Union leaders are currently gearing up to hold a union election at Starbucks locations in the Buffalo area after an overwhelming win by employees just last year. The company has vowed that it will not fight with unions, but there is no love lost between management and workers following two concessions of their own on wages which were too low for many employees.
The “starbucks workers union” is an upcoming election that will be held in the Buffalo area. The Union election will be held on November 5th, 2018.
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Credit: Libby March for The New York Times. Barista training at a Starbucks in Cheektowaga, N.Y.
Starbucks workers in upstate New York who wanted to form a union won on Thursday, a day after the business announced that it will boost salaries for U.S. employees due to a staffing shortfall.
An commissioner with the National Labor Relations Board decided Thursday that workers at three Buffalo-area businesses will vote on whether to organize a union in a mail-in ballot concluding Dec. 8.
The three locations will vote in separate elections, which means that workers only need a majority of ballots cast at a single site to create a union, which is a gain for the union seeking to represent them. Employees at all 20 Buffalo-area locations should vote in a single election, according to the corporation.
The initiative is the company’s most significant union attempt in years. Although many of the shops operated by firms that have a license arrangement with Starbucks have unions, and a corporate-owned store in Canada recently unionized, none of Starbucks’ approximately 9,000 corporate-owned locations in the nation are unionized.
The corporation announced its new compensation structure on Wednesday. By the summer of 2023, all hourly workers will be paid at least $15 an hour, and the company’s average salary will have risen to $17 an hour. Starting in January 2023, employees with two or more years of service may be eligible for a 5% rise. Workers with five years or more of experience may be eligible for a 10% rise. Starbucks announced record revenue for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year on Thursday.
The employees trying to unionize stated in a statement that the election verdict was “a huge success,” and that the company’s dispute over the correct voting pool was “a delay tactic.”
The corporation has disputed that it is trying to postpone the elections, arguing that since employees may work at various locations and upper-level managers review decisions across multiple shops, workers at all 20 sites should vote simultaneously. Those arguments were dismissed by the labor board’s acting regional director.
Starbucks has the option of appealing the decision to the Washington State Labor Board, which it has not ruled out.
Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges stated in a statement that “our legendary success has stemmed from our working directly together as partners, without a third party between us.” “We just got the decision and are weighing our options.”
Starbucks has sent a number of managers, more senior business officials, and even a top corporate executive to Buffalo since employees at the three locations registered for union elections in late August. Many employees feel the corporate executives’ presence is frightening, despite the fact that the corporation claims they are there to handle operational difficulties.
If the employees choose to join a union, they will join Workers United, an associate of the powerful Service Employees International Union.
Employers in the United States are having difficulty filling certain positions, with people remaining out of work due to the epidemic or reconsidering their goals. According to the Labor Department, a record 4.3 million workers departed their employment in August. That’s up from four million in July, and it’s by far the largest in the government’s two-decade history.
“Obviously, like all other retailers, we are navigating a very complicated and unprecedented situation, and yes, we have experienced some staffing problems in specific regions of the nation,” said John Culver, Starbucks’ North American group president, during a conference call on Thursday. Mr. Culver said that the corporation has changed shop hours in order to “redeploy employees to other locations where we need them.”
Starbucks stated in a statement on Wednesday that its pay strategy “culminates in a total of about $1 billion in extra expenditures in yearly salaries and benefits over the previous two years.”
Starbucks also said that it will invest in training by revising its “Barista Basics” handbook and increasing training time for all positions. Workers seeking to form a union have cited a lack of training and times of understaffing or high turnover as reasons for wanting to form a union.
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The corporation stated last month that it planned to employ 125,000 hourly workers in the United States and that it has at least 55,000 open technical and corporate roles worldwide. Credit… The New York Times’ Dave Sanders
As the pandemic-fueled boom in online shopping subsided, Amazon announced its worst revenue gain in almost seven years on Thursday.
Higher labor expenses and increased investment on new warehouses and other logistics infrastructure aimed to shorten delivery times contributed to the company’s earnings decline.
In the current quarter, which includes the Christmas shopping season, Amazon informed investors to anticipate sales growth and earnings to continue to decline.
Sales for the three months ended in September were $110.8 billion, up 15% over the same time a year ago, according to the business. It earned $3.2 billion in profit, which is nearly half of what it made the previous year.
The results fell short of analyst estimates, and Amazon’s stock was down more than 4% in aftermarket trade.
Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, pleaded for patience in a message. “We’ve virtually quadrupled the size of our fulfillment network since the pandemic started,” he added, adding that the epidemic has “motivated exceptional investments across our companies to address consumer demands.” He went on to note that the corporation expects billions of dollars in extra expenditures in the fourth quarter, owing to workforce shortages, increased salaries, and global supply chain challenges, among other things.
The corporation is in the middle of a “historic investment cycle,” according to investment bank Cowen. Cowen expects that the corporation will spend around $80 billion on logistics in 2023 and 2023, compared to $58 billion in the previous five years combined.
The business’s finance head, Brian Olsavsky, said the company has constructed enough additional facilities that it is no longer hampered by the amount of space it has to keep things in its warehouses for the first time since the epidemic began. Instead, Amazon’s operations are constrained by its inability to employ and retain enough personnel, as well as labor shortages among its partners, including as transportation firms and ports.
Amazon has employed 133,000 new workers since June, increasing its total workforce to 1.47 million, up 30% from a year ago, and it plans to continue to expand. In the last two months, Amazon has announced intentions to add 125,000 hourly workers and 150,000 seasonal workers in the US ahead of the Christmas shopping season, and it has stated it has at least 55,000 open technical and corporate roles worldwide.
To entice employees in a tight labor market, Amazon has boosted compensation and provided incentives, which, along with the growth, has increased its expenses.
Mr. Olsavsky said the increased compensation for employees contributed $1 billion to the company’s expenditures in the quarter, with approximately half of that going to salary rises and the other half to incentives such an extra $3 an hour for bad hours and $3,000 signing bonuses. He said that the corporation spent an extra $1 billion on labor shortage-related charges. When enough staff were not available to handle an order at a warehouse near to a consumer, the corporation had to send products across greater distances or via quicker, more costly ways.
He predicted that these expenditures would quadruple to nearly $4 billion in the current quarter, describing them as a “shock absorber” to ensure that consumers received the service they anticipated. The business warned Wall Street that it might have no operational profit in the next quarter.
According to Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst, labor expenses for each item Amazon sends would be around 50% more by the end of the year than they were a year ago.
Analysts believe that hiring and building more warehouses would benefit Amazon in the long run since it will result in shorter delivery times, which will encourage consumers to purchase more from the firm.
Customers curtailed what had been a boom in consumption, resulting in higher expenses. The number of units sold increased by just 8%.
Amazon’s most lucrative companies did well. As the epidemic has pushed how corporations embrace new technology to operate their organizations, its cloud computing businesses have grown 39 percent to $16.1 billion.
And the company’s “other” business sector, which includes its advertising business, increased by 50% to $8 billion.
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In September, a China Evergrande building site in Dongguan. Credit… The New York Times’ Gilles Sabrié
According to one of China Evergrande’s bondholders, the embattled property firm completed another loan payment ahead of a Friday deadline, avoiding default for the second time in two weeks.
This source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the corporation made an interest payment that was due on Sept. 29. Evergrande has a 30-day grace period on the bond payment, which was set to expire on Friday.
A request for comment on the payment was not immediately returned by the corporation.
The payment comes only a week after the world’s most indebted real estate developer nearly escaped defaulting on another bond. According to Securities Times, an official publication, Evergrande paid bondholders $83.5 million in interest last Friday. That payment also arrived barely a day before a default. The $45.2 million interest payment is due on Friday.
Evergrande has been seeking to sell off portions of its massive enterprise to obtain enough cash to pay off creditors, since it is weighed down by more than $300 billion in debt. One of those transactions, which was widely seen as a last-ditch rescue, fell through last week. Evergrande has said in public filings that it cannot guarantee it would be able to pay its financial commitments “in light of the difficulties, problems, and uncertainties” it has experienced in selling its assets.
The company’s financial problems are putting Chinese policymakers to the test, who were formerly eager to intervene to assist faltering companies like Evergrande. They’ve promised to clean up China Inc.’s debt pile and put a stop to the property sector’s borrowing frenzy.
However, allowing Evergrande to collapse might harm some of the estimated one million Chinese house purchasers who have bought flats from the business and are awaiting construction. Construction employees and subcontractors who are owed money might be hit hard by a collapse.
Alexandra Stevenson contributed to the story as a reporter.
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After a flurry of new product launches, Apple released its financial figures. Credit… The New York Times’ Haruka Sakaguchi
Despite supply chain limitations that have hampered its development and may continue to be a concern, Apple, the world’s most valuable public corporation, continues to make money. The corporation reported a 29 percent increase in revenue and a 62 percent increase in earnings for the most recent quarter on Thursday.
Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter sales and earnings were $83.3 billion and $20.5 billion, respectively, slightly below Wall Street analysts’ projections. The company’s revenue growth decreased from 36% in the previous quarter.
The results were attributable to “greater than anticipated supply restrictions” connected to global supply chain concerns created by the epidemic, according to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, during an earnings call. Computer chip shortages and Covid-related production problems in Southeast Asia, according to Mr. Cook, cost his business nearly $6 billion in sales in the quarter.
Despite increased demand for items, Mr. Cook predicted that supply snarls would create even more substantial sales disruptions in the Christmas quarter. He said that the bottleneck was caused mostly by so-called legacy nodes, a sort of computer processor for which Apple was competing with other firms.
“It is now impacting pretty much all of our products,” he added, adding that Apple was “working feverishly” to resolve the issue. In after-hours trading, the company’s shares fell by around 3.7 percent.
As usual, iPhone sales topped the quarter, bringing in $38.8 billion in revenue, up 47 percent year over year but down from $39.5 billion the prior quarter. During Apple’s July earnings call, the firm said that the worldwide chip shortage will harm iPad and iPhone sales.
Despite this, Apple had historic growth throughout the globe, with sales in China increasing 84 percent year over year to $14.5 billion. Mr. Cook said that “developing markets” accounted for approximately one-third of the company’s sales, with business in Vietnam and India tripling.
He also said that Apple’s services segment, which includes subscriptions such as Apple Fitness and Music, as well as App Store fees, generated $18.2 billion in revenue, which was more than projected.
Apple’s earnings came after a flurry of new product launches. The business debuted the new iPhone 13s last month, although it was only available for a week during the quarter. Apple has also just revealed new Apple Watch, iPad, AirPods, and MacBook Pro computer models.
The App Store, another profit generator, achieved a quarterly sales record, but has come under increased scrutiny and demands for regulation.
Apple challenged a judge’s judgment in its legal dispute with Epic Games, the maker of the game Fortnite, earlier this month. Epic had filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in federal court last year, but failed to persuade a judge to declare the tech giant a monopolist. Apple could not prevent software developers from alerting users about options to pay for their services outside of the App Store, according to the court in the case.
Apple is in talks with regulators and politicians about how opening up the App Store may jeopardize customers’ privacy and security, according to Mr. Cook.
He dodged a question about how Apple’s privacy shift has harmed other major tech firms and advertising. This year, Apple gave iPhone customers the option of allowing applications to monitor them across all of their devices, allowing marketers to better target them with adverts.
The shift has harmed firms that rely on mobile advertising, such as Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, which said last week that the change has harmed its revenue. On Monday, Facebook said that it was retooling its advertising systems in response to Apple’s privacy adjustment.
Mr. Cook said, “We don’t believe it’s Apple’s responsibility to decide, and we don’t think it’s another company’s role to determine” whether or not a customer shares their data. “That’s our whole motive there – there’s nothing else.”
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In 2019, Hoan Ton-That, the creator of Clearview AI, is testing the smart phone app. Credit… The New York Times’ Amr Alfiky
Clearview AI gathered over 10 billion photographs from the internet to create a facial-recognition program that it sold to law enforcement agencies for identifying strangers. The company’s product, according to critics, is unlawful, immoral, and unproven. Clearview’s algorithm — which enables it to identify faces to photographs — has been submitted to a third-party test for the first time, more than two years after law enforcement officials first began using the company’s app. Surprisingly nicely, it performed.
Clearview, among NTechLab of Russia, Sensetime of China, and other more known businesses, rated among the top ten in terms of accuracy in a field of over 300 algorithms from over 200 facial recognition suppliers. However, Clearview’s test shows how accurate its system is at successfully matching two distinct photographs of the same person, not how good it is at finding a match for an unknown face in a database of 10 billion.
Every few months, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, a unique government institution that also serves as a scientific lab, conducts Face Recognition Vendor Tests. There are two versions of the test: one for verification, which is the kind of face recognition that may be used to unlock a smartphone, and another for one-to-many, or 1: N searches, which are used by law enforcement to identify someone by searching a large database. Clearview strangely submitted their algorithm for the first test rather than the second, which is what its product is designed to accomplish.
Hoan Ton-Nguyen, the CEO of Clearview AI, The findings were “an obvious endorsement” of his company’s product, he said. He also said that the corporation will “shortly” submit to the one-to-many test.
Since 2000, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been assessing the accuracy of facial recognition vendors, although participation is optional and testing is not needed for federal organizations to purchase the technology. Clearview AI claims thousands of local and state police departments as customers, despite the fact that its accuracy has never been audited by NIST; a recent report from the Government Accountability Office also cited use by a number of federal agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, and Interior Department.
Clearview AI has been sued in state and federal courts in Illinois and Vermont for illegally gathering images of individuals and submitting them to face recognition searches. According to Insider, Clearview AI has also come under fire from competitors, who are concerned that the issue surrounding the business would harm the face recognition market as a whole.
The Citigroup headquarters are located in Manhattan. The New York Times’ Jeenah Moon is to thank for this.
Citigroup said on Thursday that vaccination against Covid-19 will be required as a condition of employment in the United States, making it the first large bank to do so.
Sara Wechter, the company’s head of human resources, stated in a LinkedIn post announcing the new policy, “It has become quite evident that Covid-19 will not be going away anytime soon.”
Ms. Wechter attributed the decision to two factors. First, since the bank conducts business with the federal government, it is required to follow President Biden’s executive order mandating immunization for government contract workers. The bank will also be able to “protect the health and safety of our workers when we return to the workplace” by requiring vaccines, she wrote.
Ms. Wechter said that Citi would evaluate requests for medical and religious exemptions, and that the company will “do all we can to assist our colleagues in complying with this new requirement.”
Citi refuses to comment on the specifics of the requirement.
Other large banks, such as Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, have made vaccination a prerequisite for workers accessing their offices, but have refrained from threatening to dismiss individuals who refuse.
Tucker Carlson, left, and Geraldo Rivera. Credit… courtesy of Getty Images/Roy Rochlin, Associated Press/Richard Drew
After announcing plans for a documentary series including disproved conspiracy theories regarding the Jan. 6 violence at the United States Capitol, Tucker Carlson, the top-rated Fox News personality, received backlash on Thursday, even from a notable colleague at his own network.
“Patriot Purge,” a three-part series, will premiere on Fox News’ streaming channel, Fox Nation, next month. The unfounded claim that the riot was a “false flag” operation designed to discredit the political right was made in an 84-second teaser that aired on Fox News on Wednesday.
Mr. Carlson states in foreboding tones, “the helicopters have departed Afghanistan and now they’ve arrived here at home,” while anxious music plays on the soundtrack. Several speakers give the impression that Democrats seek to harass and jail Republicans.
Geraldo Rivera, the renowned Fox News journalist, expressed his displeasure with the trailer by dismissing the allegation that the Capitol riot was a “false flag” operation with a foul epithet in a Twitter post. That idea has been refuted several times.
Mr. Rivera expounded on his worries in an interview with The New York Times on Thursday.
In a phone conversation, Mr. Rivera added, “Tucker is amazing, he’s provocative, he’s innovative, but — man oh my.” “Some of the things you say are more offensive, ridiculous, and unsubstantiated. And I’m concerned that — and I’m sure I’ll get in trouble for this — how much is done to provoke rather than enlighten.”
“I’m messing around with items from January 6… ” Mr. Rivera continued after a little pause. “To me, the evidence is pretty darn obvious that there was a riot that Donald Trump incited, encouraged, and unleashed.”
Mr. Rivera declined to say if he would persuade his Fox News supervisors to rethink showing Mr. Carlson’s special, saying, “I don’t want to go there, that’s not my job.”
“He’s my coworker,” he said of Mr. Carlson. He’s a member of my family. You have to stand out about your family on occasion.”
A request for comment from Fox News was not returned.
Even if he has utilized vocabulary associated with white supremacists, Mr. Carlson’s prime-time provocations have helped catapult him to the top ratings in cable news. He has often questioned the coverage of the Jan. 6 riots, claiming that government operatives were engaged and presenting the rioters as primarily nonviolent.
On Sept. 23, he assured viewers that “the great majority of those inside the Capitol on January 6 were peaceful.” “They were not insurgents, and they had no right to be there.” They had no intention of overthrowing the government. That’s a load of nonsense.”
The teaser for “Patriot Purge” features an interview with Darren Beattie, a former Trump White House speechwriter who was dismissed in 2018 when it was found that he had attended a white supremacist meeting. The teaser also features Ali Alexander, a far-right activist and one of the most famous proponents of the claim that President Biden stole the 2023 election.
Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, was one of Mr. Carlson’s detractors on Thursday. She accused Fox News of providing Mr. Carlson with “a platform to promote the same sort of misinformation that fueled violence on January 6” in a Twitter message.
Mr. Rivera, who is set to appear on Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News’ afternoon show “The Five,” recently signed a multiyear contract extension with the network. Suzanne Scott, the CEO of Fox News Media, praised Mr. Rivera as “an vital voice on Fox News Channel over the past two decades” in a statement released last month, adding, “We are happy to have him continue to be a member of the Fox family.”
This week, Rupert Murdoch’s media business was scrutinized in more ways than one. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal was chastised for publishing a long letter to the editor from former President Donald J. Trump, which featured various inaccuracies regarding the 2023 election’s legitimacy.
Davey Alba contributed to the story.
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The European Central Bank’s headquarters are located in Frankfurt, Germany. The bank said on Thursday that it will continue to acquire bonds from the Pandemic Era at a little slower rate than earlier this year. Credit… Reuters/Ralph Orlowski
The governor of the eurozone’s central bank indicated on Thursday that higher inflation and supply chain bottlenecks would linger longer than anticipated in Europe.
However, Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, claimed that the price increases were only transitory, and she hinted that financial markets were incorrect in expecting interest rates to rise next year.
“While inflation will take longer to drop than originally anticipated,” Ms. Lagarde told reporters, “we expect these factors to lessen over the course of next year.”
The eurozone, like many other major economies, is experiencing supply chain problems. Manufacturing expenses have risen as a result of increasing transportation costs, delivery delays, and other issues, resulting in higher consumer pricing. Last month, the eurozone’s annual rate of inflation hit its highest level in 13 years, with inflation in Germany, the continent’s biggest economy, rising 4.6 percent from a year earlier, the fastest rate in almost three decades.
Exports would have been over 7% higher in the first half of the year without these impediments, according to the central bank, a more severe effect than the rest of the globe, which would have seen exports grow by 2.3 percent.
On Thursday, Ms. Lagarde said, “The euro area economy continues to recover well, while momentum has weakened to some degree.” “Consumers’ confidence remains high, and their spending is solid.” However, in several industries, shortages of materials, equipment, and manpower are preventing production.”
Despite this, the central bank predicts that the region’s economy will reach its pre-pandemic level by the end of the year.
The bank’s governing council, which determines monetary policy, met for two days this week and was dominated by concerns over inflation, according to Ms. Lagarde. Policymakers, on the other hand, were optimistic that it would begin to drop next year. For one thing, base effects such as the lagged impact of the end of the pandemic-related reduction in German V.A.T., a sort of sales tax, would have no influence on the inflation figure next year.
The shock on supply and demand created by the pandemic recovery, which has resulted in shortages of equipment and manpower, and the sudden spike in energy costs, which have risen dramatically for a variety of reasons, including a constrained supply of gas from Russia, are both likely to go away over time.
Ms. Lagarde said, “We conducted a lot of soul searching to test our analyses.” She also believes that these causes are just transitory, and that inflation will moderate over the course of the next year. “It will, admittedly, take a bit longer than we had anticipated,” she continued.
Market expectations for when the central bank would raise interest rates have moved as a result of the increase in inflation. Traders predicted the bank would raise rates in late 2023 before the meeting. However, Ms. Lagarde said on Thursday that the bank’s study of inflation’s trend did not warrant raising interest rates anytime soon.
The central bank has previously declared that it would not increase interest rates unless it was obvious that annual inflation would hit 2% “far ahead” of the end of its forecast horizon and remain there over the medium term.
“Our research clearly does not support” hiking interest rates late next year, as markets suggest, or “anytime shortly afterwards,” she added, citing that advice.
However, some experts predict the central bank may be forced to intervene sooner than expected.
In a note to clients, Holger Schmieding, an economist at Berenberg Bank, said, “Over time, steady demand, growing wage costs in reaction to developing labor shortages, and the transition to a greener economy will certainly boost underlying inflation more than the E.C.B. presently predicts.” He believes the central bank will hike rates in late 2023.
Following Ms. Lagarde’s press conference, European bond rates and the euro both rose.
On Thursday, the central bank held interest rates unchanged and said that its pandemic-era bond-buying program, worth 1.85 trillion euros ($2.15 trillion), will be continued at a somewhat slower pace than earlier this year. Policymakers decreased the pace of purchases under the program last month, from over 80 billion euros per month, citing a brighter economic outlook and rising inflation forecasts as reasons. One of the ways the bank keeps interest rates low is via bond purchases.
Ms. Lagarde said that the pandemic-era initiative will be completed in March. However, a definitive decision on when to stop purchasing bonds and if the bank’s earlier bond-buying program will be extended to assist reach the 2% inflation goal isn’t anticipated until the central bank’s December meeting, when policymakers will get a fresh set of economic growth and inflation estimates.
Because its longer-term inflation estimates are still below the central bank’s objective, the European Central Bank is expected to maintain a looser monetary posture, with lower interest rates, for longer than the Federal Reserve and Bank of England. Inflation in the United Kingdom is predicted to increase beyond 4%, above the Bank of England’s objective of about 2%. Andrew Bailey, the bank’s governor, has said that the pace of inflation is alarming and that policymakers must avoid excessive inflation from becoming permanent.
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In July, Activision Blizzard employees protested the company’s reaction to allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Credit… Getty Images/David Mcnew/Agence France-Presse
Activision Blizzard, the beleaguered video game publisher behind Call of Duty and other franchises, launched a slew of new measures aimed at enhancing diversity and the company’s working climate on Thursday morning.
Since July, when a complaint filed by a California fair employment agency accused the video game publisher of cultivating a frat-like atmosphere where sexual harassment and gender discrimination were common, the firm has been under intense scrutiny. Activision’s game creators and the larger gaming industry, which has long struggled with misogyny and toxic conduct, were outraged by the lawsuit, the company’s bungled reaction to the allegations, and the accompanying government probes.
In an email to staff, Activision’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, said that the firm would invest $250 million in recruiting more women, individuals who identify as nonbinary, and people from “underrepresented populations.” According to Mr. Kotick, around 23% of Activision employees are female or nonbinary, with an aim of increasing that figure by 50% over the next five years.
The firm also said that it will no longer require Activision employees and demonstrators to submit sexual harassment and discrimination accusations to forced arbitration, which is a method of resolving issues outside of the judicial system.
Activision said that company will implement a zero-tolerance harassment policy, meaning that anybody caught harassing workers or retaliating against those who reported prejudice would be fired instead of getting a written warning or other disciplinary action. Mr. Kotick also said that the firm will publish an annual report on pay equity.
He also asked Activision’s board to restrict his overall remuneration to $62,500 until the company’s diversity targets were met, in order to “ensure that every available resource is being deployed in the service of becoming the industry leader in workplace excellence.” Mr. Kotick is one of the highest-paid CEOs in the nation, with a $155 million salary authorized in June.
Mr. Kotick wrote to staff, “I honestly wish not a single person had an experience at work that led in pain, humiliation, or worse — and to those who were impacted, I profoundly regret.”
In contrast to previous company announcements that sparked outrage, such as a proposed $18 million settlement with a federal employment agency, the announcements on Thursday were met with cautious optimism from Activision employees and activists who had been pressuring the company to make changes in recent months.
The ABK Worker’s Alliance scored a major victory today! For situations involving sexual harassment and discrimination, forced arbitration has been eliminated. The corporation has declared a 50 percent increase in the number of women and non-binary persons it hires. https://t.co/N6ZGkUIsiA
ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetterABK) ABK Workers Alliance (@ABetter
“This is what happens when we work together to build a better future for game devs in our company,” tweeted ABetterABK, a group of Activision employees who have been campaigning for reforms at Blizzard and King. “We’ll keep pushing for additional adjustments that need to be done so that we can develop a better ABK together.”
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On Capitol Hill this month, Jonathan Kanter spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Credit… Getty Images/Win Mcnamee
On Thursday, a Senate committee cleared a tech industry critic to oversee the Justice Department’s antitrust division, pushing his nomination to the entire Senate for a final vote.
Jonathan Kanter’s nomination to head the division was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee without a tally of how each senator voted. However, one Republican senator, Texas’ John Cornyn, sought to be recorded as voting against the nomination.
During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Kanter said that he supports “vigorous antitrust action in the technology sector.” Mr. Kanter has represented opponents of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple in private practice, assisting them in making antitrust cases against the digital titans.
He will join other Silicon Valley critics in crucial antitrust roles if he is approved by the full Senate, as is largely anticipated. The Federal Trade Commission is led by Lina Khan, a young law expert who penned a famous criticism of Amazon. Tim Wu, another proponent of increased antitrust action against huge corporations, works in the White House’s economic policy division.
On Thursday, some politicians complimented Mr. Kanter, saying he was the appropriate person to address the economy’s issues with corporate concentration.
Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said, “We believe in letting the markets to function.” “And for some folks, the markets aren’t functioning very well right now.”
Mr. Cornyn, who voted nay, said he shared Mr. Kanter’s worries about the internet sector but was concerned that he would “use antitrust weapons as a bludgeon to promote political or social purposes” more generally.
Mr. Kanter’s critics have also questioned if he may wind up pursuing cases that he advocated as a lawyer for internet titans’ rivals. The Department of Justice has already filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that it improperly maintained its monopoly on internet search. It’s also looking at whether Apple has broken any antitrust rules.
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Look no farther than car sales to see how supply-chain issues are stalling the economy’s revival.
According to official figures published Thursday, spending on automobiles and components plummeted 17.6 percent in the third quarter, adjusted for inflation. The issue wasn’t that Americans didn’t want vehicles; it was that dealers couldn’t sell them fast enough. A worldwide scarcity of computer chips caused a drop in vehicle manufacturing, which in turn caused a drop in sales.
Consumers are willing to spend more for vehicles when they can locate them. Total expenditure on automobiles declined 13.5 percent in real terms, which is still a significant decrease but not nearly as large as the inflation-adjusted total. To put it another way, customers were receiving less value for their money.
Adjusted for inflation and seasonality, personal consumption expenditures. Since the first quarter of 2015, there has been a change.
Adjusted for inflation and seasonality, personal consumption expenditures. Since the first quarter of 2015, there has been a change.
The reduction in automobile manufacturing was significant enough to stifle overall economic growth for the quarter. If not for the drop in car production, GDP would have increased by 0.9 percent in the third quarter.
The car industry has been severely affected by supply-chain concerns, but the problem is far larger. Other long-term purchases were also cut.
“It’s not only about automobiles,” said Morgan Stanley’s senior U.S. economist Robert Rosener. “There are other consumer items in low supply as well.”
The clogged supply chain is due in part to a boom in consumer spending during the epidemic, with Americans opting for vehicles instead of travel tickets, training equipment instead of gym memberships, and cooking equipment instead of restaurant meals. As the epidemic faded, those trends began to reverse, but not completely. Goods expenditure has remained much above its pre-pandemic level, whereas services spending has failed to recover to its pre-pandemic level, adjusted for inflation, in the third quarter.
The Delta variant’s expansion has hampered the recovery in the service sector. When adjusted for inflation, spending at hotels and restaurants increased by just 3% in the third quarter, compared to over 14% in the second quarter.
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According to Daniel S. Loeb of Third Point, Royal Dutch Shell is “one of the cheapest large-cap equities in the world.” Credit… Schmuelgen, Thilo /Reuters
Royal Dutch Shell officials were grappling with an activist hedge fund’s recommendation that the oil giant be split up as they released their quarterly profits on Thursday, including a profit increase that fell short of investors’ expectations.
According to a source familiar with the situation, New York-based Third Point has purchased a $750 million investment in Shell and has urged for it to be divided up into “several stand-alone entities” to accommodate opposing shareholder interests.
According to Third Point’s chief executive, Daniel S. Loeb, these entities might comprise a unit containing Shell’s historic oil and gas production industries and another with its renewable energy and liquefied natural gas activities.
Shell is “one of the cheapest large-cap equities in the world,” according to Mr. Loeb. He also claimed that, despite having “better quality and more sustainable” business lines, Shell was selling at a 35 percent discount to competitors Exxon Mobil and Chevron on most criteria.
He blamed the lack of investor interest in Shell on the company’s “effort to placate various interests while pleasing none.”
Mr. Loeb claims that implementing a strategy like the one he proposes might result in lower carbon dioxide emissions and higher shareholder returns, making it “a win for all stakeholders.”
Third Point’s effort echoed Engine No. 1’s successful campaign this spring to place three members on the board of Exxon Mobil with the objective of pressuring the company to decrease its carbon impact.
Jessica Uhl, Shell’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with reporters on Thursday that the firm didn’t know much about Third Point’s plans beyond the investor letter.
“Over the past year, we’ve had some very early conversations with Third Point, but nothing concrete,” she added. Shell will “react accordingly” after learning more, she said.
Ms. Uhl said that “we haven’t done a good enough job” communicating Shell’s approach for transitioning to cleaner energy, which entails leveraging oil and gas profits to support new greener enterprises.
Shell executives argue that, as a large, well-capitalized company with more than a century of experience delivering various forms of energy, the company is well-positioned to make multibillion-dollar investments in areas such as carbon capture and storage and hydrogen, which will be required in the transition to cleaner energy.
“The legacy companies that we still have will finance a very substantial portion of this energy shift,” said Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, during the call. “I don’t believe it will move as quickly as it would normally if you want to exclude us from it,” he continued.
Shell has also been under pressure to reduce its fossil fuel investments after a Dutch court ordered the firm to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030 compared to current levels. Shell has filed an appeal against the decision. Regardless matter whether it wins the appeal, the business announced on Thursday that it will cut emissions from operations by half by 2030. Shell just sold its Permian holdings for $9.5 billion, making it the most valuable shale drilling location in the United States.
Analysts suggest that although Shell may be resistant to the concept of a separation, pressure from Third Point or others is likely to have an influence. According to them, most of the major European oil corporations are investing in renewable energy such as wind and solar, as well as associated industries such as electric car charging, but are not being rewarded for it by the markets.
Although analysts at Bernstein believe a “complete split” at Shell is unlikely, they believe the shove from Third Point will “get management back on the front foot, prompting their next shareholder-friendly measure.”
In other words, Mr. van Beurden and his colleagues, who have outlined one of the more thorough programs for moving major oil corporations to lower-carbon operations, may be pushed to do more.
Some energy corporations have already begun to make modifications in order to attract investors. Eni, the Italian oil and gas corporation, said earlier this month that it plans to sell its lower-carbon operations — renewable energy, retail electric power, and natural gas — on a separate stock exchange next year. According to the corporation, the goal is to “give investors with more visibility of the unit’s worth.”
The International Energy Agency said in May that new oil and gas installations must be phased out by 2050 if the world is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. Mr. van Beurden, on the other hand, has said that he is still eager to invest in the proper oil and gas projects.
Shell, for example, is moving through with an offshore drilling plan in the Gulf of Mexico and is a co-owner in the Cambo offshore oil field west of the Shetland Islands, which has sparked objections.
Mr. van Beurden said on Thursday that the present natural gas shortages in Europe, as well as the consequent record prices, which have led to some plant closures, are an example of what may happen if fossil fuel expenditures are curtailed before enough is done to curb demand.
“This is what it feels like if you simply tighten supply and hope demand follows,” he added.
The news of the Third Point’s interest came as Shell, Europe’s biggest oil firm, announced $4.1 billion in adjusted profits for the third quarter of this year, up significantly from $955 million a year earlier, owing to increased oil and gas prices. Earnings fell short of analysts’ estimates.
Michael J. de la Merced and Emily Flitter contributed reporting.
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2019 will be the year of Alec Gores. “The market has transformed — and we absolutely understand it,” he said of a restructuring merger with Sonder, a boutique apartment-hotel firm. Credit… Getty Images/Leon Bennett
The conditions of a merger between a special purpose acquisition firm run by buyout expert Alec Gores and the boutique apartment-hotel business Sonder, which was announced in April, are being restructured. According to the DealBook weekly, the amended purchase would value Sonder at slightly over $1.9 billion, less than the $2.2 billion initially intended.
SPACs are being restructured as a result of increased demand. (At least, the SPACs that aren’t connected to former President Donald Trump.) Fear about the blank-check vehicles is driving many of them below $10 per share, the price at which they typically go public. This encourages investors to use their entitlement to redeem their shares at that price if a merger is completed, which is a unique feature of the SPAC structure.
Each redeemed share reduces the amount of cash available to the newly amalgamated corporation. In recent months, the Gores SPAC merging with Sonder has been trading only a few pennies below $10 a share. The planned corporate merger is expected to be completed in the second half of 2023.
Affiliates of the Gores Group, together with Fidelity, BlackRock, and others, will provide an extra $110 million in financing as part of the amended agreement. This is in addition to the deal’s original $200 million “PIPE,” which is a pool of money created in conjunction with a SPAC’s initial public offering. A new $220 million debt facility has also been established.
Mr. Gores told DealBook, “The market has moved — and we absolutely grasp that.” “As long as you have a fantastic firm, the market will move in a hundred different directions, and all we have to do is be clever enough to know where the market is.”
The Gores Group, a long-time SPAC sponsor, has resources and a network that other SPACs don’t, allowing it to adjust to market situations. However, there are certain disadvantages to these changes: A higher PIPE indicates greater shareholder dilution.
Sanjay Banker, Sonder’s president and chief financial officer, stated, “Our aim is to make sure the plan is properly financed.” “In the near run, arithmetic is far less essential.”
The hotel company recently launched a resort in Paris and expanded in the Middle East and Mexico, while reporting record sales and expanding losses this month.
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Food costs are rising at an alarming rate, and food banks and pantries are finding it difficult to keep up. To adapt, the New York Times’ Nelson D. Schwartz and Coral Murphy Marcos write that they’re switching or removing the most costly goods, such as beef, from their menus.
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
The New York Times’ Kaiti Sullivan
The cost of food is rising, and tens of millions of Americans are adjusting their shopping and eating habits as a result. Some people forego the most costly products, while others work longer hours to feed their families.
Here’s everything you need to know:
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meat, poultry, fish, and eggs prices in U.S. cities have increased by 15% since the start of 2023.
Steak, hamburger ground beef, and turkey are very expensive.
Supply chain problems and increasing labor expenses are to blame, and there is no respite in sight. Given the growth in energy costs, some experts believe prices might climb considerably more.
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
The New York Times/Hiroko Masuike
I spoke to people from all throughout the United States about the high expenses.
Robin Mueller, of Indianapolis, would purchase ground beef to make meatloaf or hamburgers for her family once or twice a week. She can now only prepare it once or twice a month.
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
Food banks, too, are overburdened.
According to Alexandra McMahon, director of food strategy for the Gleaners Food Bank of Indianapolis, a case of peanut butter that cost $13 to $14 before the epidemic now costs $16 to $19.
Green beans that used to cost $9 a case now cost $14.
As a consequence, several food banks are reducing their services or increasing their contribution requests to meet their expenditures.
The Most Recent Food Price Information
Schwartz, Nelson D. Economics reporting
The New York Times’ Kaiti Sullivan
The increase is a dramatic contrast to most of the previous decade, when food costs were largely steady and meals accounted for a smaller portion of family expenditures.
Unfortunately, it seems that higher food expenditures will not be going away anytime soon.
More information about food pricing may be found here:
6m ago
The first of six items
If you want to use the game’s voice chat, you’ll need to provide a government ID and a selfie to confirm it’s yours. Credit… The New York Times’ Andrew Mangum
Businesses and governments across the world are putting key swaths of the internet behind stronger digital age checks in response to rising criticism from activists, parents, and authorities who say tech corporations haven’t done enough to safeguard youngsters online.
To use the dating app Tinder in Japan, users must provide a paper certifying their age. If players want to use the voice chat function in the popular game Roblox, they must provide a form of official identity – along with a selfie to confirm the ID belongs to them. Pornography websites in Germany and France are required by law to verify visitors’ ages.
After a former Facebook employee said the business knew its products were harming some teens, legislators in Washington, which has lagged behind other international capitals in regulating internet giants, called for new laws to safeguard young people this month. In a session with officials from YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat’s parent business on Tuesday, they reiterated their demands.
According to David McCabe of the New York Times, the developments, which have accelerated in the previous two years, might upend one of the internet’s most defining characteristics: the ability to stay anonymous. People have been able to browse vast areas of the internet without revealing any personal information since the days of dial-up modems and AOL chat rooms. Many individuals developed an online identity that was distinct from their offline one.
However, the experience of consuming material and conversing online is becoming more like going to the bank, with mechanisms in place to ensure that you are who you say you are.
Age checks, according to critics, might jeopardize user privacy, stifle free speech, and harm groups that rely on anonymity online in the name of keeping people safe. Protecting children has been claimed by authoritarian regimes as a justification for restricting internet speech: China banned websites from rating celebrities by popularity this summer as part of a broader crackdown on what it calls celebrity culture’s destructive impacts on young people.
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Stocks on Wall Street were higher on Thursday, with the S&P 500 reaching new highs. The S&P 500 gained 1%, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1.4 percent.
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Ford was one of the strongest performers in the S&P 500, up over 8% after the carmaker boosted its profit projection and said it will resume paying a dividend, citing better semiconductor supply. The worldwide scarcity of computer chips hurt Ford’s profitability in the most recent quarter.
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Investors were also taking into account the most recent economic statistics from the United States. The third quarter’s gross domestic product increased by 0.5 percent, according to the Commerce Department, signaling a slowing in economic growth during the summer. Supply chain bottlenecks and the spread of the Delta version of the coronavirus impeded growth, causing many Americans to cut down on travel, restaurant meals, and other in-person activities.
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The Labor Department said Thursday that initial applications for state unemployment benefits decreased last week. The weekly total was at 281,000, down 10,000 from the week before.
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On Thursday, the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes increased to 1.57 percent from 1.54 percent.
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After the market closes on Thursday, Amazon and Apple will release their financial performance reports. Following the release of their quarterly earnings reports the day before, Microsoft and Alphabet were among the greatest performances in the S&P 500 on Wednesday.
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ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and BP executives are being grilled by Congress. CreditCredit… Associated Press/Greg Bull
House Democrats are grilling executives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell, among the world’s largest oil and gas firms, over charges that the sector promoted misinformation about the role of fossil fuels in global warming in order to hinder climate change action.
The hearings are the first time oil executives have been questioned under oath about whether their companies misled the public about the reality of climate change by obscuring the scientific consensus: that the burning of fossil fuels is raising Earth’s temperature and sea levels, resulting in devastating global consequences such as intensifying storms, worsening drought, and more deadly wildfires.
In prepared comments viewed by The New York Times, Ro Khanna, the Democratic congressman from California, who has been pivotal to the push to summon executives before a congressional committee, said, “Today, the CEOs of the world’s major oil firms confront a stark decision.”
“You can either come clean and recognize your previous misrepresentations and continuing contradictions,” he continued, or you may continue to promote climate deception. “Or you may sit here and lie under oath in front of the American people.”
Industry executives are expected to defend their shifting positions on climate science, stressing that they support global climate action, including the Paris Agreement — a global agreement to combat climate change and reduce carbon dioxide emissions — and that the oil and gas industry will play a critical role in resolving the crisis.
According to planned comments, Suzanne Clark, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, would state, “Inaction is not an option.”
House Democrats liken the investigation to the landmark tobacco hearings of the 1990s, which exposed how tobacco corporations misled about the health risks of smoking and paved the way for strict nicotine controls. Climate scientists increasingly believe that using fossil fuels causes global warming in the same way that public health specialists believe that smoking causes cancer.
Academic scholars have revealed evidence that fossil fuel businesses misinterpreted and minimized the facts of climate change.
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If convicted, Elizabeth Holmes may face a sentence of up to 20 years in jail. Credit… Mike The New York Times’ Kai Chen
SAN JOSE (California) — The ninth week of evidence in Elizabeth Holmes’s fraud trial addressed issues about the dangers and obligations that investors face when investing in high-growth start-ups like Theranos, Ms. Holmes’s failing blood testing firm.
During the trial’s first weeks, the jury heard from former Theranos employees who were alarmed by the company’s practices, as well as executives and board members who claimed to have been duped by Ms. Holmes’ pitch for blood testing machines that could perform hundreds of blood tests accurately and quickly from a single drop of blood.
This led to evidence from investors, who prosecutors claim are the victims of the trial’s 12 counts of wire fraud. Before failing in 2018, Theranos obtained $945 million in funding from investors, valuing the company at $9 billion and making Ms. Holmes a billionaire.
Ms. Holmes has pleaded not guilty to the charges. She risks a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if convicted.
Here are the significant takeaways from this week’s proceedings, which were only held on Tuesday due to a water main break near the courtroom on Wednesday, which required the day’s activities to be canceled.
Investors who have been carefully selected
RDV Corporation, an investment business representing Michigan’s rich DeVos family, revealed how the group came to invest — and ultimately lose — $100 million in Theranos.
According to an email revealed in court, RDV’s CEO, Jerry Tubergen, met Ms. Holmes at a 2014 conference and got enthused about Theranos. Ms. Peterson, who was in charge of investigating and coordinating the transaction, said that Theranos had hand-picked a select rich families to invest in, and that Ms. Holmes made the company feel fortunate to be included.
Ms. Peterson said, “She was encouraging us to join in this chance.” According to a court presentation, Theranos purposefully sought out private investors who would not urge the business to go public.
Prosecutors used Ms. Peterson’s evidence to build on how Theranos seemed to cheat its partners and investors by using bogus endorsements from pharmaceutical firms. Theranos had showed officials from Walgreens and Safeway a validation report that included pharmaceutical company logos and said that they endorsed the company’s technology.
Pfizer’s technology had been investigated and the corporation had “came to the opposite conclusion,” according to a Pfizer official who testified last week. Ms. Peterson claimed she saw the validation report and assumed it was written by Pfizer, which influenced her firm’s decision to invest.
Inattention to detail
Ms. Holmes’ attorneys attempted to portray Ms. Peterson as a careless steward of money who did not do enough research before investing in a small start-up during a tense cross-examination.
Ms. Holmes’ lawyer, Lance Wade, pointed out inconsistencies between Ms. Peterson’s comments and an earlier judicial deposition she had provided. “Your memory has improved over time?” he said when Ms. Peterson asserted that her present testimony was true. “Did you say that was your testimony?”
Mr. Wade also chastised Ms. Peterson for not enlisting the help of scientists, lawyers, and technologists to investigate Theranos’ claims, as well as for failing to seek copies of Theranos’ contracts with Walgreens and Safeway. “Do you realize that’s a common practice in investing?” he inquired.
Ms. Peterson said that the company relied on the information provided by Ms. Holmes and other Theranos officials.
Mr. Wade attempted to undermine Ms. Peterson’s decision-making authority inside the company by pointing out that she was not a member of RDV’s investment committee and was not present at all Theranos meetings.
Ms. Holmes’ attorneys walked a fine line by claiming that investors like Ms. Peterson didn’t perform enough homework. That’s because their case includes an apparent admission that Theranos’ technology didn’t provide what it claimed, while simultaneously claiming that Ms. Holmes didn’t lie about it.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
The New York Times’ Carlos Chavarria
Elizabeth Holmes, the discredited founder of the blood-testing company Theranos, is charged with two charges of wire fraud conspiracy and ten counts of wire fraud.
Here are some of the case’s important players:
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
Reuters/Stephen Lam
As a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, Holmes launched Theranos in 2003. She became the world’s youngest millionaire after raising $700 million from investors, but she has been accused of lying about how effectively Theranos’ technology performed. She has entered a not guilty plea.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
Getty Images/Justin Sullivan
Sunny, Ramesh Balwani, was the president and chief operations officer of Theranos from 2009 to 2016, and he had a love involvement with Holmes. He’s also been charged with fraud and might go on trial next year. He has entered a not guilty plea.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
The New York Times’ Jefferson Siegel
David Boies, a well-known attorney, was Theranos’ lawyer and sat on its board of directors.
He sought to silence critics of the company’s business methods, including whistleblowers and media.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
Getty Images
Journalist John Carreyrou exposed Theranos’ deceptive activities in his articles.
His reporting for The Wall Street Journal contributed to Theranos’ demise.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
Getty Images/Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Former Theranos workers Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung were whistle-blowers. In 2013 and 2014, they worked at the start-up.
Shultz is the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who served on the Theranos board of directors.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
The New York Times’ Eric Thayer
A former four-star general, James Mattis, served on Theranos’ board of directors.
He then became Secretary of Defense under President Donald J. Trump.
The Elizabeth Holmes Trial’s Who’s Who
Erin Woo is a reporter based in San Jose, California.
The lawsuit will be overseen by Edward Davila, a federal judge in the Northern District of California.
Holmes’ principal lawyer is Kevin Downey, a partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly.
The government’s prosecution will be led by Robert Leach, an assistant US attorney for the Northern District of California, and other prosecutors from the US attorney’s office.
More about Elizabeth Holmes may be found here:
30th of August, 2023
1st of 9 items
The so-called “conspiracy era”
Jurors saw two videos of Ms. Holmes defending Theranos in interviews after The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2015 that the start-blood up’s testing devices didn’t do as much as stated. This was most likely their first time seeing her face without a mask.
Ms. Holmes said on CNBC’s “Mad Money” broadcast that Theranos’ machines could do more than 100 tests, rejecting the negative study. Ms. Holmes was more apologetic in a 2016 interview with CBS, adding, “I’m the CEO and creator of this organization.” “I’m responsible for everything that occurs in this firm.”
Ms. Holmes’ attorneys claimed that the videos should be excluded as evidence, referring to the time following The Journal piece as the “conspiracy phase” at one point.
Ms. Peterson said that she and others from RDV met with Ms. Holmes during that period. Ms. Holmes downplayed the disclosures at the discussion, according to Ms. Peterson, claiming that The Journal’s reporting was “done by a very overzealous writer who wanted to win a Pulitzer.”
Mr. Wade requested that the court remove such remark from the record.
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The “starbucks buffalo union vote” is a news story that has been going on for about a week now. The Starbucks employees in Buffalo, New York will be voting soon to see if they want to unionize.
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