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Auto insurance rates are jumping the most since the 1970s, but there could be relief soon 2024-05-23 21:03:00+00:00 - Soaring auto insurance costs have been a principle driver behind inflation over the past year, but there could be relief on the way, according to Bank of America. The bank’s economists see several driving factors behind the run-up in costs to ease in the months ahead, possibly taking some of the heat off a category that has pushed the Federal Reserve to keep up its inflation fight. “The turbocharged increases in motor vehicle insurance premiums are a response to underwriting losses in the industry. Insurers saw losses,” BofA economist Stephen Juneau said in a note. However, he added, “There are signs that many insurers are getting back to profitability.” Primarily, the hit to insurers, which has been passed on to consumers, arose from three sources: higher vehicle prices, increased costs for repairs and “more accidents as driving trends returned to normal,” Juneau said. There’s some good news on that front. Sales prices for new and used vehicles have been trending lower in recent months and are down 0.4% and 6.9%, respectively, on a 12-month basis, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data through April. Also, repair and maintenance services costs were flat in April though still up 7.6% from a year ago. Motor vehicle insurance costs, though, continued to soar. The category rose 1.8% in April on a monthly basis and was up 22.6% from a year ago, the largest annual increase since 1979, according to Bank of America. In the CPI calculation, auto insurance has a weighting of nearly 3%, so it’s a significant component. The recent trends probably do not “mean that your premium will fall, but we think the rate of increase should slow,” Juneau said. That has been the general story with inflation: prices are not falling, but the rate of increase is well off the pace of mid-2022 when inflation hit its highest level in more than 40 years. Overall CPI inflation ran at a 3.4% annual rate in April. There’s one other tidbit of good news when it comes to Fed policy. The central bank’s primary inflation barometer is the Commerce Department’s measure of personal consumption expenditures, not the consumer price index from the BLS. In the PCE gauge, auto insurance has a smaller weighting, meaning it is less of an inflation driver. If the BofA forecast for insurance disinflation is accurate, it could at least give the Fed more confidence to start cutting rates later this year. Current market pricing is indicating an expected first cut in September, with one more possible before the end of the year. “We think further improvement in this aggregate is one key for the Fed to become more confident in the disinflationary process and start its cutting cycle,” Juneau said. “Until then, we expect the Fed to keep rates in park.”
Palm Beach housekeepers are making $150,000 a year due to massive demand from the wealthy 2024-05-23 20:53:00+00:00 - A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high net worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Housekeepers in Palm Beach and South Florida are cleaning up, with salaries often topping $150,000 and bidding wars between mansion owners becoming common, according to staffing companies. The mass wealth migration to Florida from New York and other high-tax states has created record demand for household staff in elite Florida enclaves — especially Palm Beach. Demand for butlers (now called “hospitality managers” or “estate managers”) as well as nannies, chefs, drivers and personal security has surged, according to staffing agencies. It’s the shortage of housekeepers, however, that has created the biggest mess for wealthy homeowners. Many of the wealthy emigres to Florida bought big homes and now need people to clean them. Hotels, resorts and businesses are also vying for cleaning staff. The result: Typical pay for housekeepers has rocketed from about $25 an hour in 2020 to $45 or $50 an hour today, according to some agencies. “I have been placing staff for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said April Berube, founder of The Wellington Agency, which places household staff in Palm Beach, Miami, New York and other locations. “We’ve seen such a boom from people relocating, especially Palm Beach and Miami.” In Palm Beach, housekeepers with experience in wealthy homes are typically making between $120,000 and $150,000 a year, along with 401(k) plans, health care and benefits, including overtime. “For housekeepers it’s wonderful,” Berube said. “For us it’s extremely difficult. It’s a severe shortage.” Melissa Psitos, founder of Lily Pond Services, said she recently had a Florida client hoping to hire a housekeeper for $75,000 a year. They ended up paying $110,000, which was reasonable for the market. Executive housekeepers, who often help direct a staff of other housekeepers and laundresses, can make even more. Psitos said she knows one head housekeeper in Palm Beach who makes $250,000 a year, including overtime, and travels with the family to their various homes. “There is just not enough supply,” she said. Bidding wars between wealthy homeowners have become common. Staffing agencies are posting “Help Wanted” ads all over the web and throughout West Palm Beach. Clients are growing frustrated. “At first they’re in shock, and they say, ‘No way I’m paying that,’” Berube said. “It’s even uncomfortable for me to give them the numbers. But when they try to hire someone for less, with less experience, they almost always come back to us and say, ‘I learned my lesson. We are willing to pay for the experience.’” Berube said the housekeepers for the wealthy need highly specific skills — from how to move quietly and unnoticed throughout the house, to how to carefully clean antiques, flatware and fine art and how to properly wash and press fine linens. “There are specific tools and skills you need to work in fine homes,” she said. Berube said with so few qualified candidates, she’s thinking of launching a school to teach high-end housekeeping skills and generate more housekeepers. “I would love to do it, but I don’t have the time, since we’re busy trying to find staff.” Sign up to receive future editions of CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank.
Some iPhone Customers Could Get Up to $349 in an Apple Settlement 2024-05-23 20:41:20+00:00 - Some Apple customers who owned an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus and experienced audio issues may be entitled to up to $349 as part of a proposed $35 million settlement on a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit, which was filed in 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claimed that the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus had audio issues related to the “audio IC” chip in those devices, according to a settlement administrator’s website. The settlement received preliminary approval last year. Apple has denied the allegations of audio problems and has denied any wrongdoing, according to the website. The company did not immediately respond on Thursday to a request for comment about the settlement. In a joint statement, Andrea Gold and Greg Coleman, lawyers for the six original plaintiffs in the case, said they were “proud of the nationwide class action settlement that is pending final approval before the court.”
Nvidia stock keeps hitting records. Can investors with little to no shares still buy? 2024-05-23 20:40:00+00:00 - Shares of Nvidia surged to record highs Thursday, following the artificial intelligence chip giant's after-the-bell quarterly results that effortlessly smashed quite possibly the highest bar ever set heading into an earnings release. While known for sizeable pullbacks in the past, the upward trajectory of Nvidia's stock last year and this year cannot be denied. So, what are investors who own little to no Nvidia shares to do if they want to buy and participate in what Wall Street and the Club believe will be higher and higher highs in the coming years? The answer to that question is not an easy yes or no because of several variables. First, we aim to never chase big rallies in stocks, especially since Nvidia's market cap gained some $250 billion Thursday to more than $2.62 trillion, according to market data provider FactSet. The Club had a 2 rating on Nvidia's shares before the earnings print, and we maintain that rating, which means waiting for a pullback before considering buying. For the Club portfolio, while looking for an opportunity to upgrade shares back to our buy-equivalent 1 rating, we would need to see a sizeable dip to consider adding to our own position. Here's why. We've been in Nvidia stock since 2019, years before the AI revolution was sparked by ChatGPT's viral moment shortly after its late 2022 launch. Our cost basis on Nvidia is nearly $156 per share. The stock was above $1050 for much of Thursday's session. We raised our price target to $1,200 on Wednesday evening. Like Apple , Jim considers Nvidia an "own it don't trade it" stock. And like Apple, years and years of gains have made Nvidia one of our top holdings — the portolio's fourth largest stock, with a 4.25% weighting. That's nearly what we consider a full position, around 5%, to maintain a diversified portfolio. (Apple is our biggest position with a 5% weighting.) Nvidia Why we own it : Nvidia's high-performance graphic processing units (GPUs) are the key driver behind the AI revolution, powering the accelerated data centers being rapidly built around the world. But this is more than just a hardware story. Through its Nvidia AI Enterprise service, Nvidia is in the process of building out a potentially massive software business. Competitors : Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Most recent buy : Aug 31, 2022 Initiation : March 2019 Second, just because buying Nvidia for the Club might not be right, it may be right at lower levels for investors who have no shares or have a small position and a cost basis much higher than where we stand. After all, the point of the Investing Club is not for members to blindly follow our ratings or moves but for you to be a more educated investor, take control of your own financial decisions, and develop your own disciplines. With that, let's think about Nvidia stock from the perspective of a long-term investor— and that's the key consideration, the investment horizon. If you are a long-term investor, then you are forced to reconcile the importance of valuing corporate fundamentals with the idea that a valuation based on a 12-month time horizon — in this case, the forward price-to-earnings multiple — can only take us so far. Valuation, especially for a long-term investor is part art and part science. In the case of Nvidia, the science part — where analysts do the legwork to determine how much money a company can make over the next 12 months — has been about as wrong as it gets. It's the artists, or rather the art critics — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang being called the modern-day Leonardo da Vinci by Jim — who have been right. At the beginning of the year, Nvidia stock traded at $481 per share on a $20.80 forward earnings estimate or a forward P/E multiple of 23 times. The company is now estimated to earn $26.59 per share this year. So, in retrospect, the stock was trading closer to 18 times at the start of the year, as Jim wrote in his morning Top 10 things to watch in the market commentary. What do we mean by that? Sometimes with a stock like Nvidia or Apple, you need to zoom out and think about the grand scheme of things more than the earnings estimates for a given 12-month period. That's especially true when analysts have consistently demonstrated an inability to fully appreciate the opportunity at hand — in Nvidia's case, generative AI, a technological breakthrough on par with electricity and the internet. Third, If we're looking to buy a stock like Nvidia after the run it's had, we can't think about what the next 12 months bring. We must think about what the world looks like 10 years from now. For example, can you imagine if upon first seeing electricity light up a light bulb, you simply asked, how many light bulbs can General Electric sell? The value of GE all those years ago was not in the light bulb but in electricity. Generative AI can be viewed similarly. It's not only about the copilot AI chat assistants or the things we see right now. It's about the way it's going to disrupt every aspect of our lives. It's also about autonomous vehicles, drug discovery and other advancements in health, enhanced cybersecurity, a means of addressing labor shortages, and so on. Nvidia is positioned to be at the heart of all of it, not just because of its hardware but its rapidly growing software and services solutions as well. You're not going to see this in a 12-month earnings estimate, and you're not going to accurately model that out over a decade. It requires stepping back and thinking beyond the Excel spreadsheet. If you've sat out the entire Nvidia ride and believe that it's only going higher over time because of all the aforementioned secular trends, you may be tempted to put on a starter position. If you do (again, this would go against our discipline to do on big rally day), just understand that pullbacks, violent ones — justified or not — are par for the course with a stock like this. The good news is the stock is being driven by fundamental earnings growth more than anything. While the current multiple has expanded a bit to about 40 times forward earnings, the stock is now trading pretty much around its five-year historical forward P/E average. Will we be looking back to the current 40 times valuation in the future and again see it as cheap through the prism of hindsight as 20/20? NVDA 5Y mountain Nvidia 5 years Only time will tell, but it's happened enough during this AI boom to favor the odds. And those odds certainly went up after what we saw from Nvidia on Wednesday evening from earnings to guidance and to a vision from CEO Jensen Huang of AI dominance for years to come. Our earnings commentary covered all that and Nvidia's planned 10-for-1 stock split announcement. One update we found particularly relevant to the question of whether Nvidia can be bought was from CFO Colette Kress. She said on the post-earnings conference call that the automotive market is expected to be Nvidia's largest enterprise vertical within data center this year, with Tesla working with an astounding 35,000 H100 chips to power its self-driving ambitions. That's even larger than the 24,000 chips Meta Platforms leveraged to train its Llama 3 model. That's intriguing because we would've expected health care to be the largest vertical. However, the update bodes very well in the years ahead for Nvidia's automotive segment. Automotive is expected to do $1.4 billion in revenue this year and then nearly double that in two years. That means rapidly growing verticals, not only in automotive but health care and sovereign AI initiatives at the government level. That's even before talking about the benefit to Nvidia from the AI-driven personal computer refresh cycle. Nvidia chips are still big in video gaming. But it's clear that the "gaming" segment is about much more. Kress also said on the call: "GeForce RTX GPUs [graphics processing units] are perfect for gamers, creators, AI enthusiasts; and offer unmatched performance for running generative AI applications on PCs. NVIDIA has full technology stack for deploying and running fast and efficient generative AI inference on GeForce RTX PCs." (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long NVDA, AAPL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang displays products on stage during the annual Nvidia GTC Conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2024. Josh Edelson | Afp | Getty Images
Norfolk Southern agrees to $310 million federal settlement over Ohio train derailment 2024-05-23 20:36:00+00:00 - Officials continue to conduct operation and inspect the area after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, United States on February 17, 2023. Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay $310 million to settle charges over a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023, the company announced on Thursday. The majority of the settlement is an estimated $235 million to cover all past and future cleanup costs. Per the agreement, the company will also pay a $15 million civil penalty to resolve alleged violations of the Clean Water Act. The agreement resolves a lawsuit filed in March 2023 by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice against Norfolk Southern for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act after the derailment of a freight train carrying hazardous substances ignited a dayslong fire that forced local residents to evacuate and contaminated the soil and waterways. "We are pleased we were able to reach a timely resolution of these investigations that recognizes our comprehensive response to the community's needs and our mission to be the gold standard of safety in the rail industry," Alan Shaw, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern, said in a statement. "We will continue keeping our promises and are invested in the community's future for the long-haul."
I drove the electric Chevrolet Silverado. It's a beast that could convince truck people to love EVs. 2024-05-23 20:26:10+00:00 - By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview After a long wait, the Chevrolet Silverado EV has officially entered the electric truck wars. I got the chance to take the First Edition RST for a short drive at a press event last week on a pre-selected route that included surface roads and highway driving. On this first drive with the truck, two things struck me immediately: its size and handling. But first, let's go over the specs. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. The version I drove starts at an eye-popping $96,395, including destination fees. For all that cash, you'll get access to the Wide Open Watts (WOW) mode, which can deliver up to 754 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque. Advertisement Silverado EV is also built on GM's new Ultium platform, which the company engineered to underpin their next generation of electric vehicles. The RST's roughly 200 kWh battery has an estimated range of 440 miles, which is yet to be confirmed by the EPA, while the 4WT work truck variant has EPA-estimated 450 miles of range. When it comes to towing, Chevy took advantage of its late arrival to the segment to achieve some classic one-upmanship on the competition. Chevy says the RST can tow more than 10,000 pounds, which would outdo the F-150 Lightning Lariat's 10,000-pound maximum. Rivian and Tesla still have Detroit beat, though. The R1T and Cybertruck both boast a maximum towing capacity of 11,000 pounds. Ultimately, I came away with the impression that the Silverado EV is built for people who love trucks — because of course it is. Trucks have always been Detroit's crown jewel, but big trucks and SUVs are going out of style in the EV segment. Advertisement In the end, the Silverado EV was fun to drive and handled well, but it's just too beefy for my taste.
NBA great Dwyane Wade launches Translatable, an online community supporting transgender youth 2024-05-23 20:24:20+00:00 - MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade was back in South Florida on Thursday to do battle again. He spent more than 14 seasons as a guard for the Miami Heat, winning three championships, having Miami-Dade County nicknamed “Wade County,” and he still leads the franchise in everything from points and rebounds to personal fouls. But the fight he outlined Thursday at The Elevate Prize Foundation’s Make Good Famous Summit, after receiving the nonprofit’s Elevate Prize Catalyst Award, may be the most personal of all. “We’ve done so many great things here so it wasn’t easy to leave,” Wade told The Associated Press in an interview before the award ceremony. “But the community wasn’t here for Zaya, so the community wasn’t here for us.” Wade’s daughter, Zaya, who turns 17 next week, came out as transgender in 2020 in the midst of anti-trans legislation in Florida and other states that prompted many trans adults to flee the state. The Wade family sold their Florida home last year and moved to California. In accepting the award, Wade shared it with Zaya and credited her with inspiring the creation of Translatable, a new online community designed to support transgender children and their families. “The question was presented to her as, ‘If you have one thing that you want to see change in this community, what would it be?’,” Wade recalled. “And, for her, it goes right to parents. It goes right to the adults. It goes right to us. It’s not the kids. It’s us. And so she wanted to create a space that felt safe for parents and their kids. That’s what Translatable is, and it’s her baby.” Wade hopes Translatable, which is funded by the Wade Family Foundation, will provide a community to “support growth, mental health, and well-being, and that this space ignites more conversations leading to greater understanding and acceptance.” He said he will use the $250,000 in unrestricted funding that comes with The Elevate Prize Catalyst Award for Translatable. Elevate Prize Foundation CEO Carolina Garcìa Jayaram said that after hearing Wade’s plans, her nonprofit made a separate additional donation to Translatable. “Dwyane Wade and what he represents speaks to the ethos of the whole foundation,” Jayaram told the AP. “He is such a hero in the sports universe and even beyond basketball. He’s been in the social justice space almost since the very beginning of his NBA career and most people don’t know that.” Jayaram said that Wade felt empowered when Zaya came out as transgender in 2020 and it was “so deeply inspirational to us that we were just dying to be a part of what he’s building.” The Elevate Prize Catalyst Award helps its winners, who have included actors Matt Damon and Michael J. Fox and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Malala Yousafzai, to amplify their philanthropic work by using the foundation’s resources and connections to inspire more donors and supporters. Jayaram also commended Wade’s decision to launch Translatable in Florida, “a place where many might feel a sense of exclusion.” Wade said Translatable, built with support from the Human Rights Campaign and The Trevor Project, will focus on supporting communities of color and emphasize the importance of parents and family. “We understand that in this state that not everyone thinks the way some others think,” he said. “Like most things in life, once you get to know them, you have more ability to be understanding. And so if you don’t want to know them, then you stay ignorant in a sense.” Alexander Roque, executive director of the Ali Forney Center, which helps homeless LGBTQ+ youth, said Translatable comes at a critical time for transgender youth, with more than 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced this year. “Not all bills turn into law, but they’re all acts of hate that affect our kids in very devastating ways,” he said. “We know statistically that every time there’s an anti-LGBTQ bill in the media, there’s a 400% increase in calls to suicide hotlines by young people. We also know that we’re seeing a significant increase in unhoused LGBTQ youth because of family rejection. So to have someone of this celebrity so invested in the community, it’s helping to change the tide of what’s happening to our kids and perhaps one of the most hopeful moments in what I hope is a changing tide.” Dr. Michelle Forcier, a clinician at FOLX Health, which provides health services for LGBTQIA+ people nationally, said creating an online community for trans youth is a specific program that would be helpful. “Youth are all about electronic and online communication, socialization, and communities,” she said. “So if you are trying to support youth it only makes sense to be a part of how youth feel most comfortable communicating.” That this community comes from a celebrity ally makes it more impactful, Forcier said. “The transgender and gender-diverse community does not have the deep pockets — including financial, political, and media resources — that the anti-transgender and anti-diversity political and advocacy community has,” she said. “To have a champion who shows up for some of our most vulnerable — transgender and gender-diverse youth and the families that care for them — that would be a truly heroic act and possibly change the game entirely.” ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
The Justice Department is suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation. What does that mean for concertgoers? 2024-05-23 20:23:54+00:00 - Will the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation give concertgoers, sports fan and theater patrons some relief from surging ticket prices? The lawsuit could potentially lead to a breakup of Live Nation Entertainment, a company that resulted from Ticketmaster’s 2010 merger with concert promoter Live Nation. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the aim is to allow more competition and to let smaller players gain more of the U.S. ticket-selling market — which Ticketmaster controls a whopping 70% of. More competition could lead to cheaper tickets. But experts say live event lovers shouldn’t expect changes any time soon. What happened? The Justice Department on Thursday accused Live Nation of engaging in a slew of practices that have allowed it to maintain a stronghold over the live music scene. They accused it of using long-term contracts to keep venues from choosing rival ticketers, blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers and threatening venues that they could lose money and fans if they don’t choose Ticketmaster. Does Taylor Swift have anything to do with this? The uproar that resulted from a myriad of problems Swifties encountered while trying to buy tickets through Ticketmaster for the pop star’s Eras Tour in 2022 shined a light on cracks in the U.S. ticketing system. State attorneys general — 30 of whom have joined the Justice Department’s lawsuit — started probing Ticketmaster. The widespread social media outcry even led to a Senate hearing. Eleanor Fox, professor emeritus at the NYU School of Law, said the debacle of an entertainment giant appearing incapable of servicing an eager audience might have helped the Justice Department build its case by making the scale of Ticketmaster’s domination more apparent. “I mean, you can say it was extraordinary that there was so much demand (and that is what led to problems), but they knew it was going to be extraordinary there was so much demand,” Fox said. “When you have competition, the companies are more sensitive and responsive to problems that can come up.” Why are ticket prices so high? Ticket prices have gone up for multiple reasons, including a huge surge in demand after the COVID-19 pandemic. Live Nation reported last month that worldwide ticket sales for the top 100 tours in 2023 jumped 46% compared with the previous year, bringing in $9.17 billion in sales. Attendance at Live Nation-produced events jumped 20% to a staggering 145 million last year. According to trade publication Pollstar, the average ticket price from the 100 top tours in 2023 was $122.84, which was 17% higher than the year before and a 31% increase compared to the average price in 2018. And as anyone who has tried to score tickets to a popular event knows, service fees and ticket resales can push prices up much higher, in some cases into the thousands of dollars. The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleges that having a giant company like Live Nation Entertainment exacerbates markups since it controls so much of the market. What does Ticketmaster say? Live Nation and Ticketmaster which have long clashed with artists and fans, have always denied they act in a monopolistic manner. They say they aren’t to blame for high ticket prices. They said Thursday that the DOJ’s lawsuit “won’t solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows.” They say service fees go to concert venues and that outside competition has ”steadily eroded” Ticketmaster’s market share. What happens next? Unless it is dismissed, the lawsuit Thursday kicked off what is likely to be a long trial. The trial might take a year to commence, and then there would be months of arguments before a judge issues a ruling, NYU School of Law’s Fox said. “And especially if the judge orders a breakup, there’s going to be an appeal,” she added. “So you are looking at years.” Are there other lawsuits against monopolies ongoing? The government has several ongoing lawsuits accusing big companies of engaging in illegal monopolies that box out competitors and drive up prices. In March, the Justice Department sued Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market. Earlier this month, closing arguments were made in a lawsuit against Google that dates from the Trump administration. Federal prosecutors accused the tech giant of maintaining a monopoly status as a search engine. In September, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging the e-commerce behemoth abuses its position in the marketplace to inflate prices on and off its platform, overcharge sellers and stifle competition. Amazon asked for the suit to be dismissed in December, but a judge set a trial date for October 2026.
Business Credit Card Benefits and Advantages 2024-05-23 20:22:20+00:00 - Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us and terms apply to offers listed (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate credit cards to write unbiased product reviews. The information for the following product(s) has been collected independently by Business Insider: CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®, Capital One Spark Miles for Business†. The details for these products have not been reviewed or provided by the issuer. If you own a business or do any freelancing or side gigs, there are plenty of reasons to get a business credit card instead of a personal one. When searching for the right business credit card, look at factors like welcome bonuses, earning categories, and purchase protection. Read Insider's guide to the best rewards business cards. The best business credit cards offer a lot of benefits both in common with personal credit cards and in addition to them. Like personal rewards credit cards, many business credit cards promote attractive welcome bonus offers, extend purchase protection and travel insurance, and in the case of airline credit cards and hotel credit cards, come with day-of-travel perks like free checked bags and anniversary award nights. Even without your own formal small business, you might still qualify for a small business credit card — and you might want to do so for a number of reasons. Using a business credit card can help you keep your personal and work expenses separate. That, in turn, can even help improve your personal credit score over time. Business Credit Card Benefits and Advantages There are currently a lot of great business rewards cards available, so if you've been thinking about applying for one, now might just be the right time. Before you do, though, here are five benefits you should look for in any business credit card you apply for. A high welcome bonus offer One of the best reasons to apply for a business credit card is that they often offer introductory bonuses that are as good as, or even better than, their personal counterparts. For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, with a $95 annual fee, is currently offering new cardholders 75,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. On the other hand, the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card is offering new cardholders 100,000 bonus points after spending $8,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening, and it has a $95 annual fee. So you could potentially earn more bonus points, if you're able to meet the spending requirement, by applying for the business card. The Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card has a $150 annual fee and its welcome bonus offer is 130,000 Hilton Honors bonus points plus a Free Night Reward after you spend $3,000 in purchases on the card in the first six months of card membership (offer ends 7/31/2024). With a $195 annual fee, The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card is currently offering a welcome bonus of 175,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after you spend $8,000 in purchases on the card within the first six months of card membership (offer ends 06/05/24). Bonus earning categories Like personal rewards credit cards, many business credit cards earn bonus points on particular purchase categories. No matter which business credit card you apply for, you should make sure it earns bonus points or miles where you actually spend the most money. Some business cards even offer a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to maximizing your purchase activity. For example, the American Express® Business Gold Card earns an excellent 4 Amex Membership Rewards points per dollar on up to $150,000 in combined purchases per year on the two categories where you spend the most each billing cycle from a prescribed list of possibilities that includes U.S. gas stations, U.S. restaurants, U.S. shipping providers, U.S. purchases made from electronic goods retailers and software & cloud system providers, U.S. purchases for advertising in select media and transit purchases including trains, taxicabs, rideshare services, ferries, tolls, parking, buses, and subways. So even if your buying habits vary from month to month, you can still take advantage of the card's bonus earning. Since many small businesses tend to make large one-time purchases, some business credit cards also offer bonus points or miles on big buys, too. For example, the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card earns 3 miles per dollar on eligible direct Delta and hotel purchases, but also 1.5 miles per dollar on eligible transit and U.S. shipping purchases, plus single eligible purchases of $5,000 or more, up to $100,000 per calendar year. Day-of-travel benefits Many of the best travel cards — both business and personal — offer perks that make the travel experience itself that much better. These can include things like free checked bags and priority boarding, like many of the best airline credit cards do, or automatic elite status and free anniversary nights, like those offered by many of the best hotel credit cards. For example, the CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® includes a free checked bag for cardholders and up to four companions on the same reservation plus preferred boarding. The Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card confers automatic Marriott Bonvoy Platinum elite status with perks like bonus points on stays and late checkout, plus an annual free night redeemable at properties that cost up to 85,000 points. Aside from privileges with a particular airline or hotel chain, if you spend a lot of time passing through airports, you should consider a business credit card that comes with a statement credit of up to $100 to refund the application fee for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck, like the Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card or the Capital One Spark Miles for Business† . You might also want a card that gets you into airline lounges, like The Business Platinum Card® from American Express, which includes free Priority Pass airport lounge access at over 1,300 lounges around the world**, plus entry to Amex's own Centurion lounges — and Delta Sky Clubs when you're traveling on Delta. Travel coverage If you're a frequent traveler and use your business credit card for work trips, you need to think about whether it offers adequate coverage in case things go wrong while you're on the road. Take a look at your card's benefits and make sure it extends protection for things like trip interruption, cancellation, and delays, as well as lost luggage and primary rental car insurance. One card that offers exceptional travel coverage is the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card. For example, if your flight is delayed by at least 12 hours (or your delay requires an overnight stay), you can be covered up to $500 for reasonable expenses such as lodging, transportation, food, etc. The Business Platinum Card® from American Express extends trip cancellation insurance up to $10,000 per trip and $20,000 per 12-month period as well as trip delay insurance that kicks in at six hours and is good for up to $500 per trip in case you need to spend money on things like accommodations or meals. Purchase protection Many small business owners need a business credit card specifically to make large purchases — such as for equipment or supplies — for work. If that's your situation, it is imperative to use a credit card that offers sufficient purchase protection in case something goes wrong with the things you buy. For example, Chase's purchase protection on the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card and the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card will both cover you against damage or theft on eligible items up to 120 days after you make a purchase with caps of $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per account. Certain American Express cards offer similar coverage, such as the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card whose purchase protection is good up to 90 days out on claims of up to $10,000 each and $50,000 per account per calendar year. Using a card with purchase protection like this can literally save you thousands of dollars in case something goes wrong with your work purchases. As a side note, some credit cards offer cell phone protection (usually subject to a deductible) against damage or theft, including the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card. What to know about business credit card benefits There are plenty of great reasons to apply for a business credit card, and there are also some key benefits you should look for in any business credit card you are thinking of getting. Finding a product that will not only earn you thousands of bonus points or cash back through a welcome bonus offer and special earning categories, but that will also save you time and money through various travel and purchase protections, is the key to maximizing any business credit card you carry. Eric Rosen Eric Rosen is a travel and credit card expert who has been helping readers reap the rewards of loyalty programs for over a decade.Eric is based in Los Angeles, though you'll often find him globetrotting to destinations like Australia, Kenya, and Laos on assignment for publications including National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Bloomberg, and AFAR, among others. He covers a mix of award travel, aviation, luxury, food, wine, and wellness. He also recently launched a podcast called Conscious Traveler where he discusses the latest in sustainability, conservation, culture, and community, and how they can inform us to make more meaningful choices when we travel. Read more Read less Tessa Campbell Junior Investing Reporter Tessa Campbell is a Junior Investing Reporter for Personal Finance Insider. She reports on investing-related topics like cryptocurrency, the stock market, and retirement savings accounts. She originally joined the PFI team as a Personal Finance Reviews Fellow in 2022. Her love of books, research, crochet, and coffee enriches her day-to-day life. Read more Read less
Biden is hiring a meme manager and is willing to pay up to $85,000 2024-05-23 20:17:25+00:00 - President Joe Biden's campaign needs a manager for "content and meme pages." The role involves collaborating with podcasters, digital media firms, and social media meme pages. It offers up to $85,000 and requires relocation to Wilmington, Delaware. Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Advertisement Do you want to parlay your skibidi toilet rizz into a career? President Joe Biden's campaign has the job for you, but you'd have to move to Wilmington, Delaware for it. Nestled in a list of jobs posted by the Biden campaign is one with the title: "partner manager for content and meme pages." The job description says that the person will build and maintain relationships with podcasters, digital media companies, and large meme pages. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in .
Democratic consultant who masterminded AI-generated fake Biden robocall scheme indicted on 26 charges 2024-05-23 19:54:54+00:00 - By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview The Democratic consultant who admitted to masterminding a bogus Joe Biden robocall scheme has been hit with dozens of charges. New Hampshire's attorney general announced in a press release on Thursday that the state has indicted Steve Kramer on 26 charges, including 13 felony counts of voter suppression and 13 misdemeanor counts of impersonating a candidate. Each pair of charges relates to 13 individual voters who received the call, though they weren't the only ones in the state to get it. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Ahead of New Hampshire's primary election in January, thousands of voters in the state reported receiving a robocall featuring an AI-generated voice of Joe Biden telling them not to go out and vote, NBC News first reported. Related stories The attorney general alleges that Kramer engaged in felony voter suppression "by sending or causing to be sent a pre-recorded phone message that disguised the source of the call, deceptively using an artificially created voice of a candidate, or providing misleading information in an attempt to deter" voters. Advertisement Kramer, working for Minnesota Rep. and then-presidential hopeful Dean Phillips at the time, told NBC News in February that he was the mastermind behind the scheme. A New Orleans-based magician and fork-bending world record holder also admitted to the outlet that Kramer had hired him to generate the Biden audio but did not know it would be distributed. He has not been charged in connection with the incident. Phillips' press secretary previously told Business Insider that the Phillips campaign did not ask Kramer to create the fake Biden robocall, and that it was "disgusted" by the call and Kramer's alleged involvement. In a separate announcement on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission proposed imposing a $6 million fine on Kramer "for apparently illegal robocalls made using deepfake, AI-generated voice cloning technology and caller ID spoofing to spread election misinformation." "I am pleased to see that our federal partners are similarly committed to protecting consumers and voters from harmful robocalls and voter suppression," New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said of the FCC's announcement. "I hope that our respective enforcement actions send a strong deterrent signal to anyone who might consider interfering with elections, whether through the use of artificial intelligence or otherwise." Advertisement A spokesperson for Kramer declined to comment on the charges, and Kramer did not immediately respond to BI's request. Kramer previously told Business Insider that "with a mere $500 investment, anyone could replicate my intentional call," adding that finding voters to reach out to was simple. "A voter list can be purchased quickly and easily through any political vendor," he said. Robocall fraud experts also previously warned Business Insider that the New Hampshire incident is "just the tip of the iceberg," and we should expect more to come in a dangerous new era for political spam calls.
The history of the flag at Justice Alito’s beach house makes its presence more chilling 2024-05-23 19:53:46+00:00 - News that an Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying outside the beach house of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito marks the second report in the space of a week that a symbol used by Jan. 6 insurrectionists was seen outside one of his residences. According to the report from The New York Times, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the flag was photographed flying at the home on multiple occasions between July and September 2023. Alito has remained silent about how and why the flag came to be flying at his property, but the more one knows about the background of the flag, the more chilling its presence at his house becomes. This flag, which bears the words “Appeal to Heaven” and an image of a green pine tree, is an unmistakable emblem for an influential segment of Christian nationalists who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, contrary to God’s will, and that believers’ spiritual warfare is essential to restoring God’s anointed leader to his rightful office. It was one of numerous Christian nationalist flags and other iconography carried by Trump supporters Jan. 6 and at the Jericho March, a series of prayer rallies that were like jet fuel for the insurrection. The Jericho March featured right-wing evangelical and Catholic speakers alongside militants such as conspiracist Alex Jones, Trump’s disgraced national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Oathkeepers founder Stewart Rhodes, now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy and other crimes. After years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. The Appeal to Heaven flag originated in Revolutionary times as a call to take up arms against unjust rulers who ignored the pleas of their citizens. But after years as a historical relic, in 2015 the flag was popularized by Dutch Sheets, an influential figure in the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s founder, C. Peter Wagner, drew on existing strands and trends in charismatic Christianity to create a powerful network of self-proclaimed apostles and prophets who claimed to be leading a revolution in Christianity. NAR’s adherents, as religion scholar and MSNBC columnist Anthea Butler has written, believe “the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming.” They promote spiritual warfare, including spiritual “mappings” to identify demonic forces in communities, and “power encounters” like exorcisms “to cleanse not only people, but cities and communities.” They envision not only a Christian nation, but also a new Christianity at the head of it. Sheets is a prominent “prophet” in the world of the NAR. He claims to receive dreams and visions from God about world events, including the 2020 election and its aftermath. According to the Times, in his 2015 book Sheets maintained that God had “resurrected” the Appeal to Heaven flag and urged his readers to “Wave it outwardly: wear it inwardly. Appeal to heaven daily for a spiritual revolution that will knock out the Goliaths of our day.” Sheets made multiple appearances in Christian media after the 2020 election, claiming that the election was stolen and that demonic forces were behind this supposed fraud. Christian nationalist support for Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results was suffused with themes of spiritual battles against mighty, seemingly unbeatable forces. The Jericho March’s overriding message was that the participants were brave warriors against forces of “corruption,” whose prayers were going to cause the “walls” of the “deep state” to fall, like the walls of Jericho in the Bible. Matthew D. Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, and the author of a forthcoming book about the New Apostolic Reformation, told me that Sheets “believes he has a special anointing on his life, and a special anointing to bring the American government into alignment with his interpretation of Christianity, including, especially, the Supreme Court.” Sheets has claimed, for example, that his “apostolic decrees” helped swing the 2000 election to George W. Bush and that he prophesied changes at the Supreme Court after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (who were replaced by Alito and John Roberts, respectively). “Christian supremacists,” as Taylor describes Sheets and his allies, “would like to see the Supreme Court rule according to his interpretation of the Bible, that the law of God would become the supreme law of the land.” The court’s 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality dismayed Sheets, like many on the right, and he took a particular interest in the 2016 election. “They are praying for total changeover in American culture to restore America to its original covenantal purposes and covenantal arrangement with God,” Taylor said. “Abortion and same-sex marriage are seen as impediments to this.” While Sheets claims to be calling for a spiritual revolution, Taylor said, the Appeal to Heaven flag nonetheless signals “an implied threat of violence.” The flag’s use and significance spread like wildfire in some evangelical communities, even as other Americans were unaware of its popularity or meaning. After Sheets’ book, the flag’s use skyrocketed in evangelical communities connected to the NAR. It even received a boost from former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who said Sheets gave her one of her own. In 2020, the flag increasingly became highly associated with Trump and then the insurrection. Taylor said neo-Nazi and other extremist groups have since adopted it, as well. According to Taylor, the flag’s use and significance spread like wildfire in some evangelical communities, even as other Americans were unaware of its popularity or meaning. But Alito is not just an ordinary citizen; he’s one of the nine most powerful jurists in the country. The leading proponent of the flag has very specifically taken an interest in the actions of the high court, and we already know from previous reporting that Alito is cozy enough with some evangelical activists to dine with them. Legitimate questions need to be answered about who else had access to the justice. And Americans cannot be kept in the dark about how this radical antidemocratic symbol came to fly outside his house. The public particularly needs to know before the court decides, in the coming weeks, Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution for Jan. 6. If Alito acquired the flag on his own and chose to fly it, the public needs to know why. The flag’s proponents want a Christian supremacist revolution against the government. Does Alito?
American women are stockpiling abortion pills amid political uncertainty 2024-05-23 19:51:30+00:00 - By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview Donald Trump's views on a national abortion ban have not exactly been transparent. In March, the repeat presidential candidate seemed to support the idea: "The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I'm thinking in terms of that, and it'll come out to something that's very reasonable," he said during an interview. Previously, he floated a 16-week ban because he liked the roundness of the number. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. But then, in April, after Arizona's Supreme Court revived a near-total abortion ban dating back to 1864, Trump said the court had gone too far and that he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban if it came across his desk. "It's all about state's rights, and it will be straightened out," he said after the ruling. Advertisement The flip-flopping probably has something to do with the line Trump is trying to walk between many within his base who support a national ban on abortion and the women voters he'll need to show up for him on election day if he wants to defeat President Joe Biden in November. But some women are not waiting to find out whether Trump will win and which side of the abortion issue he'll land on. Instead, they are preparing for the worst. A step toward the worst came today when Louisiana lawmakers became the first in the nation to classify the abortion pill as a controlled substance, making it criminal to possess the medication without a prescription. Merle Hoffman, a longtime abortion activist, told Business Insider that, in the face of all these events, some women have started to stockpile abortion pills like Mifepristone. Advertisement "Individuals may have to stockpile, and I've heard of people starting to do that, but not everybody can," Hoffman said. How to stockpile abortion pills Debbie McNabb, a retired gynecologist based in Texas, told Business Insider she only knows of one online source that will give patients abortion medication if they're not currently pregnant: AidAccess. Related stories "You can get it ahead of time. You can stockpile. It is expensive," McNabb said. "I want to say it's $150, but if people had the financial resources, they could do that. In the United States, I don't think you can go to an out-of-state clinic and get medication unless you personally are pregnant." People can also stockpile emergency contraception, which is easier to access because it is available over the counter, McNabb said. Advertisement "The only other option I'm seeing, there are women who have set up self-help groups that are bringing in Mifepristone. They're basically trafficking it under the radar, and they go to great lengths to keep their operation a secret," she said. "They acquire the pills at pharmacies in Mexico where you don't have to say that you're pregnant." Beyond that, McNabb said, people are choosing to limit their reproductive options surgically by getting their tubes tied. "We've already seen women going ahead and getting tubals and their partners going ahead and getting vasectomies. Maybe they thought they'd have a pregnancy in the future, but then they realize, 'No, I really don't want a pregnancy, and let's pull the trigger on that,'" she said. The abortion rights movement is on the defensive Aside from discussions on a nationwide abortion ban, the US Supreme Court is due to issue an opinion this summer on a case that could limit access to the abortion pill nationwide. Advertisement Though the justices appear skeptical of limiting access to the pill, their discussions have alluded to the potential revival of the Comstock Act of 1873, which banned the mailing of materials considered to be "obscene." That could be used to criminalize mailing abortion pills across state lines. In this climate, Hoffman said the abortion rights movement is in an "extremely defensive political position" and is fighting for their rights state by state. "So how much more will we have to do — in the richest country in the world with all the medical ability, scientific information, and knowledge — to be able to control our own fertility and determine our own life's course?" Hoffman asked. The anti-abortion movement won't stop at 15 weeks, she added. Advertisement "The purists are not going to be happy with a 15-week ban. They're not going to be happy with anything except a total ban," Hoffman said, adding that reproductive destiny is "embedded in our bodies." "And because it's within women's bodies, it's open to manipulation and control by the state."
Nearly half of Americans say having a college degree is less important now than it was 20 years ago 2024-05-23 19:47:00+00:00 - In 2011, 86% of college graduates said their degree had been a good investment; in 2013, 70% of U.S. adults said a college education was "very important," according to Pew Research Center and Gallup surveys. Today, 29% of Americans say that college isn't worth the cost — and roughly half (49%) say having a four-year college degree is less important for landing a high-paying job today than it was 20 years ago, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center. The escalating cost of college and ballooning student debt have influenced the shift in attitudes about higher education, the report, which surveyed more than 5,000 U.S. adults, found. Over the past 20 years, college tuition has outpaced inflation, leaving students with substantial debt. The average cost of tuition and fees at private colleges has soared by 144%, while public in-state tuition and fees have increased by 171% for out-of-state students and 211% for in-state students, according to the U.S. News & World Report. Outstanding education debt in the U.S. totals about $1.6 trillion, and burdens Americans more than credit card or auto debt. This surge in costs has led more people to question whether the return on investment is worth the financial strain. Only 22% of U.S. adults say the cost of getting a four-year degree today is worth it even if someone has to take out loans, Pew found. College graduates on average earn more than those without a four-year degree — but this so-called college wage premium is shrinking. A recent report from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found that the college wage gap peaked in the mid-2010s but declined by four percentage points in 2022. Now, bachelor's degree holders earn about 75% more over their career than those without. Economists attribute the decline to more rapid wage gains for high school graduates. Between 2020 and 2024, young high school graduates experienced 9.4% real (inflation-adjusted) wage growth whereas college graduates saw a mere 2.2% increase in their earnings, the Economic Policy Institute reports. To be clear, a wage gap still exists between American workers with degrees and those who forgo college. The inflation-adjusted median annual earnings among young men (ages 25-34) with a four-year degree was $77,000 in 2023, whereas those who only have high school diplomas earned $45,000, Pew found. Young women who graduated college earned $65,000, while their degreeless counterparts earned about $36,000. After decades of falling wages, young U.S. workers without a bachelor's degree have seen their earnings increase over the past 10 years. In 2014, men in this group were earning $39,300, while women were earning $30,900. "Job opportunities and wages have improved for less-educated young adults in the U.S.," Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew who co-authored the survey, tells CNBC Make It. "This is, in part, because they have had more bargaining power in the tight labor markets of the last 10 years, when employers had trouble hiring for both high-skill and low-skill positions."
Florida calls for probe of Starbucks' diversity policies 2024-05-23 19:45:00+00:00 - Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is calling for a state investigation of Starbucks for its diversity, equity and inclusion practices, saying the coffee chain may be violating the state's anti-discrimination laws. Moody and Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a complaint against Starbucks on Wednesday as the governor filled in for Fox News' Sean Hannity as a guest host on Hannity's conservative radio show. "We're going to make sure that in Florida this quota for hiring and programs that cause every employee to determine whether they are the problem based on the color of their skin, whether that violates Florida's anti-discrimination laws, and so the matter will be investigated," Moody, a Republican said on the show. The matter is being referred to the Florida Commission on Human Relations for an investigation, she added. DeSantis welcomed the move, saying people should not be judged on "the color of their skin or their ethnicity or anything like that." The commission, established to enforce the Florida Civil Rights Act, recently sparked controversy after Black clergy slammed the panel for halting inductions into its Civil Rights Hall of Fame during the governor's first term. Moody's complaint accuses Starbucks of having policies that appear to discriminate on the basis of race, and cites mention of the company's hiring goals of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) on the company's website. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in March found unconstitutional a main provision of Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" that restricted businesses' diversity programs and blocked ideas that might make workers feel responsible for racial injustices that occurred in the past. "As countless courts have held, using racial quotas in hiring is an illegal employment practice. The Florida Commission on Human Relations is the agency authorized by law to conduct investigations on these matters. Florida Statutes authorize the Attorney General to file a complaint with the Commission," a spokesperson for Moody's office told CBS News in an email. Starbucks did not respond to requests for further comment.
Trump's Bronx visit takes him to a place devastated by his ignorance and cruelty 2024-05-23 19:43:41+00:00 - Ahead of Donald Trump’s scheduled campaign rally on Thursday in Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres’ South Bronx district, the representative wrote an op-ed for the New York Daily News that accurately captures the mendacity of Trump’s visit. Torres wrote: “Even before inciting an insurrection against the United States Congress on Jan. 6, Trump fundamentally failed the American people with presidential malfeasance and mismanagement. Nowhere has this failure been more deeply felt than in the Bronx, where Covid-19 left a death toll of more than 7,000 — greater than the combined death count of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of the global pandemic brought preventable death and devastation to the Bronx, which is still reeling from the aftershocks of Covid. Instead of holding a rally at Crotona Park, Trump owes the Bronx an apology for the lasting damage he has done. I often find myself at odds with Torres, who’s become known for his attacks on progressives critical of Israel’s government; but on this point, Torres is right. Trump’s NYC visits — both his staged photo-op at a Harlem bodega earlier this year and his South Bronx rally — show him passing through communities devastated by his ignorance, cruelty and bigotry. Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic — and his particular scorn for local officials, who desperately pleaded with him for help — helped make two of the poorest parts of New York City, the South Bronx and Harlem, into two of the deadliest places in the city. Sometimes it can feel like many people have memory-holed this. Perhaps that’s because they want to forget the worst aspects of that traumatic period. Or maybe it’s because they’ve adopted the Trump administration’s ableist excuse that Covid deaths among marginalized groups can be blamed on personal behaviors rather than failed leadership. But as someone who lived in Harlem during much of the pandemic, the memories of ambulance sirens blaring through the night and funeral homes reaching capacity are etched in my mind forever. So are the cruel remarks Trump made as it was all playing out. I don’t think I’m alone. So in my view, Trump’s visits serve two goals. They’re staged events, coordinated by the extremist New York Young Republicans Club, to give the impression that the MAGA movement has seen a surge in nonwhite voters in recent years — a claim that we have ample reason to question. (Note that Trump’s Harlem event was held in a district where voters overwhelmingly backed city Councilman Yusef Salaam, the man who, when he was a teenager, Trump said deserved execution for a crime it was later proved he didn’t commit. And Trump's latest Bronx visit brings him to a district that favored Biden by nearly 70 points in 2020.) But beyond New York, Trump is visiting cities where his decisions, particularly around Covid-19, have fueled death and despair. Evidently, he and his campaign think some shots of cheering crowds will be enough to paper over that.
A US Navy carrier strike group locked in a Red Sea battle has fired over 500 munitions fighting the Houthis 2024-05-23 19:42:34+00:00 - By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview The US Navy carrier strike group battling the Houthis in the Red Sea has fired more than 500 munitions throughout its deployment, striking the rebels directly in Yemen and intercepting their missiles and drones. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group — which consists of the aircraft carrier Ike and several other warships — has spent months defending the key shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden from unrelenting Houthi attacks. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. In their attacks, the rebels, backed by Iran, have employed a dangerous mix of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and uncrewed surface vessels. As part of the ongoing effort to counter these attacks, the US strike group has so far gone after nearly 430 pre-planned and dynamic Houthi targets in dozens of self-defense actions, according to new information Navy officials provided to Business Insider. Advertisement These targets include static Houthi facilities and sites located across Yemen, missiles and drones the rebels were preparing to launch at ships at sea, and weapons that they already fired into shipping lanes. The strike group has leaned on its aircraft and warships to engage targets and defend against varying threats. Sailors observe as an F/A-18E Super Hornet lands on the flight deck aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea on March 12. US Navy photo The Eisenhower's air wing, which includes aircraft like F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters and EA-18 Growler jets, has been involved in the release of more than 350 air-to-surface weapons and over 50 air-to-air missiles, according to the officials. Aircraft from the strike group have flown more than 27,200 hours across over 12,100 sorties. Navy guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, meanwhile, have launched more than 100 Standard and Tomahawk missiles (surface-to-air and land-attack missiles, respectively), the officials said. Related stories But these munitions aren't cheap; a single Standard Missile-2 interceptor, for instance, is estimated to cost around $2 million. With engagements happening on a consistent basis since the fall, the expenditure of so many missiles has added up over time. Advertisement Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro disclosed in April that the Navy had already fired nearly $1 billion's worth of missiles to counter the Houthis over the previous six months, underscoring the depth and growing financial cost of the US naval activity in the region. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Carney defeats a combination of Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea on Oct. 19. US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau The Navy's Red Sea operations have often raised questions about financial sustainability and the replenishment of all the spent munitions, especially as malign Houthi activity shows no signs of letting up anytime soon, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told US lawmakers earlier this month. On Wednesday, US forces destroyed four Houthi drones in Yemen that the military had determined presented an "imminent threat" to American and coalition forces, as well as merchant vessels, in the region. US forces are not alone in these turbulent Middle Eastern waters. Several other countries have deployed warships to the region as part of the European Union's Operation Aspides security mission, which began in February. Advertisement During the first three months of the operation, European forces destroyed at least four Houthi ballistic missiles and 13 drones, the security mission announced on Sunday. It is unclear how many munitions the participating warships and their supporting aircraft fired. The Hessen sailing next to a merchant ship. German military photo The significant Western naval presence has successfully defended ships from the majority of the many Houthi attacks, but the Pentagon and its allies continue to face pressure as the rebels retain the capacity to land hits on merchant vessels, as they did just last weekend. "It is true that [the Houthi attacks] continue," a senior US defense official told reporters earlier this week. "It is also true that we feel, through our coalition strikes, we degraded their capability. We've also interdicted weapons that have been shipped to them for resupply." "But this is not a resolved issue yet," the official acknowledged. "It's also an issue that really is a global concern."
YouTuber investigates why Disney World’s Star Wars hotel closed after 18 months 2024-05-23 19:40:00+00:00 - A four-hour YouTube video investigating why Walt Disney World Resort’s Star Wars-themed hotel and live-action roleplay experience shut down after just 18 months has made waves online, resonating with people both inside and outside the Disney fan community. YouTube video essayist Jenny Nicholson, who specializes in content about theme parks, Star Wars and niche fandoms, described how she paid over $6,000 for her and another guest to share one room on the Galactic Starcruiser, the two-day, live-action role-play and resort experience. The hotel, billed as a unique “immersive experience,” opened in March 2022 and shut down in May 2023, with many Disney fans saying it was unaffordable and poorly marketed. Nicholson calculated that it cost about $2 per person, per minute — and according to her, it not only wasn’t worth it, but reflected an evolution in Disney theme parks from providing free perks for resort guests to selling them as expensive add-ons. Despite being her longest video ever, her review of the Galactic Starcruiser has been viewed nearly 3 million times in the four days since it’s been posted. The video has gotten major reactions well outside its target audience of theme park and Star Wars enthusiasts, with Nicholson’s name trending on X for days. Casey Neistat, one of the best-known YouTubers, weighed in, writing that Nicholson’s video “should be a case study for theme hotels/amusement parks/all things ‘experiencial.’” Nicholson’s analysis that Disney greatly overcharged fans, leading to the experience’s premature closure, struck a chord with people who expressed shock online at seeing what the Galactic Starcruiser actually entailed versus what it cost. The general consensus behind many of the reactions to Nicholson’s video was that the experience was not just overpriced, but mediocre, while a few Disney vloggers and fans who also attended the experience disagreed with Nicholson’s review. More than half of the video was Nicholson walking through her experience at the hotel in detail, which included a dinner show where her view was obscured by a pole, mini-games that she described as boring and pointless, and some actors who she said didn’t engage with her attempts to role-play. She praised many of the employees and the food that was included, but pointed out that some aspects of the already-expensive experience still cost extra, including watching full Disney movies in the hotel room. “Disney has always had high prices, but they also have a reputation for quality,” she said in the video. “This was more than they’ve ever charged for an experience before, so the logic followed that this would be the greatest experience they’ve ever offered.” Nicholson referred to positive Galactic Starcruiser reviews, including those from Disney fan content creators who were invited to the company’s media previews, which said that guests who could afford the experience would find it was worth it. She disagreed, arguing that Disney provided an experience that was actually not worth the value for its cost. A performance in the Crown of Corellia Dining Room at Disney's Galactic Starcruiser. Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file Nicholson factored in what she said were small rooms, disappointing and glitchy mobile device gameplay and comparable entertainment offerings to what is inside the much lower-priced Disney theme parks. She said that she believed the Galactic Starcruiser experience was only worth $800 to $1,000 per person, less than half of what it cost. “Here’s my supporting evidence: The hotel went out of business,” she said in the video. “If the value of something is what people are willing to pay, I can objectively say the Disney company charged too much for this experience, because time showed that the majority of people on this Earth were not willing to pay it.” Walt Disney World Resort pointed NBC News to statements it made at the time the Galactic Starcruiser’s closed. “Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is one of our most creative projects ever and has been praised by our guests and recognized for setting a new bar for innovation and immersive entertainment,” the company told CNBC in a statement. “This premium, boutique experience gave us the opportunity to try new things on a smaller scale of 100 rooms, and as we prepare for its final voyage, we will take what we’ve learned to create future experiences that can reach more of our guests and fans.” At the end of her video, Nicholson compares some of the original concept art and marketing for Galaxy’s Edge, the themed Star Wars land inside the Hollywood Studios park, with what ended up being put in the Galactic Starcruiser. She suggested that Disney took what was originally intended to be part of the park experience for all guests and isolated aspects as part of a much more expensive package, the Starcruiser. “This isn’t only a pattern in the Star Wars part of the parks, either,” Nicholson said, noting that Disney’s scannable wristbands, line-skipping passes, ride photos, airport transportation service and even restaurant bread baskets have all transitioned from free Disney resort perks to paid add-ons over time — echoing a common refrain within the Disney fandom. “This has become the new philosophy of the Disney theme parks,” she said. “More and more amenities that used to be free are now being put behind paywalls.”
Investing in Space: How the Pentagon is making use of AI with spy satellite data 2024-05-23 19:39:00+00:00 - CNBC's Investing in Space newsletter offers a view into the business of space exploration and privatization, delivered straight to your inbox. CNBC's Michael Sheetz reports and curates the latest news, investor updates and exclusive interviews on the most important companies reaching new heights. Sign up to receive future editions. Last week I had the opportunity to take part in venture firm Space Capital's NYC summit, which gathered investors and portfolio companies and included a number of panels on key industry topics such as Starship and China. The conversation I moderated was on "Big (Geospatial) Data & AI," with the goal of exploring how the two rapidly evolving worlds of satellite data collection and artificial intelligence interact. I was joined by Nathan Kundtz, formerly of satellite antenna company Kymeta and now leading a synthetic data startup called Rendered, and Rachael Martin, the Maven Office Director at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It's rare to hear from someone like Martin, who's deep within the intelligence community and has a front row seat on the intersection of classified information and cutting-edge technology. Martin leads the Department of Defense's flagship AI program, Project Maven, from within the NGA, which is effectively a sibling agency to the National Reconnaissance Office. Simply put, Project Maven at NGA is working on how AI can use satellite imagery and data to detect objects and activities around the world. Or, in Martin's words, the NRO will "launch them and we tell them where to go." The introduction of AI into the satellite data realm is one of necessity, Martin emphasized, because "we have billions of geospatially-referenced data points," so "how do we understand them in a way that can provide value?" "We're in a position where you have satellites everywhere but there's so many of them that you still don't know what's going on everywhere, and you couldn't possibly look at all that data and understand it in a helpful way," Martin said. "As the volume of that data grows, it is beyond the capacity of the human mind to be able to derive any kind of useful understanding from that kind of data," Martin said. What's more, "There are many different kinds of geospatial data and you're not necessarily going to use the same kinds of AI techniques to derive value" from each of them, she added. One of the major changes Martin has seen in recent years is that more and more companies in the geospatial realm "want to be part of helping us evolve solutions to some of our challenges." "From a national security perspective, our adversaries are not interested in putting objects of interest where we can find them. And so in many cases, we have to use [artificial intelligence] to help us imagine what they might look like in other scenarios that would be of interest to us," Martin said. And more change is coming: The next step in the evolution of geospatial data and AI, from her view, is applying generative AI "to basically arm non-experts with the ability to expertly use geospatial data." "What we can do with some of the generative AI tools that are coming out is to create the ability for a non-expert to query complex geospatial data and get a response back far, far more quickly than if they would have just outsourced that to a data scientist," Martin said.
Republicans demand Secret Service chief personally take action to move protests farther from the convention 2024-05-23 19:30:00+00:00 - The Republican National Committee is demanding that Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle personally get involved to move a planned protest zone farther away from the site of the party's convention in Milwaukee this summer, according to a letter obtained by NBC News. The letter, sent Thursday by Todd Steggerda, counsel to the RNC, to Cheatle, builds upon escalating demands by GOP officials to move that planned zone. Those officials believe the current plans would force delegates and others attending to come in close contact with protesters on their way to the site of the convention. “With less than two months before the Convention and even less time before the USSS finalizes the Plan, it is imperative you take personal and immediate steps to fix this unacceptable flaw in the design of the Security Perimeter,” Steggerda wrote. "The criticality of the situation demands that you immediately provide the appropriate mandate and delegated authority to your team to adjust the Security Perimeter to alleviate these risks,” he added. A spokesperson for the Secret Service didn’t immediately respond to questions about the letter. A detailed map of the Secret Service’s security perimeter — the zone around the convention that is off-limits to the general public and requires credentials and screening to access — hasn’t been publicly released. But people familiar with the plans say the space identified as a protest zone, Pere Marquette Park, falls outside it, NBC News reported earlier Thursday. Citing safety concerns after a man set himself on fire outside former President Donald Trump’s New York trial and a suspicious package was sent to the national committee this week, GOP officials have said they want the Secret Service to expand the security perimeter because the current plans would force convention attendees to be near protesters as they entered and exited Fiserv Forum, the site of the convention, risking confrontations. The GOP’s four-day nominating convention takes place July 15-18. “Your failure to act now to prevent these unnecessary and certain risks will imperil tens of thousands of Convention attendees, inexcusably forcing them into close proximity to the currently planned First Amendment Zone,” Steggerda wrote in the Thursday letter. “Inevitably, this Plan will heighten—rather than obviate or diffuse—tensions and confrontation, creating an increased and untenable risk of violence. This rapidly deteriorating security environment and the severe consequences to the public underscore the exigency of your personal leadership and action to solve this problem.” RNC and Secret Service officials were scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss several topics related to the convention. In his letter, Steggerda proposed expanding the security perimeter one block to the east “to encapsulate” Pere Marquette Park into the perimeter and to designate Zeidler Union Square, about three-quarters of a mile south of Fiserv Forum, as the protest zone. Pere Marquette Park is one block south and one block east of Fiserv Forum. Pere Marquette Park was also the designated protest zone for the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which was significantly scaled down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Zeidler Park was under consideration in 2020 before Pere Marquette Park was selected. Steggarda wrote that “this minor extension of a small portion of the eastern side of the Security Perimeter would remedy" a "critical flaw in the current design" that risked confrontation “while also protecting the public’s freedom to peaceably assemble and demonstrate within sight and sound of the Convention, a mere three to four blocks away.” NBC News reported earlier Thursday that the Secret Service has said that the security perimeter is based on a threat assessment and that it would prefer to not take over more area than necessary. Further inaction by the Secret Service would punt the decision to Milwaukee officials. A spokesman for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a Democrat, said officials were “very open to listening to all the concerns” from all parties involved, but some members of Milwaukee’s Common Council said they felt the currently planned protest zone was adequate. RNC officials wrote to Cheatle about their concerns last month, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed up with a letter of his own this month to warn that preliminary plans could create “a likely — and preventable — area of conflict between protestors and Convention attendees and delegates.”