were screened Thursday at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, and Friday was expected to bring similar crowds — possibly bigger.

United passengers have taken to social media and talked to reporters about long airport lines and sleeping in airports after flights were canceled.

Unions representing the airline’s pilots and flight attendants have joined in the criticism, accusing United management of poor planning, a lack of crew schedulers, and operating too many flights.

Chicago-based United said it did not pay for the CEO’s flight on Wednesday. The airline declined to say whether Kirby frequently takes private planes.

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July 2, 2023
After several turbulent days, flight disruptions ease despite worries about 5G signals

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Airline passengers who have endured tens of thousands of weather-related flight delays this week got a welcome respite from the headaches Saturday, despite concerns about possible disruptions caused by new wireless 5G systems rolling out near major airports.

The number of flight delays and cancellations declined from the spikes recorded earlier in the week, according to data compiled by tracking service FlightAware. As of 10 p.m. EST, there had been at least 850 flight cancellations and more than 28,000 delayed flights Saturday. During the June 28-30 period, an average of 1,751 flights were canceled and more then 32,600 flights delayed, according to the FlightAware data.

The cancellation rate worked out to about 1% in the U.S. as of Saturday afternoon, according to Flightradar24, another tracking service. Flightradar24 spokesperson Ian Petchenik described Saturday’s conditions as “smooth sailing” in an email to The Associated Press, while adding inclement weather could cause problems at East Coast airports later in the day.

President Joe Biden says his administration will write new rules to expand the rights of airline passengers.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration also advised travelers that bad weather conditions on the East Coast could affect flights later Saturday.

Heading into Saturday, one of the biggest concerns had been whether 5G signals would interfere with aircraft equipment, especially devices using radio waves to measure distance above the ground that are critical when planes land in low visibility.

Predictions that interference would cause massive flight groundings failed to come true last year, when telecom companies began rolling out the new service. They then agreed to limit the power of the signals around busy airports, giving airlines an extra year to upgrade their planes.

The leader of the nation’s largest pilots’ union said crews will be able to handle the impact of 5G, but he criticized the way the wireless licenses were granted, saying it had added unnecessary risk to aviation.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently told airlines that flights could be disrupted because a small portion of the nation’s fleet has not been upgraded to protect against radio interference.

But the worst fears about 5G hadn’t cropped up by mid-afternoon Saturday, prompting Transportation Department spokesperson Kerry Arndt to describe flight travel as being at “near-normal” levels. But Arrndt also stressed that the Federal Aviation Administration is “working very closely with airlines to monitor summer pop-up storms, wildfire smoke, and any 5G issues.”

Most of the major U.S. airlines had made the changes needed to adapt to 5G. American, Southwest, Alaska, Frontier and United say all of their planes have height-measuring devices, called radio altimeters, that are protected against 5G interference.

The big exception is Delta Air Lines. Delta says it has 190 planes, including most of its smaller ones, that still lack upgraded altimeters because its supplier has been unable to provide them fast enough.

The airline does not expect to cancel any flights because of the issue, Delta said Friday. The airline plans to route the 190 planes carefully to limit the risk of canceling flights or forcing planes to divert away from airports where visibility is low because of fog or low clouds. FlightAware listed nine Delta flight cancellations Saturday. None of them were tied to 5G issues, according to the airline.

The Delta planes that have not been retrofitted include several models of Airbus jets: all of its A220s, most of its A319s and A320s and some of its A321s. The airline’s Boeing jets have upgraded altimeters, as do all Delta Connection planes, which are operated by Endeavor Air, Republic Airways and SkyWest Airlines, according to the airline.

JetBlue did not respond to requests for comment but told The Wall Street Journal it expected to retrofit 17 smaller Airbus jets by October, with possible “limited impact” some days in Boston.

Wireless carriers including Verizon and AT&T use a part of the radio spectrum called C-Band, which is close to frequencies used by radio altimeters, for their new 5G service. The Federal Communications Commission granted them licenses for the C-Band spectrum and dismissed any risk of interference, saying there was ample buffer between C-Band and altimeter frequencies.

When the Federal Aviation Administration sided with airlines and objected, the wireless companies pushed back the rollout of their new service. In a compromise brokered by the Biden administration, the wireless carriers then agreed not to power up 5G signals near about 50 busy airports. That postponement ends Saturday.

AT&T declined to comment. Verizon did not immediately respond to a question about its plans.

Buttigieg reminded the head of trade group Airlines for America about the deadline in a letter last week, warning that only planes with retrofitted altimeters would be allowed to land under low-visibility conditions. He said more than 80% of the U.S. fleet had been retrofitted, but a significant number of planes, including many operated by foreign airlines, have not been upgraded.

“This means on bad-weather, low-visibility days in particular, there could be increased delays and cancellations,” Buttigieg wrote. He said airlines with planes awaiting retrofitting should adjust their schedules to avoid stranding passengers.

Airlines say the FAA was slow to approve standards for upgrading the radio altimeters and supply-chain problems have made it difficult for manufacturers to produce enough of the devices. Nicholas Calio, head of the Airlines for America, complained about a rush to modify planes “amid pressure from the telecommunications companies.”

Jason Ambrosi, a Delta pilot and president of the Air Line Pilots Association, accused the FCC of granting 5G licenses without consulting aviation interests, which he said “has left the safest aviation system in the world at increased risk.” But, he said, “Ultimately, we will be able to address the impacts of 5G.”

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Associated Press Business Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this story from San Ramon, California.

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July 2, 2023
Still hiring: Big Tech layoffs give other sectors an opening

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For the thousands of workers who’d never experienced upheaval in the tech sector, the recent mass layoffs at companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta came as a shock.

Now they are being courted by long-established employers whose names aren’t typically synonymous with tech work, including hotel chains, retailers, investment firms, railroad companies and even the Internal Revenue Service.

All of those sectors have signaled on recruiting platforms that they are still hiring software engineers, data scientists and cybersecurity specialists despite the layoffs in Big Tech. It’s a chance for them to level the playing field against tech giants that have long had their pick of the top talent with lucrative compensation, alluring perks and sheer name recognition.

Federal regulators on Thursday launched a legal attack on Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion takeover of video game maker Activision Blizzard by depicting it as an anticompetitive weapon while Microsoft hailed the deal as a way to make popular games such as Call of Duty more widely available at cheape

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates says he is visiting Beijing. He joins a series of foreign business figures who have visited China as the ruling Communist Party tries to revive investor interest in the country.

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Microsoft from completing its deal to buy video game company Activision Blizzard, the latest antitrust challenge to the proposed merger but one that could hasten its conclusion.

One small step for an intrepid crew of 24th century space explorers could be a giant leap — or flop — for Microsoft when the Xbox-maker launches its long-awaited video game Starfield.

No employer is making a more aggressive push than the country’s largest: the federal government, which is aiming to hire 22,000 tech workers in fiscal year 2023. Federal agencies have participated in a series of “Tech to Gov” job forums targeted in part at laid off workers, hoping to ease their own chronic labor shortages that have hindered efforts to strengthen cybersecurity defenses and modernize the way they deliver benefits and collect taxes.

“It’s a real opportunity for the federal government,” said Rob Shriver deputy director of the U.S. office of Personnel Management. “We have just about any tech job that anybody could possibly be interested in the federal government.”

Federal, state and local government tech job postings soared 48% in the first three months of 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to an analysis by tech trade group CompTIA of data from Lightcast, a labor analytics firm. It was a sharp contrast to the 33% decrease in tech job openings during that period in the tech industry, and a 31.5% slowdown in such postings across the economy, according to CompTIA’s figures.

Tech hiring reached a historic high of more than 4 million in 2022, although hiring began to fall off in the second half of the year, according to CompTIA. This year, there have been about 1.26 million tech postings between January and May, a level more on par with the pre-pandemic years, said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA.

To be sure, the competition for tech talent remains tight, and many companies, including tech companies, are still hiring — just more slowly. The unemployment rate for tech workers is just 2%. But some who lost their jobs in Big Tech swiftly landed jobs at non-tech firms.

After Hector Garcia, 53, was laid off by Meta’s Facebook in November, it didn’t take long for him to be snapped up by Abbott, the Chicago-based global health company, which expects to hire hundreds of software engineers, data architects and cybersecurity analysts over the next years.

“I decided to go for something that I hadn’t done before,” said Garcia, a data architect who said he got offers from tech firms but was intrigued by the idea of working for a manufacturer that produces something tangible in medical devices.

Jonathan Johnson, CEO of online retailer Overstock, said that he has seen a 20% increase in applications for tech job openings in first quarter compared to a year ago. He also noted that it’s taking a shorter time to fill a spot compared to a year ago and that the quality of applicants has improved.

“There’s less demand and more supply,” Johnson said.

The layoffs have been especially shocking for the newest generation of workers who are too young to remember the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000 and “grew up consuming the apps and services of the big tech brands,” said Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer for Handshake, a leading career site for college students and graduates.

“The volatility and layoffs of the past year rocked that image of stability and growth,” Cruzvergara said.

During the September 2022-2023 school year, the share of applications by tech majors to tech companies fell by 4.4 percentage points on Handshake, compared to last year. In contrast, the share of applications by tech majors to government jobs on the platform grew by 2.5 percentage points.

Tech firms still saw a 46% increase applications from tech majors, as Handshake received more applications overall from that group. But the application to government jobs rose much faster, tripling from last year. Hospitality and health care jobs also saw an increase in applications from tech majors — 18% and 82%, respectively — and their share of applicants from that pool remained steady.

Kevin Monahan, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Career and Professional Development Center, said he first saw a shift last fall before some of the biggest layoffs. More students returned from internships saying that tech companies weren’t extending job offers or return internships at that time.

“Indirectly, students were able to see the writing on the wall,” Monahan said.

Ly Na Nguyen, a computer science major at Columbia University, said she went off LinkedIn for a couple of weeks at the height of the layoffs because it was so disheartening to read posts from people shocked over their dismissals. Nguyen is happy to be returning to Amazon this summer for another internship, which she said has added prestige to her resume. But overtures from outside Big Tech has have grabbed her attention.

“Right now, I’m super flexible,” Nguyen said. “I’d definitely look at a government job.”

In March, young tech workers from several federal agencies spoke at an online forum on Handshake about the government’s urgent need to recruit new talent. Less than 7% of the federal workforce is under 30.

“No one is necessarily going to strike it rich working in the government,” said Chris Kuang, co-founder of the U.S. Digital Corp, a federal fellowship program for early career technologists, answering a question about pay. But he encouraged students to consider benefits such as pension plans, job stability and the possibility of working on “any issue under the sun.”

“In this economy, a federal job will be one of the most secure types out there,” Kuang said.

The government faces plenty of competition from private sector companies making similar overtures.

Hotels and restaurants also posted slightly more tech jobs in the first quarter of 2023 compared to last year, according to CompTIA figures, as the sector emerges from the economic turmoil of the pandemic.

Hilton saw a 152% increase in applications to internships and full-time jobs from tech majors on Handshake this school year, compared to the year prior.

“We do want to demystify the siloed thinking of ’Hey, if I want to work in tech, I have to go work at a tech firm,” Hilton Chief Human Resources Officer Laura Fuentes said at Handshake’s annual conference of company and higher education leaders.

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AP Retail Writer Anne D’Innocenzio in New York contributed to this story.

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June 27, 2023
California’s new budget covers $32 billion deficit while extending tax credits for film industry

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers approved a $310.8 billion budget on Tuesday that closes a nearly $32 billion budget deficit while also extending a lucrative tax break for the state’s iconic film and television industry.

The nation’s most populous state has had combined budget surpluses of well over $100 billion in the past few years, enabling the Democrats in charge to greatly expand government.

But this year, revenues slowed as inflation soared and the stock market struggled. California gets most of its revenue from taxes paid by the wealthy, making it more vulnerable to changes in the economy than other states. Last month, the administration of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated the state’s spending would exceed revenues by over $30 billion.

California has cited two Northern California mushroom farms for health and safety violations and proposed more than $165,000 in fines five months after a worker killed seven people in back-to-back shootings.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for big changes in the state’s building and permitting process.

California’s transit agencies are asking Democrats who control the state’s government to rescue them like Democrats in New York recently did.

Two insurance industry giants have stepped back from the California marketplace. They say that wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have prompted them to stop writing new policies.

The budget approved by lawmakers covers that deficit by cutting some spending — about $8 billion — while delaying other spending and shifting some expenses to other funds. The plan would borrow $6.1 billion and would set aside $37.8 billion in reserves, the most ever. Newsom has said he will sign it into law.

Despite the deficit, lawmakers agreed to extend tax credits for movie and television productions that film in the state. Those credits will reduce state revenues by up to $330 million per year. The big change is that those tax credits will be refundable. That means if a movie studio has credits that are worth more than what it owes in taxes, the state will pay the studio the difference in cash.

“It’s real hard to justify doing this when we’re not doing that for a lot of people who are struggling in California,” Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher said.

Others said the improved tax credits are needed as California faces competition from other states seeking to lure TV and movie productions out of California, which has long been synonymous with the glamor of Hollywood.

“It’s something I know people can argue over whether it benefits California or not, but it is iconic and it creates jobs,” Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins said.

California’s budget reflects the partisan divisions that permeate the country’s politics. Democrats praised the budget for avoiding painful cuts to health care and public education programs, two of the biggest areas of state spending. But Republicans criticized the budget as unsustainable. Republican Assemblymember Vince Fong noted the budget Democrats approved on Tuesday assumes much higher tax revenues than the projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“If revenues come closer to the independent legislative analyst’s projections and if a recession occurs, not only will the deficits be larger, they will consume most, if not all, of our reserves,” Fong said.

The budget is a complex array of nearly two dozen bills that include much more than just spending decisions. It includes protections for the Joshua tree, a native desert plant at the center of a long debate about how to safeguard it from threats driven by climate change without adding unnecessary roadblocks to housing and solar development projects in areas where the tree grows.

The state will charge a fee to developers who remove the trees, pledging to use the money to conserve the species. Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, called the bill an “innovative approach” to balancing tree preservation and development efforts.

But Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican representing Palmdale, a Southern California city in the Mojave Desert where many of the trees grow, worried the bill will hinder housing development in his district.

“There’s never been a bill that’s more impactful to my desert community than this one,” Lackey said.

The budget includes a lifeline for public transit agencies struggling to survive following steep declines in riders during the coronavirus pandemic. It allows transit agencies to use some of the $5.1 billion in funding over the next three years for operations.

Still, some San Francisco Bay-area lawmakers said the spending wasn’t enough to forestall painful service cuts over the next few years. On Monday, they proposed legislation that would increase tolls on seven state-owned bridges — including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — by $1.50 over the next five years.

Civil liberties groups were upset that the budget allows state officials to withhold some records related to investigations of police misconduct until 2027, a delay the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training said was necessary as it prepares to handle an estimated 3,400 cases each year.

Lawmakers agreed to impose a new tax on the private companies that contract with the state to administer Medicaid benefits. The tax will bring in an estimated $32 billion over the next four years, with some of the money going to doctors while other funding will go to rural hospitals struggling to avoid bankruptcy.

“This will fundamentally help us change how we do health care,” Democratic state Sen. Anna Caballero said.

The budget includes more than $2.8 billion to increase pay for state-subsidized child care workers. But it delays until next year funding for an additional 20,000 slots in the state’s subsidized child care program for low-income families.

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Associated Press writer Sophie Austin contributed to this report. Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna

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June 27, 2023
Want a climate-friendly flight? It’s going to take a while and cost you more

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When it comes to flying, going green may cost you more. And it’s going to take a while for the strategy to take off.

Sustainability was a hot topic this week at the Paris Air Show, the world’s largest event for the aviation industry, which faces increasing pressure to reduce the climate-changing greenhouse gases that aircraft spew.

Even the massive orders at the show got a emissions-reduction spin: Airlines and manufacturers said the new planes will be more fuel-efficient than the ones they replace.

Inflation is pushing in different directions in Europe, rising in Germany and falling again in Spain.

Halfway into 2023, and so little on Wall Street has gone according to plan. The S&P 500 has climbed roughly 14% as one of the most-predicted and longest awaited recessions in history has yet to appear.

Royal accounts show that a change in monarchs, double-digit inflation and ongoing costs of renovating Buckingham Palace contributed to a 5% increase in publicly-funded spending by Britain’s royals.

Applications for unemployment benefits fell significantly last week after it appeared claims had reached a modestly elevated level in recent weeks.

But most of those planes will burn conventional, kerosene-based jet fuel. Startups are working feverishly on electric-powered aircraft, but they won’t catch on as quickly as electric vehicles.

“It’s a lot easier to pack a heavy battery into a vehicle if you don’t have to lift it off the ground,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia University.

That means sustainable aviation fuel has become the industry’s best hope to achieve its promise of net zero emissions by 2050. Aviation produces 2% to 3% of worldwide carbon emissions, but its share is expected to grow as travel increases and other industries become greener.

Sustainable fuel, however, accounts for just 0.1% of all jet fuel. Made from sources like used cooking oil and plant waste, SAF can be blended with conventional jet fuel but costs much more.

Suppliers are “going to be able to kind of set the price,” Molly Wilkinson, an American Airlines vice president, said at the air show. “And we fear that at that point, that price eventually is going to trickle down to the passenger in some form of a ticket price.”

With such a limited supply, critics say airlines are making overly ambitious promises and exaggerating how quickly they can ramp up the use of SAF. The industry even has skeptics: Nearly one-third of aviation sustainability officers in a GE Aerospace survey doubt the industry will hit its net zero goal by 2050.

Delta Air Lines is being sued in U.S. federal court by critics who say the carrier falsely bills itself as the world’s first carbon-neutral airline, and that Delta’s claim rests on carbon offsets that are largely bogus. The Atlanta-based airline says the charges are “without legal merit.”

Across the Atlantic, a consumer group known by its French acronym, BEUC, filed a complaint this week with the European Union’s executive arm, accusing 17 airlines of greenwashing.

The group says airlines are misleading consumers and violating rules on unfair commercial practices by encouraging customers to pay extra to help finance development of SAF and offset future carbon emissions created by flying.

In one case, the group’s researchers found Air France charging up to 138 euros ($150) for the green option.

“Sustainable aviation fuels, they are indeed the biggest technological potential to decarbonize the aviation sector, but the main problem … is that they are not available,” said Dimitri Vergne, a senior policy officer at BEUC.

“We know that before the end of the next decade — at least — they won’t be available in massive quantities” and won’t be the main source of fuel for planes, Vergne added.

Producers say SAF reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%, compared with regular jet fuel, over its life cycle.

Airlines have been talking about becoming greener for years. They were rattled by the rise of “flight shaming,” a movement that encourages people to find less-polluting forms of transportation — or reduce travel altogether.

The issue gained urgency this year when European Union negotiators agreed on new rules requiring airlines to use more sustainable fuel starting in 2025 and rising sharply in later years.

The United States is pushing incentives instead of mandates.

A law signed last year by President Joe Biden will provide tax breaks for developing cleaner jet fuel, but one of the credits will expire in just two years. Wilkinson, the American Airlines executive, said that was too short to entice sustainable fuel producers and that the credit should be extended by 10 years or longer.

The International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group, estimates that SAF could contribute 65% of the emissions reductions needed for the industry to hit its 2050 net-zero goal.

But very few flights are powered by SAF because of the limited supply and infrastructure.

Just before the Paris Air Show opened, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would contribute 200 million euros ($218 million) toward a 1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) plant to make SAF.

Many airlines have touted investments in SAF producers such as World Energy, which has a plant in Paramount, California, and Finland’s Neste.

United Airlines plans to triple its use of SAF this year, to 10 million gallons — but it burned 3.6 billion gallons of fuel last year.

Some see sustainable fuel as a bridge to cleaner technologies, including larger electric planes or aircraft powered by hydrogen. But packing enough power to run a large electric plane would require a fantastic leap in battery technology.

Hydrogen must be chilled and stored somewhere — it couldn’t be carried in the wings of today’s planes, as jet fuel is.

“Hydrogen sounds like a good idea. The problem is the more you look into the details, the more you realize it’s an engineering challenge but also an economics challenge,” Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consultancy, said at the Paris Air Show. “It’s within the realm of possibility, (but) not for the next few decades.”

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This story has been corrected to note that Wagner is at Columbia University, not New York University.

Koenig reported from Dallas. AP journalists Jade Le Deley and Tristan Werkmeister in Le Bourget, France, and Kelvin Chan in Toronto contributed.

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June 26, 2023
Suspected admin of dark web drug site Monopoly Market extradited to US from Austria

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BERLIN (AP) — Austrian authorities said Monday they have extradited the suspected administrator of a vast dark web marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods to the United States.

The U.S. Department of Justice has accused Milomir Desnica of running the Monopoly Market site and facilitating $18 million in illegal drug transactions using cryptocurrencies.

Authorities in the U.S. and Europe last month announced the arrest of nearly 300 people on both sides of the Atlantic and the seizure of more than $53 million in a bust of the site, which was the largest operation of its kind. The dark web is a part of the internet that is hosted within an encrypted network and accessible only through specialized anonymity-providing tools.

Austria’s main center-left opposition party has reversed the result of its weekend leadership election, announcing that a computer error originally led to the wrong candidate being declared the winner.

An Austrian federal court says the state can’t be held liable for a COVID-19 infection from an outbreak at an Alpine ski resort as the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe The Supreme Court of Justice on Thursday announced its verdict in a long-running legal battle involving a German resident who travele

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer conducted her second international trade mission of the year this week, spending two days in Austria and Latvia meeting with both business and government leaders.

Jessica Pegula sent the U.S. into the Billie Jean King Cup finals with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Julia Grabher of Austria.

Desnica, a citizen of Croatia and Serbia, was arrested in Vienna last November and handed over to U.S. authorities Friday, Austria’s Federal Criminal Police said.

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June 26, 2023
High-speed internet is a necessity, President Biden says, pledging all US will have access by 2030

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity,” as he pledged that every household in the nation would have access by 2030 using cables made in the U.S.

“These investments will help all Americans,” he said. “We’re not going to leave anyone behind.”

Biden announced that more than $40 billion would be distributed across the country to deliver high-speed internet in places where there’s either no service, or service is too slow.

The United States has flown nuclear-capable bombers to the Korean Peninsula in its latest show of force against North Korea.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says a request for his country to temporarily host a U.S. immigrant visa processing center for thousands of Afghans faces security and other concerns but is still being considered by his administration.

The United States is about to start the countdown to its 250th anniversary. The buildup begins this July 4 at a Major League Baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs at American Family Field in Milwaukee, where the organization created by Congress to oversee the party will ki

The Pell Grant program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year.

“But it’s not enough to have access — you need affordability and access,” the president said, adding that his administration is working with service providers to bring down costs on what is now a household utility — like water or gas — but often remains priced at a premium.

With Monday’s announcement, the administration is launching the second phase of its “Investing in America” tour. The three-week blitz of speeches and events is designed to promote Biden’s previous legislative wins on infrastructure, the economy and climate change going into a reelection year. The president and his advisers believe voters don’t know enough about his policies heading into his 2024 reelection campaign and that more voters would back him once they learn more.

Biden’s challenge is that investments in computer chips and major infrastructure projects such as rail tunnels can take a decade to come to fruition. That leaves much of the messaging focused on grants that will be spent over time, rather than completed projects.

The internet access funding amounts depended primarily on the number of unserved locations in each jurisdiction or those locations that lack access to internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second download and upload speeds of 3 Mbps. Download speeds involve retrieving information from the internet, including streaming movies and TV. Upload speeds determine how fast information travels from a computer to the internet, like sending emails or publishing photos online.

The funding includes more than $1 billion each for 19 states, with remaining states falling below that threshold. Allotments range from $100.7 million for Washington, D.C., to $3.3 billion for Texas.

Biden said more than 35,000 projects are already funded or underway to lay cable that provides internet access. Some of those are from $25 billion in initial funding as part of the “American Rescue Plan.”

“High-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore,” he said. “It’s become an absolute necessity.”

More than 7% of the country falls in the underserved category, according to the Federal Communications Commission ‘s analysis.

Sen. Joe Manchin, who Biden called out as a “friend” during today’s announcement, celebrated the $1.2 billion West Virginia will receive to expand service in the rural, mountainous state of around 1.8 million.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo joined Manchin at a press conference after Biden’s announcement and said West Virginia’s allotment would be enough money to “finally connect every resident.”

“When I say everyone, I mean everyone,” she said. Raimondo said the reason that hasn’t happened in the past is because it’s expensive to lay fiber in a rural or mountainous area.

“And so the internet providers haven’t done it — it doesn’t make economic sense for them,” she said. “What we’re saying to them now is, ‘With this money, $1.2 billion to connect about 300,000 folks in West Virginia, it is plenty of money to get to everyone.’”

Congress approved the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, along with several other internet expansion initiatives, through the infrastructure bill Biden signed in 2021.

Earlier this month, the Commerce Department announced winners of middle mile grants, which will fund projects that build the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to extend internet access to every part of the country.

States have until the end of the year to submit proposals outlining how they plan to use that money, which won’t begin to be distributed until those plans are approved. Once the Commerce Department signs off on those initial plans, states can award grants to telecommunications companies, electric cooperatives and other providers to expand internet infrastructure.

Under the rules of the program, states must prioritize connecting predominantly unserved areas before bolstering service in underserved areas—which are those without access to internet speeds of 100 Mbps/20 Mbps—and in schools, libraries or other community institutions.

Hinging such a large investment on FCC data has been somewhat controversial. Members of Congress pressed FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about inaccuracies they said would negatively impact rural states’ allotments in particular, and state broadband officials were concerned about the short timeline to correct discrepancies in the first version of the map.

The second version of the map, which was released at the end of May and used for allotments, reflects the net addition of 1 million locations, updated data from internet service providers and the results of more than 3 million public challenges, Rosenworcel, who in the past has been a critic of how the FCC’s maps were developed, said in a May statement.

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AP reporter Leah Willingham contributed from Charleston, West Virginia.

Harjai, who reported from Los Angeles, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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June 26, 2023
NYC gets $25M for e-bike charging stations, seeking to prevent deadly battery fires

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NEW YORK (AP) — After a series of fires involving faulty e-bike batteries including a recent blaze that claimed four lives, New York City officials announced Sunday that they are receiving a $25 million emergency grant from the federal government to fund scores of charging stations citywide.

Mayor Eric Adams hopes the stations will provide a safer way for delivery workers, who rely on e-bikes to efficiently do their jobs, to recharge lithium batteries used to power their bicycles.

“This means that residents will no longer need to charge the e-bikes in their apartments — what we find to be extremely dangerous, particularly when you charge them overnight,” Adams said at a news conference Sunday. He was flanked by the state’s two U.S. senators who helped secure the funding from the US. Department of Transportation.

Washington next month will become the first U.S. state to deduct taxes from workers’ paychecks to finance a new long-term care benefit for residents who can’t live independently due to illness, injury or aging-related conditions like dementia.

Drivers in New York City will be charged extra in tolls to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street as part of a long-stalled congestion pricing plan.

New York’s former lieutenant governor and longtime civic leader Richard Ravitch has died at the age of 89.

New York City will add the festival of Diwali to the list of public school holidays in recognition of the growth of the city’s South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities.

The announcement comes after a lithium ion battery caught fire and engulfed an e-bike shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The fire and thick smoke spread to apartments above the shop, killing four people and injuring three others, including a responding firefighter.

In the days since, New York City officials sought the public’s help in cracking down on unsafe e-bike shops and fire officials issued at least 10 citations to shops for improper handling of the batteries.

City officials said they’d previously fined the shop for its e-bike charging practices, though inspectors reportedly did not check to see if the store was selling reconditioned batteries on a recent visit.

Under new guidelines, fire officials will be directed to respond to complaints about e-bike batteries within 12 hours, rather than the previous policy of three days.

New York City has seen over 100 fires and 13 deaths this year linked to e-bikes, more than double the total number of fatalities from last year, officials said.

The city has issued nearly 500 summonses related to e-bikes, which can result in fines between $1,000 and $5,000.

The batteries can overheat if defective or improperly charged.

Adams had announced in March that the city was working to establish charging stations. The grant would fund an initial 170 charging units in about 50 locations.

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said the charging stations proved “new hope” to prevent “these fires that start from shoddy China-made lithium ion batteries and chargers,” he said during the press conference.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she and Schumer were working on legislation to establish safety standards for batteries.

“If passed,” she said, “it would take improperly manufactured batteries off the market.”

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June 26, 2023
2.5M Genworth policyholders and 769K retired California workers and beneficiaries affected by hack

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The country’s largest public pension fund says the personal information of about 769,000 retired California employees and other beneficiaries — including Social Security numbers — was among data stolen by Russian cybercriminals in the breach of a popular file-transfer application.

It blamed the breach on a third-party vendor that verifies deaths. The same vendor, PBI Research Services/Berwyn Group, also lost the personal data of at least 2.5 million Genworth Financial policyholders, including Social Security numbers, to the same criminal gang, according to the Fortune 500 insurer.

The California Public Employees Retirement system said they were offering affected members two years of free credit monitoring. Genworth said in a statement posted online it would offer credit monitoring and ID theft protection.

The U.S. is imposing sanctions on four firms and one individual connected to the Wagner Group. The Russian mercenary group led a brief revolt against the Kremlin last week.

Workers in the fields of computer science, real estate, finance and insurance experienced the greatest bumps in working from home during the first years of the pandemic, while it barely budged for laborers in occupations like stockers, truck operators and order fillers.

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy says he will seek the 2024 Republican nomination to challenge Montana U.S. Sen.

More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives. That’s according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs designed to help small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years.

The breach of the MOVEit file-transfer program, discovered last month, is estimated by cybersecurity experts to have compromised hundreds of organizations globally. Confirmed victims include the U.S. Department of Energy and several other federal agencies, more than 9 million motorists in Oregon and Louisiana, Johns Hopkins University, Ernst & Young, the BBC and British Airways.

The criminal gang behind the hack, known as Cl0p, is extorting victims, threatening to dump their data online if they don’t pay up.

Genworth disclosed the hack Thursday of the MOVEit instance managed by PBI Research in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Minnesota-based PBI Research did not immediately return a phone message seeking details on which of its other customers may have been affected. The company’s website lists the Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee public pension funds as among customers of its mortality verification service.

“This external breach of information is inexcusable,” CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost said in a news release. “Our members deserve better. As soon as we learned about what happened, we took fast action to protect our members’ financial interests, as well as steps to ensure long-term protections.”

CalPERS had more than $442 billion in assets as of Dec. 31 and about 1.5 million members.

Security experts say such so-called supply-chain hacks expose an uncomfortable truth about the software organizations use: Network security is only as strong as the weakest digital link in the ecosystem.

The stolen data included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers — and might also include names of spouses or domestic partners and children, officials said. CalPERS planned to send letters Thursday to those affected by the breach.

CalPERS said PBI notified it of the breach on June 6, the same day cybersecurity firms began to issue reports on the breach of MOVEit, whose maker, Ipswitch, is owned by Progress Software.

PBI reported the breach to federal law enforcement, and CalPERS placed “additional safeguards” to protect the information of retirees who use the member benefits website and visit a regional office, officials said. The agency did not elaborate on those safeguards, citing security reasons.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Genworth disclosed the hack on Thursday, not June 16.

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Bajak reported from Boston.

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Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna

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June 26, 2023
Malaysia says it will take legal action against Meta over harmful content on Facebook

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s government said Friday it will take legal action against Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, for failing to remove undesirable and harmful content from its social media platform.

The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission said Facebook has recently been plagued by a “a significant volume of undesirable content” relating to sensitive issues on race, religion and royalty as well as defamation, impersonation, online gambling and scam advertisements.

The commission said repeated efforts to reach out to Meta to remove harmful content were of no avail.

Four Thai nationals have been charged with human trafficking in a Malaysian court over the 2015 discovery of mass graves and human trafficking camps at the country’s border with Thailand.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia and Indonesia signed agreements Thursday that ended longstanding maritime border disputes and vowed to bolster cooperation to fight “highly detrimental discriminatory” measures against palm oil.

Malaysia has condemned a Singapore-born comedian who made fun of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 during a skit in the United States.

Malaysia’s maritime agency says a detained Chinese barge likely plundered two World War II British shipwrecks in the South China Sea after discovering another 100 old artillery shells on it.

“Meta’s response, which has been sluggish and unsatisfactory, has not met the urgency of the matter and has led to increasing public concern and scrutiny,” it said in a statement. “As there is no sufficient cooperation from Meta, MCMC has no option but to take definitive steps or legal action against Meta as a measure to ensure that people are secure and protected in the physical sphere.”

The commission said it will not tolerate abuse of online platforms and telecommunications services for “malicious cyber activities, phishing, or any content that threatens racial stability, social harmony and defies respect for the rulers.” Malaysia has nine ethnic Malay state rulers, whose role is largely ceremonial but held in esteem among the country’s Malay majority.

Earlier this month, the government warned of action against Telegram after it refused to cooperate over complaints regarding content and misuse of the app, including the sale of pornographic materials, drugs and investment scams. Officials were quoted by local media as saying Telegram scams have cost Malaysians some 45 million ringgit ($9.6 million) since January 2020.

Telegram initially said it wouldn’t participate in “any form of political censorship” but later agreed to work with local authorities to curb illegal activities.

The action against online platforms coincides with six crucial state elections that must be held no later than the end of August. While state polls do not affect the federal government, they are closely watched as they will be the first test of public support for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim ‘s unity government that was formed after a fractious general election in November.

Anwar faces strong opposition from the Islamic-dominated National Alliance, which got unexpectedly strong support from Malays in the November election. The National Alliance is hoping for another big showing in the six state elections and has been aggressively using social media to slam Anwar’s government.

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Find more of AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific

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June 26, 2023
Lawyers submitted bogus case law created by ChatGPT. A judge fined them $5,000

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NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday imposed $5,000 fines on two lawyers and a law firm in an unprecedented instance in which ChatGPT was blamed for their submission of fictitious legal research in an aviation injury claim.

Judge P. Kevin Castel said they acted in bad faith. But he credited their apologies and remedial steps taken in explaining why harsher sanctions were not necessary to ensure they or others won’t again let artificial intelligence tools prompt them to produce fake legal history in their arguments.

“Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance,” Castel wrote. “But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings.”

A former NFL quarterback, a firefighter from Georgia and two fathers who drowned while trying to save their children are among at least 10 recent victims of dangerous rip currents along Gulf of Mexico beaches stretching across Florida’s Panhandle to Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Oregon Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek has appointed a new secretary of state. LaVonne Griffin-Valade will take over from Shemia Fagan, who resigned in May after coming under fire for her consultancy work for a marijuana business.

Riccardo Muti has ended 13 seasons as Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director with praise and a series of honors.

New York started new inspections this month at the unlicensed pot shops that are troubling the state’s fledgling legal marijuana market.

The judge said the lawyers and their firm, Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, P.C., “abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted non-existent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question.”

In a statement, the law firm said it would comply with Castel’s order, but added: “We respectfully disagree with the finding that anyone at our firm acted in bad faith. We have already apologized to the Court and our client. We continue to believe that in the face of what even the Court acknowledged was an unprecedented situation, we made a good faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth.”

The firm said it was considering whether to appeal.

Castel said the bad faith resulted from the failures of the attorneys to respond properly to the judge and their legal adversaries when it was noticed that six legal cases listed to support their March 1 written arguments did not exist.

The judge cited “shifting and contradictory explanations” offered by attorney Steven A. Schwartz. He said attorney Peter LoDuca lied about being on vacation and was dishonest about confirming the truth of statements submitted to Castel.

At a hearing earlier this month, Schwartz said he used the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot to help him find legal precedents supporting a client’s case against the Colombian airline Avianca for an injury incurred on a 2019 flight.

Microsoft has invested some $1 billion in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

The chatbot, which generates essay-like answers to prompts from users, suggested several cases involving aviation mishaps that Schwartz hadn’t been able to find through usual methods used at his law firm. Several of those cases weren’t real, misidentified judges or involved airlines that didn’t exist.

The judge said one of the fake decisions generated by the chatbot “have some traits that are superficially consistent with actual judicial decisions” but he said other portions contained “gibberish” and were “nonsensical.”

In a separate written opinion, the judge tossed out the underlying aviation claim, saying the statute of limitations had expired.

Lawyers for Schwartz and LoDuca did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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June 26, 2023
Is Twitter ready for Europe’s new Big Tech rules? EU official says it has work to do

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Twitter needs to do more work to fall in line with the European Union’s tough new digital rulebook, a top EU official said after overseeing a “stress test” of the company’s systems in Silicon Valley.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton said late Thursday that he noted the “strong commitment of Twitter to comply” with the Digital Services Act, sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months.

However, “work needs to continue,” he said in a statement after reviewing the results of the voluntary test at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with owner Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

Tony Estanguet won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games. Now, the trim 45-year-old is the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is insisting that right-wing populism won’t gain the upper hand in his country, days after a far-right party won control of a county administration for the first time since the Nazi era.

The U.K. government’s climate advisers have slammed officials for their slow pace in meeting their net zero target and backtracking on fossil fuel commitments.

Maltese lawmakers have unanimously approved legislation to ease the the strictest abortion laws in the European Union.

Breton, who oversees digital policy, is also meeting other tech bosses in California. He’s the EU’s point person working to get Big Tech ready for the new rules, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation and other harmful and illegal material on their sites. The law takes effect Aug. 25 for the biggest platforms.

The Digital Services Act, along with new regulations in the pipeline for data and artificial intelligence, has made Brussels a trailblazer in the growing global movement to clamp down on tech giants.

The mock exercise tested Twitter’s readiness to cope with the DSA’s requirements, including protecting children online and detecting and mitigating risks like disinformation, under both normal and extreme situations.

“Twitter is taking the exercise seriously and has identified the key areas on which it needs to focus to comply with the DSA,” Breton said, without providing more details. “With two months to go before the new EU regulation kicks in, work needs to continue for the systems to be in place and work effectively and quickly.”

Twitter’s global government affairs team tweeted that the company is “on track to be ready when the DSA comes into force.” Yaccarino tweeted that “Europe is very important to Twitter and we’re focused on our continued partnership.”

Musk agreed in December to let the EU carry out the stress test, which the bloc is offering to all tech companies before the rules take effect. Breton said other online platforms will be carrying out their own stress tests in the coming weeks but didn’t name them.

Despite Musk’s claims to the contrary, independent researchers have found misinformation — as well as hate speech — spreading on Twitter since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company last year. Musk has reinstated notorious election deniers, overhauled Twitter’s verification system and gutted much of the staff that had been responsible for moderating posts.

Last month, Breton warned Twitter that it “can’t hide” from its obligations after the social media site abandoned the bloc’s voluntary “code of practice” on online disinformation, which other social media platforms have pledged to support.

Combating disinformation will become a legal requirement under the Digital Services Act.

“If laws are passed, Twitter will obey the law,” Musk told the France 2 TV channel this week when asked about the DSA.

Breton’s agenda Friday includes discussions about the EU’s digital rules and upcoming artificial intelligence regulations with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company makes the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. But a briefing for journalists was canceled.

The DSA is part of a sweeping update to the EU’s digital rulebook aimed at forcing tech companies to clean up their platforms and better protect users online.

For European users of big tech platforms, it will be easier to report illegal content like hate speech, and they will get more information on why they have been recommended certain content.

Violations will incur fines worth up to 6% of annual global revenue — amounting to billions of dollars for some tech giants — or even a ban on operating in the EU, with its with 450 million consumers.

Breton also is meeting Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the dominant supplier of semiconductors used in AI sytems, for talks on the EU’s Chips Act to boost the continent’s chipmaking industry.

The EU, meanwhile, is putting the final touches on its AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules on the emerging technology that has stirred fascination as well as fears it could violate privacy, upend jobs, infringe on copyright and more.

Final approval is expected by the end of the year, but it won’t take effect until two years later. Breton has been pitching a voluntary “AI Pact” to help companies get ready for its adoption.

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June 26, 2023
Ford Venture Gets Record $9.2 Billion Government Loan for EV Batteries

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Ford Venture Gets Record $9.2 Billion Government Loan for EV Batteries

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June 22, 2023
Buy Ford Stock, Analyst Says. The Gap Is an Opportunity.
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https://www.barrons.com/articles/ford-stock-analyst-buy-608f1c5c
Updated May 30, 2023 2:33 pm ET / Original May 30, 2023 8:23 am ET

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Ford Motor

stock picked up an upgrade to Buy. Business execution is improving and Wall Street hasn’t caught up yet with what’s possible. That’s an opportunity.
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May 30, 2023