Dow Jones futures fell on Hong Kong unrest. AMD, Lockheed Martin, Zscaler show strength in the stock market correction. Apple stock does not.
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The city's largest airline outlined its "zero tolerance" approach in a memo sent days after Chinese authorities took steps to prevent Cathay workers who participate in protests from flying to mainland China or passing through the country's airspace. Cathay said that it would comply with that rule.
"It is important to remember that actions and words of our employees made outside of working hours can have a significant effect on the company," CEO Rupert Hogg told employees. The airline shared a copy of the memo with CNN.
"We have a high profile in the community given the nature of our business and inevitably actions of our employees frequently attract attention and would be treated as that representing the company's position," Hogg added.
All flights departing Hong Kong were later canceled Monday because of massive protests at its international airport, according to a statement posted on Cathay's website. Cathay cited a directive from the Hong Kong International Airport Authority.
China's Civil Aviation Administration said Friday that it would ban Cathay employees who support or take part in "illegal demonstrations, protests and violent attacks, as well as those who have had radical behaviors" from working on flights in China's airspace. The agency also said it will require Cathay to submit identification details about all relevant crews for approval prior to takeoff.
Hogg had told employees on Saturday that the company is legally required to comply with China's aviation authority. He wrote that workers who partake in such actions will be "immediately suspended" from any flights or "air transportation" activity involving mainland China.
The chief executive also pointed out that China is key to the airline's business. Cathay not only flies in and out of mainland China — it also has a "large number of routes" to Europe and the United States that pass through that airspace.
Cathay Pacific is based in Hong Kong, which though a part of China is governed under a separate legal framework granting the city certain political and legal freedoms not available on the mainland.
"Our primary focus must remain on delivering a safe, comfortable customer experience for everyone who chooses to fly with us," Hogg wrote in his memo on Saturday. "At the same time, we always try to create a safe, supportive environment for all Cathay Pacific Group employees. Though people may share different views, it is essential that we all respect each other, our customers and members of the public."
The company also said that by Thursday it will provide a report to China's Civil Aviation Administration on actions taken to improve flight safety and security, per the agency's request.
On the same day that Cathay announced it would comply with China's aviation authority, the airline also confirmed that it removed a pilot from duty last month who had been arrested during one of the protests.
"Cathay Pacific wishes to make it clear that we express no view whatsoever on the subject matter of any proceedings to which he may be subject," the company said.
Cathay(CPCAY) flies about 34 million passengers every year and serves nearly 200 cities around the world from its hub at Hong Kong's international airport. But its business has suffered because of the city's political crisis.
The airline was forced to cancel more than 150 flights last week amid a day of mass demonstrations and strikes. And the international airport was the site of a three-day sit in.
The company's stockwas down about 4.5% on Monday. It has lost more than 11% this month.
CNN's Laura He and Sandi Sidhu contributed to this report.
A Tesla electric car caught fire after crashing into a tow truck on a Moscow motorway late on Saturday.
Footage of the incident on state TV channel Rossia 24 showed the car by the side of the road engulfed in flames and thick black smoke. Two small explosions occurred within a few seconds of each other.
It was not possible to tell which Tesla model the car was and only the metal frame remained after the fire.
Tesla Inc stood by safety claims for its Model 3 earlier this week in the face of regulatory scrutiny, while documents showed the top U.S. automotive safety watchdog issued at least five subpoenas since last year seeking information about crashes involving the company's vehicles.
The state-run RIA news agency website posted a video showing the car driving in the left-hand lane of Moscow's ring road, known as the MKAD, before crashing into a tow truck parked by a safety fence that separates the carriageway from oncoming traffic.
The accident took place at around 9 p.m. Moscow time. The speed limit on the ring road is 100 kilometers per hour.
Tesla was not immediately available for a comment on the incident outside normal business hours.
The driver, 41-year-old Alexei Tretyakov, and his children were injured in the crash but escaped from the vehicle before it was destroyed by the fire, Rossia 24 reported.
As electric vehicles continue to move into the mainstream, more owners are seeking out and creating accessories to make their vehicles look and function in ways that better fit their personalities. EV Items*, a company created by a former Tesla employee and current Tesla owner, has built up an impressive array of affordable accessories for the Tesla Model 3, S, and X that give owners new options to customize their rides without breaking the bank.
Their Model 3 Wireless Qi Charger, for instance, is just $59.99, compared to other options that will set you back more than $100 for a similar device, including Tesla’s own wireless phone charger at $125.
Image credit: EV Items
Other offerings provide additional utility in the spacious Tesla Model 3 center console. Their Premium Vegan Center Console Storage Cubby gives owners a safe place to put smaller items like sunglasses or loose change without having to worry about where it might end up after the next zero to sixty launch onto the freeway. The small tray comes in either black or a bright red for those looking for a little more pop in the interior. EV Items isn’t just for Tesla Model 3 owners, they also have a full line of products for the Model X and Model S including a cubby drawer that helps owners make better use of the awkward shelf under the display.
Image credit: EV Items
Speaking of the center console and its fingerprint magnet finish, EV Items makes a vinyl wrap that lets owners throw down one of a handful of vinyl colors over the high gloss factory black. Give your center console a satin black, satin white, black or white carbon fiber or brushed stainless look with just a few minutes work and a Tesla Model 3 center console wrap kit.
Floor mats are a common first upgrade for Tesla owners, especially for owners living in areas with lots of rain, sleet, and snow. EV Items has a great set of all weather floor and trunk mats custom fit for Teslas. They are cut from a nice thick rubber mat that not only provide protection for the car from kids, animals, feet, sleet, snow, and the like, but they are easy to clean.
The protector from all things kid. Image credit: EV Items
Being made of thick rubber means they can just be pulled out of the car, hosed off, and hung out to dry as needed. That’s a lifesaver for parents and those just looking for a life hack that minimizes the amount of time spent cleaning their car so they can spend more time out on the road just enjoying it.
Finally, and most importantly, an air freshener. I know, I know, they have those down at your local gas station. But remember, where we’re going, we don’t need gas stations. But we will still have kids and pets and other visitors that might not leave the interior of your car smelling fresh and happy. We all want the inside of your car to smell fresh and happy, and EV Items knew that.
Image credit: EV Items
They came up with a few air fresheners that come free with any order, and make great add on items to any cart and any car. The air fresheners come in two different builds. The first one depicts a fictitious “starman” flying through space near a blue-green planet in a sporty red car and another that features the starman character standing proudly, helmet in hand. They look a lot like the starman and roadster that were launched into space by SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch, but the little disclaimer says they are works of fiction, so they couldn’t be. But they’re awesome and they’d fit right into the interior of your Tesla.
For a limited time, they are offering 20% off to CleanTechnica readers using this special link or promo code “CLEANTECHNICA” which is a nice chunk off the top of any order. If you’re rocking a new Tesla and in want of some accessories to make it yours, head over to EV Items and pick up some of their gear, then come back here and let us know what you think.
*This post was sponsored by EV Items; all images from the company (used with permission)
Sponsored ContentCleanTechnica and our parent company, Important Media, occasionally choose to work with select clients for paid promotion on our network sites. This is the account for all paid content. For information about paid outreach, please contact our Accounts Manager Andrea Bertoli.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It has become a jarring and frequent contradiction. President Donald Trump blames the Federal Reserve for putting the U.S. economy at risk while data shows an economy in “reasonably good” shape, as the head of the central bank recently said.
FILE PHOTO: The Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
But behind that confusing dance between a norm-breaking Republican president and a stick-to-its-knitting Fed lies a dilemma for Trump.
“Reasonably good” is not what Trump promised to deliver during his 2016 campaign, and at this point he heads into a reelection year short of the key economic goals he set and worried a recession could undermine his bid for a second term.
Growth is ebbing and well below the 3% annual rate he said his administration would hit; the trade deficit has widened and there is no sign of the “easy” victory he said would come in a trade war with China; far from the surge in investment he promised would follow a corporate tax cut, business capital spending of late has been a drag on growth overall.
Each month there are more jobs. But that has been true for nearly nine years, and as on many fronts the best days of “Trumponomics” may be in the past as the economy’s performance reverts to an Obama-era trend of around 2% annual growth.
“He is so focused on the Fed because in terms of avoiding a recession that is truly in his eyes his biggest obstacle,” to reelection, said a source in regular communication with the White House, explaining that Trump wants to take no chances, even if the risk of a downturn is low.
It’s in that context that Trump scorns a central bank whose longer-term approach to policy has clashed with his more immediate interests - the same tension apparent in other battles between the president and government agencies with their own institutional powers or culture.
In the Fed’s case, while its chairman and Washington-based governors are appointed by the president, its responsibility is to a “mandate” established by Congress.
The Fed’s goals of “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates” are distinct from, and sometimes in conflict with, the economic or political priorities of the party in power, whether it’s maximizing annual growth, gaining leverage in a trade negotiation or, gaining economic momentum in an election year with interest rates lower than the data would warrant.
Other things equal, lower interest rates can boost economic activity by encouraging households and businesses to borrow, spend and invest, but can also lead to financial excesses as happened in the early 2000s in the U.S. mortgage market, and - less of a concern today - inflation.
Managing those mandated goals, Fed officials note, can require tradeoffs, involves looking further ahead than can be forecast with certainty, and always includes a judgment about whether the lower unemployment and other benefits that might come with easier monetary policy are worth the risks involved.
Trump’s demands that the Fed stimulate the economy, by contrast, have covered a gamut of immediate needs, and moved well beyond convention to suggest, for example, that the Fed restart crisis-era asset purchases at a time of historically low unemployment.
One day it’s to support a wobbly stock market. The next to boost growth, and then later to gain an upper hand in trade talks through a cheaper dollar, as Trump demanded twice last week when he said the U.S. central bank should not allow the rate cuts and currency moves of other nations to offset the impact of tariffs he has imposed.
When rates remained low through President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and second term, Trump said the Fed had “become very political.” Advisers familiar with his thinking say he now expects the same treatment, even if the economy is in a different place.
It’s debatable whether the Fed-bashing has had much influence.
The source close to the administration said Trump believes his “relentless” public criticism of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell “has gotten him to play ball.” The central bank cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its July 30-31 policy meeting.
Fed officials see it differently.
Powell, the private equity lawyer handpicked by Trump to head the Fed only to be blasted later by the president as an incompetent “nobody,” has emphasized that he was “not going to make mistakes of character or integrity” - in other words, that he would not take Trump’s election prospects into consideration in setting policy.
The Fed has in fact steadily shifted gears since late last year but for a variety of reasons, including a sense that the fallout from trade wars may be greater than expected, and that its own estimate of the appropriate interest rate for the current state of the U.S. economy was too high.
Perhaps above all was evidence that the faster growth produced by the $1.5 trillion tax cut package passed in late 2017 and higher federal government spending in 2018 was fading quicker than expected.
Early last year “we were looking for growth above trend and continued improvement in the unemployment rate,” Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said last week. By later in the year “we began to wonder if things were playing out in a softer fashion ... The tax bill’s influence on business fixed investment was harder to see, it was sort of waning ... Trade negotiations were taking place with a brinkmanship style and that led to more uncertainty.”
In response, the Fed first shelved its plans to steadily raise rates this year. That decision came on the heels of four rate increases in 2018.
At the most recent policy meeting, the Fed’s rate-setting committee decided to go even further by cutting the central bank’s benchmark overnight lending rate.
The move was, arguably, a response to Trump - but to his actions, not his direct demands. In May, the president unnerved investors by threatening to impose tariffs on Mexico unless it curbed the flow of migrants heading north into the United States.
Although a deal was reached to avert the tariffs, the linkage of trade policy to a largely non-economic goal resonated deeply among Fed officials, who became convinced they needed some rate cut “insurance” to protect the U.S. economic expansion from an increasingly uncertain global environment.
But if the rate cut raised questions about whether the central bank was now tethered to Trump’s tweets - destined to consider rate cuts when any threatened tariffs sent markets into a tailspin - Fed policymakers last week tried to put some distance between themselves and the Oval Office.
From here on, said St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, among the stronger advocates for lower rates, “tit-for-tat” trade actions wouldn’t warrant Fed action.
Although traders are expecting the Fed to cut rates two more times this year, and some bond pricing may reflect a rising risk of a recession, Fed officials feel a downturn is unlikely and that they have matters in hand.
“It certainly became clear to me with the Mexico situation ... that trade policy uncertainty is going to be high. It is going to be high into the foreseeable future,” Bullard said. “We’ve adjusted for the ratcheting up ... Let’s wait and see how the economy responds to that.”
Reporting by Howard Schneider and Ginger Gibson; Editing by Paul Simao
FILE PHOTO: Chinese 100 yuan banknotes are seen in a counting machine while a clerk counts them at a branch of a commercial bank in Beijing, China, in this March 30, 2016 file picture. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo
YICHUN, China/ SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Volatility in China’s yuan since August is a normal market reaction to escalating trade frictions stoked by the United States and was caused, to some extent, by Washington’s decision to raise tariffs, a senior Chinese central bank official said.
Zhu Jun, director-general of the People’s Bank of China’s international department, made the comments on Saturday to a forum held in the northern Chinese province of Heilongjiang.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday labeled China a currency manipulator, hours after China let the yuan drop through a key support level to its lowest point in more than a decade. The moves jolted financial markets, fueling fears of a global currency war.
Days earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump had vowed to impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports from Sept. 1, ending a temporary truce and sharply escalating the trade dispute.
Zhu said that the yuan’s move was a normal reaction to Trump’s tariff threat.
“The labeling...violates basic, common economic sense and international consensus, and is unconvincing,” Zhu said, adding that the Chinese economy was resilient and capable of coping with various situations.
The year-long trade war between the world’s two largest economies has already spread beyond tit-for-tat tariffs on goods to other areas such as technology, and analysts caution retaliation could widen in scope and severity, weighing further on business confidence and global economic growth.
The yuan CNY=CFXS lost 1.6% against the dollar last week, but there were signs in the last few sessions that authorities were trying to stabilize it.[CNY/]
Reporting by Li Zheng, Hongwei Li and Brenda Goh; Editing by Kim Coghill
Julianne March, 49, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, finds herself out of a job and facing misdemeanor charges after becoming so drunk on the job she was unable to perform basic flight attendant duties.
Passengers immediately noted something was wrong when March refused to make eye contact with passengers while boarding, then slurred her words during pre-flight announcements and stumbled while walking down the aisle, bumping into several passengers.
But what really gave it away was that she started but was unable to finish the pre-flight safety briefing. Instead, she slumped over in her seat, passing out for the remainder of the flight. Multiple calls from the flight deck, a standard part of the pre-flight safety sequence, were not answered. She did not even fasten her seatbelt: another passenger did it for her.
The particularly scary aspect was that this was a 50-seat regional jet and she was the sole flight attendant on the flight. This incident occurred on United flight 4849, from Chicago (ORD) to South Bend (SBN) on August 02, 2019.
One passenger tweeted to United:
Hey @united, our flight attendant appears to be quite drunk on this from from ORD to SBN. She is slurring her speech (she couldn’t make it through the security announcement), couldn’t walk straight/was bumping into everyone in the aisle, and kept dropping things.
Police met the aircraft upon arrival in South Bend and March was immediately detained. Her BAC registered at 0.204, five times the legal limit for a flight attendant. She was booked for criminal public intoxication. She later admitted to police she had consumed two vodka chasers before work.
St. Joseph County Jail
Flight Attendant Fired
An Air Wisconsin spokesperson said:
The Flight Attendant involved in this incident is no longer an employee of the company. We will continue to cooperate with local authorities and assist them as necessary.
An insider told ABC News that she was a recent hire and still a probationary flight attendant.
Meanwhile, United was quick to point the finger at Air Wisconsin:
We expect our regional carriers to take appropriate action as required when issues like these happen with their employees. Legally and with regards to regulatory agencies this is an Air Wisconsin issue.
Both statements are certainly true, but this is primarily a United, not Air Wisconsin, PR issue.
CONCLUSION
This is one of the those WOW stories…a story that ranks as one of the most harrowing intoxication incidents I have ever covered on Live and Let’s Fly. March, a name which gives me visions of the district attorney in Matlock who had the same character name (thus dating me…), has not offered her side of the story. Hopefully, she gets the help she needs…but she has forfeited her privilege to be a flight attendant.
I do have one question. When the FA did not respond to the flight deck phone call, why did they take off? Does that not also violate protocols?
