As Hurricane Helene intensifies and moves toward Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has warned electric vehicle owners in the state to move their cars to higher ground because of the risk of saltwater intrusion. When saltwater gets into an EV battery, it can cause fires days or even weeks after exposure.

“If you have an EV, you need to get that to higher land,” he said during a news briefing on Wednesday. “Be careful about that getting inundated. It can cause fires.”

Hurricane Helene is forecasted to become at least a Category 3 hurricane by the time it makes landfall, which is expected Thursday evening around Florida’s Big Bend area.

There are more than 250,000 EVs on Florida roads, according to the Department of Energy’s data on EV registrations by state. That’s second only to California, which has more than 1.2 million registered EVs; Texas has the next-highest, with more than 230,000. 

More than 42,000 of Florida’s EVs are in the Tampa Bay area, which could see record high water levels during the Hurricane Helene storm surge. 

EVs and Saltwater Intrusion

EVs pose a risk in storms because of saltwater intrusion, in which saltwater floods and corrodes the EV battery. That can create a chemical reaction that causes “extreme fire risk,” per the U.S. Coast Guard. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, hurricanes that have hit Florida have highlighted this risk, showing that saltwater-flooded EVs “pose major safety concerns to passengers, emergency responders, and recovery personnel.”

This was an issue during 2022’s Hurricane Ian, the administration notes, which affected between 3,000 and 5,000 EVs, 36 of which caught on fire. Fewer EVs caught on fire during 2023’s Hurricane Idalia in part because the hurricane was weaker, and because of warnings to move electric vehicles to higher ground. 

“You’re in an area that is in the eye of where there can be storm surge, you have an electric vehicle—just know that when you have saltwater intrusion on that, those can catch on fire,” DeSantis said during the news briefing. “Those are very difficult to put out.”

EV fires are so hard to extinguish because of the lithium-ion batteries, which store an immense amount of energy. EV battery fires can burn for hours; after Hurricane Ian, E&E News reported that there were six fires in Naples caused by EVs submerged in seawater. Those flooded cars burned for “hours and hours” and required “thousands upon thousands of gallons of water,” according to the local fire department. Some startups are working on EV batteries that replace the internal, flammable solvents with with water or even saltwater, which reduces the risk of fires.

“This emerging threat has forced local fire departments to divert resources away from hurricane recovery to control and contain these dangerous fires,” Florida Senator Rick Scott wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in 2022.

When Italian energy giant Enel announced in April that it had failed to meet the carbon emissions reduction goals in a third of its sustainability linked bonds (SLB), it exposed significant deficiencies in a once-coveted form of loan aimed at reining in climate-altering carbon emissions. 

It also raised concerns about whether companies such as Enel and the banks that underwrite the sustainability linked bonds were truly interested in combating climate change or in merely making misleading claims of being environmentally friendly, a practice known as greenwashing.

Enel was the first and largest corporate issuer of sustainability linked bonds, which are a form of green bonds that raise capital for general corporate purposes rather than for specific renewable energy projects. With SLBs, a discounted rate of about 10%-15% is tied to reaching certain sustainability indicators, such as decarbonization metrics, renewable energy consumption or generation, and the volume of recycled materials. 

At their debut in 2019, sustainability linked bonds were welcomed as a way for industrial companies and banks to show that they were taking steps to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. With the bonds, climate change could even be addressed by heavy polluters, such as automakers or steel manufacturers, which otherwise might not have projects eligible for traditional green bonds. 

Initially, the sustainability linked bond market grew rapidly, soaring to over $100 billion in global volume in 2021. But since then the market has hit a wall. In the first quarter of 2024, the global SLB volume peaked at $3.1 billion, down 37% from the same period the prior year. Experts attribute the steep drop to growing investor concerns that the bonds are failing to induce any real reductions in carbon emissions. 

Enel missed its target for direct emissions by about 8%, a deficiency that triggered an automatic 0.25% increase in the interest rate on the affected bonds. The financial hit was relatively minor, amounting to around $100 million over the remaining life of the bonds for a company whose annual revenue was $103 billion last year. 

Enel attributed the shortfall to higher-than-expected coal-based electricity generation, in part mandated by the Italian government in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent disruption in European gas supplies. But that explanation did not temper reactions in the sustainability linked bond market. Enel had embraced SLBs as part of a well-publicized strategy to develop a business model in line with the Paris Agreement to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

In the wake of Enel’s failure to meet its emission goals, concerns grew that if the sustainability linked bonds were insufficient to ensure that Enel’s highly motivated sustainability program reached its goals, what were the odds the bonds would have a consequential impact on the decarbonization efforts of a less committed bond issuer?

Moreover, investors and underwriters supporting the sustainability linked bond market—a group that in Enel’s case included major financial players such as BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Societe Generale—often did so to claim these instruments as part of their “green” portfolios. 

“SLBs can be a valuable climate change tool, a difference maker, but two things are necessary: The target goals must be ambitious, offering a credible decarbonization pathway, and the consequences of failing to meet those goals must be a deterrent to falling short,” said Kevin Leung, a sustainable finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. 

Despite the high hopes for sustainability linked bonds, about 86% of the 800 bonds that so far have been issued lack adequate greenhouse gas reduction targets to achieve global climate change goals, according to Climate Bonds Initiative, which analyzes the green bond marketplace. 

In general, the bonds’ sustainability indicators are either too ambiguous or too shortsighted to align with science-based carbon abatement solutions or their monitoring protocols are not sufficiently robust or transparent—shortcomings often ignored by investors. As a result, a Climate Bonds analysis of more than 150 bonds from top issuers through November 2023 found that in about half of the cases, companies are not on track to meet their climate goals or have failed to provide evidence of their progress. Only 25% appear to be on target to reach their goals. 

French oil and gas major TotalEnergies provides an apt illustration of the gap between the purpose of sustainability linked bonds and their results. In 2021, Total announced that all its future debt would be issued as SLBs, linked to its climate targets. To kick off this strategy, in January 2021 Total issued about $3.2 billion in SLB-style bonds with an average interest rate of 1.875%, in part to further its development of nonfossil fuel energy sources, the company said. Total reveled in the discounted cost of capital, describing it as “comparable to that of pure players in renewables.” 

To get this advantageous rate, Total did the minimum, offering only generic claims about its sustainability initiatives, including the promise of a mere 20% reduction in the carbon intensity of its oil products by 2030, when most companies would aim for a more robust reduction. Total also stated, without any guarantees, that a transition to renewable energy was its unwavering priority. No scheduled metrics for monitoring the organization’s performance was included in the loan. 

By contrast, a more robust goal was laid down by Kinetik, a U.S.-based natural gas company that issued nearly $4 billion in sustainability-linked bonds in 2022 and 2023. The company has targeted a 35% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from its operations by 2030. 

Even Total’s vague assurances appear to run counter to Total’s actual plans. In 2030, two-thirds of Total’s capital expenditures will still be earmarked for oil and gas with nearly half for new fields, according to an analysis by Oil Change International. By that time, oil and gas will account for 80% of Total’s energy mix, compared with 95% in 2021, which actually means that Total’s fossil fuel production will increase by about 3%, a separate report by Reclaim Finance found.

But if Total has become a symbol of how sustainability linked bonds can be misused and rendered toothless, the company’s lenders have not been put off. During shareholder votes about Total’s decarbonization policies, investment managers Amundi and AXA said that by merely vowing to focus on energy transition,Total has proved its intention to adopt more ambitious climate targets over time. And BlackRock said it was satisfied that Total’s “stated carbon neutrality strategy meets our expectations of a company committed to the energy transition.” 

In fact, global asset manager BlackRock believed that Total’s enthusiastic embrace of sustainability linked bonds was evidence enough that it would ultimately achieve net zero goals. That justification for supporting Total’s debt has not aged well: In April, three years after announcing its SLB strategy and issuing debt at discounted interest rates, Total said it was abandoning the approach. According to one analyst who follows SLBs closely but asked to remain anonymous because of his relationship with other companies he does business with, Total’s investors told him they had become less willing to give the company discounted loans for empty promises and little headway towards addressing climate change. 

Most sustainability linked bonds are more explicit about targeted outcomes than Total’s bonds. But that only highlights a fundamental flaw in this type of debt. Generally, the issuers meet or come close to their goals only because their metrics are not particularly difficult to achieve—in some cases, reflecting results reached prior to the bond issuance—or are not connected to the way a particular company can impact climate change. 

Compounding matters, some of the most crucial measurements of decarbonization are often absent from sustainability linked bond goals. Scope 3 emissions, those that occur outside an organization’s direct control and usually account for the largest source of a company’s carbon output, aren’t covered in 70% of sustainability linked bonds underwritten by top issuers. Estimating Scope 3 emissions is difficult, but there are ways to cover these greenhouse gases, such as metrics that measure the share of renewable energy in a supply chain, or the percentage of a company’s products recycled by consumers. 

On the demand side of sustainability linked bonds, the pricing and penalties mechanisms are also contributing to the deficient key performance indicators (KPI), the metrics used to measure environmental performance. 

“The major problem here is that the link between KPIs and the interest rate paid in the loan is weak,” said Joachim Klement, a London-based investment strategist. He and others believe that the discounts of a few basis points that issuers receive are not large enough to entice companies to undertake an expensive and potentially disruptive decarbonization program. Moreover, the penalties for not meeting climate change goals—generally a 0.25% increase in interest rates—are too weak to deter missed targets, especially for big companies like Enel. Since sustainability goals take time to reach, companies can often enjoy interest discounts for several years before paying a step-up for a short period until the bond matures. 

Unless sustainability linked bonds (and other green bonds) begin to play a perceptible role in addressing climate change, net zero and global temperature goals are likely impractical and out of reach. And to a large degree, that puts the onus on financial backers and underwriters to set the SLB market straight, demanding meaningful and carefully defined environmental improvements in return for real and advantageous interest rate discounts—and to require strict and scientific monitoring protocols to certify the key performance indicators are met. 

Additionally, if SLB shortcomings are not addressed, regulators may ultimately determine that these bonds should not even be categorized as green investments. That possibility has already made sustainability linked bonds less attractive to some investors, say experts. 

Still, many climate change investment supporters are hopeful that SLBs can play a constructive role in corporate decarbonization and provide a venue for credible green investments. It is somewhat fitting, perhaps, that it took bond defaults by Enel, a true believer in using lending as a cudgel against climate change, to inspire a reckoning about sustainability linked bonds. 

— Jeffrey Rothfeder, Capital & Main

This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

U.K. transport officials and police said Thursday they are investigating a “cyber-security incident” after users of public Wi-Fi networks at the country’s biggest railway stations reported being shown anti-Muslim messages.

Passengers trying to log onto the Wi-Fi at 19 stations, including Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street and several London terminuses, on Wednesday evening were met by a page reading, “We love you, Europe,” followed by an anti-Islam message listing a series of terror attacks.

Network Rail, which manages the stations, said the Wi-Fi had been switched off and no passenger data was taken.

“British Transport Police are investigating the incident,” Network Rail said in a statement. “This service is provided via a third party and has been suspended while an investigation is under way.”

The police force confirmed it was investigating reports of “Islamophobic messaging on some Network Rail Wi-Fi services.”

Telent, the company that provides the stations’ Wi-Fi, said an “unauthorized change” to the landing page was made from a “legitimate administrator account” and that the matter was now subject to criminal investigation.

The incident follows a more disruptive cyberattack in early September on Transport for London, which runs the capital’s bus, subway and suburban train system.

TFL said some customer names, contact details and potentially bank account details were exposed in the attack, which is being investigated by the National Crime Agency.

A 17-year-old was arrested over the attack, questioned and bailed without being charged.

Weeks on, the attack continues to affect the transit company’s ability to provide some online services such as refunds and real-time transit information.

Free COVID tests are officially back.

With COVID-19 cases on the rise, and reports that the new XEC variant is now in half of U.S. states, the government is once again providing free at-home test kits.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will start shipping those out directly to homes as soon as next week. It hopes to get the kits out before this year’s busy holiday season.

That’s as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is predicting that virus cases will likely climb again over the winter and could peak in mid-January.

How to order your tests

Any household can order four at-home COVID nasal swab kits through the covidtests.gov website.

The over-the-counter kits are designed to detect current COVID-19 variants.

What to know about the tests

Here’s a rundown of what to know about the tests available for order:

• They are rapid antigen at-home tests (not PCR)
• They can be taken at home or other locations
• They give results within 30 minutes (no lab drop-off required)
• They can be used for testing even if you do not have COVID-19 symptoms
• They can be used for testing regardless of how up to date you are on your COVID-19 vaccines

Earlier this week, some visitors had trouble accessing the website to order the tests, but on Thursday, Fast Company was able to order the tests without incident.

In addition to continued testing, the CDC is encouraging Americans to get updated COVID booster shots from Pfizer or Moderna, “to protect against the potentially serious outcomes of COVID-19 this fall and winter whether or not they have ever previously been vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine.”

On September 24, Ubisoft abruptly canceled its appearance at the Tokyo Game Show and postponed all press previews of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Wednesday, we learned why. Anti-DEI backlash has sent the company spinning.

The Paris-based video game publisher pushed the release of its biggest game of the year from November 12 to February 14 of next year—and warned investors that net bookings would no longer exceed the 2.3 billion euros of last year, but come in at a disappointing 1.95 billion euros. That sent shares lower Thursday, continuing a rough year for the company (UBI.PA). Year to date, shares are down 57%, which has stirred up some activist investors to call for a sale.  

The bookings’ shortfall was, technically, due to the delay and disappointing sales of Star Wars: Outlaws. However, the underlying reason for both of those, at least in part, is the far-right opposition to diversity and inclusion.

Outlaws, which has a female lead character, received mostly solid reviews from professional critics; but many players gave it a zero rating out of 10 on Metacritic, citing “forced DEI narratives” and claiming the developers “spent more time on the woke culture than on the story and gameplay.” Some players were also unhappy with the optional season pass model that tacked an additional $40 onto the game’s price for extra missions. (The season pass/downloadable content model has been a popular one in the industry for many publishers, and is used in Fortnite and Dark Souls 3.) 

That review bombing, driven by anti-DEI backlash, seemingly worked—and set off a chain of events that led to Wednesday’s announcement.

“We believe Star Wars Outlaws was impacted by a coordinated effort that sought to troll Ubisoft games specifically and Star Wars content in general,” wrote Michael Pachter of Wedbush in an analyst’s note. “This is a case of a rare incel victory that led to Ubisoft having to take down its numbers.”

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot addressed the controversy directly in announcing the revised guidance.

“Let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately,” he wrote. “I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”

That’s unlikely to quiet far-right critics. In fact, the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which was already under fire by that group for having a female ninja and a Black samurai as lead characters in a game set in feudal Japan, could embolden detractors. GamerGate-friendly forums on Reddit are already celebrating the announcement and taking a victory lap, with a few racist comments thrown in.

But gameplay mechanics weren’t what caused the prerelease backlash of Shadows. As far back as July, the development team has found itself on the defensive for its choice to include a Black protagonist in the game. (That character, Yasuke, is based on an actual Black samurai from the 16^th century.)

“While we strive for authenticity in everything that we do, Assassin’s Creed games are works of fiction inspired by real historical events and figures,” the development team wrote in July. “From its inception, the series has taken creative license and incorporated fantasy elements to craft engaging and immersive experiences. The representation of Yasuke in our game is an illustration of this. His unique and mysterious life made him an ideal candidate to tell an Assassin’s Creed story with the setting of feudal Japan as a backdrop.”

Despite the anti-DEI backlash, Ubisoft doesn’t seem like it’s making radical changes to the next Assassin’s Creed. The company, in its announcement Wednesday, vowed to “[fulfill] the promise of our dual-protagonist adventure, with Naoe and Yasuke bringing two very different gameplay styles.” To boost sales, the company said it would give anyone who preorders the game the first expansion for free.

Pachter said he still expects the game to sell more than 7 million copies, adding “this game has the potential to be one of Ubisoft’s bestsellers ever.”

That might not be enough for some investors. Reuters, on Thursday, reported an activist investor, pushing for the sale of Ubisoft to a third-party or private equity investors, claimed to have the support of 10% of the company’s shareholders. 

Millions of websites worldwide are unable to update thanks to an ongoing dispute that has bubbled over between a core backbone of the internet and a popular hosting platform that brings it to many users.

On Wednesday, Matt Mullenweg, an entrepreneur who developed WordPress and founded Automattic, a provider of free WordPress, shut off access to WP Engine, a platform that many users deploy in order to host their WordPress sites. The reason: a dispute over the extent to which Mullenweg believes the latter leeches off the former.

“Matt has absolute power in the WP ecosystem,” Jono Alderson, an independent technical SEO consultant, tells Fast Company. While Alderson says WordPress’s software is open-source, in reality large parts of it are under Mullenweg’s control. “It doesn’t matter if it’s trademark, ego, or something else entirely—if Matt decides something, for better or worse, we’re all beholden to his decisions.”

The dispute predates this week, but came to a head this month when Mullenweg called WP Engine, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in investment since its founding in 2010, “a cancer to WordPress.”

Mullenweg alleges that the WP Engine brands itself as an offshoot of WordPress (and makes a lot of money from that affiliation), all while actually contributing a tiny amount of labor to its upkeep. By way of evidence that there’s brand confusion, Mullenweg has said his own mother has incorrectly believed WP Engine is a WordPress product.

In response, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic in which the firm alleged Mullenweg effectively held up WP Engine to ransom or would “embark on a self-described ‘scorched earth nuclear approach.’” Lawyers for WP Engine claim Mullenweg covertly demanded the company pay Automattic “tens of millions.”

Automattic fired back with its own cease-and-desist letter, alleging that WP Engine had piggybacked on its trademarks. “WP Engine has developed a business generating annual revenues of over $400 million, which has been based entirely on extensive and unauthorized uses of our Client’s trademarks,” lawyers for Automattic wrote.

In an outspoken blog post this week to accompany the decision to ban WP Engine, Mullenweg wrote: “Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?” Pressable, a WP Engine competitor Mullenweg runs, has offered to buy out WP Engine customers’ contracts and cover the cost of cancellation.

In response, WP Engine said: “Matt Mullenweg’s unprecedented and unwarranted action interferes with the normal operation of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not just WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open-source users.”

This is a dispute between two deeply embattled and antagonistic parties—so much so that WordPress recently updated its trademark verbiage to take a swipe at WP Engine. But WordPress powers around 43.5% of all websites online, according to W3techs, which tracks the web. In other words, this squabble matters.

Tommy Vacek, a former WP Engine employee, posted on X: “in this case, Matt is completely wrong. He is having a personal meltdown that is now affecting users of WordPress. Another user, Matt Ronge, wrote: “Automattic blocking WP Engine customers from updating their plugins is deeply hostile. Fine, sue each other into oblivion, but don’t interfere with customers.” 

On the other hand, some Automattic employees have come out publicly to defend Mullenweg’s actions, and to say that WP Engine ought to support the WordPress project more. “My belief is that Matt Mullenweg is taking a public stand, acting in good faith, to defend the future sustainability and well-being of the WordPress commons,” wrote Dave Martin, who has worked with the company for more than a decade.

But at the end of the day, the risk of interfering with customers’ ability to host their websites is what has people worried most about the ongoing spat. “I think this is a negative vibe that we could well have done without,” Joost de Valk, an investor at Dutch firm Emilia Capital and a self-professed WordPress aficionado, tells Fast Company.

“Matt’s dispute with WP Engine is harming real businesses and individuals, many of which have no awareness or interest in the matter,” says Alderson, the SEO consultant. “What happens next could reshape the underlying fabric of the web, shuffle billions of dollars of investment, and alter the balance of power on the internet.”

Moms know that sometimes, parenting goes hand-in-hand with self-sacrifice. That was the thought that struck DeNaesha Gonazalez when she saw a cute silver purse abandoned in the baby aisle of Target—seemingly evidence that a mom, shopping for her children, had a choice to make.

Gonzalez shared a video of the moment on TikTok September 4, writing, “SHE DESERVED THE PURSE.” Moms instantly understood. They shared the video widely, and left comments about the strikingly similar moments they’d had in the baby aisle.

The video has since gained more than 20 million views in a matter of weeks. And as moms commiserated over the struggle of having to put back items in order to buy necessary kids and baby products, some social media users did something else: They started leaving cash and gift cards in the baby aisle of their local store for deserving parents to discover.

It started when Cecily Bauchmann, a TikTok creator with 2.2 million followers and a friend of Gonzalez’s, made her own video about leaving a $100 gift card underneath a box of diapers. “I saw this TikTok the other day and it inspired me to do this,” she explains in the video.

Bauchmann’s video inspired others to do the same, and a new trend was born. Since then, hundreds of videos have been shared using the hashtag #shedeservedthepurse, documenting people leaving gifts for parents in the baby aisle.

As the trend grows, the baby aisle may get a little more crowded. Some TikTok users have made videos joking that they’ll be perusing it for a little extra cash. To totally negate that risk, some other users have started giving cash or a gift card directly to a shopping mom. “I know, as a mom, we all struggle,” says TikTok user Valeria Rangel as she hands a mom a gift card in a video with nearly 275,000 views.

But there’s a far more pressing issue than money falling into hands of people other than the deserving parents for which it was intended. And that is, in today’s world, parents often have to make tougher choices than putting back a purse.

According to the 2024 State of Motherhood report by Motherly, 27% of moms receive regular financial support from their parents—and nearly half (49%) under age 30 do.

Likewise, a Credit Karma survey found that a third of parents struggled to buy back-to-school supplies this year.

Financial woes among parents was one of the major concerns raised by the Surgeon General in his recent report, Parents Under Pressure. In it, he asserted that two-fifths of parents say they are too stressed to function on most days. Last year, 66% of parents said they were “consumed” by financial stress.

Hopefully, TikTok keeps doing its thing, and more parents walk out of stores like Target with a little cash in their pocket or something special for themselves. TikTok probably can’t help them with the childcare bill, groceries, or mortgage. But still, witnessing people supporting one another even in these small ways is endlessly inspiring.

In July, Southwest Airlines announced that it would be ditching its signature open-seating model for a more standard assigned-seating system—leading some to wonder whether Southwest is losing its most defining brand features. Today, the company shared more details about how the switch will impact ticket-buying, boarding, and the in-flight experience. 

On an investor relations call today, Southwest’s top executives discussed the company’s upcoming overhaul, which is intended to address declining profits and share prices. “Recent financial performance is not up to your or to my expectations,” CEO Bob Jordan said on the call, adding that Southwest “[owns] those challenges.” Changes to the airline will include more premium add-ons for better seats, the introduction of red-eye flights in early 2025, new cabin layouts for increased legroom, and, of course, an all-new assigned-seating system.

In today’s call with investors, Southwest’s executive vice president Ryan Green shared that, the new assigned-seats model will begin in practice in the first half of 2026 and that booking those flights will start in the second half of 2025. Here’s everything else we know about the new seating and other changes:

Bundled fare prices

Southwest is best known for its “bags-fly-free” policy, which allows passengers to fly with two free checked bags, as well as its somewhat unusual open-seating policy. According to a study conducted by the company, “bags-fly-free” is an important differentiator for the company that generates brand awareness, and eliminating it would “destroy value.”

On the other hand, 80% of Southwest customers, and 86% of potential customers, reported that they would prefer an assigned seat over open seating. In fact, Southwest’s lack of assigned seating was the top reason potential customers chose other airlines. While open seating initially served as a draw factor for Southwest as an underdog airline, it requires passenger cooperation to proceed efficiently—an element which, some experts theorize, is becoming more difficult to control over time.

Currently, Southwest’s open-boarding policy automatically assigns passengers to a boarding group and seat number based on how quickly they check in to their flight. For an extra fee, the airline allows passengers to upgrade their boarding position depending on availability, and preboarding is available for passengers with disabilities (though some claim that this option is frequently abused).

In the new seating system, when passengers purchase a Southwest ticket, they will be given the choice to select their seats as well as choose among a number of premium options, including extra legroom and business select class in a kind of “fare bundle.”

“Gone will be the days of setting alarm clocks 24 hours in advance of a flight to secure a good boarding position and a good seat,” Green says. 

The new system will eliminate some of the time pressure involved with open seating, with the trade-off being that the cabin will be segmented between standard and upgraded seats. 

“The fare bundles will have logical step-ups and attributes with commensurately higher prices along the way,” Green says. “When customers were presented with these new fare bundles in our test environment, they showed a clear desire to purchase a higher-priced fare bundle, which translates to increased revenue through higher yields.”

Maintaining “uniquely Southwest” boarding 

According to Green, Southwest is known for the “relative calmness” of its boarding process at the gate. With the existing open-seating system, passengers line up behind stanchions based on their boarding group (labeled A-C). 

To avoid changing that process too much, customers will now receive both a seat assignment and a boarding number after checking in. The boarding number will include a letter and number, similar to the current system. However, the new model will mean that those who paid for the highest fare bundles and most premium seats will enter the aircraft and store their baggage first. 

Airlines are generally laser-focused on their boarding process to increase efficiency, and Southwest is no different. Based on today’s presentation, the company used more than 8.5 million digitally simulated flights and 200 hours of live-boarding simulations to hone its new approach.

“We expect our future boarding process to feel very familiar and uniquely Southwest,” Green says.

New plane interiors

While researching the best approach for its upcoming overhaul, Southwest tested out several new cabin configurations to offer premium upgrades, including two-by-two rows or blocked middle seats. Ultimately, though, they landed on an extended legroom model. 

“The extended legroom option generated roughly the same amount of revenue as the two-by-two seating model, or a model where we blocked the middle seats, but was far less complex to implement, and the speed to market was much quicker,” Green says. 

Based on the company’s modeling, it expects about one-third of seats on every plane to include extra legroom. To make the switch, Southwest is trading in the seats on its 175-person Boeing 737-800 plane for a skinnier profile seat, and removing a row of seats from its fleet of Boeing 737-700 planes. Southwest is currently working to receive final certification on its new cabin layouts from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The actual retrofitting is slated to begin in the first quarter of 2025. Alongside the new seats, Southwest also plans to implement larger overhead bins and double its Wi-Fi bandwidth per user. 

Green claims that the new assigned and premium seating options “will drive significant economic value for shareholders of roughly $1.5 billion of incremental EBIT in 2027.”

Worried about your teen’s Instagram use? Faced with growing pressure to do more to stop online harm, the social media platform has rolled out a major new update to protect young people and give parents more control.

With many teens spending almost all of their time online, parents are concerned that social media is exposing them to harmful content like cyberbullying, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. Prominent profile figures including U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Prince Harry have warned about the risks.

Critics say Instagram’s changes are a step in the right direction but they still put the onus on parents and children instead of the company to deal with the problem.

Here’s a guide to Instagram’s new teen accounts:

What limits will young users have?

Instagram already prohibits anyone under 13 from signing up.

Now, teen accounts will automatically be set to private. That means they’ll have to accept or reject requests from new followers. Other users won’t be able to see a teen user’s posts and videos, or tag the account.

Teens will also face messaging restrictions. They can only receive direct messages from people they’re following or who follow them. But they can still send messages to other accounts.

And they’ll be subject to the strictest content settings, and won’t be shown content involving sensitive topics like fighting videos and posts about cosmetic procedures. Instagram’s anti-bullying feature will be set to the highest level to screen out offensive words and phrases in comments and direct message requests.

To cut down their screen time, teens will get a notification to stop using the app after it’s been open for more than an hour — which they can ignore.

Sleep mode will kick in from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., which mutes notifications and sends auto-replies to direct messages at a time when they’re supposed to be sleeping. However, they can still scroll through Instagram and even respond to messages if they want to.

Are there workarounds?

These limits will be turned on automatically for all teens, but 16 and 17-year-olds will have the authority to turn them off. Kids under 16 will need permission to do so and parents can make changes and approve or deny any requests in the family center.

Teens might lie about their age, but it’s getting harder to fool the platform. Instagram has previously started requiring users to verify their ages — by uploading an ID or doing a video selfie — if they try to change their birthdates to show they’re over 18.

Now, Instagram says it will start testing artificial intelligence technology early next year to detect if a user is a teen even if the account lists an adult birthday.

Of course, teens don’t have to agree to be supervised in the first place. Instagram says they and their parents both have to opt in. And either side can revoke supervision at any time.

What if the parent isn’t on Instagram? If you want to use the teen controls, you’ll need an account even if you don’t want it. A spokeswoman said it’s important for parents to be familiar with the platform so they can effectively supervise their teens.

New controls for parents

If you don’t think the limits on your teen’s account are strict enough, you can add supervisory controls.

This feature allows parents to see who their teen has traded messages with within the past seven days, but not what’s in those messages.

Not happy that your teen can ignore reminders to stop using the app? There are controls to let parents limit the amount of time their teen spends on Instagram each day. Once the limit is hit, they are cut off. You can also block your teen from using Instagram during specific times of the day, and monitor the topics of content that they’re seeing.

How to set up parental controls

First, you’ll need your teen to set up family supervision on his or her account. On the mobile app, go to settings and scroll down to the family center to activate this feature.

Next, the teen account will have to invite a parent. It will be in the form of a link the teen can send by text message to the parent.

After accepting the invite, the teen user has 48 hours to review and confirm the parent’s response.

Can I use the teen settings right away?

Anyone under 18 who now signs up for Instagram in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia will be automatically enrolled into a restricted teen account. Existing accounts will be transferred by mid-November. Teens in the European Union’s 27 countries will be migrated later this year.

The rest of the world will get teen accounts in January and they will roll out to other Meta services like Facebook next year.

—Kelvin Chan, Associated Press business writer

California’s lawsuit on Monday accusing Exxon of fueling global plastic waste pollution by misleading the public about the limitations of recycling is the latest in a line of recent cases based on a centuries-old legal theory known as public nuisance. Here is a look at how public nuisance claims work, how such claims have fared and what it might mean for California’s effort.

What is a public nuisance?

A public nuisance claim is one that can be brought against defendants based on behavior that interferes with a right that belongs to the general public, rather than to an individual. Frequently cited examples include an obstacle blocking a public road, pollution in a public waterway or a factory that emits a noxious gas.

Unlike personal injury cases, public nuisance cases, which are often brought by local governments, do not seek damages to compensate plaintiffs for an injury. Instead, they seek to make the party responsible for the nuisance pay to abate, or fix, the condition. The amount of money the defendant must pay depends on the cost of abatement.

How does California’s lawsuit fit in?

California’s case is one of many recent lawsuits that try to apply the concept of public nuisance more broadly than it has been used historically. Rather than accusing Exxon of directly polluting public land or water, the state says the company deceived the public for decades into believing plastic recycling was much more effective than it is, encouraging a widespread “throw away lifestyle” of disposable plastic products.

The state says that, in turn, led to more widespread plastic pollution, which can be traced directly to Exxon’s conduct. It is seeking to make Exxon pay the cost of abating the pollution, with the amount yet to be determined.

Exxon has denied the allegations, arguing that recycling works and that California itself failed to correct problems in its recycling system.

California and others have previously used a similar theory in suing Exxon and other oil companies for allegedly covering up their own knowledge about fossil fuels and climate change. Many of those have been tied up for years in legal battles over which courts have jurisdiction to hear them.

How have other recent public nuisance lawsuits fared?

Many recent public nuisance lawsuits have not been tested at trial, but some have ended in large settlements. Notably, opioid drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies have settled with state and local governments nationwide for close to $50 billion over claims they fueled an epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths.

However, a federal judge rejected public nuisance claims in one opioid case, brought by a West Virginia city and county, that did go to trial. The case is currently on appeal.

Broad public nuisance claims have had some success in California. San Francisco won its public nuisance opioid case against Walgreens, which then agreed to settle for $230 million last year rather than pursue an appeal.

The state’s highest court in 1997 ruled that gang activity could be a public nuisance, and in 2017 ruled that three companies had created a public nuisance with lead paint used throughout the state and must pay to abate it.

There are limits, however; a state court judge in June rejected public nuisance claims by school districts accusing social media companies of encouraging addiction among their students.

Have any similar lawsuits been filed over plastic pollution?

Yes. New York last year brought a public nuisance lawsuit accusing PepsiCo of fueling plastic pollution with its single-use plastic bottles, caps and wrappers. U.S. environmental group Earth Island Institute in 2020 brought similar claims against Pepsi and others including Coca-Cola and Nestle, which a judge earlier this year allowed to go forward. The lawsuits remain pending.

Can California’s lawsuit go forward if the court rejects the public nuisance theory?

Yes. In addition to its public nuisance claim, California is bringing claims under the state’s unfair business practices, false advertising and environmental pollution laws. Even without a public nuisance claim, the lawsuit could bring in significant damages if successful.

—Brendan Pierson, Reuters

Italy’s antitrust agency has launched an investigation into a Dublin-based company that operates Shein‘s website and app over possibly misleading environmental claims made on the fast-fashion retailer’s website.

The investigation targets Infinite Styles Services CO. Limited and accuses Shein’s website of trying “to convey an image of production and commercial sustainability of its garments through generic, vague, confusing and/or misleading environmental claims,” the antitrust agency said in a statement.

Shein said it was “ready to cooperate openly with relevant Italian authorities, providing the necessary support and information to address any inquiries”.

The probe is the latest in a string of investigations by regulators across Europe into potentially misleading environmental claims by companies, as new European Union regulation seeks to crack down on greenwashing.

The Italian authority said some information the website gives about Shein’s ‘evoluSHEIN’ collection could mislead consumers about the amount of “green” fabrics used, while also failing to inform them that the garments are not recyclable.

It also said that Shein’s website appeared to emphasise a commitment to decarbonisation which seems to be contradicted by the increase in greenhouse gas emissions shown in Shein‘s sustainability reports for 2022 and 2023.

Founded in China, Shein is known for its cheap tops and dresses. Its treatment of workers and environmental record have come under increased scrutiny following reports that it could list its shares in London.

Under European Union anti-greenwashing regulations that came into force this year and will apply in all member states in two years’ time, companies are banned from making vague environmental claims about their products, like labelling them “energy efficient” or “environmentally friendly” if they don’t provide evidence to back them up.

“We’re going through a green claims correction period, where companies are either going to be investigated and fined, or they go away and get the data to really substantiate and accurately communicate specific claims,” said Abbie Morris, CEO of Compare Ethics, which checks green claims compliance for clients like Reformation and New Look.

Shein, in its statement, said it was committed to complying with laws and regulations in the markets where it operates and to maintaining transparency with its customers.

Italy’s antitrust body, which is in charge of consumer protection as well as competition issues, recently opened investigations into online search giant Google and luxury brands Armani and Dior.

Under Italian legislation, companies found in breach of consumer rights rules face fines ranging from 5,000 euros to 10 million euros ($5,590-$11.2 million).

Shein has its Europe, Middle East and Africa headquarters in Dublin. Its global headquarters are in Singapore.

($1 = 0.8943 euros)

—Elisa Anzolin and Helen Reid, Reuters

Billions of dollars will be spent this year persuading Americans who to vote for, but one billboard campaign is just telling them when to vote.

VoteAmerica, a voter mobilization group, is spending $7 million to put up approximately 800 billboards across 10 states with information about early voting and Election Day. The billboards are simple. They predict that “there will be record high voter turnout this year,” and list the date for Election Day (which is November 5) and list when early voting starts in the state. The ads will go up in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

A 2016 study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an education-focused nonprofit, found 37% of Americans didn’t know when Election Day was. You can’t vote if you don’t know when, though, hence the campaign.

“There’s a myth that people don’t vote because they don’t care or they are turned off from politics,” Debra Cleaver, the founder and CEO of VoteAmerica tells Fast Company. “The truth is, people don’t vote because voting is hard. The date of the election changes every year. Rules change drastically between big elections in some states, and all of the rules vary state by state. It’s unrealistic to expect the average voter to keep up.”

VoteAmerica has been running informational ads about when to vote since 2017, including in special and off-year elections, and Cleaver says she got the idea from “voter suppression” billboards with messages meant to discourage people from voting, like a billboard design in 2012 that warned “Voter Fraud Is a Felony.”

“In both midterm and presidential elections, nefarious groups have put up hundreds of billboards in specifically Black and brown neighborhoods designed to keep people form showing up to vote,” she says. “We know that if these spaces aren’t secured, they could be weaponized to spread false information.”

In VoteAmerica’s first campaign, they rented every single billboard, transit shelter, and bus-stop ad in majority Black counties in Alabama for four weeks ahead of a special Senate election. Door knockers found “every single person they spoke to knew an election was coming because of the billboards,” Cleaver says. In 2018, they found people who lived near their billboards and out-of-home advertising were more likely to vote than people who didn’t.

Says Cleaver: “The single best predictor of whether or not you vote is whether you know the date of the election.”

Federal regulators who say Google holds an illegal monopoly over the technology that matches online advertisers to publishers are vastly underestimating the competition the tech giant faces, an expert hired by Google testified Thursday.

Mark Israel, an economist who prepared an expert report on Google’s behalf, said the government’s claims that Google holds a monopoly over advertising technology are improperly focused on a narrow market the government defines as “open web display advertising,” essentially the rectangular ads that appear on the top and along the right hand side of a web page when a consumer browses the web on a desktop computer.

But the government’s case fails to account for a variety of competition that occurs beyond those rectangular boxes, Israel said. In the real world, advertisers have dramatically shifted where they spend money to social media companies like Facebook and TikTok, and online retailers like Amazon.

When you account for all online display advertising, not just the narrow segment defined by the government’s case, Google gets just 10% of the U.S. market share as of 2022, he said. That’s down from roughly 15% a decade ago.

In addition, advertisers have moved away from placing their ads on the screens of desktop and laptop computers where Google is alleged to control the market, with money migrating to ads placed on apps and mobile device screens. Israel cited marketing data showing display ad spending on desktop and laptop devices has decreased from 71% in 2013 to 17% in 2022.

The government’s case “seems to miss where the competition is today,” Israel said.

His testimony comes as Google wraps up its defense in the third week of an antitrust trial that began earlier this month in Alexandria, Virginia. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has said she expects the government will put on a short rebuttal case Friday. Then the trial will go on hiatus, with both sides submitting proposed findings of fact in November and returning to court to make closing arguments in December. She said she expects to make a ruling by the end of the year.

The government’s case alleges Google has built and maintained an illegal monopoly that restricts choices and inflates costs for online publishers and advertisers. Its control of the market has allowed Google to keep 36 cents on the dollar for every ad bought and sold through its ad tech stack, the government claims.

The government says Google controls advertising tech at every step of the process, including the predominant technology used by publishers to sell their ad space, the predominant technology used by advertisers looking to purchase ad space, and the ad exchanges in the middle that conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to match advertiser to publisher.

The government’s case contends that Google illegally ties those markets together, forcing publishers to use Google’s technology if they want access to Google’s large cache of advertisers.

The government, using more narrow market definitions than those used by Israel, has claimed that Google controls 91% of the market for publisher ad servers and 87% of the market for advertising ad networks.

Google says the government’s case also fails to account for the billions the company has invested to ensure its products, working together, generate better value for publishers and advertisers by matching the right advertisers to the right consumers.

Israel cited data showing publishers working with Google are generating more revenue for each bit of ad space they make available, while advertisers are paying less for each click their ads generate.

That only occurs, Israel said, because Google’s technology is continually improving the quality of the ads by matching advertisers to consumers based on their interests and purchase history.

Israel also disputed the government’s claims that Google gets 36 cents on the dollar for the ad sales it facilitates. He said data shows that percentage has dropped to 31% or 32% in recent years. More importantly, he said, competitors have even higher take rates, with an industry average of 42 cents on the dollar.

The Virginia trial is separate from another case brought by the government alleging that Google’s ubiquitous search engine constitutes an illegal monopoly. In that case, a judge in the district of Columbia ruled in favor of the government and declared the search engine a monopoly, but no decision has yet been made on any potential remedies. The government is scheduled to offer suggestions of proposed remedies next month. Those could include restricting Google from paying tech companies to lock in Google as the default search engine for gadgets like cellphones, or even seeking to force google to sell off parts of its business.

—Matthew Barakat, AP Business Writer

Journalist Ken Klippenstein was deemed by X to have crossed a line when he shared a link to a dossier about Ohio Sen. JD Vance. That has resulted in a ban from the social media platform, and prompted questions over company owner Elon Musk’s supposed neutrality over when and how he intervenes over questionable content.

The dossier, which Klippenstein published on Substack and linked to via his X account, reportedly came from a hack of the Trump campaign believed to have been launched by Iran, and contains details the campaign supposedly checked while vetting Vance prior to his selection as vice presidential nominee.

The document includes information about Vance, including his personal address and part of his Social Security number. That data is what X took issue with, according to a company spokesperson.

“Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number,” the spokesperson tells Fast Company. The X spokesperson declined to clarify on the timeline of the ban, and Klippenstein himself did not respond to a request for comment.

Liam McLoughlin, a social media researcher at the University of Liverpool, says it’s clear here that “Elon Musk has taken a politically motivated approach to content moderation.”

McLoughlin cites as evidence to support that claim the fact that Musk has previously promoted the Twitter Files, dossiers of information obtained under similar means to Vance’s dossier that were heavily hyped shortly after Musk assumed control of the company (then called Twitter). Musk has in the past also criticized the social network for banning the distribution of hacked materials about Hunter Biden, which included medical details and personal images.

Musk has also previously railed against what he called “real time doxxing” of his location—by which he meant the existence of the @ElonJet profile, which used publicly available flight tracking data to see where the billionaire was flying to and from. @ElonJet was banned from Twitter early into Musk’s ownership of the platform, and some users who shared links to its off-Twitter presence were also temporarily banned.

Musk’s latest decision needs to be considered in that light, some argue. “At best, it’s an inconsistent approach to moderation and his own personal values,” says McLoughlin. “At worst, it’s a clear sign that he views content moderation as not about protecting the platform and users, but as a tool of political editorialization.”

That could pose a risk for X in the long run, reckons McLoughlin—because any editorialization could open up allegations that the platform is shunning its protection under Section 230, which indemnifies platforms for the content posted by their users. “If platforms become editorialized and seek to present a small window of acceptable political content, regulators may start to consider options to view them as publishers and hold them liable for content on their platforms,” he says.

WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani is leaving the company after two and a half years. During that time, the company has radically altered its business model to stay competitive in the Ozempic era.

Board member Tara Comonte will step in as interim CEO. Comonte previously served as the president and CFO of burger chain Shake Shack and TMRW Life Sciences, a biotechnology company helping women through the process of getting in-vitro fertilization.

“The courageous transformation of WeightWatchers from a retail weight loss company to a digital weight health company has been the proudest achievement of my career,” Sistani wrote on Instagram.

Sistani, who previously worked at Tumblr and cofounded social media app Houseparty, joined the company in 2022 when it was wrestling with how to create robust digital communities in a Zoom-driven world and compete with digitally native upstarts like Noom.

But the same month she joined, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared the first shortage of a drug that it had approved just a year prior: Wegovy, the semaglutide GLP-1 weight-loss medication made by Novo Nordisk. By the end of 2023, Novo Nordisk achieved more than $18 billion in annual sales of Ozempic and Wegovy, while sales of Eli Lilly’s rival GLP-1 drug, Mounjaro, surpassed $5 billion. GLP-1 sales are expected to hit $133 billion worldwide by 2030, according to MarketWatch.

Declining revenue and a telehealth pivot

Later that year, Sistani oversaw the acquisition of telehealth company Sequence, which prescribes weight-loss drugs, including GLP-1s, for $132 million. Sequence was integrated in the company as a new offering, WeightWatchers Clinic, which cost $99 a month. Clinic patients would also have to pay for the cost of their medication, which is often not covered by insurance and can cost as much as $1,000 a month.

It remains to be seen whether WeightWatchers’ telehealth offerings will change the course of the company, but the past few years have been difficult. The company ended 2023 with annual revenue of $890 million, down 50% from its 2018 peak.

On its most recent earnings call, WeightWatchers lowered its 2024 revenue outlook to at least $770 million, and said it could end the year with 3.1 million subscribers—which would be an 18% year-over-year drop. It has also trimmed costs and conducted layoffs, including executing a 40% reduction in employees at the VP level and above.

WeightWatchers stock, which traded at more than $100 six years ago, is less than $1 a share and was down another 3% on news of Sistani’s departure. In May, Oprah Winfrey, once a prominent spokesperson for the company, left the board and divested from the company. Early this year she announced that she had started taking GLP-1s.

In the high-stakes showdown between the world’s richest man and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, Elon Musk blinked.

Musk’s social media site X has complied with Alexandre de Moraes’s orders and requested its service be reestablished in the country, two sources said Thursday.

X complied with orders to block certain accounts from the platform, name an official legal representative in Brazil, and pay fines imposed for not complying with earlier court orders, his lawyers said in a petition filed Thursday, according to the sources, who are familiar with the document. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

On Saturday, de Moraes ordered the platform to submit additional documentation about its legal representative for court review, which the sources said has been done.

X was blocked on Aug. 30 in the highly online country of 213 million people, where it was one of X’s biggest markets, with more than 20 million users. De Moraes ordered the shutdown after sparring with Musk for months over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation. The company said at the time that de Moraes’ efforts to block certain accounts were illegal moves to censor “political opponents” and that it would not comply. Musk called the judge an enemy of free speech and a criminal. But de Moraes’ decisions have been repeatedly upheld by his peers — including his nationwide block of X.

In a twist, X’s new representative is the same person who held the position before X shuttered its office in Brazil, according to the company’s public filing with the Sao Paulo commercial registry. That happened after de Moraes threatened to arrest the person, Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição, if X did not comply with orders to block accounts.

In an apparent effort to avoid her getting blamed for potential violations of Brazilian law — and risk arrest — a clause has been written into the representation agreement that any action on the part of X that will result in obligations for her requires prior instruction in writing from the company, according to the company’s filing at the registry.

Associated Press emails and calls to her office were not returned. The Supreme Court’s press office has not confirmed receipt of X’s documents, and X did not immediately respond to a request from the AP.

An encouraging sign, perhaps motivated by business sense

It’s still early to know whether the feud between X and Brazil’s top court is over, said Bruna Santos, a lawyer and global campaigns manager at nonprofit Digital Action. However, the platform’s decision to appoint a representative indicates the company has entered “a state of good-faith cooperation with Brazilian authorities.”

And the fact that Brazilian users migrated in droves to rival platforms BlueSky and Threads may have played into X’s backstep, Santos added.

“There must be a genuine concern on the platform that they are losing users, the core users from the early Twitter days, or the loyal ones, who stick around for good,” she said.

At a university in Rio de Janeiro, some students told the AP they were heartened by the news.

“I used it a lot as a way to search for information and news, and I missed it,” said João Maurício Almeida Raposo, a 19-year-old economics student. He started using Threads, but doesn’t like it.

Brazil is not the first country to ban X — far from it — but such a drastic step has generally been limited to authoritarian regimes. The platform and its former incarnation, Twitter, have been banned in Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Venezuela and Turkmenistan, for instance. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, have also temporarily suspended X before, usually to quell dissent and unrest.

X’s dustup with Brazil has some parallels to the company’s dealings with the Indian government three years ago, back when it was still called Twitter and before Musk purchased it for $44 billion. In 2021, India threatened to arrest employees of Twitter (as well as Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp), for not complying with the government’s requests to take down posts related to farmers’ protests that rocked the country.

Speech is more limited in Brazil than in the US

Unlike in the U.S., where free speech is baked into the constitution, in Brazil speech is more limited, with restrictions on homophobia and racism, for example, and judges can order sites to remove content. Many of de Moraes’ decisions are sealed from the public and neither he nor X has disclosed the full list of accounts he has ordered blocked, but prominent supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right activists were among those that X earlier removed from the platform.

Some belonged to a network known in Brazil as “digital militias.” They were targeted by a yearslong investigation overseen by de Moraes, initially for allegedly spreading defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, and then after Bolsonaro’s 2022 election loss for inciting demonstrations across the country that were seeking to overturn President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory.

In April, de Moraes included Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation into the U.S. business executive for alleged obstruction.

In that decision, de Moraes noted that Musk began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court’s actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court’s orders to block certain accounts.

Musk, meanwhile, accused de Moraes of suppressing free speech and violating Brazil’s constitution, and noted on X that users could seek to bypass any shutdown of the social media platform by using VPNs. In an unusual move for a democratic country, de Moraes also set exorbitant daily fines for anyone using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access the platform.

X’s defiant stance appears to have softened following the shutdown.

On Sept. 18, after X became accessible to some users in Brazil despite the ban, the Government Affairs account posted that this was due to a change in network providers and was “inadvertent and temporary.” But, it added, “we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.”

The score is 1-0, but the game isn’t necessarily over, said Carlos Affonso Souza, a lawyer and director of the Institute for Technology and Society, a Rio-based think tank.

“The first round ends with a victory for de Moraes, who adopted drastic measures, but which wound up producing the effect of making X do a reversal and comply with orders,” Affonso Souza said.

Ortutay reported from San Francisco.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA and BARBARA ORTUTAY Associated Press

Donald Trump has identified what he sees as an all-purpose fix for what ails America: Slap huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the United States.
The former president and current Republican nominee asserts that tariffs — basically import taxes — will create more factory jobs, shrink the federal deficit, lower food prices and allow the government to subsidize childcare.
He even says tariffs can promote world peace.

“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump said this month in Flint, Michigan.

As president, Trump imposed tariffs with a flourish — targeting imported solar panels, steel, aluminum and pretty much everything from China.

“Tariff Man,” he called himself.

This time, he’s gone much further: He has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports.
This week, he raised the ante still higher. To punish the machinery manufacturer John Deere for its plans to move some production to Mexico, Trump vowed to tax anything Deere tried to export back into the United States — at 200%.

And he threatened to hit Mexican-made goods with 100% tariffs, a move that would risk blowing up a trade deal that Trump’s own administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico.

Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity. They are especially alarmed by Trump’s latest proposed tariffs.

This week, a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics concluded that Trump’s main tariff proposals — assuming that the targeted countries retaliated with their own tariffs — would slash more than a percentage point off the U.S. economy by 2026 and make inflation 2 percentage points higher next year than it otherwise would have been.

Vice President Kamala Harris has dismissed Trump’s tariff threats as unserious. Her campaign has cited a report that found that Trump’s 20% universal tariff would cost a typical family nearly $4,000 a year.

But the Biden-Harris administration itself has a taste for tariffs. It retained the taxes Trump imposed on $360 billion in Chinese goods. And it imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.

Indeed, the United States in recent years has gradually retreated from its post-World War II role of promoting global free trade and lower tariffs. That shift has been a response to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, widely attributed to unfettered tree trade and an increasingly aggressive China.

Tariffs are a tax on imports

They are typically charged as a percentage of the price a buyer pays a foreign seller. In the United States, tariffs are collected by Customs and Border Protection agents at 328 ports of entry across the country.

The tariff rates range from passenger cars (2.5%) to golf shoes (6%). Tariffs can be lower for countries with which the United States has trade agreements. For example, most goods can move among the United States, Mexico and Canada tariff-free because of Trump’s US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

There’s much misinformation about who actually pays tariffs

Trump insists that tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. In fact, its is importers — American companies — that pay tariffs, and the money goes to U.S. Treasury. Those companies, in turn, typically pass their higher costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices. That’s why economists say consumers usually end up footing the bill for tariffs.

Still, tariffs can hurt foreign countries by making their products pricier and harder to sell abroad. Yang Zhou, an economist at Shanghai’s Fudan University, concluded in a study that Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods inflicted more than three times as much damage to the Chinese economy as they did to the U.S. economy.

Tariffs are intended mainly to protect domestic industries

By raising the price of imports, tariffs can protect home-grown manufacturers. They may also serve to punish foreign countries for committing unfair trade practices, like subsidizing their exporters or dumping products at unfairly low prices.

Before the federal income tax was established in 1913, tariffs were a major revenue driver for the government. From 1790 to 1860, tariffs accounted for 90% of federal revenue, according to Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economist who has studied the history of trade policy.

Tariffs fell out of favor as global trade grew after World War II. The government needed vastly bigger revenue streams to finance its operations.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the government is expected to collect $81.4 billion in tariffs and fees. That’s a trifle next to the $2.5 trillion that’s expected to come from individual income taxes and the $1.7 trillion from Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Still, Trump wants to enact a budget policy that resembles what was in place in the 19th century.

He has argued that tariffs on farm imports could lower food prices by aiding America’s farmers. In fact, tariffs on imported food products would almost certainly send grocery prices up by reducing choices for consumers and competition for American producers.

Tariffs can also be used to pressure other countries on issues that may or may not be related to trade. In 2019, for example, Trump used the threat of tariffs as leverage to persuade Mexico to crack down on waves of Central American migrants crossing Mexican territory on their way to the United States.
Trump even sees tariffs as a way to prevent wars.

“I can do it with a phone call,” he said at an August rally in North Carolina.
If another country tries to start a war, he said he’d issue a threat:
“We’re going to charge you 100% tariffs. And all of a sudden, the president or prime minister or dictator or whoever the hell is running the country says to me, ‘Sir, we won’t go to war.’ “

Economists generally consider tariffs self-defeating

Tariffs raise costs for companies and consumers that rely on imports. They’re also likely to provoke retaliation.

The European Union, for example, punched back against Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum by taxing U.S. products, from bourbon to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Likewise, China responded to Trump’s trade war by slapping tariffs on American goods, including soybeans and pork in a calculated drive to hurt his supporters in farm country.

A study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Zurich, Harvard and the World Bank concluded that Trump’s tariffs failed to restore jobs to the American heartland. The tariffs “neither raised nor lowered U.S. employment” where they were supposed to protect jobs, the study found.

Despite Trump’s 2018 taxes on imported steel, for example, the number of jobs at U.S. steel plants barely budged: They remained right around 140,000. By comparison, Walmart alone employs 1.6 million people in the United States.
Worse, the retaliatory taxes imposed by China and other nations on U.S. goods had “negative employment impacts,” especially for farmers, the study found. These retaliatory tariffs were only partly offset by billions in government aid that Trump doled out to farmers. The Trump tariffs also damaged companies that relied on targeted imports.

If Trump’s trade war fizzled as policy, though, it succeeded as politics. The study found that support for Trump and Republican congressional candidates rose in areas most exposed to the import tariffs — the industrial Midwest and manufacturing-heavy Southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee.

—Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer

He’s sold Bibles, sneakers, photo books and cryptocurrency during his third campaign for president. Now, Donald Trump is launching a new business venture: diamond-encrusted watches.

The Republican presidential candidate unveiled the “Official Trump Watch Collection” on Thursday. The most expensive, listed as including 122 diamonds on its bezel and available in three 18-karat gold styles, costs $100,000. Another “Fight Fight Fight” model is listed at $499.

Trump has hawked a series of branded products since he launched his 2024 White House campaign, following his long tradition of melding his political and business interests. Thursday’s launch, coming 40 days before Election Day, could open him up to criticism about monetizing his campaign, particularly as he makes an argument that Vice President Kamala Harris is out of touch with Americans’ economic struggles.

While websites for the various products note that proceeds from their sales do not directly benefit Trump or his campaign, they also note that each is subject to a “paid license agreement.” That’s the same mechanism that allowed Trump, well before he entered politics, to profit for years from sales of everything from water, vodka and steaks.

Earlier this week, he announced the sale of $100 silver coins bearing his face. In March, ahead of Easter, Trump released a video on Truth Social urging his supporters to spend $59.99 for a “God Bless the USA Bible,” inspired by country singer Lee Greenwood’s patriotic ballad. Trump takes the stage to the song at each of his rallies and has appeared with Greenwood at events.

In February, he hawked new Trump-branded sneakers at “Sneaker Con,” a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.” The shoes, shiny gold high tops with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold as “Never Surrender High-Tops” for $399 on a new website that also sells other Trump-branded shoes and “Victory47” cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle.

Trump has also dabbled in NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, and last year reported earning between $100,000 and $1 million from a series of digital trading cards that portrayed him in cartoon-like images, including as an astronaut, a cowboy and a superhero.

Some of those items, including the coins, sneakers and Bibles, were listed as affiliated with CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure, has a similar arrangement with 45Footwear, which also says it uses Trump’s “name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

The items have gone up for sale in the wake of a $489 million civil fraud judgment against the former president, which a New York appellate court on Thursday appeared to be open to reducing or reversing.

According to a disclaimer on a sales website, the watches are covered by a similar agreement to license Trump’s name, image and likeness, and proceeds from their sales do not go to Trump’s campaign or the Trump Organization and “are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals.”

Instead, TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC — the company listed as the sales entity — says it uses the “‘Trump’ name, image and likeness under a paid license agreement which may be terminated or revoked according to its terms. Trump Watches are intended as collectible items for individual enjoyment only, not for investment purposes.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign referred questions about the licensing deal to the Trump Organization, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment. TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC also did not immediately respond to an inquiry on the deal via its website.

Meg Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

—Meg Kinnard, Associated Press

Last night, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. The Category 4 hurricane was the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the Big Bend areas of the state. Hurricane Helene made landfall just after 11 p.m. in Florida before moving up to Georgia and the Carolinas. 

Reuters is reporting that at least four people have died with more than three million homes left without power. This is in addition to areas of Florida being swamped with up to 10 feet of seawater.

It is likely that it will still be days before we know the final toll Hurricane Helene has had on life, property, and livelihoods, but the good news is if you want to start helping victims of the hurricane, you can begin now. Here’s how:

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross has a page on its website dedicated to accepting monetary donations for those affected by Hurricane Helene. You can choose to make a fixed one-time donation in any amount from $10 or more.

Donations can be made via credit card, Apple Pay, or PayPal. Funds will go to help those people affected by the hurricane. 

The Florida Disaster Fund

The State of Florida has a private disaster fund called the Florida Disaster Fund, which helps Florida residents recover from natural disasters. The Florida Disaster Fund accepts online donations in the amount of $10 or more. You can pay via debit or credit card.

The Florida Disaster Fund also offers a PayPal fundraiser page where you can donate. Finally, the fund also accepts donations via check. Checks can be mailed to: Volunteer Florida Foundation, Attn: Florida Disaster Fund, 1545 Raymond Diehl Road, Suite 250, Tallahassee, FL 32308.

Salvation Army

The Salvation Army has a dedicated page set up to accept donations for Hurricane Helene relief. Donations can be made in any amount, and they can also be made in currencies other than USD. 

The Salvation Army’s relief fund page also has a tool that lets you see if your employer will match your donation. Your donation can be paid via bank accounts, credit card, Apple Pay, or PayPal.

United Way of Florida

The United Way of Florida accepts donations to help with relief from disasters that hit the state.  You can make a donation in any amount and choose whether you want it to be a onetime donation or a monthly or annual one. The United Way of Florida also accepts donations by check, which you can find the details for here.

How big is Helene?

To give you an idea about the sheer magnitude of the storm, check out the below tweet from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It shows a time-lapse of Hurricane Helene from making landfall in Florida’s Big Bends to its trek north through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

Unlike many other areas of real estate, such as mortgage and commercial real estate, publicly traded homebuilders have shown resilience over the past few years. Not only were large builders able to absorb the mortgage rate shock two years ago—partly by offering affordability adjustments like mortgage rate buydowns, outright price cuts, and smaller homes in some housing markets—but they have also maintained profit margins and net new orders that are at or exceed pre-pandemic levels. Back in May, ResiClub declared these big builders the winners of the 2024 housing market.

Earlier this week, Forbes published an article, “The Homebuilders Getting Rich Off America’s Housing Shortage,” finding that the bull market for giant homebuilders has created 12 new billionaires in the industry as their stocks have soared.

Among the 10 largest publicly traded homebuilders tracked by ResiClub, all 10 have outperformed the S&P 500 Index this decade:

M/I Homes: +210% 

Toll Brothers: +192%

PulteGroup: +184% 

Lennar: +169% 

D.R. Horton: +167%

Meritage Homes: +165%

Taylor Morrison: +154% 

Tri Pointe Homes: +139%

KB Home: +105% 

NVR: +99%

S&P 500: +69%

At the start of the decade, the 10 largest publicly traded homebuilders had a combined market cap of $77.7 billion, according to S&P Global.

As of Wednesday, those same 10 publicly traded homebuilders have a combined market cap of $170.0 billion, according to S&P Global.

Here are the 12 new billionaires in the homebuilding industry, according to Forbes:

Horton family

Ryan Horton: $3 billion

Reagan Horton: $3 billion

Marty Horton: $1.5 billion

After D.R. Horton founder Donald Horton died in May, his wife Marty and two sons Ryan and Reagan inherited the fortune.

Miller family

Stuart Miller: $1.8 billion (executive chairman and co-CEO of Lennar)

Jeffrey Miller: $1.4 billion

Leslie Miller Saiontz: $1.4 billion

Leonard Miller founded Lennar Corp. and his son Stuart has been running the company since 1997.

Kathy Britton: $2.6 billion

After the death of Bob Perry, founder of Perry Homes, Britton has led the company as executive chair.

Bruce Toll: $2 billion

Toll is the cofounder of Toll Brothers who runs BET Investors, a commercial real estate firm.

Itzhak Ezratti & family: $1.9 billion

Ezratti is cofounder GL Homes, which his son Misha now manages as its president.

Thomas Bradbury: $1.7 billion

Bradbury is founder and executive chairman of Smith Douglas Homes.

Elly Reisman: $1.4 billion

Reisman is cofounder of Great Gulf Homes as well as a director and part-owner of Ashton Woods Homes.

David Weekley: $1.1 billion

Weekley cofounded David Weekley Homes along with his brother Dick.