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  • At least 146 killed during incident at Halloween festivities in Seoul | CNN

    At least 146 killed during incident at Halloween festivities in Seoul | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    At least 146 people are now reported to have been killed during an incident at Halloween festivities in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood Saturday night, according to Choi Seong-bum, chief of the Yongsan-gu Fire Department.

    At least 150 others were also reported injured, the chief added.

    Authorities are still investigating exactly what caused the incident, but the fire chief said it was a “presumed stampede” and that many people fell, resulting in casualties. The chief said they received reports of people “buried” in crowds starting around 10:24 p.m. local time Saturday night.

    There was no gas leak nor fire on site, according to the chief. The cause of the deaths has not been confirmed.

    Earlier, the Yonhap News Agency reported that some people had suffered from “cardiac arrest,” attributing the statement to fire authorities. Emergency officials assisted at least 81 people in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood reporting “difficulty breathing.”

    Dozens of the injured were transferred to nearby hospitals, said Choi Jae-won, the head of Yongsan Health Center, adding that the death toll would likely increase.

    The Seoul city government is also receiving reports of missing people as there are many unidentified victims. The bodies of the victims are being transferred to multiple hospital mortuaries, according to authorities.

    A witness described a chaotic scene to CNN, saying he saw people jammed in a narrow street unable to breathe.

    “I saw people going to the left side and I saw the person getting to the opposite side. So, the person in the middle got jammed, so they had no way to communicate, they could not breathe,” Song Sehyun told CNN.

    Crowds are seen in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on October 30, 2022.

    Police closed off the area and social media videos showed people lying in the streets and on stretchers as first responders rendered aid.

    The fire chief said that more than 1,700 emergency response forces have been dispatched, including 517 firefighters, 1,100 police officials, and about 70 government workers.

    South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol sent a disaster medical assistance team to the Halloween incident, according to the presidential office.

    Emergency services treat injured people on October 30, 2022, in Seoul, South Korea.

    The president also ordered authorities to secure emergency beds in hospitals nearby and to implement swift rescue operations and treatment, presidential spokesman Lee Jae-Myung said in a briefing.

    Yoon was in an emergency meeting regarding the situation, the office said in a statement.

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  • Health insurance premiums at work didn’t rise in 2022 amid soaring inflation, but the good times won’t last | CNN Politics

    Health insurance premiums at work didn’t rise in 2022 amid soaring inflation, but the good times won’t last | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Even though the price of gas, groceries and other essentials shot up in 2022, health care premiums for employer-sponsored coverage remained essentially flat, according to a survey released Thursday.

    Job-based policies for families cost an average of roughly $22,500 in 2022, with workers contributing an average of about $6,100, the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefit Survey found. That is basically the same as last year.

    The average cost of single policies was just over $7,900 for this year, with employees responsible for about $1,350.

    Unlike in previous years, premium growth trailed behind the increases in inflation and workers’ wages, which came in at 8% and 6.7%, respectively. That’s because the cost of coverage is typically set months in advance – before inflation really took off.

    Also, utilization of health care services remained low in 2021, so employers that fund their own health plans didn’t spend as much as anticipated, which allowed them to keep premiums steady this year, said Matthew Rae, associate director for the Program on the Health Care Marketplace at Kaiser.

    But workers can expect to feel the sting of inflation when they enroll in coverage for next year, which is happening now at many companies.

    “Employers are already concerned about what they pay for health premiums, but this could be the calm before the storm, as recent inflation suggests that larger increases are imminent,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser’s chief executive officer.

    Other surveys show that premiums and out-of-pocket costs are expected to increase in 2023 at a faster rate than in recent years due to inflation. Hospitals, doctors and other providers are feeling the pricing pressure. Their costs for labor, particularly nurses and service staff, and supplies have increased sharply due to inflation and demand. So they are pushing insurers to raise their reimbursement rates when contracts are up for renewal.

    Nearly 159 million non-elderly people are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, according to Kaiser.

    For this year, deductibles only inched up. The average annual deductible stands at roughly $1,760 among workers who face a deductible for single coverage. That compares with about $1,670 last year.

    Employers, particularly large ones, see a growing need for mental health services, the Kaiser survey found.

    Nearly half of big companies saw an increase in the share of workers using mental health services, and more than a quarter say that more employees are asking for family leave because of mental health issues.

    But many employers don’t feel they have enough providers in their networks to provide timely access to mental health care, Rae said.

    While 82% of firms said they have a sufficient number of primary care providers, only 44% said the same of behavioral health providers.

    Telehealth remains important, with three-quarters of firms saying telemedicine matters “somewhat” or “a great deal” in providing access to mental health services.

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  • Soaring inflation is throwing retirees’ budgets into chaos | CNN Business

    Soaring inflation is throwing retirees’ budgets into chaos | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    At the Senior Friendship Center in Sarasota, Florida, talking about inflation really strikes a chord.

    At a card table there, CNN met with a group of seniors, all on fixed incomes, who spoke about feeling the squeeze from steep price hikes over the past year.

    Katherine Janes, 81, said she had to turn to her son for financial help.

    “It makes things a little easier,” Janes said. “Everything is expensive.”

    Ron Longhurst cut back on evening socializing, which has been difficult as a single 79-year-old.

    “Day-to-day, I stay home more,” he said. “You think twice about the big night out… I’m taking maybe a week or two longer between haircuts.”

    Ann Smith, 82, cut down on her favorite “simple pleasure” — drinking soda.

    “I used to enjoy a Coke or two a day,” she said. “I now do one a day, maybe one every other day instead.”

    Seniors on a fixed income have been hit particularly hard by inflation, with September prices up 8.2% from a year ago. The price hikes are even steeper in areas like Tampa, Florida, where the housing market has exploded.

    Sharon Johnson, 67, said her family’s monthly rent in Tampa jumped $350 this year, rising to roughly $3,100 per month. And with other bills surging, like her utilities, it has thrown her budget into chaos.

    “The cost of living is not working well right now for us. It’s hard,” Johnson said. “I’ve never had to feel a worry about how we were going to eat, but today, we’re only doing light foods, sandwiches.”

    Sharon Johnson, 67, said her rent jumped by $350 a month this year, throwing her budget into chaos.

    They already have some boxes packed, expecting another rent hike when their lease ends early next year.

    Johnson, a retired university counselor, and her husband, a retired engineer and teacher, moved to Florida from Michigan three years ago, bringing along her sister and nephew to live with them.

    The family would like to buy a home, but the draining price hikes and red-hot housing market are making that more difficult. Johnson says they may have to downsize as a result.

    “We are middle income, but with less to work with than when we worked full time,” Johnson said. “We have worked hard. And we’ve been honest. Then why is it going in reverse?”

    Next year, Social Security recipients will receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment of 8.7%, the largest increase since 1981.

    But for now, many seniors are feeling little relief.

    Barbara Smith, 70, is a caretaker and also volunteers at Trinity Cafe in Tampa, a restaurant that serves free meals to the less fortunate. But she said she has come to rely on the take-home meal she gets after her shift and it is often the only one she eats all day.

    “Then I don’t have to go and purchase it, because I don’t have the money to do that,” Smith said.

    As she weathers price hikes on food, gas, and personal items, she’s stopped buying puzzles, her favorite hobby. The strain of inflation can be isolating, she said.

    “If it wasn’t for volunteering, I’d probably be insane by now,” she said.

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  • London-based TV channel sparks Iranian leaders’ ire amid protests | CNN

    London-based TV channel sparks Iranian leaders’ ire amid protests | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi
    CNN
     — 

    A top Iranian military official issued a warning to Saudi Arabia last week as his government continued to face off against protesters at home. “You are involved in this matter and know that you are vulnerable, it is better to be careful,” he said at the sidelines of a military drill.

    Major General Hossein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was referring to what state news outlets called a “media war” that they say is being waged against “the Iranian youth and nation” by foreign conspirators seeking to create unrest in the country by supporting protesters there.

    Then, on Thursday Iran again warned Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom, to “stop interfering in the country’s internal affairs.”

    Iran last week said it sanctioned a number of media outlets in the UK for “supporting terrorism” and “inciting violence”, reported Tasnim news agency The sanctioned entities include, among others, Volant Media, Global Media, and DMA Media, as well as the “anti-Iranian TV channels” that the companies support, such as Iran International, reported Tasnim agency.

    Now in their sixth week, protests have swept through the Islamic Republic following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died on September 16 after being detained by “morality police” and taken to a “re-education center,” allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

    As the protests rage, Iran is turning up the heat on its adversaries, mainly the United States and Israel. But last week, Saudi Arabia found itself in the line of fire, which risks further complicating attempts by the two regional rivals to mend ties.

    Riyadh hasn’t publicly commented on the protests. The kingdom’s foreign minister refused to give his view when asked to during an interview with Al Arabiya news channel on October 12.

    “Saudi Arabia has a fixed policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of states,” he said. “Surely, we are following [the situation] and we wish Iran and its people the best.”

    Iran and Saudi Arabia severed ties in 2016 and both parties have backed opposite sides in proxy conflicts across the Middle East. Last year, they began direct talks in an attempt to improve relations. Baghdad has hosted five rounds of talks so far, the last of which was held in April.

    At the heart of Iran’s most recent accusations against Saudi Arabia may be Iran International, a Persian-language news channel that broadcasts from London. The channel has become one of the go-to sources for many Persian speakers looking for news on the protests. It has been at the forefront of covering the demonstrations, getting breaking news and exclusive footage of the events on the ground. Its Twitter account has over a million followers.

    Founded in 2017, Iran International has previously come under scrutiny by the Iranian government. Some say it is due to their coverage of the protests at home, which in recent weeks have rocked the Islamic Republic.

    Salami didn’t name the channel in his warning, but government-backed Iranian media last week accused Saudi Arabia of funding it. Saudi Arabia has not addressed the allegations. Karim Sa djadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington DC, said on Twitter that Iran has demanded the shuttering of the channel in talks with Saudi Arabia, citing a senior Gulf official.

    In 2018, Iran International released a statement denying connections to any government, including Saudi Arabia or Iran after The Guardian reported that it was funded by a firm whose director has ties to Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

    Saudi Arabia did not comment on the Guardian report. The Saudi government did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    “We have heard these accusations before most often promoted by those in whose interests it is to deny a free press,” a spokesperson for Volant Media told CNN.

    “Iran International and its sister channel, Afghanistan International, are editorially independent television channels owned by Volant Media, a company based in London owned by a Saudi Arabian/British citizen; it has no state backing or affiliation,” added the spokesperson.

    Azadeh Moaveni, associate professor of journalism at New York University, described the channel as “one of the most pernicious and damaging forces to enter the Iranian media sphere,” calling it an arm of Saudi foreign policy. “I would not describe Iran International as pro-reform, or organically Iranian in any manner,” she told CNN.

    Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran who was also an adviser to the Iranian nuclear talks negotiating team, said there’s “no doubt” that Iran International is funded by Saudi Arabia. A prominent figure on state-funded Iranian outlets, Marandi added that Iran International spreads rumors, ethnic and sectarian strife “and it tries to use misinformation to create fear, chaos and promote violence.”

    Saudi Research and Marketing Group, a media conglomerate with ties to the Saudi ruling family, has run the Persian language website of the UK’s Independent newspaper since 2018. Its account on Instagram, where many Iranians get their news, has over 600,000 followers.

    CNN’s parent company is Warner Bros. Discovery, which has a partnership with Saudi Research and Media Group, a Saudi joint stock company.

    Saudi Arabia has for years accused Iran of doing the same with its own Arabic-language news channels: targeting Arab audiences with propaganda. State-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting runs Al Alam TV, an Arabic news channel that has interviewed Saudi opposition figures and has been blocked by Arab states. Iran-backed Hezbollah’s Al Manar channel has also been blocked.

    “It’s about time Iran gets a taste of its own medicine,” said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi author and analyst. “Iran has spent decades inciting and funding instability in the Arab world so having them pay the price of such behavior themselves is certainly a source of satisfaction to a lot of people,” he told CNN.

    The channel “is making an impact on public behavior in Iran and they are nervous about their domestic situation,” added Shihabi.

    Analysts say that Iran’s tight grip on domestic media outlets and its lack of freedom of expression have created “fertile ground” for anti-establishment platforms such as Iran International to flourish.

    “It is not so much the broadcasters themselves, but the situation in Iran has provided the possibility for broadcasters outside of Iran to gather a certain degree of popularity in the Iranian context,” said Gholam Khiabany, a reader in media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London.

    Harun Najafizada, a former journalist at Iran International who is now a director at the sister Afghanistan International news channel, said the parent company Volant Media is privately funded but “I don’t care as long as they do not influence my editorial take,” adding that shareholders never interfere in decision making.

    Iran International stood out from other Western-backed Persian language news outlets “by taking the side of the disenchanted, oppressed, voiceless people,” while competitor Persian channels in the West were focused on bringing balance by giving the Iranian government a voice, he told CNN.

    “They have a vision, of course – they don’t do it for God,” said Najafizada, referring to the shareholders. “That vision is democracy.”

    Just two days after Salami’s first warning, however, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, was quoted saying that the two countries should reopen their embassies to facilitate a rapprochement, according to the semi-official Iranian news agency ISNA.

    “We are neighbors of Saudi Arabia and we must coexist,” he was cited as saying by ISNA. “The embassies of the two countries should reopen in order to solve our problems in a better way.”

    Business owners and factory workers in Iran’s Kurdish region went on strike over the weekend as anti-government protests continued.

    Video shared with CNN by pro-reform activist outlet IranWire shows Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdish region, quiet at the beginning of the work week as stores remain shut.

    The Norway-based Iranian rights group Hengaw said shopkeepers were on strike in Bukan, Sanandaj and Saqez, as well as Marivan. Strikes and protests have become common in cities and towns across Iran as people unite against the regime.

    The nationwide protests are now in their fifth week, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died three days after being arrested by the country’s morality police and taken to a re-education center.

    Here’s the latest on this developing story:

    • Iran will file a lawsuit against the United States claiming the US had direct involvement in recent riots, Kazem Gharibabadi, the deputy head of the Iranian judiciary and secretary of the country’s High Council for Human Rights, said on Saturday, according to state news agency IRNA.
    • The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations (CCITTA) on Saturday called for a nationwide strike in protest at the recent deaths and detention of students in the country, according to a statement published on Telegram. The council also announced a period of public mourning for students who have died in recent weeks from Thursday through Saturday, and called for a sit-in on Sunday, October 23 and Monday, October 24.
    • Protests took place in central Berlin on Saturday, with close to 80,000 people standing in solidarity with Iran, German state broadcaster RBB reported, citing police officials.

    Israel and Lebanon could sign maritime border agreement on Thursday, Biden energy adviser says

    Senior US adviser for global energy security Amos Hochstein said on Sunday that Israel and Lebanon could sign their historic maritime borders agreement as early as Thursday.

    • Background: “We’re going to have a deal. We’re going to sign it hopefully this Thursday,” Hochstein said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And I hope that this continues our commitment to stability in the region and prosperity for both countries,” he added.
    • Why it matters: The US-brokered agreement settles a years-long maritime border dispute involving major oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean. Still technically at war, Lebanon and Israel both have much to gain. Not only does the agreement cool down recent security tensions, it also allows Israel to begin drilling and exporting gas to Europe and offers potential economic relief to Lebanon.

    Human Rights Watch says LGBTQ people subjected to arrest and mistreatment in Qatar ahead of World Cup

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Qatar’s security forces of arbitrarily arresting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and subjecting them to ill-treatment in detention ahead of the FIFA World Cup.

    • Background: HRW said in a report issued Monday that it documented six cases of “severe and repeated beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022,” the most recent of which took place in September. Security forces arrested people in public places based solely on their gender expression and unlawfully searched their phones, the HRW report said, adding that as a requirement for their release, security forces mandated that transgender women detainees attend “conversion therapy sessions” at a government-sponsored “behavioral healthcare” center. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar and punishable by imprisonment. A Qatari official told CNN that the HRW allegations “contain information that is categorically and unequivocally false.”
    • Why it matters: Ahead of the FIFA World Cup, which starts November 20, Qatar has said it would welcome LGBT visitors, after concerns were raised from the LGBT community over how safe they will be at the tournament.

    Egypt has ordered the release of prominent activist, presidential pardon committee member says

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday pardoned a prominent activist and former parliamentarian, Zyad el-Elaimy, according to a presidential pardon committee member.

    • Background: Jailed since 2019, el-Elaimy was one of the key participants in the 2011 uprisings that led to the downfall of former longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak. His release is “in response to calls by political parties and forces,” presidential pardon committee member Tarek el-Khouly wrote on Facebook. Young members of political parties, politicians and the presidential pardon committee also coordinated to help secure his release, added el-Khouly. El-Elaimy was given a five-year sentence last year on charges of spreading false news.
    • Why it matters: The release comes two weeks ahead of November’s COP27 summit in Egypt. The country has come in for sharp criticism in recent months, with activists denouncing global leaders’ attendance in the light of Sisi’s questionable human rights record. Egypt has been promoting moves to improve its rights record, but activists and critics have described recent reforms as mostly cosmetic.

    United Arab Emirates: #Diwali

    Also known as Deepavali, the holiday is widely trending across social platforms in the United Arab Emirates, with many flooding Twitter with colorful photos of candles and wishing joy and prosperity to the world.

    Some are also posting photos of themselves in traditional celebratory garments. Diwali is one of the most important festivals in Hinduism, the largest religion in India. This year, it falls on October 24.

    India and the UAE share a strong political and economic relationship, one that has grown closer in recent years.

    The Indian expatriate community in the UAE is around 3.5 million, according to the Indian embassy in the UAE, adding that it is reportedly the largest ethnic community in the oil-rich Arabian Gulf state. Approximately 15% of the diaspora are in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, added the Indian embassy, while the rest are in six northern Emirates, including business hub Dubai.

    The UAE also accounts for 33% of foreign remittances to India, at more than $20 billion a year.

    Diwali is also significant for Sikhs and Jains. It is celebrated in India, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries with South Asian diasporas.

    Palestinian girls wearing traditional embroidered dresses perform during a ceremony marking the start of the olive harvest season in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday.

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  • Elon Musk must close Twitter deal by end of this week or face trial | CNN Business

    Elon Musk must close Twitter deal by end of this week or face trial | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    The clock is ticking for Elon Musk to complete his deal to buy Twitter.

    The billionaire Tesla CEO has until 5 p.m. ET on Friday to close his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter or face a trial that was previously delayed to allow both parties to close the deal.

    The high-stakes countdown comes after a months-long battle over an acquisition that would put the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms, with vast potential impacts on the company’s employees, users and for online discourse generally.

    Musk in April agreed to buy Twitter

    (TWTR)     for $54.20 per outstanding share and then, weeks later, sought to terminate the deal. He initially cited concerns over the prevalence of bots on the platform and later added claims from a company whistleblower. Twitter

    (TWTR)     sued him to follow through with the acquisition.

    The two sides had been in the midst of a contentious litigation process preparing for trial to begin on Oct. 17 when Musk told Twitter he wanted to move forward with closing the deal at the originally agreed upon price. The judge overseeing the case, Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, gave the two sides until Oct. 28 to close the deal or face a November trial.

    In the weeks since the litigation was paused, Twitter has appeared to continue to take steps toward closing the deal. Bloomberg last week reported that the company had frozen employees’ stock accounts in anticipation of the deal’s closing, and that lawyers for both Musk and Twitter were preparing paperwork to close the deal. Musk, meanwhile, told Tesla shareholders that he was “excited” about Twitter even as he admitted to “obviously overpaying” for it.

    But there have been questions about whether the financing Musk had originally lined up to help fund the deal would come through as expected after he spent months disparaging the company and the overall market, including for social media stocks, has declined. Musk has turned to a mix of debt and equity financing for the deal, in addition to putting up his own money, much of it likely from sales of his Tesla shares.

    Some experts have suggested that Musk may need to sell billions of dollars worth of additional Tesla

    (TSLA)     shares to fund the deal, a move that became easier for the CEO after the company reported quarterly earnings last week – not to mention more costly following a recent decline in the car maker’s share price.

    With days to go before the deadline, there have also been some last-minute jitters among Twitter investors and employees.

    Twitter shares briefly dipped Friday morning following a Bloomberg report that Biden administration officials were in early discussions about possibly subjecting some of Musk’s ventures to national security reviews, including the planned Twitter takeover.

    However, asked by CNN, the administration pushed back on the report, which cited people familiar with the matter. “We do not know of any such conversations,” National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. Mergers and acquisitions experts have said that while such a review could complicate matters, it likely wouldn’t allow Musk to get out of the acquisition deal.

    Separately, Twitter was forced to address concerns among its employees about the fate of their jobs after The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk told prospective investors in the deal that he planned to get rid of nearly 75% of the company’s staff. (Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment on the report, which cited internal documents and unnamed people familiar with the matter.)

    Following the report, Twitter General Counsel Sean Edgett sent a memo to staff saying the company does “not have any confirmation of the buyer’s plans following close and recommend not following rumors or leaked documents but rather wait for facts from us and the buyer directly,” according to a report from Bloomberg. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN the authenticity of the memo.

    Musk previously discussed dramatically reducing Twitter’s workforce in personal text messages with friends about the deal, which were revealed in court filings, and didn’t dismiss the potential for layoffs in a call with Twitter employees in June.

    Despite his reported plans to gut the staff, and his own remarks that he is overpaying for the company, Musk has tried to sound optimistic about Twitter’s potential.

    “The long-term potential for Twitter, in my view, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” he said on the Tesla conference call last week. He has floated several possible product updates and suggested Twitter will become part of an “everything” app called x, possibly in the style of popular Chinese app WeChat.

    But the most immediate change for users, if the deal goes through, could be limiting Twitter’s content moderation and restoring accounts that were previously banned from the platform, most notably that of former President Donald Trump.

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  • 3 things that will help reduce the sting of high inflation | CNN Business

    3 things that will help reduce the sting of high inflation | CNN Business

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    There’s really nothing nice to say about inflation when it comes to your bottom line.

    It’s hard on your wallet. It’s hard on your savings because it reduces the buying power of the dollars you socked away. And it’s hard on your paycheck, because chances are your last raise did not keep pace with headline inflation, which the latest reading puts at 8.2%.

    But that same high inflation has led to a couple of changes that might offer you a little relief. And every little bit helps.

    Starting next year, your paycheck could be a little bigger thanks to inflation adjustments that the Internal Revenue Service will make to 2023 federal income tax brackets and other provisions.

    The net effect of those adjustments is this: More of your 2023 wages will be subject to lower tax rates than they were this year. And you may be able to deduct higher amounts of income.

    Here’s the skinny on that.

    When you save money in a tax-deferred workplace retirement plan like a 401(k) or 403(b), you can reduce your taxable income because you get a deduction for your contribution the year you make it. The more you save, the more you cut your tax bill.

    Starting next year, you will be allowed to contribute up to $22,500 into your 401(k), 403(b), most 457 plans or the Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees.

    That’s $2,000 – or roughly 9.8% – more than the current $20,500 federal contribution limit, a direct result of higher inflation. Those are the biggest adjustments made to the contribution limit in decades.

    More about those changes and changes to IRA contribution limits can be found here.

    Social Security recipients will receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment of 8.7% next year, the largest increase since 1981.

    The spike will boost retirees’ monthly payments by $146 to an estimated average of $1,827 for 2023.

    No one will be living large on that amount, but the extra cash will offset some of the higher prices for everyday expenses that seniors incur.

    Here’s more on the coming boost to Social Security checks, along with welcome news that there will be a drop in Medicare Part B premiums next year.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this report

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  • Korean auto giant Hyundai investigating child labor in its U.S. supply chain | CNN Business

    Korean auto giant Hyundai investigating child labor in its U.S. supply chain | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Hyundai Motor Co, Korea’s top automaker, is investigating child labor violations in its U.S. supply chain and plans to “sever ties” with Hyundai suppliers in Alabama found to have relied on underage workers, the company’s global chief operating officer Jose Munoz told Reuters on Wednesday.

    A Reuters investigative report in July documented children, including a 12-year-old, working at a Hyundai-controlled metal stamping plant in rural Luverne, Alabama, called SMART Alabama, LLC.

    Following the Reuters report, Alabama’s state Department of Labor, in coordination with federal agencies, began investigating SMART Alabama. Authorities subsequently launched a child labor probe at another of Hyundai’s regional supplier plants, Korean-operated SL Alabama, finding children as young as age 13.

    In an interview before a Reuters event in Detroit on Wednesday, Munoz said Hyundai intends to “sever relations” with the two Alabama supplier plants under scrutiny for deploying underage labor “as soon as possible.”

    In addition, Munoz told Reuters he had ordered a broader investigation into Hyundai’s entire network of U.S. auto parts suppliers for potential labor law violations and “to ensure compliance.”

    Munoz’s comments represent the Korean automotive giant’s most substantive public acknowledgment to date that child labor violations may have occurred in its U.S. supply chain, a network of dozens of mostly Korean-owned auto-parts plants that supply Hyundai’s massive vehicle assembly plant in Montgomery, Alabama.

    Hyundai’s $1.8 billion flagship U.S. assembly plant in Montgomery produced nearly half of the 738,000 vehicles the automaker sold in the United States last year, according to company figures.

    The executive also pledged that Hyundai would push to stop relying on third party labor suppliers at its southern U.S. operations.

    As Reuters reported, migrant children from Guatemala found working at SMART Alabama, LLC and SL Alabama had been hired by recruiting or staffing firms in the region. In a statement to Reuters this week, Hyundai said it had already stopped relying on at least one labor recruiting firm that had been hiring for SMART.

    Munoz told Reuters: “Hyundai is pushing to stop using third party labor suppliers, and oversee hiring directly.”

    Munoz did not offer further detail into how long Hyundai’s probe of its U.S. supply chain would take, when Hyundai or any partner plants could end their dependence on third party staffing firms for labor, or when Hyundai could end commercial relationships with two existing Alabama suppliers investigated for child labor violations by U.S. authorities.

    In a statement on Wednesday, SL Alabama said it had taken “aggressive steps to remedy the situation” as soon it learned a subcontractor had provided underage workers. It terminated its relationship with the staffing firm, took more direct control of the hiring process and hired a law firm to conduct an audit of its employment practices, it said.

    SMART Alabama did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Munoz’s comments come on the same day that an investor group working with union pension funds sent a letter to Hyundai, pushing it to respond to reports of child labor at U.S. parts suppliers, and warning of potential reputational damage to the Korean automaker.

    The letter said that the use of child labor violated international standards Hyundai committed to in its Human Rights Charter and its own code of conduct for suppliers.

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  • A robot is killing weeds by zapping them with electricity | CNN Business

    A robot is killing weeds by zapping them with electricity | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    On a field in England, three robots have been given a mission: to find and zap weeds with electricity before planting seeds in the cleared soil.

    The robots — named Tom, Dick and Harry — were developed by Small Robot Company to rid land of unwanted weeds with minimal use of chemicals and heavy machinery.

    The startup has been working on its autonomous weed killers since 2017, and this April launched Tom, its first commercial robot which is now operational on three UK farms. The other robots are still in the prototype stage, undergoing testing.

    Small Robot says robot Tom can scan 20 hectares (49 acres) a day, collecting data which is then used by Dick, a “crop-care” robot, to zap weeds. Then it’s robot Harry’s turn to plant seeds in the weed-free soil.

    Using the full system, once it is up and running, farmers could reduce costs by 40% and chemical usage by up to 95%, the company says.

    According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization six million metric tons of pesticides were traded globally in 2018, valued at $38 billion.

    “Our system allows farmers to wean their depleted, damaged soils off a diet of chemicals,” says Ben Scott-Robinson, Small Robot’s co-founder and CEO.

    Small Robot says it has raised over £7 million ($9.9 million). Scott-Robinson says the company hopes to launch its full system of robots by 2023, which will be offered as a service at a rate of around £400 ($568) per hectare. The monitoring robot is placed at a farm first and the weeding and planting robots delivered only when the data shows they’re needed.

    To develop the zapping technology, Small Robot partnered with another UK-based startup, RootWave.

    “It creates a current that goes through the roots of the plant through the soil and then back up, which completely destroys the weed,” says Scott-Robinson. “We can go to each individual plant that is threatening the crop plants and take it out.”

    “It’s not as fast as it would be if you went out to spray the entire field,” he says. “But you have to bear in mind we only have to go into the parts of the field where the weeds are.” Plants that are neutral or beneficial to the crops are left untouched.

    Small Robot calls this “per plant farming” — a type of precise agriculture where every plant is accounted for and monitored.

    For Kit Franklin, an agricultural engineering lecturer from Harper Adams University, efficiency remains a hurdle.

    “There is no doubt in my mind that the electrical system works,” he tells CNN Business. “But you can cover hundreds of hectares a day with a large-scale sprayer … If we want to go into this really precise weed killing system, we have to realize that there is an output reduction that is very hard to overcome.”

    But Franklin believes farmers will adopt the technology if they can see a business case.

    “There’s a realization that farming in an environmentally friendly way is also a way of farming in an efficient way,” he says. “Using less inputs, where and when we need them, is going to save us money and it’s going to be good for the environment and the perception of farmers.”

    As well as reducing the use of chemicals, Small Robot wants to improve soil quality and biodiversity.

    “If you treat a living environment like an industrial process, then you are ignoring the complexity of it,” Scott-Robinson says. “We have to change farming now, otherwise there won’t be anything to farm.”

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  • How Covid prompted Asian startups to use tech in revolutionizing mental health support | CNN Business

    How Covid prompted Asian startups to use tech in revolutionizing mental health support | CNN Business

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    Singapore
    CNN Business
     — 

    Many Asian countries introduced tougher Covid-19 restrictions than in other continents, a reality that has caused concerns about elevated levels of stress, anxiety and isolation. Now, a number of young entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to provide greater access to mental healthcare there.

    In July, Singapore-based Intellect raised $20 million in its Series A funding, the largest amount raised by a mental health start-up in Asia.

    Founded in 2019, Intellect runs a mobile app that regularly checks in on users’ mood, provides rescue sessions and exercises that tailor to their needs, and allows them to connect with therapists in real time if needed.

    “The traditional form of therapy is in-person and on-on-one, and it is hard to scale,” said Theodoric Chew, the 26-year-old co-founder of Intellect. “When technology comes in, we can scale access to mental care to everyone.”

    The start-up now serves more than 3 million users across the Asia-Pacific region in 15 languages since services began in early 2020.

    Chew said he was inspired to try to popularize mental healthcare after battling a panic attack when he was 16 years old.

    “I saw first-hand how therapy and working with professionals helped me become better,” he said. “On the flip side, I saw a lot of people struggling across the region – not clinically, but not having the right tools or know-how to access care.”

    While Intellect was founded before the pandemic, it quickly grew in popularity as companies became aware of their employees’ mental health as Covid-19 related lockdown and quarantine measures were imposed.

    “A lot of people were thrown into an array of things – anxiety of the pandemic, being locked up, and getting stay-home notices,” he said. “What has changed fundamentally was that mental health is no longer just a nice-to-have element that companies should consider, it’s something that’s needed across the board today.”

    “It does benefit companies in very real ways … because if you’re not feeling well mentally, you tend to not perform as well,” he said.

    Justin Kim, CEO and co-founder of Ami, another digital mental healthcare start-up based in Singapore and Jakarta, agreed that there’s a need to scale mental health offerings.

    “Many companies are spending millions of dollars a year and paying for gym memberships. But why don’t people invest into their mental health the same way? It’s because there are no resources that are being offered to them, that’s just as accessible and affordable,” he added.

    Justin Kim is the CEO and co-founder of Ami. His start-up has received funding from Meta, the owner of Facebook.

    Since the start-up was founded in January this year, it has raised at least $3 million from a number of investors, including Meta, the owner of Facebook.

    Kim’s team has been working on developing an app that would allow users to text or call mental health coaches confidentially at any time – without having to make prior appointments. He said this allows users to seek professional help whenever they need it in the most efficient way.

    Both Chew and Kim are targeting employers in their business models – companies can pay for a subscription and workers will have unlimited access to their services, which are kept private from their bosses.

    Alistair Carmichael, an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, said employers will benefit from better mental health in their workforce. “The impacts of poor mental health outcomes are significant. … If we focus on the employment and organizational level, those impacts can be things like presenteeism, absenteeism, lost productivity, lost engagement and attrition,” he said.

    Depression and anxiety disorders have cost the global economy $1 trillion each year in lost productivity, the World Health Organization has estimated. And a report by the WHO in March showed the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% during the first year of the pandemic.

    Chew said Intellect is attempting to close the gap by proactively safeguarding mental wellbeing before symptoms get worse. When employees open the app, the system asks them how they feel at the moment. Mini “rescue sessions” are also provided to users who are experiencing a rough time, while live therapy sessions are also available for those who require them.

    The app that Intellect developed proactively asks users how they feel at the moment. Mini

    The app features numerous learning programs for users to overcome mental roadblocks, such as self-esteem issues, depression or procrastination. A journal function guides users through writing what’s on their mind, while a “mood timeline” keeps track of their stress levels.

    Since launching the app, Intellect has served a number of high-profile corporate clients such as Dell, Foodpanda, and Singaporean communications conglomerate Singtel, Chew said, which allowed Intellect to expand from a team of two to 80.

    Kim, whose start-up has been building a prototype, said employers could also benefit by identifying trends and general concerns among their workforces.

    “With employees’ consent, we do share aggregated levels of data. And that offers employers a birds’ eye perspective of what their employees are actually struggling with, that they need to deep dive on,” he said.

    “But we never identify who said that, because we don’t want employees to feel like this isn’t a safe space where they can freely address concerns they have.”

    Karen Lau, a Hong Kong-based clinical psychologist with mental health initiative Mind HK, said addressing mental health in Asia comes with unique challenges.

    “In Asian contexts, many cultures tend to uphold values such as honor, pride, and a concept of face,” she said. “Mental illness is usually viewed and judged as a sign of weakness and a source of shame for the family.”

    “I think when it comes to mental health, just like your physical health, every issue is easier to prevent than fixed,” Kim said. “If people get out there and admit and celebrate the fact that they’re receiving coaching or services to invest in their mental health, it’s going to normalize the practice.”

    Chew said one of his goals is to break social stigma and build a new mental healthcare system for the Asia-Pacific region.

    “Mental health has long had a stigma across Asia, whereby traditionally we’ve seen it as a clinical issue, a crisis,” he said. “We see mental health just as important as physical health. You and I face things like stress, burnout, sleep issues, and relationship struggle as well. That’s where actually a lot of us should start working on our mental wellbeing.”

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  • Amazon workers vote against forming union in upstate New York, dealing setback to grassroots labor group | CNN Business

    Amazon workers vote against forming union in upstate New York, dealing setback to grassroots labor group | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Amazon workers in upstate New York have voted against forming a union, dealing another blow to a grassroots labor group attempting to organize several of the tech giant’s US warehouses.

    In total, 406 workers at the Amazon facility near Albany voted against unionizing and 206 voted for it, according to a preliminary tally Tuesday from the National Labor Relations Board. There were some challenged and void ballots, but not a big enough figure to sway the final results.

    Workers at the facility, called ALB1, were seeking to organize with the Amazon Labor Union, the same grassroots worker group that successfully formed the first-ever union at a US Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York, earlier this year. The Albany vote was the ALU’s third attempt to unionize an Amazon warehouse, after it fell short of securing a union win at a smaller Amazon facility also located in Staten Island. It also comes as Amazon has still not formally recognized the union in Staten Island or come to the bargaining table.

    After the vote count concluded on Tuesday, ALU President Chris Smalls said his labor group is “filled with mixed emotions” over the results and pledged: “This won’t be the end of ALU at ALB1.”

    Smalls also accused Amazon of retaliating against union organizers at ALB1, which Amazon has previously denied, and blasted the vote as a “sham election.”

    Amazon, meanwhile, welcomed the results of the election in a statement Tuesday.

    “We’re glad that our team in Albany was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep the direct relationship with Amazon as we think that this is the best arrangement for both our employees and customers,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, said in a statement. “We will continue to work directly with our teammates in Albany, as we do everywhere, to keep making Amazon better every day.”

    The Amazon organizing efforts have come amid a broader reawakening of the US labor movement during the pandemic, with some early union victories at companies such as Apple and Starbucks. Smalls, in particular, has emerged as a face of this labor movement since the win in Staten Island, making appearances at the White House and posing with celebrities at the Time 100 summit.

    Smalls previously told CNN Business that the ALU has been fielding an explosion of interest from Amazon workers at other facilities since its original victory. In addition to the ALB1 facility, an Amazon fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, California, also recently submitted a petition for a union election with the ALU.

    But ahead of the Albany vote last week, Smalls appeared to play down the ramifications of the outcome, suggesting the organizing activity itself is a victory. “The expansion of the ALU is definitely historical by itself,” he previously told CNN. “I don’t think nothing’s up for stake.”

    Smalls echoed that sentiment in a tweet on Tuesday before the vote tally kicked off. “Proud of the brave workers of ALB1 regardless of todays results,” he tweeted, adding: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take!”

    Amazon’s worker-organizers at the Albany facility say they were inspired to form a union after seeing the success of the ALU in Staten Island. Some workers in Albany said they were also motivated to organize after witnessing colleagues get injured on the job. A report from the National Employment Law Project found that the ALB1 facility had the highest rates of “most serious injuries” among all Amazon facilities in the state.

    An Amazon spokesperson previously told CNN Business that Amazon ramped up hiring to meet demand from Covid-19 “and like other companies in the industry, we saw an increase in recordable injuries during this time from 2020 to 2021 as we trained so many new employees.” The spokesperson added that the company has invested billions of dollars in new operations safety measures.

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  • Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis respond to ‘false’ accusations from former nanny in joint statement | CNN

    Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis respond to ‘false’ accusations from former nanny in joint statement | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis have released a joint statement regarding the highly publicized end of their relationship.

    The former couple, who were together from 2011 until 2020 and share two children, spoke out on Monday in response to a story published by The Daily Mail, in which a woman described as a former nanny for the two stars divulged alleged private details about the time leading up to and around their split.

    “As parents, it is incredibly upsetting to learn that a former nanny of our two young children would choose to make such false and scurrilous accusations about us publicly,” their joint statement provided to CNN read. “Her now 18 month long campaign of harassing us, as well as loved ones, close friends and colleagues, has reached its unfortunate apex.”

    “We will continue to focus on raising and protecting our children with the sincere hope that she will now choose to leave our family alone,” the statement concluded.

    The unnamed woman, whose claims have not been verified by CNN, spoke with the British outlet about the couple’s interactions amid Wilde’s relationship with Harry Styles, with whom she was working on the set of her film, “Don’t Worry Darling.”

    Wilde previously told Vanity Fair that her relationship with Sudeikis, with whom she shares daughter Daisy, 5, and son Otis, 8, ended long before her romance with Styles began.

    The couple’s separation has been, at times, contentious.

    The “Booksmart” director has previously addressed being served legal documents by Sudeikis’s legal team regarding custody of their children while presenting her latest movie at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, calling the move “vicious.”

    A source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time that Sudeikis “had no prior knowledge of the time or place that the envelope would have been delivered” and called it “inappropriate.”

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  • Xi Jinping’s speech: yes to zero-Covid, no to market reforms? | CNN Business

    Xi Jinping’s speech: yes to zero-Covid, no to market reforms? | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN Business
     — 

    Even though China’s economy is beset by problems ranging from a real estate crisis to youth unemployment, Xi Jinping did not offer any grand ideas to set the country back on track during his two-hour opening speech at the Communist Party Congress on Sunday.

    The Chinese leader is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in power at the week-long congress. Priorities presented at the political gathering of more than 2,000 party members will also set China’s trajectory for the next five years or even longer.

    In his speech Sunday, Xi struck a confident tone, highlighting China’s growing strength and rising influence under his first decade in power. He also repeatedly underscored the risks and challenges the country faces, including the Covid pandemic, Hong Kong and Taiwan — all of which he claimed China had come away from victorious.

    But experts are concerned that Xi offered no signs of moving away from the country’s rigid zero-Covid policy or its tight regulatory stance on various businesses, both of which have hampered growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

    “Yesterday’s speech confirms what many China watchers have long suspected — Xi has no intention of embracing market liberalization or relaxing China’s zero-Covid policies, at least not anytime soon,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a DC-based think tank.

    “Instead, he intends to double down on policies geared towards security and self-reliance at the expense of China’s long-term economic growth.”

    China is the world’s last major economy still enforcing strict zero-Covid measures, which aim to stamp out chains of transmission through border restrictions, mass testing, extensive quarantines, and uncompromising snap lockdowns.

    And China’s economy is in bad shape. Growth has stalled, youth unemployment is at a record high, and the housing market is in shambles. Constant Covid lockdowns have not only wreaked havoc on the economy, but also sparked rising social discontent.

    Last week, two large banners were hung on an overpass of a major thoroughfare in Beijing, protesting against Xi’s Covid policy and authoritarian rule. It was a rare protest against the top leadership in the country, signaling the frustration and anger among the public.

    Many international organizations, including the IMF and World Bank, have recently downgraded China’s GDP growth forecasts for this year, citing zero-Covid as one of the major drags.

    Xi, however, praised the government’s adherence to zero-Covid, saying it has “achieved significant positive results.”

    Xi’s speech — a summary of the Communist Party’s work report, or action plan — was similarly short on concrete solutions to other challenges facing the economy in the near term.

    “We believe the ongoing Party Congress may not be an inflection point for major policy changes,” Goldman Sachs analysts said on Sunday, adding that they believe China may not loosen its Covid restrictions until at least the second quarter of 2023.

    On the property sector, Xi emphasized the need to provide affordable housing and dampen speculative demand — but there was no specific mention of the slump in real estate, which has mushroomed into a major crisis over the past few years, threatening both economic and social stability.

    “We maintain our view that a comprehensive solution to the beleaguered property sector might not be introduced until after March 2023, when the political reshuffle is fully completed,” said Nomura analysts on Monday.

    Nor did Xi mention record youth unemployment, which is mainly a result of his year-long crackdown on the tech industry set against the backdrop of punishing zero-Covid policies.

    In the full version of the official 20th Party Congress work report, which was published shortly after his speech, Xi emphasized the need to continue the party’s “anti-monopoly” crackdown and regulate “excessive incomes,” a sign that he will continue to get tough on big businesses and wealthy individuals.

    Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on the country’s private sector, under the banner of Xi’s “common prosperity” campaign, has pummeled several companies in sectors ranging from tech and finance to gaming and private education.

    The government has defended the campaign as necessary for “social fairness” and narrowing income gaps.

    In his speech, Xi also made clear that development was the “top priority” and stressed continued focus on “high-quality growth.”

    That may dispel some market concerns that the government no longer cared much about economic growth, UBS analysts said.

    However, to achieve Xi’s target of making China a “medium developed country” by 2035, the country’s annual real GDP growth needs to average around 4.7% a year from 2021 to 2035, the UBS analysts said. That could be “quite challenging,” they noted, adding they expect China’s potential growth to average between 4% to 4.5% a year this decade, and fall lower after 2030.

    Meantime, a comparison between this year’s speech and the last one delivered by Xi in 2017 at the 19th party congress revealed a potentially worrying trend.

    The frequency of words such as “security,” “people,” and “socialism” used in 2022 had increased compared to 2017, while that of “economy,” “market” and “reform” declined, Goldman analysts said.

    The change was also noticed by Nomura analysts, who said it could point to “a shift in the party’s mandate.”

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  • Workers at second Apple store vote to join union | CNN Business

    Workers at second Apple store vote to join union | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Apple workers in Oklahoma City have voted to form the second-ever labor union at one of the company’s US stores, in the latest sign that organizing efforts are gaining traction inside and outside the tech and retail industries.

    In a preliminary tally by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday evening, 56 workers, or 64% of those casting ballots at the Penn Square Mall Apple store, voted to be represented the Communication Workers of America, and 32 voted against it. Turnout was strong, with 88 of a potential 95 workers participating in the vote.

    The union victory comes four months after Apple store workers in Towson, Maryland, made history by voting to form Apple’s first US unionized location. In late June, the NLRB officially certified the union election win.

    Workers at both locations have said they’re looking to unionize in an effort to have more of a say in how their stores are run. Some also said they were inspired by union pushes this year at Amazon and Starbucks.

    Apple did not directly address the vote results when asked for comment Friday.

    “We believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams,” said the company’s statement. “We’re proud to provide our team members with strong compensation and exceptional benefits. Since 2018, we’ve increased our starting rates in the US by 45% and we’ve made many significant enhancements to our industry-leading benefits.”

    The vote was roughly in line with what employees leading the organizing effort were expecting, according to Leigha Briscoe, one of the members of the organizing committee at the store.

    “We felt like we had the majority support, and as long a people got out and cast their vote, we would win,” Briscoe told CNN Business late Friday after the vote tally.

    Briscoe has been an employee at the store for six years. She said the employees who wanted to form a union approached CWA, rather than CWA trying to organize the store on its own.

    Briscoe, 28, is typical of many of the younger workers leading successful union organizing drives nationwide in the wake of the pandemic. Many of the successful efforts, such as at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and at more than 200 Starbucks stores nationwide, have been led by workers in their twenties or early thirties.

    Between January and July of this year there were 826 union elections, up 45% from the number held in the same period of 2021, according to a CNN analysis of data from the NLRB. And the 70% success rate by unions in those votes is far better than the 42% success rate in the first seven months of 2021.

    But only 41,000 potential union members were eligible to vote in the 2022 elections. Even if the unions had won all those votes — NLRB data don’t break down how many workers worked at each company holding a vote — it would be a small fraction of the more than 100 million workers at US businesses who don’t belong to a union, according to Labor Department statistics.

    The retail sector has a far lower rate of unionization than some other industries. Labor Department data show only 4.4% of retail workers nationwide are members of unions, compared to 6.1% of employees working at businesses overall.

    When including government employees, only 10.3% of workers nationwide are union members, roughly half the rate of union membership in 1983, the first year it was tracked by the Labor Department, when union membership made up 20.1% of the nation’s workers.

    Oklahoma is not particularly fertile ground for union efforts. The Labor Department data show only 5.6% of workers overall are union members, barely more than half of the 10.3% national rate.

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  • Apple store workers in Oklahoma to vote on labor union | CNN Business

    Apple store workers in Oklahoma to vote on labor union | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Apple workers in Oklahoma City are set to vote this week on whether to form the second-ever labor union at one of the tech giant’s US stores.

    The Apple store workers in Oklahoma are seeking to gain representation with the Communication Workers of America union. Voting is set to take place on Thursday and Friday, with the vote-tally scheduled for Friday evening. Just under 100 employees at the Apple store in the Penn Square Mall are eligible to vote in this union election.

    Earlier this year, Apple store workers at a mall in Towson, Maryland, made history when they voted to become the first unionized Apple store in the United States. The move was lauded by President Joe Biden, among others. In late June, the National Labor Relations Board officially certified the union election win, paving the way for the workers and Apple management to negotiate their first contract.

    The organizing efforts at Apple stores come amid the backdrop of a tidal wave of workplace activism emerging at major companies from Amazon to Starbucks after the pandemic exposed new pressures on frontline workers and a tight labor market gave these workers new leverage.

    Leigha Briscoe, a worker at the Oklahoma Apple store, said that their group was inspired to organize after “seeing what was happening in the labor movement across the United States with other large corporations.”

    “Particularly watching Amazon and Starbucks has been the two that really stuck out to me,” she said. “That really kind of brought to light the possibility of us being able to do that in our store.”

    Watching these other workers seize new power via organizing also helped in “shifting my view of what a labor union was, and seeing that, ‘Hey, this is something that can still be done in the modern workforce,’” Briscoe added. “That’s really what kind of helped me see that this was going to be valuable for our team, and I think it’s safe to say that a lot of our other team members were also watching that happen as well, and that kind of inspired them in the same way as it has me.”

    “Fundamentally, what we’re looking for is being able to have a seat at the table and negotiate what our experience looks like,” she said.

    An Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the Oklahoma City vote. Ahead of the union election at the Maryland store earlier this year, Apple said in a statement that it deeply values its retail team members and emphasized that it offers a “very strong compensation and benefits for full time and part time employees.”

    One of the worker organizers at the Maryland location previously told CNN that “compensation is important” but “the most important” goal was “having a say” in store policies that impact staff.

    Patrick Hart, another worker at the Oklahoma City Apple store, echoed that sentiment. Hart said he was tired of hearing from his managers that “that’s just how it is” when he raised concerns or brought feedback to them about their workplace experiences. He said they are seeking more of a voice in their workplace with their unionization efforts.

    Hart also emphasized that he was inspired by the resurgence of the organized labor movement, and especially efforts to unionize Amazon warehouses. The new labor push comes as union membership overall in the United States has plummeted in recent decades. The unionization rate for all wage and salary workers in the United States last year was some 10.3%, Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data indicates, compared to 20.1% in 1983, which was the first year comparable data was available.

    After taking inspiration from others, Hart said he hopes that their efforts in Oklahoma can similarly embolden fellow workers to band together – no matter what industry they may be in.

    “I want everyone to realize unions aren’t just for those bad and hard workplaces, it is for everyone in America, we have the right to unionize,” Hart said. “I just want people to realize that, because it can do a lot of good for a lot of people who feel they’re stuck in their workplace.”

    Hart continued: “They don’t have to leave their job, they can just make their current one a better place.”

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  • How Iran’s protests transformed into a national uprising | CNN

    How Iran’s protests transformed into a national uprising | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly a month after the start of nationwide protests, parts of Iran now bear the hallmarks of battle zones, with flares lighting up skies, gunfire ringing out and bloody scenes recorded in video footage.

    “I am recording this video about the situation in Sanandaj,” said one demonstrator, his face covered with a black scarf and dark glasses, in a message to CNN from the Kurdish-majority city in western Iran, where some of the most dramatic images have emerged from the protests, despite a near total internet shutdown in the area.

    “Last night, the security forces were firing in the direction of houses. They were using military-grade bullets,” he said. “Until now, I hadn’t heard such bullets. People were really afraid.”

    Video apparently shot from rooftops showed what appeared to be clashes between young protesters and heavily armed security forces. Bullets and flares crossed the night sky and a cloud of dust and smoke covered the city blocks.

    At street level, other videos showed protesters throwing rocks at police, with the officers sometimes traveling in a procession of motorcycles, who appeared to be shooting at the crowd.

    Large numbers of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have been participating in the crackdown in addition to local police, say activists in Sanandaj, who accuse authorities of lashing back indiscriminately. According to Oslo-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw, a 7-year-old boy died in his mother’s arms on Sunday after security forces fired into a crowd of protesters.

    While it is impossible to independently verify a death toll from such clashes, gruesome images circulating online, and eyewitness testimony collected by CNN as well as rights groups, point to the bloodshed. Video showed a driver in the city lying dead with a large gunshot wound in his face – activists said he was honking his horn in solidarity with protesters.

    “In Sanandaj, they shoot the people honking their horns with bullets. And they shoot young and old alike,” said another protester in a video message to CNN. “The injured don’t go to hospitals because if they go there plain-clothes police will arrest them.

    “We are protesting for freedom in Iran. For the prisoners and the condemned, for the people of Iran calling for the regime to go. Everyone wants this regime to go.”

    Despite the government’s repeated claims of having restored calm, the scenes are being replicated throughout the country to varying degrees, with the Kurdish-majority west of the country appearing to bear the brunt of the crackdown.

    With remarkable defiance, Iranian people keep pouring into thoroughfares across the country. The protests were first ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (also known as Zhina), who died nearly one month ago after being detained by the country’s morality police, but demonstrators have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the regime.

    Increasingly, activists and experts are characterizing the protests as a national uprising and one of the biggest challenges to the Iranian regime since its founding.

    “This is not a protest for reform,” Roham Alvandi, an associate professor of History at the London School of Economics, told CNN. “This is an uprising demanding the end of the Islamic Republic. And that is something completely different to what we’ve seen before.”

    What started as protests against the death of Mahsa Amini has transformed into something much larger.

    In the last month, Iran’s protesters have targeted the economic and political nerve centers of the regime. Videos showed people throwing rocks at police in the center of Tehran. In the capital’s bazaar, security forces were seen running away from demonstrators. Even in the conservative cities of Mashhad and Qom – the heart of the regime’s powerbase – demonstrators crop up frequently.

    Some gas and oil refineries have also turned into sites of protests, which are rapidly spreading in the country’s southwest. The country’s Council of Oil Contractor Workers has said it would potentially call a strike and pause oil production.

    The petroleum industry is the lifeline of Iran’s economy, which has been buckling under the strain of US sanctions unleashed by the Trump administration in 2018 and sustained by the Biden administration. US officials have been in indirect negotiations with Iran for a year and a half in a bid to restore a landmark 2015 nuclear deal – which former President Donald Trump withdrew from four years ago – that would see Iran curb its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief.

    Video suggested that the demonstrations at the refineries began as protests over wages, but then transformed into anti-regime protests, with laborers chanting “death to the dictator” – a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Around the country, protesters have pushing for economic strikes with some success. In Kurdish-majority areas, where the protests are believed to be more organized than elsewhere in the country, social media videos showed lines of shops shuttered. In Tehran’s bazaar, a number of stores have closed in recent days, though many merchants say they did so to protect their shops from the protests and the crackdowns that follow. A general strike, which Iranian activists have called for, has yet to materialize.

    Labor strikes are loaded with historic meaning in Iran. In 1979, oil and gas refineries played a critical role in the popular movement that overthrew the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and paved the way for the Islamic Republic.

    More widespread protest action by workers and merchants, experts say, could mark another escalation in the protests.

    “If there is a nationwide general strike, what can the government do really,” said Alvandi. “That would completely paralyze the state and would show the powerlessness of the state in the face of this movement.”

    Meanwhile, the crackdown continues to intensify in various parts of Iran, most notably in the Kurdish-majority north and northwest, where allegations of the mistreatment of the ethnic minority was already widespread.

    An Iranian police officer on a motocycle raises a baton to disperse protesters last month.

    Hengaw, the Kurdish rights group, believes that the violence against protesters being reported from the region “is just a drop in the ocean,” with only partial information emerging about the crackdown.

    Authorities have sporadically shut down the internet across Iran in an apparent bid to quash the protests, with the Kurdish-majority parts of the country experiencing the longest shutdowns, according to activists and the internet watchdog NetBlocks.

    A “major disruption” to internet access has occurred since 9:30 a.m. in Iran (2 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, according to NetBlocks. Kurdish activists say that authorities have also shut the area’s landline network, arguing that the bloodshed seen in the videos could just be the tip of the iceberg.

    “The Iranian regime and its security apparatus has no limit,” said Ramyar Hassani of Hengaw. “They know no limits.”

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  • TikTok wants to open warehouses | CNN Business

    TikTok wants to open warehouses | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    While seemingly every social media app is copying TikTok, TikTok now appears to be copying Amazon’s playbook.

    TikTok appears to be looking to create a new logistics and warehousing network in the United States to support its e-commerce efforts, according to several job openings recently posted to its hiring site and LinkedIn page.

    Like other social networks, TikTok has expanded into e-commerce to add revenue opportunities. TikTok currently offers a shopping option called TikTok Shop in select markets, including the UK and Indonesia, which lets creators and merchants sell products through the platform. It has also partnered with Shopify to enable shopping on the platform.

    But with the latest job postings, which were first reported by Axios, TikTok seems to want to go even further. Instead of simply serving as a platform to reach customers, TikTok may be looking to provide logistical support to build what it calls “a brand new and better e-commerce experience.”

    “By providing warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns, our mission is to help sellers improve their operational capability and efficiency, provide buyers a satisfying shopping experience and ensure fast and sustainable growth of TikTok Shop,” the company said in a job posting.

    In one job posting, for example, the company says it’s looking for someone to “build the new fulfillment service from scratch” and be “responsible for the business development of fulfillment service of TikTok e-commerce logistics in US.”

    Many of the roles are posted based out of Seattle, which is also home to Amazon’s first corporate headquarters. Amazon’s sprawling logistics and delivery network turned it into a central tool for numerous merchants and ensured it could offer a vast range of products with expedited deliveries.

    A TikTok spokesperson declined to elaborate on the latest roles. In a statement to CNN, the spokesperson said the company is “focused on providing a valuable shopping experience in countries where TikTok Shop is currently offered across Southeast Asia and the UK, which includes providing merchants with a range of product features and delivery options.”

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  • The Fed only cares about inflation. That’s bad news for you | CNN Business

    The Fed only cares about inflation. That’s bad news for you | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Jerome Powell and other members of the Federal Reserve are obsessed with choking off inflation once and for all, even if the Fed’s series of aggressive rate hikes slow the economy to a crawl. That could be bad news for consumers, investors and Corporate America.

    What’s more, many market experts and economists note that the rate of inflation, while still uncomfortably high, is falling and should continue to decline – but there is a noted lag effect. Fed vice chair Lael Brainard admitted as much in a speech Monday, saying that “policy actions to date will have their full effect on activity in coming quarters.”

    Still, the Fed isn’t done raising rates. Investors are pricing in the strong probability of a fourth consecutive three-quarters of a percentage point hike at the Fed’s next meeting on November 2. And the chances of a fifth straight hike of that magnitude at the Fed’s December 14 meeting are also on the rise.

    It seems that Powell wants to atone for his mistake of repeatedly calling inflation “transitory” for much of last year. So the Fed is going to keep raising rates to prove that it is taking inflation seriously, even if that leads to a bigger pullback in stocks…and tipping the economy into a recession.

    Needless to say, that’s a problem. Especially since the Fed has two mandates: price stability and maximum employment. That means the jobs market might get hit due to the Fed’s laser-like focus on inflation.

    “My concern is that the Fed is tightening so quickly and so significantly without knowing what it means for the economy,” said Brian Levitt, global market strategist with Invesco.

    Keep in mind that the Fed’s series of rate hikes are unprecedented in the “modern” era of central banking, i.e. after Alan Greenspan became Fed chair in 1987 and the Fed became far more transparent.

    The Fed was far more opaque before Greenspan, and the market didn’t pick apart every speech, policy move and economic forecast the way Wall Street does now. Inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s was also a much different animal, due largely to an oil price shock that lasted years because of a supply shortage.

    The current inflation crisis stems from more temporary (we won’t say transitory) supply chain issues tied to the pandemic as well as the rapid reopening of the global economy following a brief recession.

    But the economy is now showing cracks. Long-term bond yields have surged, and mortgage rates have popped, cooling off the housing market. The stock market has deflated as well, wringing even more excess from the economy.

    “We’re more cautious because the Fed is tightening into a weakening economy,” said Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer and chief market strategist with Truist Advisory Services. “These supersized hikes are the most aggressive in decades. But the Fed has scar tissue from inflation.”

    As painful this current bout of inflation is for Americans, it’s nothing compared to what people lived through in the early 1980s before then Fed chair Paul Volcker squashed inflation with a series of massive rate hikes.

    Unless pricing pressures pick up again, it appears the year-over-year increase for the consumer price index (CPI) peaked at 9% in June. That’s a big move from about 2.3% in February 2020 just before the pandemic shutdown. But 9% is still a far cry from the CPI high during the Volcker years of 14.6% in early 1980.

    And with consumer and wholesale prices already edging lower, some experts worry that the continued uber-hawkish stance by the Fed will do more harm than good for the economy.

    “The speed at which the Fed is increasing rates will certainly have some unintended consequences,” said Michael Weisz, president of Yieldstreet, an investment firm that specializes in so-called alternative assets such as real estate, private equity, venture capital and art.

    Weisz said the surge in interest rates could lead to a “consumer credit crunch being more pronounced,” in which loans beyond mortgages might become more expensive and harder to get.

    Rate hikes raise the costs for companies to pay down their debt, increasing the possibility of corporate bankruptcies and defaults on commercial loans. It may even potentially lead to stagflation…the double whopper of stagnant growth and continued inflation. In other words, prices may remain high and the job market will probably be worse.

    “The Fed runs a real risk of over-tightening, as the impacts of the restrictive policy may not flow through inflation and unemployment data until it’s too late,” Weisz added.

    As long as inflation remains the bigger issue for the economy, the Fed is going to focus more on getting prices under control. After all, the unemployment rate is at 3.5%, a half-century low.

    “The Fed has made it clear their number one priority right now is price stability,” said Dustin Thackeray, chief investment officer of Crewe Advisors. “Until the Fed sees sustained evidence their monetary policy is having a material impact on…the job market, they will maintain their persistent efforts in reining in inflationary pressures.”

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  • Amazon plans to hire 150,000 workers ahead of holiday shopping season | CNN Business

    Amazon plans to hire 150,000 workers ahead of holiday shopping season | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Amazon said Thursday it plans to hire 150,000 new employees across the United States to meet demand ahead of the busy holiday shopping season.

    The openings, which include full-time, seasonal and part-time roles, range from packing and picking to sorting and shipping, the company said. The announcement comes just days before Amazon is set to hold another Prime Day shopping event.

    Amazon ramps up hiring each holiday season, but this year it is doing so in a tight labor market and with rising inflation putting more pressure on companies to raise wages.

    Last week, Amazon said it would raise hourly wages for warehouse and delivery workers. With the increase, Amazon employees can, on average, earn more than $19 an hour based on the position and location in the United States, up from an average of $18 previously.

    On Thursday, the company said it will provide additional sign-on bonuses for the newly announced holiday positions, ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 in select locations. Some of the states with the highest number of jobs available include California, Illinois, Texas.

    The hiring news also comes amid multiple high-profile unionization drives at Amazon warehouses, including at facilities in Alabama and New York. The Amazon Labor Union secured a historic victory in forming the first US labor union at a facility in Staten Island, New York earlier this year. Next week, workers at a separate facility near Albany, New York, are slated to vote to join the same grassroots worker group.

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  • 5 things to know for Oct. 11: Ukraine, Rail strike, Trump, School shootings, Speeding | CNN

    5 things to know for Oct. 11: Ukraine, Rail strike, Trump, School shootings, Speeding | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    If you’re planning to take a trip this winter, now’s the time to pounce on the best prices available for airfares. Some travel experts recommend securing holiday flights before Halloween because prices typically increase considerably as Thanksgiving gets closer.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Air raid sirens sounded in multiple regions of Ukraine today after Russia launched new missile attacks. This comes after Russia unleashed a wave of attacks across Ukraine on Monday, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 100 others, according to Ukrainian officials. Critical infrastructure was hit in several regions and in the capital Kyiv, where dozens of fires broke out, Ukraine’s emergency services said. Numerous areas in the region are still without power today following the barrage of Russian strikes that were partly targeted at energy facilities to leave Ukrainians without electricity. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, condemning the strikes and pledging continued US security assistance “including advanced air defense systems.”

    The threat of a freight rail strike is back after a major union of railroad workers rejected a tentative agreement Monday with the nation’s freight carriers. More than half of the 23,000 members in one of the largest rail unions opposed the agreement, meaning the two parties will now enter negotiations in hopes of reaching a deal. Without a new deal, there could be a strike that significantly impacts the nation’s already struggling supply chains. But such a strike would not occur until at least November 19, according to the union. The Biden administration has been desperate to avoid a strike because major railroads carry 30% of the nation’s freight and a strike could cause shortages and higher prices for essentials like food and gasoline. A strike could also force factories without parts to close and leave store shelves empty during the holiday shopping season. 

    Romans: There is a move afoot here for better quality of living

    New emails released by the General Services Administration debunk claims made by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government agency is to blame for packing boxes from the White House that ended up at his Mar-a-Lago residence after his presidency. Former presidents are allowed to take certain government materials and office equipment to set up a permanent office away from the White House. But that does not include the sort of classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago – which are at the center of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation. Trump and his allies have said GSA was responsible for classified documents being at his Florida home. The newly released emails, however, make clear that the boxes had already been packed and sat shrink-wrapped in an empty office space.

    Here’s why Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon’s decisions are under scrutiny

    Prosecutors and defense attorneys will present closing arguments today in the sentencing trial of the Parkland school shooter. This will be the last opportunity for them to make their cases before the jury will help decide whether the gunman will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. The imminent conclusion of the trial comes almost a year after the 24-year-old shooter pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and other charges for the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three school staff members were killed. Separately, in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s superintendent announced his retirement Monday after new details surfaced about the Robb Elementary School massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.

    Families of victims and survivors testify in Parkland shooter trial

    The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended a new vehicle system that could stop drivers from speeding. The technology essentially recognizes speed limits and either issues visual or audible alerts when a driver is speeding or prevents vehicles from going above those limits. New York City has become the first city in the US to test the speed-limiting technology in 50 of its fleet vehicles. “There’s no reason today, with so much technology and so much awareness, that anybody should die at the hands of an automobile,” said Meera Joshi, New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Operations. After more than 20,000 deaths on US roads this year alone, the NTSB has called on the federal government to start incentivizing car makers to put speed-limiting systems in new cars, according to a report. It will be up to automobile manufacturers whether they introduce the technology.

    Actor William Shatner shares what it’s like traveling to space

    “Everything I had expected to see was wrong,” Shatner wrote in a new biography. Learn about the actor’s life-changing experience aboard a suborbital space tourism flight.

    Football player Sebastian Gutierrez swaps pizza shop for the New England Patriots

    A former pizza shop worker is now earning his dough in the NFL! Read his inspirational story here.

    How dogs changed the course of civilization

    Did you know dogs were the first animal that humans ever domesticated? Here’s how adorable fur babies became a part of our daily lives.

    Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunion delights ‘Back to the Future’ fans

    The pair had an epic reunion at Comic Con 37 years after the release of the sci-fi comedy. (Can you believe it’s been 37 years? Take a second to remember those good old days.)

    Shaquille O’Neal reiterates his desire to buy an NBA team

    The four-time NBA champion shared a cryptic message about his wish to buy an NBA team “back home.” Here are some possibilities where that could be.

    Eileen Ryan, a veteran actress and the mother of actor Sean Penn, has died, Penn’s publicist shared in a statement. She was 94. Ryan appeared in more than 60 television shows and films over her long career, including the acclaimed films “Magnolia” and “I Am Sam.”

    $18 million

    That’s the prize Dustin Johnson won after clinching the inaugural LIV Golf championship, tournament officials announced Monday. The 38-year-old made the switch from the PGA Tour to the Saudi-backed rebel series in June. The controversial LIV Golf series has caused a rift in professional golf, as LIV golfers have been banned from the PGA Tour for participating in the breakaway series.

    “No child should ever be subjected to such racist, mean and dehumanizing comments, especially from a public official.”

    – Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin and his husband, issuing a family statement after his fellow council member, Nury Martinez, made racist remarks about him and his Black child. In leaked audio obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez says Bonin, a White man, appeared with his son on a float in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and “handled his young Black son as though he were an accessory.” The Times reported that Martinez also said of Bonin’s child, “Parece changuito,” or “He’s like a monkey.” Following the backlash for an array of offensive comments heard in the audio, Martinez resigned as Los Angeles City Council president on Monday.

    Fall temperatures for the Northeast as rain hits Florida

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    Today is National Coming Out Day

    Every year on October 11, National Coming Out Day celebrates the act of “coming out” – when an LGBTQ person decides to publicly share their gender identities or sexual orientation. Watch this 2-minute video to learn how the rainbow flag became a symbol of LGBTQ pride. (Click here to view)

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  • Amazon suspends 50 workers who refused to work after warehouse fire | CNN Business

    Amazon suspends 50 workers who refused to work after warehouse fire | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Amazon suspended dozens of workers at its only unionized warehouse on Tuesday, one day after they organized a work stoppage following a fire at the facility.

    About 50 workers at the facility in Staten Island, New York were suspended with pay, according to Connor Spence, one of the suspended workers. Spence is a picker at the warehouse, known as JFK8, and the secretary treasurer for the Amazon Labor Union, the grassroots workers group behind the successful union push.

    Spence told CNN that a fire broke out at the warehouse on Monday, causing the entire building to be evacuated and all the day shift workers to be sent home. When night shift workers arrived, they were “not really told what was going on,” Spence said. Eventually, he said, managers began telling the employees to get back to their work.

    “The issue that people had was the building still reeked with smoke, it was difficult to breathe at some workstations,” Spence said. “We wanted to be sent home with pay because it was unsafe.”

    Spence, who works the day shift but stayed late with the night shift workers to offer support, said they organized a work stoppage and demanded that the workers be sent home with pay. He estimates “more than 100 people” participated in the stoppage. “After a while it was clear that they weren’t going to cooperate with us, that they weren’t going to hear our demands, so we decided to walk out,” he said.

    Paul Flaningan, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the fire and that roughly 50 workers had been suspended in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.

    “Late Monday afternoon there was a small fire in a cardboard compactor outside of JFK8, one of our facilities in Staten Island, New York. All employees were safely evacuated, and day shift employees were sent home with pay,” Flaningan said. “The FDNY certified the building is safe and at that point we asked all night shift employees to report to their regularly scheduled shift.”

    “While the vast majority of employees reported to their workstations, a small group refused to return to work and remained in the building without permission,” Flaningan said.

    The moves may only add to tension between Amazon and some of the workers at the facility.

    Amazon has yet to formally recognize or bargain with the Amazon Labor Union at JFK8, despite losing the first round of its efforts with the National Labor Relations Board to overturn the union’s victory. The incident in Staten Island also comes about a week ahead of a separate union election – also organized by the Amazon Labor Union – at an Amazon facility near Albany, New York.

    According to Spence, the roughly 50 workers at JFK8 have been suspended with pay until Amazon conducts an investigation into what happened.

    “Nobody is sure how long that will take,” he said.

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