STOCKHOLM – Scandinavian airline SAS has reached a labour deal with unions representing striking pilots, Danish broadcasters TV2 and DR reported on Monday, citing undisclosed sources.
(Reporting by Niklas Pollard, editing by Gwladys FOuche)
By Noor Zainab Hussain and Saeed Azhar
(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc on Monday warned it may slow hiring and cut expenses, as the economic outlook worsens, after reporting a 48% slump in quarterly profit which beat forecasts due to gains in fixed-income and commodities trading.
U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, aimed at taming runaway inflation, have rattled global financial markets, curbing companies’ appetite for deals and making them wary of stock and debt offerings.
Goldman’s investment banking revenue fell 41% to $2.14 billion in the second quarter, as fees from both equity and debt underwriting fell along with those from advising on stock listings and mergers and acquisitions.
“Given the challenging operating environment, we are closely re-examining all of our forward spending and investment plans to ensure the best use of our resources,” Chief Financial Officer Denis Coleman told analysts on an earnings’ call.
“Specifically, we have made the decision to slow hiring velocity and reduce certain professional fees going forward, though these actions will take some time to be reflected in our results.”
The bank will also reinstate its annual performance review for employees at the end of the year, a process it had suspended during the period of the pandemic, he said.
The restoration of the process that tends to identify under-performers was the strongest signal that Wall Street banks may consider potential job cuts as outlook for dealmaking turns challenging. Wall Street had eased up on hiring after a recruiting frenzy last year.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the market environment has become more “complicated” due to a combination of macroeconomic conditions and geopolitics, citing the war in Ukraine.
“We see inflation deeply entrenched in the economy,” he said. “And what’s unusual about this particular period is that both demand and supply are being affected by exogenous events, namely the pandemic and the war.”
Despite the slump in deals, Goldman’s shares rose 3% as revenue at the global markets unit, which houses its trading desks, jumped 32% to $6.47 billion, with fixed income, commodities and trading revenue surging 55% and equities revenue adding 11%.
Goldman’s chief financial officer also said the bank will “very carefully” look at buybacks. Other banks, such as JPMorgan, have suspended buybacks.
“We didn’t give a number for this quarter but we did say that we’re looking at it very carefully. We’re operating with a capital surplus right now,” he said.
Goldman’s quarterly report caps big bank earnings and mirrors peers JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley, both of which reported that revenues from investment banking more than halved. However, Goldman’s trading unit outperformed JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, which last week reported jumps in market revenue of 15% and 25% respectively.
“Goldman once again showed that it can excel in challenging markets given a top-line beat in each of its four business lines,” Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo, wrote in a note.
In the second quarter, there were 305 initial public offerings globally, raising $40.6 billion, down 65% from last year, according to data from Ernst & Young.
The value of announced deals dropped 25.5% year-on-year to $1 trillion in the quarter with M&A activity in the United States plunging 40%, according to Dealogic data.
“The banks’ news certainly was very poor for the most part,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments, adding however: “It was not unexpected when you consider that investment banking income is really falling off the table and that some of the banks have taken large credit reserves.”
Goldman’s net revenue fell 23% to $11.86 billion for the second quarter and profit nearly halved to $2.8 billion, or $7.73 per share.
Asset management was another weak spot, with net revenue of $1.08 billion, 79% lower than the second quarter of 2021.
CONSUMER FOCUS
Solomon has been working to reduce the bank’s reliance on volatile trading and investment banking by shifting focus to Marcus, its consumer banking unit.
Consumer and wealth management recorded a 25% jump in net revenues to $2.18 billion, driven by higher management fees and credit card balances.
However, if the U.S. Federal Reserve further raises borrowing costs to a level that restricts consumer spending, the demand for loans could take a hit.
Goldman kept aside $667 million to cover credit losses, compared with a net benefit of $92 million in the same period a year ago.
The U.S. central bank has been trying curb a relentless surge in prices and has committed to a “soft landing.”
In June, the Fed raised its benchmark federal funds rate by 75 basis points, the biggest hike since 1994, as inflation unexpectedly rose despite expectations it had peaked.
Goldman’s net interest income jumped 6% to $1.73 billion.
(Reporting by Saeed Azhar in New York, Niket Nishant and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Nick Zieminski)
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON – Astronomers have spotted in a galaxy adjacent to our Milky Way what they are calling a cosmic “needle in a haystack” – a black hole that not only is classified as dormant but appears to have been born without the explosion of a dying star.
Researchers said on Monday this one differs from all other known black holes in that it is “X-ray quiet” – not emitting powerful X-ray radiation indicative of gobbling up nearby material with its strong gravitational pull – and that it was not born in a stellar blast called a supernova.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so intense not even light can escape.
This one, with a mass at least nine times greater than our sun, was detected in the Tarantula Nebula region of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy and is located about 160,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
An extremely luminous and hot blue star with a mass about 25 times that of the sun orbits with this black hole in a stellar marriage. This so-called binary system is named VFTS 243. The researchers believe the companion star eventually also will become a black hole and could merge with the other one.
Dormant black holes, thought to be relatively common, are hard to detect because they interact very little with their surroundings. Numerous prior proposed candidates have been debunked with further study, including by members of the team that uncovered this one.
“The challenge is finding those objects,” said Tomer Shenar, a research fellow in astronomy at Amsterdam University, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01730-y. “We identified a needle in a haystack.”
“It’s the first object of its kind discovered after astronomers have been searching for decades,” said astronomer and study co-author Kareem El-Badry of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The researchers used six years of observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Chile-based Very Large Telescope.
There are different categories of black holes. The smallest, like the newly detected one, are so-called stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of massive individual stars at the ends of their life cycles. There also are intermediate-mass black holes as well as the enormous supermassive black holes residing at the center of most galaxies.
“Black holes are intrinsically dark objects. They do not emit any light. Therefore, in order to detect a black hole, we usually look at binary systems in which we see one luminous star moving around a second, not-detected object,” said study co-author Julia Bodensteiner, a postdoctoral research fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Munich.
It is typically assumed that the collapse of massive stars into black holes is associated with a powerful supernova explosion. In this case, a star perhaps 20 times our sun’s mass blew some of its material into space in its death throes, then collapsed in on itself without an explosion.
The shape of its orbit with its companion offers evidence for the lack of an explosion.
“The orbit of the system is almost perfectly circular,” Shenar said.
Had a supernova occurred, the blast’s force would have kicked the newly formed black hole in a random direction and yielded an elliptical rather than circular orbit, Shenar added.
Black holes can be mercilessly ravenous, guzzling any material – gas, dust and stars – wandering within their gravitational pull.
“Black holes can only be mercilessly ravenous if there is something close enough to them that they can devour. Usually, we detect them if they are receiving material from a companion star, a process we call accretion,” Bodensteiner said.
Shenar added, “In so-called dormant black hole systems, the companion is far enough away that the material does not accumulate around the black hole to heat up and emit X-rays. Instead, it is immediately swallowed by the black hole.”
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
(Reuters) – Power demand in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) hit a record on Friday and will likely break that on Tuesday as homes and business in the U.S. Central region keep their air conditioners cranked up to escape a lingering heat wave.
That heat also pushed demand in Texas to record highs, forcing the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), to urge consumers to conserve energy to help avoid taking bigger actions to reduce usage, including rotating outages.
Overall, the United States is expected to use record amounts of power in 2022 due mostly to rising economic and population growth in Sun Belt states covered by ERCOT, SPP and in the U.S. Southeast.
SPP, which operates the grid for almost 18 million people in 17 states from North Dakota to Texas, did not take as many steps as ERCOT to control usage to meet record demand.
SPP, like ERCOT, asked its members to postpone maintenance on some critical equipment like power lines and generating plants, a common step grid operators take to ensure resources will be available during times of high demand.
AccuWeather forecast temperatures in Oklahoma City, the biggest city in SPP, will jump from 100 Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) on Monday to 110 F (43.3°C) on Tuesday. That would be the hottest day in the city since August 2012 when highs reached a record-tying 113 F (45°C) and compares with a normal high of 94 F for this time of year, according to federal data.
SPP said power use hit a preliminary 52,028 megawatts (MW) on July 15, topping the previous record of 51,510 MW on July 14, and will reach 53,024 MW on Tuesday.
One megawatt can power around 1,000 U.S. homes on a typical day, but only about 200 homes on a hot summer day.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Sandra Maler)
By Cole Horton and Ross Kerber
(Reuters) -S&P 500 chief executives made $18.3 million on average in 2021, 324 times the pay of their median workers and higher than the ratio in 2020, the top American labor union federation reported on Monday.
Corporate leaders’ raises far outpaced wage gains that failed to keep up with inflation, said the AFL-CIO, in an annual report that has become widely cited as a measure of U.S. inequality trends.
“It’s another version of more for them and less for us,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond on a conference call to introduce the report.
The 2021 CEO-to-worker ratio in the S&P 500 was the widest since 2018, when the federation was first able to track the figure based on new disclosures. The ratio was 299-to-1 in 2020.[L1N2OQ1ML]
Amazon.com Inc. CEO Andy Jassy’s total compensation of $212.7 million last year was 6,474 times that of its median worker. That was the highest ratio out of all S&P 500 companies based on their latest proxy statements, the AFL-CIO said.
A spokesperson for Amazon said that Jassy’s compensation was “competitive with that of CEOs at other large companies” as it vests over 10 years.
The highest paid CEO in the S&P 500 was Peter Kern of online travel company Expedia Group Inc., whose compensation totaled $296.2 million, according to the study.
An Expedia spokesperson noted details in the company’s proxy statement about Kern’s compensation, including that equity awards make up the bulk of the pay package and will not fully vest until at least 2026.
Top CEOs benefited from big stock awards and cash bonuses last year. [L2N2WC198] The federation found S&P 500 CEOs’ average pay rose 18% in 2021, while U.S. consumer prices rose 7%.
Other federal figures cited by the AFL-CIO show nominal worker wages rose 4.7% last year, but fell 2.4% adjusted for inflation.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston and Cole Horton in New YorkEditing by Alistair Bell)
(Reuters) – Poland’s antimonopoly office has filed charges against five banks it found to have acted against the interests of customers, the watchdog said on Monday.
After a year-long investigation, charges have been filed against Bank Millennium, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, Credit Agricole Bank Polska, mBank and Santander Bank Polska, the watchdog said.
Representatives of the banks were not immediately available to comment.
Proceedings now enter the next stage, in which the watchdog will verify charges in cooperation with the institutions in question. If the charges are found to be valid, the accused banks could face fines of up to 10% of annual turnover.
(Reporting by Mateusz Rabiega; Editing by David Goodman)
WASHINGTON – A Georgia grand jury has subpoenaed U.S. Representative Jody Hice as Fulton County continues its criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing over former President Donald Trump’s attempts to sway the state’s 2020 election results, documents showed.
The special grand jury in Fulton County called on Hice, a Georgia Republican, to appear on Tuesday, according to court and congressional documents first reported on by Politico and the Associated Press earlier on Monday.
Representatives for Fulton County did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Hice’s office. The lawmaker notified Congress about the request on Friday and is seeking to have the matter transferred to federal court, filings showed.
The Georgia probe is one of the most serious cases facing Trump, who was recorded in a Jan. 2 phone call pressuring a top state official to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the state.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and blasted the probe as politically motivated. He has argued that he lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud – an allegation that has been rejected in multiple court decisions, a number of Republican audits and by the Department of Justice.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the probe for the state’s most populous county, has also warned some Republicans that they could face indictments for their role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Yahoo News reported.
The Department of Justice has separately been investigating an alleged plan by Trump and his supporters to overturn the election.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating Trump supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol has also focused on Trump’s actions in Georgia.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Additional reporting by Moira Warburton and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
HARRISON, OH – Hildegard McCarthy of Harrison is the lucky winner of the top prize of $35,000 on the Cash Explosion 35th Anniversary scratch-off.
McCarthy will receive $25,200 after mandatory state and federal taxes totaling 28 percent.
The winning ticket was purchased at the Kroger located at 10477 Harrison Avenue in Harrison.
According to lottery officials, “Cash Explosion 35th Anniversary is a $2 scratch-off with a top prize of $35,000. As of July 13, 2022, there are seven top prizes remaining in the game.”
SYLVANIA, OH – Albert Kleine Jr. of Sylvania is the lucky winner of $20,000 after playing the Ohio Bonus Cash scratch-off.
Kleine will receive $14,400 after mandatory state and federal taxes totaling 28 percent.
His ticket was purchased at the Circle K located at 111 Commerce Lane in Bluffton.
According to lottery officials, “Ohio Bonus Cash is a $10 scratch-off with a top prize of $40,000 a year for 25 years. As of July 13, 2022, there are three top prizes remaining in the game.”
WASHINGTON – Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, will deliver remarks to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office said.
U.S. lawmakers will host Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Pelosi’s office said in a statement on Monday.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Susan Heavey)
BALTIMORE, MD- A 19-year-old from Prince George’s County is the lucky recipient of $25,000 after her mom purchased a 50-cent straight bet. She chose the set of random numbers 77131 and later discovered that they had the winning ticket.
The lucky winner was at work when she decided she called her mom to buy her a ticket to play Pick 5. The 19-year-old missed the evening drawing as she was at work. When she called her mom on her break to have her check the tickets, she found out, that her Pick 5 ticket won $25,000.
By David Shepardson
FARNBOROUGH, England – European airplane manufacturer Airbus and more than a half dozen airlines said on Monday they had signed letters of intent to discuss buying carbon removal credits to offset the emissions from air travel.
Airbus joined by Air Canada, Air France-KLM, EasyJet, International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group and Virgin Atlantic have committed to engage in “negotiations on the possible pre-purchase of verified and durable carbon removal credits starting in 2025.”
The carbon removal credits will be issued by Airbus’ partner 1PointFive – a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp Low Carbon Ventures business, which plans to build a direct air carbon capture and storage facility in Texas for carbon removal that will be able to remove up to 1 million tons of C02. Construction is expected to begin toward the end of this year and be running by 2024, said Steve Kelly, who heads 1PointFive.
Airbus’ partnership with 1PointFive includes prepurchasing 400,000 tons of carbon removal credits over a four-year period, the companies said.
“These first letters of intent mark a concrete step towards the use of this promising technology for both Airbus’ own decarbonization plan and the aviation sector’s ambition to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Airbus’ Julie Kitcher said.
The airline industry, responsible for nearly 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, faces significant challenges in meeting ambitious goals to cut emissions. Airline officials argue that carbon capture can be one part of a multi-pronged strategy to cut emissions.
In 2020, United Airlines said it agreed to a multimillion-dollar investment in a project to built a U.S. industrial-sized direct air capture plant with 1PointFive.
The technology has yet to be proven up to scale. And it’s expensive, costing hundreds of dollars to capture just one ton of CO2. Several previous carbon capture and storage (CCS) efforts have failed.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
By Aluisio Alves
SAO PAULO – Simpar, a holding firm for Brazilian logistics companies Movida, JSL and Vamos, is preparing to expand into the United States and European markets in a bid to diversify its revenues, its chief executive told Reuters.
“In the next four to five years, we intend to have about 35% of our revenues in other currencies,” CEO Fernando Simoes said in an interview. “Currency diversification is part of our governance model.”
The company has already expanded through acquisitions into sectors as diverse as vehicle leasing and resale, infrastructure concessions, waste recycling and financial services.
In the last year and a half, Simpar has bought 18 companies to help its goal of expanding its gross revenue to 35.5 billion reais ($6.61 billion) by 2024.
Simoes said he expects the company’s inorganic growth trend to continue in the near future, especially in its heavy transport and car dealership units, under the brands JSL and Automob, respectively.
Tough conditions in the cargo transport market in Brazil, worsened by high fuel costs, have created opportunities for companies with a better cash flow position. As a result, JSL has bought six smaller rivals in the last two years.
A similar process should happen in the light vehicle dealership sector, said the CEO, a segment in which Automob has only 0.2% of the market but is one of the largest providers in the country.
“Nobody has consolidated this segment in Brazil yet, and we have the structure to do it,” he said.
Automob could be the fourth of the group’s seven business units to be listed on the stock exchange.
“It is today the one with the largest size for such an operation,” said Simoes, referring to a potential IPO, without indicating when this might happen.
($1 = 5.3690 reais)
(Reporting by Aluisio Alves; Writing by Peter Frontini; Editing by Susan Fenton)
(Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday he gave a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden where he defended Julian Assange’s innocence and renewed a previous offer of asylum to the WikiLeaks founder.
The United Kingdom last month approved Assange’s extradition to the United States to face criminal charges relating to WikiLeaks’ release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables.
“I left a letter to the president about Assange, explaining that he did not commit any serious crime, did not cause anyone’s death, did not violate any human rights and that he exercised his freedom, and that arresting him would mean a permanent affront to freedom of expression,” Lopez Obrador said in a regular news conference.
Lopez Obrador earlier this year said that he also offered asylum to Assange in a letter to then-U.S. President Donald Trump before he left office and again at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in 2021.
Last month Lopez Obrador called Assange “the best journalist of our time.”
(This story corrects spelling in 2nd paragraph to say “United States,” not “United Station”)
(Reporting by Aida Pelaez Fernandez and Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Brendan O’Boyle)
BALTIMORE, MD- A retired federal official is the lucky winner of $100,000 after purchasing a winning Fast Play ticket while visiting her mother in Maryland.
“I play the lottery at home pretty often, so I get tickets here when I visit,” she said. The woman purchased a new $10 Fast Play game called Towering 10s. According to officials, she saw that her ticket matched the winning numbers in two of the 10 towers, which turned two $50,000 wins into a combined $100,000 top prize.
The Town Center Sunoco at 19738 Germantown Road in Montgomery County will receive a $1,000 bonus for selling a top-prize winning ticket.
BERLIN – Volkswagen-owned Porsche expects revenue of 38 billion to 39 billion euros ($38.63 billion to $39.64 billion) in 2022 from 33.1 billion in 2021, the sportscar maker said on Monday, despite registering a 5% drop in deliveries in the first half of the year.
Long-term, the brand is targeting 20% or more return on sales, with a goal of 17-18% for 2022, it said, up from 16% in 2021.
Porsche, which its owner Volkswagen plans to list on the stock market by the end of this year, saw a 5% drop in deliveries in the first half of 2022 with China sales down 16% amid coronavirus-induced lockdowns.
Still, Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke said the carmaker expects a stronger second half in China, with Chief Executive Oliver Blume adding June and July sales so far were positive.
($1 = 0.9859 euros)
($1 = 0.9838 euros)
(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Editing by Miranda Murray)
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – A 40 year-old man was shot multiple times in the Northeast District of Baltimore Saturday afternoon. This incident happened on the 5500 Block of Bowleys Lane.
Detectives say, “At approximately 2:35 p.m., Northeast District officers were dispatched to the 5500 block of Bowleys Lane to investigate a reported shooting. When officers arrived at the scene, they located a 40-year-old male suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim was transported to an area hospital by ambulance.”
If you have any information about this incident is urged to contact Northeast District Shooting detectives at (410)396-2444 or the Metro Crime Stoppers tip-line at 1-866-7LOCK-UP. You can also anonymously text a tip by visiting the MCS of Maryland website. This incident remains under investigation.
PARIS -France on Monday braced for what could become one of the hottest days ever recorded with temperatures reaching and even exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in coastal regions cherished by tourists, as wildfires intensified in the west and south.
By 1500 GMT, several records had been broken locally, Meteo France said in an update, with 42.6 degrees in Biscarosse and 42.4 in Cazaux on the Atlantic coast in western France, 40.7 in Saint-Nazaire and 39.3 in the Brittany port of Brest in the country’s northwest.
It will become clear later on Monday whether a new national all-day average temperature record, now standing at 29.4 degrees reached from the historic heat waves of 2003 and 2019, will be set.
Thick plumes of smoke could be seen from famous Atlantic coast beaches close to the towering Pyla sand dune near Arcachon as strong winds and high temperatures kept fuelling wildfires. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin sent three additional water-bomber planes to the region.
Fires in the region have now spread over 14,800 hectares (36571.6 acres).
There were no reports of injuries so far.
“The situation is very difficult with the heat and the wind. and will remain very difficult tonight,” local prefect Fabienne Buccio said on BFM television”.
(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel, additional reporting by Dominique VidalonEditing by Mark Heinrich and Marguerita Choy)
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The Baltimore Police Department Homicide detectives are investigating a shooting that left a man dead Saturday morning. The shooting took place on the 1300 Block of Ramsey Street in Southeast Baltimore.
According to investigators, “At approximately 12:01 a.m., police officers were dispatched to the 1300 block of Ramsey Street to investigate a reported shooting. When officers arrived at the scene, they located and unidentified male suffering from gunshot wounds. The victim was transported to an area hospital and pronounced dead by medical personnel.”
If you have any information about this incident, please contact Baltimore Police Department Homicide at 410-396-2100 or the Metro Crime Stoppers tip-line at 1-866-7LOCK-UP. You can also anonymously text a tip by visiting the MCS of Maryland website.
The shooting remains under investigation.
MILLSBORO, DE- An anonymous Delaware resident has won $61,892 after a Trifecta Box bet with the Maryland lottery led to a winning combination.
The lucky woman placed a wager on the 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, and 12 horses. According to lottery officials, she bet that three of those horses would finish the race in first, second, and third place in any order. In her race, the horses won in the order of 11, 10, and 12. She plans to use the prize to purchase a new home.
The Lottery will give the Wicomico County business at 2513 North Salisbury Boulevard, a bonus of $618.92 for selling to winning ticket.
WASHINGTON -Uber Technologies Inc will pay more than $2 million and waive wait time fees for disabled passengers to settle U.S. allegations that the ride share company had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Department of Justice said on Monday.
As part of a two-year agreement, Uber will waive wait time fees for certified disabled riders and pay $1,738,500 to more than 1,000 riders who complained about the charges and $500,000 to others harmed by the practice, the department said.
Uber will also credit accounts for more than 65,000 eligible riders, it added.
The department sued the company in November after passengers complained that they were charged fees for taking more than two minutes to get into their ride share cars, noting in its announcement Monday that blind passengers may take longer to reach the waiting car or those with walkers or wheelchairs may take longer to get in.
“People with disabilities should not be made to feel like second-class citizens or punished because of their disability,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement, adding that the settlement will send “a strong message that Uber and other ridesharing companies will be held accountable.”
An Uber spokesperson welcomed the settlement and said it would continue “to help everyone move easily around their communities” and keep “working to improve accessibility for all users.”
“It has long been our policy to refund wait time fees for riders with a disability when they alerted us that they were charged,” it said, adding that it had made changes before the lawsuit to have disabled riders’ wait time fees waived automatically when Uber is notified that they were charged.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by David Shepardson and Nivedita Balu; editing by Paul Grant and Aurora Ellis)
By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON – Democrats on the ballot for November’s most competitive congressional elections have a growing financial advantage over Republicans, with a few Republican campaigns showing signs they are struggling at fundraising, new financial disclosures show.
Republicans are still favored to win control of at least one chamber of the U.S. Congress on Nov. 8, boosted by widespread dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
But Democrats ended June with about $15 million more in the bank than their Republican opponents in 17 congressional races that are widely seen as toss-up elections on Nov. 8 and have finished party nominating contests, according to disclosures filed to the Federal Election Commission late on Friday.
In most of these races, Republican candidates still appeared to be raising enough money to mount viable campaigns, said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
But money is not pouring into Republican campaign coffers for Ohio’s 9th congressional district, where Republican activist J.R. Majewski ended June with only about $113,000 in the bank.
Majewski, who is challenging Democratic U.S. Representative Marcy Kaptur, first gained attention by painting his lawn with a giant “TRUMP” sign and has recently been the subject of news coverage exploring his links to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and his presence at the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Kaptur, first elected in 1982, ended June with about $1.7 million in the bank.
If she wins a 21st term in November she would become the longest-serving woman to ever hold a seat in Congress.
“If Republicans come up like a little bit short in some of these swing districts, the huge money advantage for Democratic incumbents will probably be part of it,” said Kondik.
Majewski’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Other Republicans who trailed badly in fundraising during the last three months included Colorado state senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, whose campaign for Colorado’s 8th district only raised about $150,000 during the period. The Democrat in the race, state representative Yadira Caraveo, brought in around $600,000.
Democrats also outraised Republicans in U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia, the chamber’s tightest contests in November where party nomination contests have already played out.
Republican candidates in those three races still raised nearly $15 million between April and June, a large sum even if Democrats raised more than twice as much.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Alistair Bell)
By Tim Hepher and Rajesh Kumar Singh
FARNBOROUGH, England -General Electric Chief Executive Larry Culp said on Monday a new “GE Aerospace” brand for its aviation business pointed to a “wider strategic aperture” that could eventually lead to the industrial giant entering new businesses.
Asked at the Farnborough Airshow if that meant a greater appetite for acquisitions as the conglomerate prepares to split into three, Culp said any changes would be “first and foremost organic, and then and only then inorganic opportunities”.
GE is preparing to split into three public companies by spinning off its healthcare business next year, and combining its power and renewable energy units to be spun off in 2024. GE itself will then become an aviation company, headed by Culp.
The split marks the end of the 130-year-old conglomerate that was once the most valuable U.S. corporation and a global symbol of American business power.
It is also in stark contrast to the path GE pursued in the 1980s and 1990s under Jack Welch, who expanded the company into an industrial behemoth.
On Monday, GE unveiled names for the new corporate trio: GE HealthCare, GE Vernova for its energy portfolio and GE Aerospace for the engine maker, which is currently known as GE Aviation.
“The choice to use Aerospace as our go-forward name is in some respects to make sure everyone understands we are more than what we do in commercial,” Culp told reporters. “It is a wider strategic aperture but it would be premature to talk about this or that area being of particular interest,” he added, though he did draw attention to defence and systems.
Experts say systems and other aerospace technologies are key to the future of airplanes which will see a more seamless integration between powerplants and airframes than in the past.
CHESSBOARD
GE’s main competitor in engines for in-demand narrowbody commercial jet engines and in military jet engines, Pratt & Whitney, is part of the Raytheon Technologies conglomerate that combines a broad slate of aircraft systems.
Culp ruled out mimicking a rival’s structure but said GE’s drastic recent efforts to cut debt had left it able to invest.
“Recall, we’ve taken down the better part of $90 billion of debt. We are really going to set up Aerospace and the other two companies to have balance sheets that will allow them to invest both organically and where appropriate inorganically,” he said.
As part of the preparation for the spin-offs, Culp last month expanded his role to head the aviation unit. Some analysts said the move was directed at clearing up any ambiguity surrounding the unit’s management structure.
John Slattery, who had previously been divisional CEO, was named Chief Commercial Officer with a remit including strategy.
The reorganisation and name change comes as planemakers and their engine suppliers are gearing up for major bets that will define air travel for decades as they ponder the propulsion needed for the next generation of greener medium-haul jets.
“Those are the critical questions that GE Aerospace will need to answer,” Culp said. “John and I are going to spend a ton of time going forward .. focused on that chessboard.”
Asked about clogged aerospace supply chains, Culp said “I don’t think this can be solved overnight … It may take 18 months for everyone to catch up.”
He did not elaborate in detail on recent engine delays at CFM, co-owned by GE and France’s Safran.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher and Rajesh Kumar SinghEditing by Mark Potter)
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The Baltimore Police Department is investigating the shooting death of a 32 year-old man that took place on Saturday night in Southwest Baltimore.
According to detectives, “At approximately 11:50 p.m., police officers were dispatched to the 4100 block of Edmondson Avenue to investigate a reported shooting. When officers arrived at the scene, they located a 32-year-old male suffering from a gunshot wound. The victim was transported to University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center by ambulance. The victim succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead by medical personnel.”
If you have any information about this incident, please contact detectives at 410-396-2100, or the Metro Crime Stoppers tip-line at 1-866-7LOCK-UP. You can also anonymously text a tip by visiting the MCS of Maryland website.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The Baltimore PD is investigating the shooting death of a 28 year-old man that took place Saturday afternoon. The shooting happened on the 6200 Block of Fortview Way in Southeast, Baltimore.
Police say, “At approximately 5:50 p.m., police officers were dispatched to the 6200 block of Fortview Way to investigate a reported shooting. When officers arrived at the location, they located a 28-year-old male suffering from gunshot wounds. Medics were summoned to the scene and pronounced the victim dead.”
If you have any information about this shooting, please call homicide detectives at 410-396-2100 or Metro Crime Stoppers tip-line at 1-866-7LOCK-UP. You can also anonymously text a tip by visiting the MCS of Maryland website.