CREWS WORKED TO KEEP IT COOL TO MAKE SURE IT WOULD NOT REIGNITE. IN SOLANO COUNTY, SOME TOUGH ECONOMIC NEWS AS JELLY BELLY IS CUTTING DOZENS OF JOBS IN FAIRFIELD. THE COMPANY SAYS THESE LAYOFFS WILL START IN EARLY JUNE. THIS IS MAINLY OFFICE-BASED ROLES IN MARKETING, FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING. THE COMPANY TOLD OUR PARTNERS AT THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. THE MOVE WILL NOT IMPACT CANDY PRODUCTION, WAREHOUSING OR THE VISITOR CENTER.
Sixty-nine employees are slated to lose their jobs at Fairfield-headquartered Jelly Belly, according to a WARN notice obtained by SFGATE. Jelly Belly’s parent company, Ferrara Candy Company, is closing its Fairfield “corporate-commercial operations,” located at One Jelly Belly Lane, 2400 N. Watney Way, 2500 N. Watney Way, and 2385 N. Watney Way, according to screenshots of the WARN letter Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy shared on Facebook on Friday.“This action will not impact any Fairfield Manufacturing, Warehousing, or Visitor Center roles,” Sukrat Baber, assistant general counsel of Ferrara Candy, wrote in the letter sent to the mayor and other local officials. “This layoff is expected to be permanent.”“This action will not impact any Fairfield Manufacturing, Warehousing, or Visitor Center roles,” Sukrat Baber, assistant general counsel of Ferrara Candy, wrote in the letter sent to the mayor and other local officials. “This layoff is expected to be permanent.”Ferrara Candy Company, which also owns other candy brands such as Nerds, Sweetarts and Laffy Taffy, acquired Jelly Belly in 2023. “These reductions were expected based on what they told us previously when they first acquired Jelly Belly,” Fairfield City Manager David Gassaway wrote in a letter last week to the City Council, according to Moy’s Facebook post. Despite the layoffs, Jelly Belly will continue making candy and offering tours at its factory, a popular Fairfield tourist attraction. Ferrara does not plan to close the factory. “We anticipate no impact to the Jelly Belly brand, our products, manufacturing levels, or service to our customers,” continued the statement from Ferrara provided to SFGATE.The news comes as another blow to Fairfield, following the closure of the Anheuser-Busch plant this month. However, “Some good news: We have seen healthy interest in companies considering buying the Budweiser plant,” Moy wrote in her Facebook post.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
FAIRFIELD, Calif. —
Sixty-nine employees are slated to lose their jobs at Fairfield-headquartered Jelly Belly, according to a WARN notice obtained by SFGATE. Jelly Belly’s parent company, Ferrara Candy Company, is closing its Fairfield “corporate-commercial operations,” located at One Jelly Belly Lane, 2400 N. Watney Way, 2500 N. Watney Way, and 2385 N. Watney Way, according to screenshots of the WARN letter Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy shared on Facebook on Friday.
“This action will not impact any Fairfield Manufacturing, Warehousing, or Visitor Center roles,” Sukrat Baber, assistant general counsel of Ferrara Candy, wrote in the letter sent to the mayor and other local officials. “This layoff is expected to be permanent.”
“This action will not impact any Fairfield Manufacturing, Warehousing, or Visitor Center roles,” Sukrat Baber, assistant general counsel of Ferrara Candy, wrote in the letter sent to the mayor and other local officials. “This layoff is expected to be permanent.”
Ferrara Candy Company, which also owns other candy brands such as Nerds, Sweetarts and Laffy Taffy, acquired Jelly Belly in 2023.
“These reductions were expected based on what they told us previously when they first acquired Jelly Belly,” Fairfield City Manager David Gassaway wrote in a letter last week to the City Council, according to Moy’s Facebook post.
Despite the layoffs, Jelly Belly will continue making candy and offering tours at its factory, a popular Fairfield tourist attraction. Ferrara does not plan to close the factory.
“We anticipate no impact to the Jelly Belly brand, our products, manufacturing levels, or service to our customers,” continued the statement from Ferrara provided to SFGATE.
The news comes as another blow to Fairfield, following the closure of the Anheuser-Busch plant this month. However, “Some good news: We have seen healthy interest in companies considering buying the Budweiser plant,” Moy wrote in her Facebook post.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Friday it will hear Monsanto’s claim that it should be shielded from tens of thousands of lawsuits over its weed killer Roundup because the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a warning label that it may cause cancer.
The justices will not resolve the decades-long dispute over whether Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer.
Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans.
However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis.
The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.
In product liability suits, plaintiffs typically seek to hold product makers responsible for failing to warn them of a known danger.
John Durnell, a Missouri man, said he sprayed Roundup for years to control weeds without gloves or a mask, believing it was safe. He sued after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In 2023, a jury rejected his claim the product was defective but it ruled for him on his “strict liability failure to warn claim,” a state court concluded. He was awarded $1.25 million in damages.
Monsanto appealed, arguing this state law verdict is in conflict with federal law regulating pesticides.
“EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades,” the company told the court in its appeal.
They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be “misbranded” with such a warning.
Nonetheless, the “premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects,” they said.
On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide “whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning.”
The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.
Monsanto says it has removed Roundup from its consumer products, but it is still used for farms.
Last month, Trump administration lawyers urged the court to hear the case.
They said the EPA has “has approved hundreds of labels for Roundup and other glyphosate-based products without requiring a cancer warning,” yet state courts are upholding lawsuits based on a failure to warn.
Environmentalists said the court should not step in to shield makers of dangerous products.
Lawyers for EarthJustice said the court “could let pesticide companies off the hook — even when their products make people sick.”
“When people use pesticides in their fields or on their lawns, they don’t expect to get cancer,” said Patti Goldman, a senior attorney. “Yet this happens, and when it does, state court lawsuits provide the only real path to accountability.”
The land below the Beverly Hills flagship store of luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has been sold to a New York investor as the owners of the department store chain sell property to pay debts.
Neiman Marcus, which has occupied the 9700 Wilshire Boulevard store since it opened in 1979, will continue to serve customers there as a tenant.
“We made the strategic decision to sell the land beneath the Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills store and enter into a long-term lease with the new owner,” said a spokesperson for Saks Global. “This opportunistic real estate transaction does not impact our day-to-day operations. We remain committed to serving our loyal Beverly Hills customers.”
Saks Global, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Saks Off 5th and Bergdorf Goodman, sold the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus site for an undisclosed price.
The new owner of the property on the edge of the city’s prestigious Golden Triangle is Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., a private real estate investment firm owned by Ben Ashkenazy.
Ashkenazy also owns the former Barneys building on Wilshire Boulevard that is now occupied by Saks Fifth Avenue.
“This strategic acquisition significantly expands Ashkenazy’s presence in Beverly Hills and reinforces the firm’s focus on irreplaceable, best-in-class retail assets located in globally recognized luxury corridors,” the company said in a statement.
Executives at Saks Global have signaled plans to shore up cash by offloading stores, or raising emergency financing.
It could also part with a stake in luxury retail chain Bergdorf Goodman to help pay off debts and reinvest in its core retail business, real estate data provider CoStar said.
The company faces a $100-million debt payment deadline at the end of December and is considering Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a last resort, Bloomberg said. The scramble comes a year after Saks Global purchased Neiman Marcus in a $2.7-billion deal.
The Beverly Hills retail property market is still one of the most robust in the country, said real estate broker Jay Luchs of Newmark. He was not involved in the Neiman Marcus property sale, but has brokered sales and leases of luxury stores in Southern California for more than two decades.
“This is probably the best it’s ever been in Beverly Hills,” he said, with “essentially nothing available” on Rodeo Drive for merchants in search of store space and demand climbing on nearby streets such as Wilshire Boulevard.
Some top-shelf brands are making their stores larger, and luxury brands, including LVMH, Chanel, Hermes and Richemont, are buying their stores instead of renting them, he said.
“They don’t do that unless they’re making a tremendous amount of money, unless they want to be there forever,” Luchs said, “and they realize that Los Angeles and Beverly Hills is a very important market for them.”
Trump Media & Technology Group stock (DJT) has hit a milestone that will secure Donald Trump an additional $1.1 billion.
According to a regulatory filing, Trump is entitled to an additional 36 million shares if the company’s share price trades above $17.50 “for twenty out of any thirty trading days” over the next three years.
Trump secured his “earnout” bonus at the end of Tuesday’s trading session, with the stock trading around $33 a share at the close.
Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, went public on the Nasdaq after merging with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp. in a deal approved by shareholders late last month. Shares are down nearly 60% since the end of March.
Short interest in DJT stock — bets that the stock price will fall rather than rise — is about 13% of outstanding shares, according to the latest data from S3 Partners. The company recently attempted to fend off short sellers by advising investors on ways to prevent their shares from being loaned for short-interest positions.
Trump maintains a roughly 60% stake in the company. At current levels, Trump Media boasts a market cap of roughly $4.3 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $2.6 billion. Right after the company’s public debut, Trump’s stake was worth just over $4.5 billion.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump does a little dance after speaking, Tuesday, April 2, 2024, at a rally in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The former president founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in 2021. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms.
According to an updated regulatory filing released earlier this month, Trump Media reported sales of just over $4 million as net losses reached nearly $60 million for the full year ending Dec. 31. The company warned it expects losses to continue amid greater profitability challenges.
The filing also confirmed stakeholders are still subject to a six-month lockup period before selling or transferring shares. The only exception to the lockup period would be if the company’s board votes to make a special dispensation. Although possible, experts told Yahoo Finance last month the attempt would likely result in multiple lawsuits on behalf of public shareholders.
State regulators on Friday gave the green light for Waymo to expand into Los Angeles and San Mateo counties, clearing the way for the driverless taxi service to launch in the coming months.
Exactly when Waymo services will be available in Los Angeles is still to be determined, but the decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will open the streets of America’s second-largest city to a fleet of autonomous vehicles — even as self-driving cars continue to be the subject of safety concerns and some public criticism.
Waymo, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and already operates in parts of San Francisco.
The company is allowed to operate fully autonomous vehicles and carry public passengers as part of its testing and promotion, and has been testing its driverless white Jaguars in Los Angeles for more than a year. An invitation-only period rolled out in Los Angeles County last year, giving some a chance to experience the service firsthand.
“As always, we’ll take a careful and incremental approach to expansion by continuing to work closely with city officials, local communities and our partners to ensure we’re offering a service that’s safe, accessible and valuable to our riders,” Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said in a statement.
But Waymo’s expansion has been met with some skepticism — and the vehicles have at times been targets of vandalism. Last month, a crowd burned an empty Waymo car in San Francisco’s Chinatown, though the motive for that attack was unclear.
Los Angeles officials have expressed concern over the deployment of the driverless vehicles, and some have backed legislation introduced by state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José) that would give local officials more power to regulate them.
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the CPUC’s approval “a dangerous decision.”
“These robotaxis are far too untested and Angelenos shouldn’t be Big Tech’s guinea pigs. Decisions like this one should be informed by cities, not made over city objections,” Hahn said in a statement.
Peter Finn — president of the Teamsters Joint Council 7, a union that represents freight and delivery truck drivers — said the commission’s decision comes less than a month after Waymo issued a recall because of a software issue. That recall was prompted by incidents in Phoenix in December, when two Waymo vehicles struck the same pickup truck minutes apart as it was being towed.
“The fact that this permit is being granted following such a fiasco raises a lot of questions about the due diligence conducted during this process and how forthcoming Waymo is with both regulators and the general public,” Finn said in statement.
Currently, local jurisdictions have no say in the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles. The CPUC cleared the expansion of Waymo’s operations despite letters of opposition from officials in South San Francisco, San Mateo and Los Angeles counties, and multiple transportation agencies.
In a protest letter to the commission, the L.A. Department of Transportation argued that there needs to be standardization of disengagement protocols and more oversight over the automated vehicles before they are deployed.
“Any expansion by Waymo will set a precedent for these companies and those looking to enter the marketplace to deploy without any rules or safeguards in place that were promulgated without meaningful coordination with local jurisdictions,” the letter said.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass asked regulators in November to increase their scrutiny of autonomous vehicles and said the city should have a say in how they are regulated.
At the time, she pointed to one of the Waymo driverless cars operating in Los Angeles that had failed to initially stop for a traffic officer at Beaudry Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard on Aug. 3, 2023. The officer had been signaling east- and westbound traffic to come to a stop.
Groups submitting letters of support for the Waymo expansion included United Way Bay Area, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California and Southern California Resource Services for Independent Living, among others.
Before the commission’s approval, San Mateo County Atty. John D. Nibbelin protested, saying the county didn’t have enough information on the expansion plans or enough engagement with Waymo.
“The ‘quick and simplified’ advice letter review process … is insufficient to develop the evidence necessary to fully understand the potential impacts and issues Waymo’s expansion into San Mateo County will create, including accounting for the differing needs and hurdles Waymo will face operating in San Mateo County,” Nibbelin’s letter to the commission stated.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom walked out of the Tesla gigafactory in China last month feeling jazzed about the future.
A future where people do a lot less driving, instead being whisked around by autonomous cars and flying taxis. A future where, he said, the “entire transportation system is completely reorganized.”
“I think it’s going to come very fast,” Newsom said to reporters on the last day of his trip to China promoting clean energy partnerships with California.
“With AI in particular aiding this advancement, I think it’s just going to explode and you’re going to start seeing driverless flying cars as well.”
Newsom made it clear that he’s committed to keeping California the global leader in the development of autonomous technology and said the state shouldn’t “cede the future” to other countries or states.
A tech-friendly, entrepreneurial streak has been one of Newsom’s hallmarks since he entered politics. As lieutenant governor in 2011, he famously set up his San Francisco office in a private hub of tech start-ups. Newsom boasts of having bought one of the first Teslas ever sold, and has had a longstanding relationship with Elon Musk, whom he calls “one of the world’s great innovators.”
But the governor’s effusive comments about autonomous vehicles come as the technology is causing outrage in some California cities, putting Newsom in conflict with many fellow Democrats who are calling for more oversight of the robotic cars on public roads. He’s clashing with mayors and other local officials who want more control over the expansion of robotaxis in their cities, as well as with state lawmakers who believe California’s system for regulating autonomous vehicles is insufficient.
Martha Hubert writes a message opposing robotaxi expansion on Aug. 10 in San Francisco.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
The friction is growing as autonomous vehicle companies ramp up their lobbying in Sacramento. Cruise, Waymo, Motional and the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Assn. collectively spent about $2.4 million on lobbying the state government in the first nine months of this year — more than three times the $671,579 they spent lobbying in all of last year, according to disclosures filed with the Secretary of State. Much of that increase is due to a huge jump in spending by Waymo, the business owned by Google’s parent company that operates robotaxis in San Francisco and Santa Monica, with plans to expand to other parts of L.A. this month.
Skepticism from local officials has intensified since a Cruise robotaxi dragged a person down a San Francisco street last month, and the company allegedly failed to disclose footage of the wreck. The DMV suspended Cruise’s permits and the General Motors-owned company announced it is suspending U.S. operations while it works to “rebuild public trust.” It recalled its autonomous fleet to perform a software update.
On Nov. 1, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wrote a fiery letter to state regulators saying the city wants more say in regulating driverless taxis and she criticized the state for a lack of attention to “public safety, road safety, and other serious concerns.”
“To date, local jurisdictions like Los Angeles have had little to no input in AV deployment and are already seeing significant harm and disruption,” Bass wrote to the state Public Utilities Commission, which approved a massive expansion of robotaxis in August.
Newsom appoints the members of the Public Utilities Commission and oversees the Department of Motor Vehicles, the two agencies tasked with regulating autonomous vehicles. He told reporters he agreed with the DMV’s decision to ban Cruise from San Francisco streets following the crash that left a pedestrian seriously injured.
Even before the Cruise debacle, city officials in San Francisco criticized the state’s move to grow the presence of autonomous vehicles. The fire chief complained that robotaxis are a danger to emergency response because they stop in traffic, pull up too close to firetrucks that are unloading equipment and block firehouse driveways. The police officers union also raised concerns about their expansion. After the Public Utilities Commission approved the expansion, San Francisco’s city attorney filed motions asking it to reverse course, which the commission declined to do.
Now a state lawmaker is pressing the DMV for more information on how it permits autonomous vehicles, how it addresses safety concerns and why it suspended Cruise’s permit. The formal inquiry by state Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) could portend hearings or legislation on autonomous vehicles after the Legislature reconvenes in January.
“All of us in public service would like to intervene and prevent things from happening and not have tragedy dictate an acceleration of remedies. But if we don’t hurry that’s what’s going to happen,” Cortese said in an interview.
He said California’s structure of having two agencies tasked with regulating driverless cars is problematic.
“I believe we need a single executive agency that deals with autonomous vehicles much like the FAA deals with air travel, commercial and private,” Cortese said. “We don’t have the infrastructure set up to monitor what’s going on or hold people accountable.”
Newsom defended the state’s oversight during his conversation with reporters outside the Shanghai Tesla plant.
“The DMV has built a whole new shop in terms of organizing around making sure people are safe,” he said. “But autonomy is the future.”
An electric Jaguar I-Pace car outfitted with Waymo full self-driving technology drives through Santa Monica on Feb. 21.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The DMV launched an investigation in 2021 into whether Tesla falsely markets its autonomous technology. The company brands it as “full self-driving” but California does not regulate Teslas as autonomous vehicles, so the company doesn’t have to report crash data to the state. The DMV’s investigation has yielded no public results in more than 2½ years, to the frustration of some state lawmakers.
The governor also clashed with lawmakers over autonomous vehicles earlier this year when he vetoed a bill to require human safety drivers in self-driving big-rig trucks — a measure that sailed through the Legislature with bipartisan support. Newsom said the bill was unnecessary because of the state’s existing system for regulating the evolving technology.
“DMV continuously monitors the testing and operations of autonomous vehicles on California roads and has the authority to suspend or revoke permits as necessary to protect the public’s safety,” he wrote in the veto message.
Peter Finn, a vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which sponsored the bill to require human drivers on autonomous trucks, said the union will keep pushing because both safety and jobs are at stake.
“We’re not backing away from this fight. We’re going to double down in terms of pursuing fair and responsible guardrails to this technology,” he said.
He called Newsom “completely out of touch with California residents” on the issue of autonomous vehicles.
There’s no sign that Newsom’s zeal for automotive innovation will subside. In addition to touring the Shanghai Tesla factory, while in China Newsom test drove a hybrid SUV made by Chinese manufacturer BYD. He took his hands off the wheel and waved to reporters as the car went into automated mode and rotated in a full 360-degree turn.
“This is another leap of the technology. Next level,” Newsom marveled from behind the wheel of the vehicle, which played the Eagles’ song “Hotel California” on the sound system when he turned it on.
Gov. Gavin Newsom test drives an SUV with autonomous features made by BYD during a visit to Shenzhen, China, on Oct. 24.
(Laurel Rosenhall / Los Angeles Times)
The governor said he first experienced driverless technology many years ago during a visit to Google with company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Four years ago, at the Sears Point raceway in Sonoma County, Newsom said he rode in an “Audi going 160 miles an hour with no one in the driver’s seat.”
Newsom also expressed excitement about aviation innovation underway in California. Drone-like electric planes are being tested across the state by Silicon Valley tech companies pitching the vision of clean, quiet flying taxis to get people off clogged freeways. Two companies, Archer and Joby, plan to launch with pilots while a company called Wisk is developing an autonomous air taxi.
Joby reported hiring a Sacramento lobbying firm for the first time in July, and one of its lobbyists, Michael Picker, is a former president of the Public Utilities Commission, which regulates taxis and rideshare companies.
Asked if he had safety concerns with autonomous technology, the governor echoed industry talking points that human drivers who can get drunk or sleepy behind the wheel are more dangerous than driverless cars.
“I think we’re gonna look back in 20 to 30 years and go, why were we allowed to drive? And allow 30-plus-thousand Americans to die every single year in accidents?” Newsom said. “There’s a precision with the technology, but it has to be worked through. I just think it’s mesmerizing, the change that’s about to come.”
Times staff writer Anabel Sosa contributed to this report.
