Residents east of Atlanta were again warned Tuesday to take shelter where they are if shifting winds push the still-billowing chemical cloud from a chlorine factory fire over their neighborhood.

A shelter-in-place order had just ended Monday evening for Rockdale County, where the chemical fire sent a huge plume of orange and black smoke into the Georgia sky on Sunday. People complained about a strong chemical smell and haze for many miles around the BioLab plant in Conyers, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Atlanta.

“Due to the weather, the plume is banking down and moving throughout the county. If the cloud moves over your vicinity, please shelter in place until the cloud moves out,” Rockdale County officials told residents on social media early Tuesday.

The City of Atlanta said its firefighters continue to monitor the fallout, and urged anyone with “nose, throat or eye irritation, or difficulty breathing,” to call a Georgia Poison Center hotline.

“If you don’t have to be outside, if you don’t have to be on the roadways, stay home,” Rockdale County Board of Commissioners Chairman Oz Nesbitt said at a Tuesday morning news conference.

The fire was brought under control around 4 p.m. Sunday, officials said, but firefighters were still actively engaged Tuesday as the smoldering material kept sending up a plume of now grey-white smoke. The pollution “constantly shifted,” and with no strong prevailing wind to disperse it, smelly haze lingered across the Atlanta area.

BioLab’s website says it is the swimming pool and spa water care division of Lawrenceville, Georgia-based KIK Consumer Products. Residents around the area expressed frustration that company officials in their public statements didn’t specify what “products” were burning.

Atlanta’s fire department said it was testing for the presence of chemicals including chlorine, hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also has been monitoring, for “chlorine and related compounds.”

Federal officials are investigating what led to the fire and how it has been handled. The sprinkler system showered water onto water-reactive chemicals around 5 a.m. Sunday, Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel said. There were employees inside the plant, but no injuries were reported.

Residents north of Interstate 20 were ordered to evacuate on Sunday, while others were told to shelter in place. But residents of Atlanta’s densely populated eastern suburbs in DeKalb and Gwinnett counties also reported seeing a haze or the strong smell of chlorine.

Hours passed Sunday before DeKalb emergency management authorities said data suggested the air pollution was “unlikely to cause harm to most people.” The DeKalb statement said anyone concerned about breathing the chemicals could stay inside with their homes sealed up and air conditioners turned off.

An EPA statement said “the odor threshold for chlorine is very low, meaning people can smell it at very low concentrations that do not cause harm.”

Nesbitt made a point of holding the news conference outdoors Tuesday morning, to show that “it’s all right for us to stand out here.” But he said “this has happened too many times,” and promised to work with state and federal officials to determine what’s to be done about the plant, once the immediate crisis is resolved.

Also Tuesday, lawyers for Fannie and Albert Tartt of Conyers, Georgia, filed a lawsuit against BioLab on behalf of the tens of thousands of people who had to evacuate or shelter-in-place, accusing the company of “reckless and egregious conduct.”

“What’s especially egregious is that the defendants have been here before — having exposed this community in a similar fashion over the past 20 years,” said attorney Daniel R. Flynn, of the DiCello Levitt law firm, one of several involved in the class action.

BioLab did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the lawsuit.

There have been other destructive fires at the Conyers complex, which opened in 1973.

In May 2004, multiple warehouse explosions led to a huge fire and chlorine-laden fire that prompted the evacuation of 300 people, at least nine of whom sought hospital treatment for burning eyes and lungs, The Associated Press reported.

In June 2015, six Rockdale County firefighters were hurt in a fire at the complex, and another fire in 2016 prompted voluntary evacuations, the Rockdale Citizen reported.

In September 2020, a chemical fire prompted authorities to shut down Interstate 20. Biolab workers tried to isolate decomposing chemicals to prevent the catastrophe, but their forklifts slid on the wet floor amid the fumes, and poorly stacked pallets of materials hindered firefighters, nine of whom went to hospitals after inhaling hazardous vapors, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board determined.

—Jeff Martin, Associated Press

Associated Press reporter Freida Frisaro contributed to this report.

U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in August as the American labor market continued to show resilience.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8 million vacancies in August, up from 7.7 million in July. Economists had expected openings to be virtually unchanged. Openings were up in construction and in state and local government.

Layoffs fell in August. But the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their job prospects — slid to the lowest level since August 2020 when the economy was reeling from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at 12.2 million in March 2022, but they remain above where they stood before the coronavirus pandemic hit the American economy in early 2020. When the economy roared back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns, companies scrambled to find enough workers to keep up with customer orders.

The overheating economy caused an outburst of inflation, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Inflation has come down — from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 2.5% in August.

The economy proved surprisingly resilient in the face of the Fed hikes, averting a widely forecast recession. But the job market has gradually lost momentum. Hiring averaged just 116,000 net new jobs a month from June through August — the weakest three-month average since mid-2020.

When the Labor Department releases its jobs report for September on Friday, it is expected to show that employers added 143,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.2%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

The Fed, satisfied with the progress against inflation and worried about the cooling job market, last month cut its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, the central bank’s first and biggest rate cut since March 2020.

“Job openings had a big gain, and while these numbers are volatile, it’s likely employers see falling interest rates spurring the economy and may want to staff up,” said Robert Frick, economist with the Navy Federal Credit Union.

—Paul Wiseman, Associated Press economics writer

After altering how Hollywood discovers scripts, The Black List is now targeting the book world. Founder and CEO Franklin Leonard proved that overlooked scripts like Slumdog Millionaire and I, Tonya can become commercial and artistic hits. Now, grounded in his belief that the Black List can act as a giant metal detector for uncovering great fiction, he explains his reasoning and plans for this expansion.  

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

Today I want to zero in on The Black List itself because you’ve recently embarked on an expansion.

The Black List started as a side project for you, an underground kind of crowdsourcing effort aimed at identifying the best Hollywood scripts that weren’t getting made. In the years since, you’ve built it into a platform for scriptwriters and playwrights for training, identifying talent, linking talent to opportunity. Now you’re expanding into something new. So can you explain to us sort of where The Black List is, what the expansion is, and why you’ve gone down this road?

Yeah, like you said, it started as this annual survey of Hollywood’s most liked unproduced screenplays that quickly became an arbiter of taste in the business and sort of served early notice of writers and scripts that the industry should be paying attention to with great success. For the last couple of years, a lot of folks in the book space had been asking me when we were going to expand into novels. I tend to be a research data-driven person, and I also knew that the reason The Black List worked was that it had been purpose-built for the film and television industry ecosystem. I was trying to solve a problem in that space.

Something you knew personally, something you lived through, right?

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been in the industry for more than 10 years before we launched the website. I’ve been there for more than 20 now. So we were building something that could optimize the system in the film and television, and then the theater space.

And Howie Sanders at Anonymous Content was really adamant that I seriously consider this and set me up on a series of meetings with people in the book industry. What I was pleasantly surprised to find was that people were really excited about it, that there was a recognition that there was a lot of great writing happening in places that they didn’t know about and that they couldn’t find. And that we could be an industrial-size metal detector and take an infinite pile of haystacks and find the needles.

And that’s really what we built. So The Black List expanded into fiction in early September. It means that if you are a novelist, if you have an unpublished novel, a self-published novel, or a published novel, you can create a writer profile on The Black List website, list all the things that you’ve created so that they’re searchable by people in the publishing, film, television, and theater businesses. 

And if you want to get feedback on your work or you want to make it directly available to those people, you can host it on the site. You can purchase feedback. And when that feedback is really positive, we’ll tell everybody in the publishing world and in the film and television world that this is a book you should probably pay attention to.

And again, the goal remains to identify and celebrate the best writing we can find. We’re going to find a lot of great books that a lot of people are going to put out and a lot of books that are going to get adapted into film and television. It’s a tide that raises all boats.

So much of it seems to be about what is seen as risky, right? Like at the Emmys recently, Baby Reindeer‘s Richard Gadd echoed what American Fiction director Cord Jefferson said at the Oscars, right? The industry needs to take more gambles on original work. And it sounds like what The Black List is trying to do in some ways is to make that easier by kind of pre-vetting things, right?

Yeah, I think that’s fair.

I always have anxiety when people say that they need to make more risky work. Because I actually think that if you’re thinking about things rationally and you’re trying to optimize for your economic outcomes, making more risky work is not necessarily the strategy.

My argument is, what if our assumptions about what is risky are deeply flawed? And so we’ve been making decisions about risk assessment that are wrong, right? And I think there’s considerable evidence to that effect.

For years I was told in my career that female-driven action movies don’t work. They just don’t work. Everybody knows they don’t work. I remember thinking, okay, I guess that’s true.

And look, this is why Hunger Games was passed on by literally almost every studio. “Female-driven action doesn’t work.” That wasn’t universal at the time. But this is conventional wisdom that’s like all convention and no wisdom. Similarly, Black movies don’t sell abroad. I genuinely don’t know why people think that, but it was an assumption for a long time in the industry that I still think we’re growing out of, but people weren’t looking at the data.

Coming to America made several hundred million dollars internationally in the ’80s. Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Denzel, they’ve been global movie stars for years.

But those are the assumptions that define what is perceived as risky and not risky.

And so my point of view is these assumptions are wrong. And when we change these assumptions, we’re going to end up making more things that would have in an old paradigm been perceived as risky but actually are optimal to make more money. And here’s my favorite example of this:

Harvard Business School did a study on The Black List a couple of years ago, the annual Black List survey. And these are scripts that at the end of the year are in production, but they are very much beloved by Hollywood executives. There are things like The Imitation Game, Slumdog Millionaire, and Juno.

But Harvard Business School found that movies made from Black List scripts—the weird ones, the things that people think, “Oh, it’s impossible to make this. Those are too risky”—90% more in revenue controlling for all other factors than movies made from scripts not on the annual Black List. 

And that’s because great writing has a lot of value, no matter how risky the perceived subject matter is. But if you nail a good story, well told, it’s probably a good investment. It’s probably your best investment.

I had Janice Min of The Ankler on recently after the Emmys, and she talked about how she feels like the entertainment industry is sort of running away from doing anything that’s different. After the Oscars, you were pretty excited about the quality of the work that was recognized this year. Are you optimistic or wary about the future?

I will always have a great deal of optimism about the potential for creative people to solve problems in the pursuit of creating great art.

Every year when the Emmys happen and the Oscars happen, if you look around at the nominees, you look around at the best movies that are made every year, the best TV that’s made every year, you can make a usually a pretty compelling case that this is a pretty exciting time, that amazing things are being made.

I think at the same time, the challenges that face those creatives to execute on those singular visions continue to increase.

It’s harder to get budgets. It’s harder to get the resources that you need to get distribution in a way that can allow your thing to even be found, but I’m also optimistic because this remains the first era where a lot of kinds of people even have a chance to make anything.

A lot of people have nostalgia for 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 60 years ago, “Ah, better things were being made. They were more idiosyncratic, and people, filmmakers had actual resources to do things.” It’s not true. It’s a fiction.

Some filmmakers had resources to do things, but women filmmakers didn’t. Filmmakers of color didn’t. Queer filmmakers didn’t. Disabled filmmakers didn’t. And so I’d rather be in this era and be able to enjoy the bounty of those folks than a fictive history where everything was easier. I’ll also say that we have a sort of nostalgia about past eras in terms of where movies came from. Everyone’s like, “Oh, there were so many more original movies made years ago.” I was looking back at the top 30 movies in 1999. The vast majority of those are sequels and remakes and adaptations.

So even then—

Even then?

Even then, and by the way, if you think about it, Gone with the Wind is an adaptation of a novel, right? Like, heck, Birth of a Nation is an adaptation of a novel, if we’re being real about it. So it is not as though we were already not, as a business, saying, “Wow, we’re investing a lot of capital into making this thing that we’re going to try to distribute to a lot of people.” Wouldn’t it be helpful if they were sort of already familiar with the story and the thing so that they were more excited to go to it?

And I don’t think anybody really cares all that much about whether something was adapted or a remake. They just want it to be good.

With demand for AI chips soaring, California-based AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in preparation for an initial public offering.

Cerebras is a competitor to companies such as Nvidia, and given the massive demand among investors for chipmaker stocks, the company appears primed to start issuing shares in the near future, having applied to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CBRS. No listing date has been announced yet, but a source familiar with the plans said the company is aiming for later this month.

An IPO from Cerebras could also help kick-start a still-sluggish market for U.S. listings, which have seen a significant slowdown following a flurry of activity during and after the pandemic a few years ago.

Is Cerebras profitable?

Potential investors may want to take note that Cerebras is still operating in the red. According to its S-1 filing, the company saw a net loss of nearly $67 million during the first half of 2024, with roughly $136 million in sales. It also saw net losses of $127.2 million and $177.7 million during 2023 and 2022, respectively.

The numbers do appear to be trending in the right direction, however, as the filing notes that the losses from the first half of 2024 represent a year-over-year “reduction of 14%.”

As for what the IPO could ultimately net the company, Renaissance Capital estimates that a Cerebras IPO could generate $800 million.

AI-focused companies are lining up to go public

Overall, the IPO market has been slow, though data from EY shows that the recently concluded third quarter of 2024 did see an uptick over the second quarter.

Globally, there were 310 IPOs during the third quarter this year, netting nearly $25 billion in proceeds. For comparison, during the third quarter of 2022, there were 371 IPOs, with more than $52 billion in proceeds. 

EY, in a brief, also notes that AI enthusiasm is shining through in the IPO data. “Approximately 50 AI companies are currently in IPO registration; about one-third are profitable. This trend reflects sustained investor interest in AI-driven innovations, despite challenges around profitability,” it reads.

Further, a recent interest rate cut by the Fed—and the prospect of more cuts ahead—could also help fuel more IPO activity. But there are still a lot of factors at play that could keep investors on the sidelines for now, says Mark Schwartz, EY Americas IPO and SPAC advisory leader.

“Despite largely favorable market conditions following a mid-summer dip in confidence of sorts, issuers are approaching the rest of this year cautiously in light of the election and geopolitical concerns,” Schwartz said in a statement to Fast Company. “But, as we get clarity on the political scene and the interest rate environment, there is growing conviction that a stronger IPO market will emerge next year.”

Jamming out at a concert puts music front and center in a person’s life, but only for a moment. Most of the time, music serves more as sonic wallpaper, spicing up the background while we go about the business of our day. For many people, that includes working. But is a particular kind of music better for boosting productivity?

Deciding on which music to have cranking through the day’s tasks, though, is something America’s Air Podded workforce may not be doing with much intentionality. The choice could be informed by mood, by recent album reviews, by Spotify’s algorithm, or any number of other factors. But according to a new study, you may want to consider two important variables: predictability and novelty.

“Music is just such an emotional medium,” says Yiren Ren, a sixth-year PhD student in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology. “It can not only modulate how you feel at that moment, it can also modulate the memory you’re recalling at that moment and how you perceive that memory itself.”

As a composer and a scientist, Ren has long been interested in how music interacts with our brains. She recently put her interests into practice, conducting a series of studies with Georgia Tech cognitive neuroscientist Thackery Brown, who runs the university’s MAP (Memory, Affect, and Planning) Lab. One of the studies examined how music affected a subject’s ability to process or remember new information.

To determine whether different rhythms and melodies made an impact on people’s cognitive abilities, the scientists asked 48 participants to learn sequences of abstract shapes while listening to different types of music. The study revealed that familiar, predictable music strengthened the participants’ ability to keep sequences straight, while familiar music tweaked to be more atonal put a roadblock in the participants’ path.

If predictability in music helps cognitive clarity and productivity while performing tasks, it shouldn’t surprise anyone who gravitates to familiar favorites during the workday. But there’s also something to be said for listening to new albums on the clock.

While predictable music can lead to greater cognitive clarity, music that is novel to the listener may, in some ways, allow them to stick with a task longer because it contains surprising elements that can jar listeners out of complacency. Or at least that was the impact it seemed to have on some participants in the study.

This side effect led Ren to reexamine her love of jazz. The scientist grew up in China and only discovered jazz’s eclectic rhythms after moving to the U.S. It quickly became a staple in her catalog of music to play while working. Now, she understands why.  

“The syntax of jazz was just a new world to me when I discovered it, and I still cannot predict it,” she says. “It gives me a fresh surprise all the time, and I think that kind of surprise adds a little uncertainty and hits the sweet spot of good mood, good attention, and focus on the task.”

Listening to the same kind of music all the time, though, would remove some of that novelty. And the same music doesn’t translate well across all tasks. Ren shared some recommendations based on both her studies and personal experiences around which types of music help with productivity when it comes to specific types of work.

Correspondence

Whether you’ve reached inbox infinity or just have several Slack conversations that need immediate attention, Ren has a tip: Consider listening to music with lyrics in a foreign language (or music without any lyrics at all). Song lyrics in your native tongue can get tangled up with the words you’re reading and formulating responses to, creating a hurdle, rather than guardrails, to getting work done. Lyrics you can’t quite understand, on the other hand, just add another element in the wall of sound.

Coding

While doing any coding work, Ren reaches for fast rock music. Propulsive rhythms are what get people dancing, she says, and having fast rock play in the background while coding never fails to get her fingers pumping.

Writing

Scientists have long debated the Mozart effect, which describes how listening to Mozart’s symphonies tends to invite higher cognitive skills than other music. “Researchers think it’s because Mozart’s music triggers a good level of attention and arousal,” Ren says, “but not too many disruptions or too much tension.” While the scientist does indeed find classical music to be perfect for accompanying focused writing, she prefers Beethoven or Chopin for the job.

Of course, as helpful as music can be for amping up attention and focus, it isn’t always necessary.

“Sometimes, the best music to work to,” Ren says, “is no music.”

Speaker company Sonos laid out a number of new plans and commitments on Tuesday in an attempt to turn around the beleaguered sound company following a bug-riddled app relaunch in May that’s still impacting the company.

The changes mostly focus on creating new avenues for employees and customers to raise concerns, plus more stringent beta testing. The seven commitments include: “unwavering focus on customer experience, increasing the stringency of prelaunch testing, approaching change with humility, appointing a quality ombudsperson, extending our home speaker warranties, relentless app improvement, and establishing a customer advisory board.”

Sonos’s executive leadership team will also not receive annual bonus payments for the October 2024 to September 2025 fiscal year unless the company “succeeds in improving the quality of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust.”

Sonos in May had rolled out a new version of its app that ended up causing tons of users to have extreme issues with their wireless home-speaker systems. Features that were a staple within the app, like setting speakers at a specific volume level or adding new devices, were missing or broken, according to user complaints. The company’s CEO said during an earnings call with investors in August that fixing the ongoing issues with the mobile app would cost the company roughly $20 million to $30 million. It also laid off 100 employees that same month.

“We’re working to ensure we don’t just fix our mistakes but actively build a better Sonos experience for everyone,” the company wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Sonos said that in terms of progress, many of the initiatives are already underway, while others will roll out throughout the year. More than 80% of the features removed from the app have been restored, it said, and expects to hit 100% in the coming weeks.

“We are committed to making Sonos better than ever, and these commitments are just the beginning of that journey,” the company said.

There are ways to get around using the Sonos app, which could help antsy users who don’t want to wait for the company to roll out individual fixes. Apple users can lean on Airplay, for example, while Android users can work with AirMusic.

The U.S. dockworkers who went on strike early Tuesday are just the latest unionized group to back their demands for better contracts by walking off the job to illustrate their value to both the national economy and their employers’ bottom line.

Unions representing auto workers, actors, hotel housekeepers, and aircraft-assembly workers all called strikes as organized labor made itself heard over the past year. Members argued they made the sacrifices their companies asked of them during the pandemic and rough economic patches, and now it’s time to catch up, particularly after several years of heightened inflation.

Between 2022 and 2023, the number of work stoppages rose 9% to 466 strikes and four lockouts, according to figures maintained by Cornell University’s ILR [Industrial and Labor Relations] School. However, the number of workers involved in work stoppages, approximately 539,000, was more than double that of the previous year, according to the school’s research.

A database maintained by Cornell and the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recorded 250 strikes and other labor actions in 2024 as of Monday.

Here’s a look at some recent showdowns between companies and organized labor:

U.S. ports and the International Longshoremen’s Association

Dockworkers at 36 ports from Maine to Texas hit picket lines early Tuesday, the first strike for them in decades, over wages and automation even though progress had been reported in contract talks. The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight.

The alliance said it had increased its offer to 50% raises over six years, and it pledged to keep limits on automation in place from the old contract. The alliance also said its offer tripled employer contributions to retirement plans and strengthened healthcare options. In a statement early Tuesday, the union said it rejected the alliance’s latest proposal because it “fell far short of what ILA rank-and-file members are demanding in wages and protections against automation.” The two sides had not held formal negotiations since June.

Workers at the Port of Philadelphia walked in a circle outside the port and chanted “No work without a fair contract.” The union, striking for the first time since 1977, had message boards on the side of a truck reading: “Automation Hurts Families: ILA Stands For Job Protection.”

If drawn out, the strike will force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season—potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys and artificial Christmas trees to cars, coffee, even fruit.

Boeing and the International Association of Machinists

Aircraft-assembly workers walked off the job at Boeing factories near Seattle and elsewhere on September 12 after union members voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposed contract and go on strike. Boeing and negotiators from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers have held three bargaining sessions alongside federal mediators. The company presented a revised contract last week, but the union refused to present it for a vote after surveying its members, who said it failed to meet their wage and pension demands.

Video games and SAG-AFTRA

Earlier this month video game performers reached agreements with 80 individual games that have signed interim or tiered-budget agreements with the performers’ union and accepted the artificial intelligence provisions they have been seeking.

The performers had been striking for more than a month.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) began striking in July after negotiations with game industry giants that began more than a year and a half ago came to a halt over AI protections.

The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around “exploitative uses” of artificial intelligence, and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered-budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.

Las Vegas resorts and Culinary Workers Union

Last month, thousands of hospitality union workers on the Las Vegas Strip reached a tentative deal with the Venetian and Palazzo resorts, a first for employees at the sprawling Italian-inspired complex that opened 25 years ago.

The Culinary Workers Union announced on the social platform X that the deal came together after a year of negotiations. It covers more than 4,000 hotel and casino workers, from housekeepers and cocktail servers to bartenders and porters.

Bethany Khan, a union spokesperson, said the deal mirrors the major wins secured in recent contracts awarded to 40,000 hospitality workers at 18 Strip properties owned or operated by casino giants MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn Resorts.

Those wins included a 32% pay increase over five years, housekeeping workload reductions, and improved job security amid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence.

The bump in pay under those contracts will amount to an average $35 hourly wage by the end of the contracts, according to the union. Workers at these properties were making about $26 hourly with benefits before winning their latest contracts in November.

Hotel chains and UNITE HERE

More than 10,000 workers at 25 hotels across the U.S. staged a Labor Day weekend strike to amplify their demands for higher pay, fairer workloads, and the reversal of COVID-era cuts. The majority of the striking housekeepers and other hospitality workers represented by the UNITE HERE union stayed off the job for a few days. [The UNITE and HERE unions merged in 2004 and stand for Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.] On September 24, about 2,000 unionized workers at Hawaii’s largest resort, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort, joined another couple-thousand hotel workers who remained on strike at Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott hotels in Honolulu, San Diego, and San Francisco, according to the union.

Kaiser Permanente and healthcare workers

Unions representing 85,000 healthcare workers reached a tentative agreement with industry giant Kaiser Permanente in October 2023 following a strike over wages and staffing levels.

The deal included setting minimum hourly wages at $25 in California, where most of Kaiser’s facilities are located, and $23 in other states. Workers would also see a 21% wage increase over four years.

The lead-up to the agreement included a three-day strike involving 75,000 workers in multiple states.

The agreement also included protective terms around subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as initiatives to invest in the current workforce and address a staffing crisis.

Automakers and UAW

Late last year, the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, along with a similar deal with General Motors, that would raise pay across the industry and force automakers to absorb higher costs.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, ended contentious talks that began in the summer of 2022 and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW, though Ford’s top executive said the company will rethink where it will build cars in the future. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly-plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains.

Top assembly-plant workers were to receive immediate 11% raises and would earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract.

UPS and Teamsters

UPS workers that are members of the Teamsters union approved a tentative contract with the package delivery company last year before hitting the picket lines as they had vowed to do. The run-up to the approval was not smooth though, with contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

After negotiations broke down in early July 2023, the Atlanta company reached a tentative contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an August 1 deadline.

At the time the agreement was struck, full- and part-time union workers were set to get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.

UPS said at the time that by the end of the new contract, the average UPS full-time driver would make about $170,000 annually in pay and benefits. It was not clear how much of that figure benefits accounted for.

As part of the deal, the delivery company also agreed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a full holiday, end forced overtime on drivers’ days off, and stop using driver-facing cameras in cabs, among a host of other issues. It eliminated a two-tier wage system for drivers, and tentative deals on safety issues were also reached, including equipping more trucks with air-conditioning.

Hollywood studios and SAG-AFTRA

Hollywood’s actors voted to ratify a deal with studios in December 2023 that ended their strike after nearly four months, bringing an official finish to a labor strife that shook the entertainment industry for most of last year.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved a three-year contract.

Control over the use of artificial intelligence was the most hard-fought issue in the long, methodical negotiations. The contract called for a 7% general pay increase with further hikes coming in the second and third years of the deal.

The agreement also included a hard-won provision that had temporarily derailed talks: the creation of a fund to pay performers for future viewings of their work on streaming services, in addition to traditional residuals paid for the showing of movies or series.

Indonesian shrimp farmer Yulius Cahyonugroho operated more than two dozen ponds only a few years ago, employing seven people and making more than enough to support his family.

Since then, the 39-year-old says the prices he gets from purchasers have fallen by half and he’s had to scale back to four workers and about one-third the ponds, some months not even breaking even. His wife has had to take a job at a watermelon farm to help support their two children.

“It is more stable than the shrimp farms,” said the farmer from Indonesia’s Central Java province.

As big Western supermarkets make windfall profits, their aggressive pursuit of ever-lower wholesale prices is causing misery for people at the bottom end of the supply chain—people like Cahyonugroho who produce and process the seafood, according to an investigation by an alliance of NGOs focused on three of the world’s largest producers of shrimp provided to the Associated Press ahead of its publication on Monday.

The analysis of the industry in Vietnam, Indonesia, and India, which provide about half the shrimp in the world’s top four markets, found a 20%-60% drop in earnings from pre-pandemic levels as producers struggle to meet pricing demands by cutting labor costs.

In many places this has meant unpaid and underpaid work through longer hours, wage insecurity as rates fluctuate, and many workers not even making low-minimum wages. The report also found hazardous working conditions, particularly in India and parts of Indonesia, and even child labor in some places in India.

“The supermarket procurement practices changed, and the working conditions were affected—directly and rapidly,” said Katrina Nakamura of Sustainability Incubator, who wrote the regional report and whose Hawaii-based nonprofit led the research on the industry in Vietnam. “Those two things go together because they’re tied together through the pricing.”

Tubagus Haeru Rahayu, the director general of aquaculture for Indonesia’s Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry, said he was surprised by the report’s findings and had already reached out to people in the industry to investigate the price pressures.

“If there is pressure like that, there will definitely be a reaction—not only in Indonesia but in Vietnam and India too,” he told the AP in an interview at his Jakarta office.

Indian and Vietnamese officials refused to comment.

Supermarkets linked to facilities where exploited labor was reported by workers include Target, Walmart, and Costco in the United States, Britain’s Sainsbury’s and Tesco, and Aldi and Co-op in Europe.

Switzerland’s Co-op said it had a “zero tolerance” policy for violations of labor law, and that its producers “receive fair and market-driven prices.”

Germany’s Aldi did not specifically address the issue of pricing, but said it uses independent certification schemes to ensure responsibly sourcing for farmed shrimp products, and would continue to monitor the allegations.

“We are committed to fulfilling our responsibility to respect human rights,” Aldi said.

Sainsbury’s referred to a comment from the British Retail Consortium industry group, which said its members were committed to sourcing products at a “fair, sustainable price” and that the welfare of people and communities in supply chains is fundamental to their purchasing practices.

None of the other retailers named in the report responded to multiple requests for comment on the report, titled Human Rights for Dinner.

In Vietnam, researchers found that workers who peel, gut, and devein shrimp typically work six or seven days a week, often in rooms kept extremely cold to keep the product fresh.

Some 80% of those involved in processing the shrimp are women who rise at 4 a.m. and return home at 6 p.m., with the exception of pregnant women and new mothers who can stop one hour earlier.

“The work day for peelers consists of standing in a refrigerated and disinfected room and working extremely rapidly with a knife while taking care not to make a mistake,” researchers said.

Wages are generally not disclosed ahead of time and are based upon production. Sometimes workers make minimum wage, but frequently they do not.

The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers issued a statement calling the allegations in the report “unfounded, misleading, and detrimental to the reputation of Vietnam’s shrimp exports.”

It cited government labor policies in a four-page statement but did not specifically address the findings, and did not respond to queries.

After food supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported earlier this year that some grocers have used the situation “as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.”

The demands for lower wholesale shrimp prices—combined with rising production costs and an oversupply—means farmers often must sell their products under cost just to keep operations going, the Sustainability Incubator analysis found.

Cahyonugroho said he’s stuck selling his shrimp at the price offered by middlemen who then sell it to factories for processing. He can’t scrape together the startup costs needed to sell directly to factories or markets to earn more.

“The opportunity is there,” he said, “but you need a lot of capital if you want to jump into something like that.”

The middlemen who buy the shrimp obfuscate the true sources of shrimp that appear in Western supermarkets, so many retailers may not be following ethical commitments they’ve made about procuring shrimp.

Only about 2,000 of the 2 million shrimp farms in the major-producing countries of India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Ecuador, Thailand, and Bangladesh are certified by either the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or the Best Aquaculture Practices ecolabel.

“With the yield from most certified shrimp farms being very small, it is mathematically impossible for certified farms to produce enough shrimp per month to supply all of the supermarkets that boast commitments to purchasing certified shrimp,” the report said.

Ideally, supermarkets should pay higher wholesale prices and ensure that the extra money makes it all the way down the supply chain, Nakamura said.

U.S. policymakers could use antitrust and other laws already in place to establish oversight to ensure fair pricing from Western retailers, rather than adding punishing tariffs on suppliers for labor violations, she said.

Awareness about the trends hurting suppliers is growing.

In July, the European Union adopted a new directive requiring companies to “identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe.”

Britain’s Groceries Code Adjudicator office published a “deep dive” into views of suppliers about the conduct of supermarkets, saying they had chosen to conduct “warfare” with suppliers.

Higher wholesale prices don’t have to mean higher prices for consumers, Sustainability Incubator said.

“Prices to farmers would be at least 200% higher than today if the shrimp sold in Global North supermarkets was made at minimum wage rates and in compliance with applicable domestic laws for labor, workplace health, and safety,” the report said. “This would not necessarily mean higher consumer prices, because supermarkets are already profiting at existing consumer prices.”

Researchers from the Corporate Accountability Lab found that Indian shrimp industry workers face “dangerous and abusive conditions” and that highly salinated water from newly dug hatcheries and ponds, tainted with chemicals and toxic algae, are contaminating surrounding water and soil.

Unpaid labor prevails, including salaries below minimum wage, unpaid overtime, wage deductions for costs of work and “significant” debt bondage, the report found.

Child labor was also identified, with girls aged 14 and 15 being recruited for peeling work.

In Indonesia, three non-profit research organizations found that shrimp workers’ wages have declined since the pandemic and now average $160 per month, below Indonesia’s minimum wage in most of the biggest shrimp-producing provinces. Shrimp peelers were found to be routinely required to work at least 12 hours per day to meet minimum targets.

Still, given widespread poverty most workers said they’re happy to have their jobs, said lead researcher Kharisma Nugroho of the Migunani Research Institute.

“It’s exploitation of the vulnerability of the workers, because they have a lack of options,” he said.

“They’re paid the minimum wages but they have to work 150% of the normal,” he told the AP. “Can they live? Yes. Can they move? Yes. Do they make a complaint? No. They’re still there.”

The regional report compiled more than 500 interviews conducted in-person with workers in their native languages, in India, Indonesia and Vietnam, supplemented with secondary data and interviews from Thailand, Bangladesh and Ecuador.

After the Indonesia country report was issued recently, government officials asked to meet with the authors, and Nugroho said they showed a “genuine willingness to improve the situation.”

Vietnamese officials have also engaged with Sustainability Incubator to talk about the findings.

Government and industry intervention has already helped in Thailand, which has been criticized after the AP exposed serious labor abuses in the shrimp industry in the past. That, however, has led to higher prices for Thai shrimp, leading some buyers to shift sourcing to India and Ecuador.

Ecuador has an industrial approach to shrimp farming — unlike the smaller, often family-run operations in Southeast Asia — and is now the world’s largest exporter of shrimp. It has the lowest prices, followed by India; China, which wasn’t included in the report; then Vietnam and Indonesia.

But with the demand for lower wholesale prices, while Ecuador’s exports rose 12% in volume in 2023, they fell 5% in value. India’s exports rose 1% but dropped nearly 11% in value.

Meantime, with their relatively higher prices, Vietnam’s exports were down 25% in 2023 in volume Indonesia’s dropped 9.5%.

“Labor exploitation in shrimp aquaculture industries is not company, sector, or country-specific,” the report concluded. “Instead, it is the result of a hidden business model that exploits people for profit.”

—David Rising, Associated Press

Associated Press writer Edna Tarigan contributed to this report.

This version has corrected the spelling of a researcher’s name to Katrina, not Katrin.

This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Teachers can use generative AI in a variety of ways. They may use it to develop lesson plans and quizzes. Or teachers may rely on a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT, for insight on how to teach a concept more effectively.

In our new research, only the teachers doing both of those things reported feeling that they were getting more done. They also told us that their teaching was more effective with AI.

Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, we followed 24 teachers at K-12 schools throughout the United States as they wrestled with whether and how to use generative AI for their work. We gave them a standard training session on generative AI in the fall of 2023. We then conducted multiple observations, interviews and surveys throughout the year.

We found that teachers felt more productive and effective with generative AI when they turned to it for advice. The standard methods to teach to state standards that work for one student, or in one school year, might not work as well in another. Teachers may get stuck and need to try a different approach. Generative AI, it turns out, can be a source of ideas for those alternative approaches.

While many focus on the productivity benefits of how generative AI can help teachers make quizzes or activities faster, our study points to something different. Teachers feel more productive and effective when their students are learning, and generative AI seems to help some teachers get new ideas about how to advance student learning.

Why it matters

K-12 teaching requires creativity, particularly when it comes to tasks such as lesson plans or how to integrate technology into the classroom. Teachers are under pressure to work quickly, however, because they have so many things to do, such as prepare teaching materials, meet with parents and grade students’ schoolwork. Teachers do not have enough time each day to do all of the work that they need to.

We know that such pressure often makes creativity difficult. This can make teachers feel stuck. Some people, in particular AI experts, view generative AI as a solution to this problem; generative AI is always on call, it works quickly, and it never tires.

However, this view assumes that teachers will know how to use generative AI effectively to get the solutions they are seeking. Our research reveals that for many teachers, the time it takes to get a satisfactory output from the technology – and revise it to fit their needs – is no shorter than the time it would take to create the materials from scratch on their own. This is why using generative AI to create materials is not enough to get more done.

By understanding how teachers can effectively use generative AI for advice, schools can make more informed decisions about how to invest in AI for their teachers and how to support teachers in using these new tools. Further, this feeds back to the scientists creating AI tools, who can make better decisions about how to design these systems.

What still isn’t known

Many teachers face roadblocks that prevent them from seeing the benefits of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. These benefits include being able to create better materials faster. The teachers we talked to, however, were all new users of the technology. Teachers who are more familiar with ways to prompt generative AI – we call them “power users” – might have other ways of interacting with the technology that we did not see. We also do not yet know exactly why some teachers move from being new users to proficient users but others do not.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

Samantha Keppler is an assistant professor of technology and operations at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Clare Snyder is a PhD candidate in business administration at the University of Michigan.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A week ago, market observers (and political wonks) were wondering just how low shares of Trump Media (Nasdaq: DJT) were going to go. But despite long-standing fears of insider selling and a steady 10-day decline in the company’s share price, Trump Media’s DJT stock is surging recently.

Although the stock is still well below its 52-week high of $79.38, share prices for Truth Social’s parent company have jumped about 30% in the past week. The stock has rebounded from a 52-week low of $11.75 on September 24 to more than $16 on Monday. And shares closed up slightly again on Tuesday.

What’s driving the trades—and what caused the shift in sentiment? Here’s what you need to know.

Why have investors turned bullish on Trump Media stock?

A large portion of Trump Media stock is owned by individual investors, many of whom are fans of Trump himself. So they’re largely perennially bullish on the company. But the recent stock surge seems to be a sigh of relief by many that Trump has kept his vow to not sell his shares in the company.

Trump made a pledge on September 13 to hang onto his 114.7 million shares of DJT stock, which represent a greater than 56% stake in Trump Media and are worth about $1.9 billion. Still, there was some trepidation among shareholders. With the lockup period now long past (he has been able to sell shares as of September 19), that nervousness is fading and that’s fueling people to buy more, which is sending the price higher.

Did any insiders sell their DJT stock?

Trump held onto his shares, but some insiders didn’t hesitate to sell when they had the opportunity. After the lockup ended in September, United Atlantic Ventures, a partnership of former Apprentice contestants Andrew Litinsky and Wes Moss, unloaded 11 million shares, virtually its entire holdings. That represented 5.4% of the total shares in Trump Medias.

Are short sellers driving the price of Trump Media higher?

That’s unclear, but it’s certainly possible. Traders who bet the company’s share price would continue to drop amid the sell-off (by borrowing shares to sell and buy back at a lower price) may have come upon deadlines to return those, which could have boosted the stock price.

Short positions on September 13 (the number of shares being shorted) numbered 14.5 million, more than double the amount of short sellers Trump Media saw when it began trading publicly in March.

How much is the election playing into the rise in DJT’s stock price?

It’s hard to separate Trump Media from Trump the candidate, even for investors. The fact that the election is still essentially a dead heat in certain critical swing states is fueling optimism on both sides. Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week may have been seen as a positive sign by Trump Media bulls.

Is the insider selling at Trump Media over?

That is, quite literally, the multimillion-dollar question. Despite his insistence that he has no plans to sell his shares, Trump has been known to change his mind with little warning. Selling now, though, could be a bad political move, as supporters of Trump Media might feel abandoned if he increases his personal wealth (or uses the stock to pay one of several big judgments he faces) just weeks before the election.

Meanwhile, there’s also the lingering question of Patrick Orlando’s intentions. Orlando’s ARC Global Investments sponsored the SPAC that merged with Trump Media, and he recently won a case against Trump Media, with a judge ordering the company to deliver a larger stake in the company to Orlando, saying TMTG had breached its contract with ARC.

Orlando has not declared any intention to sell his shares, but he no longer has a role at the company, which may worry some investors.

On Tuesday, PepsiCo agreed to acquire grain-free Mexican-American brand Siete Foods for $1.2 billion, adding to its roster of healthier food and snack offerings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The billion-dollar bet comes amid growing consumer preferences for healthier food, snacks, and drinks like bottled water, seltzer, juices, and sports beverages.

Siete Foods makes grain-free, high-quality tortilla chips, soft tortillas, and sauces. The purchase comes as PepsiCo focuses on offering snacks with lower sodium, saturated fat, and sugar.

The Mexican-American staples add to PepsiCo’s already diverse food and drink portfolio, which includes Aquafina bottled water, Naked Juice, Tropicana fruit juices, and Gatorade. In addition, it sells Frito-Lay corn and potato chips and Quaker Oats granola bars. It also bought fruit-snack startup Bare Foods in 2018.

According to an analysis from Seattle-based investment platform Kavout, the acquisition of Siete Foods “would significantly enhance PepsiCo’s portfolio by adding a range of health-oriented, culturally authentic products. . . . By integrating Siete Foods’s products, PepsiCo can tap into the growing demand for grain-free and gluten-free options, thereby expanding its market reach.”

PepsiCo’s acquisition of Siete Foods comes at a time when its competitors are also consolidating, and companies are making big purchases to stay competitive.

Late this summer, Mars, which makes M&M’s and Snickers, struck a nearly $30 billion deal to buy Cheez-Its and Pop-Tart owner Kellanova (formed when Kellogg Co. split three ways). As a result, Mars has expanded its reach even further with household brand names Eggo, Town House, MorningStar Farms, and Rice Krispies Treats all under its roof.

A U.S. labor board issued a complaint accusing Apple of violating employees’ rights to organize and advocate for better working conditions by maintaining a series of unlawful workplace rules.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the complaint announced late on Monday claims Apple required employees nationwide to sign illegal confidentiality, nondisclosure, and noncompete agreements and imposed overly broad misconduct and social media policies.

The complaint accuses Apple of “interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of” their rights under federal labor law.

Apple, in a statement provided by a spokesperson, said it has always respected its employees’ rights to discuss wages, hours, and working conditions, which is reflected in its employment policies.

“We strongly disagree with these claims and will continue to share the facts at the hearing,” the company said.

If Apple does not settle the case, it will be heard by an administrative judge beginning in January. The agency is seeking to require Apple to rescind the allegedly unlawful rules and notify its entire U.S. workforce of their legal rights.

Administrative judges’ decisions can be reviewed by the five-member labor board, whose rulings can be appealed to federal appeals courts.

The complaint stems from charges filed against Apple in 2021 by Ashley Gjovik, a former senior engineering manager at the company. Gjovik said various Apple rules, including those relating to confidentiality and social media use, deter employees from discussing issues such as pay equity and sex discrimination with each other and the media.

Gjovik also filed a lawsuit in California federal court in May accusing Apple of illegally retaliating against her for filing the NLRB complaints and attempting to organize other workers. Apple has denied wrongdoing and has moved to dismiss the case.

The company is facing at least two other pending NLRB cases claiming it fired an employee at its Cupertino, California, headquarters for criticizing managers and illegally interfered with a union campaign at a retail store in Atlanta. The company has denied wrongdoing.

The NLRB in May ruled that the manager of an Apple store in Manhattan unlawfully interrogated an employee about his support for a union. Two Apple stores in the U.S. have unionized since 2022, and unions are working to organize several other locations.

—Daniel Wiessner, Reuters

Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway is buying the rest of its utility unit from the estate of a longtime board member who died three years ago, but it’s not clear exactly how much it will pay for that 8% stake in the massive utility business.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it will pay Walter Scott‘s family $2.4 billion cash and issue a number of Class B Berkshire shares that are equivalent to 1.6 million shares of the utility business, but since the utility’s shares aren’t publicly traded it is hard to estimate the total value of the deal that’s expected to close later this year. Altogether, Berkshire is buying more than 4.4 million shares in the utilities to give it 100% ownership.

“That filing left me with a number of questions, but they don’t have an investor relations function so I don’t expect those questions to be answered,” CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert said. “The hope is that when they report earnings, there will be more details.”

Des Moines, Iowa-based Berkshire Hathaway Energy includes MidAmerican Energy, Pacificorp, and NV Energy in Nevada and a Canadian electricity transmission provider called AltaLink, among other businesses.

Buffett doesn’t like to disclose any more than he has to, and the Berkshire Hathaway parent company didn’t issue a press release or file anything with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving investors to speculate.

Apparently, Buffett doesn’t believe this transaction is big enough to have a material impact on Berkshire Hathaway given that it just reported more than $30.3 billion in earnings and was sitting on $277 billion cash in the second quarter.

But a similar transaction when Berkshire bought out vice chairman Greg Abel’s 1% stake in the utility business two years ago for $870 million suggests this deal with the Scott family is sizable. Abel is slated to eventually replace Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO. If Berkshire agreed to pay the same price for the shares the Scott family is selling, the deal should be worth $6.96 billion.

Of course in the past two years, one of Berkshire’s biggest utilities, PacifiCorp, has paid out hundreds of millions in settlements related to wildfires in Oregon and California that damaged thousands of homes in 2020, and Berkshire Hathaway has recorded $2.7 billion in wildfire losses.

Buffett was down on the utility industry’s prospects in this year’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. But it’s not clear what the current value of the utility divisions shares are today. Buffett didn’t immediately respond to questions about the deal with the Scott family, and the utility unit declined to comment beyond what is in the regulatory filing.

In addition to utilities, Berkshire Hathaway owns BNSF railroad, a number of large insurance companies including Geico, and a varied assortment of manufacturing and retail firms that includes aviation-parts maker Precision Castparts and more well-known brands like Dairy Queen and See’s Candy.

—Josh Funk, Associated Press business writer

Meta said it has taken down some 8,000 so-called “celeb bait” scam ads from Facebook and Instagram as part of a new effort with Australian banks to curb the practice.

The scams use images of famous people, often generated by artificial intelligence, to trick consumers into giving money to non-existent investment schemes.

The U.S. social media giant said it took down the scam ads after receiving 102 reports since April from the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange, an intelligence-sharing body run by the country’s main banks.

Such scams are a global problem, but Meta is under heightened pressure to tackle the issue in Australia with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government planning to introduce an anti-scam law by the end of the year.

The bill proposes A$50 million ($34 million) fines for social media, financial and telecommunications companies which fail to meet their obligations to crack down on the practice. A public consultation closes on Oct. 4.

Australian scam reports jumped by nearly one-fifth in 2023, with losses totalling A$2.7 billion, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The commission accused Meta in a 2022 lawsuit of failing to stop the dissemination of cryptocurrency advertisements that used images of celebrities like Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman. It estimated that 58% of cryptocurrency advertisements on Facebook were possible scams.

Meta is fighting the lawsuit which is yet to go to hearings.

The company is also defending a separate civil lawsuit in California brought by Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest who accuses Meta of enabling the publication of thousands of bogus cryptocurrency advertisements on Facebook displaying his face. Forrest says Australians continue to lose money to the scams that he began warning Meta about in 2019.

David Agranovich, Meta’s director of threat disruption, told a media briefing that the effort with Australian banks was still in its early stages.

“What we find promising is that a small amount of high-value signals can help us identify much wider fraud and scam activity,” he said, referring to indications within ads about potentially inauthentic content.

Asked about Meta’s view on Australia’s proposed anti-scam code, Agranovich said the company was still working through the draft legislation. “I expect we’ll have more to share specifically on that later,” he added.

Rhonda Luo, head of strategy and engagement at the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange said industry initiatives “are really important to get ahead of the curve on scams, rather than wait for regulation to come in and have effect”.

($1 = 1.4535 Australian dollars)

—Byron Kaye, Retuers

A code of conduct will be enforced on the online dating industry to better protect Australian users after research found that three-in-four people suffer some form of sexual violence through the platforms, Australia’s government said on Tuesday.

Bumble, Grindr and Match Group Inc., a Texas-based company that owns platforms including Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid and Plenty of Fish, have agreed to the code that took effect on Tuesday, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

The platforms, which account for 75% of the industry in Australia, have until April 1 to implement the changes before they are strictly enforced, Rowland said.

The code requires the platforms’ systems to detect potential incidents of online-enabled harm and demands that the accounts of some offenders are terminated.
Complaint and reporting mechanisms are to be made prominent and transparent. A new rating system will show users how well platforms are meeting their obligations under the code.

The government called for a code of conduct last year after the Australian Institute of Criminology research found that three-in-four users of dating apps or websites had experienced some form of sexual violence through these platforms in the five years through 2021.

“There needs to be a complaint-handling process. This is a pretty basic feature that Australians would have expected in the first place,” Rowland said on Tuesday.

“If there are grounds to ban a particular individual from utilizing one of those platforms, if they’re banned on one platform, they’re blocked on all platforms,” she added.

Match Group said it had already introduced new safety features on Tinder including photo and identification verification to prevent bad actors from accessing the platform while giving users more confidence in the authenticity of their connections.

The platform used artificial intelligence to issue real-time warnings about potentially offensive language in an opening line and advising users to pause before sending.

“This is a pervasive issue, and we take our responsibility to help keep users safe on our platform very seriously,” Match Group said in a statement on Wednesday.
Match Group said it would continue to collaborate with the government and the industry to “help make dating safer for all Australians.”

Bumble said it shared the government’s hope of eliminating gender-based violence and was grateful for the opportunity to work with the government and industry on what the platform described as a “world-first dating code of practice.”

“We know that domestic and sexual violence is an enormous problem in Australia, and that women, members of LGBTQ+ communities, and First Nations are the most at risk,” a Bumble statement said.

“Bumble puts women’s experiences at the center of our mission to create a world where all relationships are healthy and equitable, and safety has been central to our mission from day one,” Bumble added.

Grindr said in a statement it was “honored to participate in the development of the code and shares the Australian government’s commitment to online safety.”
All the platforms helped design the code they signed up to.

Platforms that have not signed up include Happn, Coffee Meets Bagel and Feeld.
The government expects the code will enable Australians to make better informed choices about which dating apps are best equipped to provide a safe dating experience.

The government has also warned the online dating industry that it will legislate if the operators fail to keep Australians safe on their platforms.

—Rod McGuirk, Associated Press

Childcare has become a significant issue in the lead-up to the election—on both sides of the aisle. Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz have already proposed expanding the child tax credit, increasing childcare subsidies for families, and doubling down on grant programs for childcare providers, carrying on the Biden administration’s commitment to those issue. While the Trump campaign has not laid out explicit policies, vice presidential candidate JD Vance has repeatedly touched on the issue on the campaign trail, often focusing on the steep costs of childcare.

During the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, the candidates were asked about their plans to address the childcare shortage and lack of federal paid leave. Walz talked about the leave policy he signed into law in Minnesota—which will provide 20 weeks of paid time off when it takes effect in 2026—and pledged his support for a federal policy, though he said the amount of leave was “negotiable.” (Harris has previously said that she would “fight for a future” with paid leave and affordable childcare.)

He also reiterated his support for expanding the child tax credit, which Harris and Walz have proposed increasing from $2,000 per child to $6,000 for newborns and at least $3,000 for all children.

While Vance said he was “committed to pursuing pro-family policies,” he stopped short of providing clear policy solutions. When asked if he supported a national paid leave program, Vance said he believed there was a bipartisan solution but then pivoted to talking about the challenges his wife faced after having children, and how working women like her faced “cultural pressure” while navigating that period.

“A lot of young women would like to go back to work immediately,” he said. “Some would like to spend a little time home with the kids. Some would like to spend longer at home with the kids. We should have a family care model that makes choice possible.” Vance did, however, later note that levying taxes on companies that relied on cheap labor overseas could bring in additional money to support paid family leave and “childcare options that are viable and workable for a lot of American families.”

When it came to childcare, Vance’s responses were more or less consistent with previous comments he has made about how family members could help offset those costs. He argued the federal funding program that subsidizes childcare for low-income families only supported “one kind of childcare model” and did not provide assistance for alternate arrangements.

“Let’s say you’d like your church, maybe, to help you out with childcare,” he said. “Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you’d like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide childcare in the way that makes the most sense. You don’t get access to any of these federal monies. We want to promote choice in how we deliver family care.” Vance also cited “family care” as a solution for mitigating childcare shortages.

Walz, on the other hand, again referenced the work he has done as governor in Minnesota to provide more robust, affordable childcare options. (Earlier this year, Walz announced a $6 million round of childcare grants to help fund programs across Minnesota.) He also noted that addressing the childcare shortage required a multi-pronged approach that would make care more affordable while also ensuring workers were paid fairly.

“As far as childcare on this, you have to take it at both the supply and the demand side,” he said. “You can’t expect the most important people in our lives to take care of our children or our parents, to get paid the least amount of money. And we have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that.”

Neither Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance nor Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has the national stature of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, so viewers had a chance to judge these two relatively unknown politicians for the first time, side by side, in a relatively uncontrolled setting on Oct. 1, 2024.

A lot of the post-debate analysis has centered on the candidates’ responses to questions on abortion and immigration, as well as other contentious issues like Trump’s and Vance’s refusal to recognize President Joe Biden’s 2020 win as legitimate.

But I didn’t listen too closely to what Vance and Walz said. Instead, I focused on their gestures, blinks and smiles. That’s because for over two decades I’ve researched the nonverbal behavior of political figures.

My research has long centered on the Swiss Army knife of facial behaviors: the smile. A smile isn’t just a sign of being happy. There are countless types of smiles, each of which has a distinct social purpose.

At their core, smiles are emotionally contagious—used as a sign to reassure others that we mean no harm and want to cooperate.

The types of smiles that politicians tend to display can give us insights into their personalities. Former President Ronald Reagan, who was known as the “Happy Warrior,” had a smile that was highly contagious and reassuring to both followers and opponents alike.

However, smiles can also be deployed as a form of self-regulation. And they can signal dominance, confidence and contempt.

Walz tries to shake off his nerves

At the outset, it was obvious that Walz was stressed on the debate stage.

After Walz shook Vance’s hand ahead of the debate, Walz stood, waiting, and then flashed what’s called an “affiliative smile.” This involved pulling up his lip corners quickly before the smile vanished. This type of smile is usually under the control of the individual and is posed to indicate the intent to cooperate.

Walz then broke out into a reward smile, with a relaxed jaw, his teeth showing, and the muscles around his eyes contracted. Smiling in this manner during stressful moments can be used to lessen negative emotions while increasing positive ones—and it appears that this form of self-regulation was Walz’s goal.

Vance pleased with himself

While Vance was much less expressive than Walz, he did appear to show a slight smile after he attempted to bait Walz into defending the specifics of the 2023 Minnesota Reproductive Freedom Defense Act. Among other things, this law protects out-of-state patients traveling to Minnesota to get an abortion from criminal penalties and legal attacks.

Vance’s smile occurred just as viewers went to commercial break. Perhaps Vance was pleased with how he performed on an issue that has dogged his ticket—and was just grateful to be moving on.

Vance’s lack of expressiveness during the debate may be seen as standing in stark contrast to Trump’s larger-than-life persona. Perhaps that was the reason why Trump chose Vance as a running mate.

However, while Vance presented himself as calm, befitting his Ivy League legal education, the very slight movements of his face revealed little—and could lead to viewers having a hard time connecting with him emotionally as a potential leader.

Walz caught in a fib

One rather interesting moment—especially for viewers used to public figures telling bald-faced lies—wasn’t actually a smile.

Walz blushed in embarrassment after being caught in a fib regarding him being in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He attempted to dodge the question, and when one of the moderators—Margaret Brennan—followed up, Walz owned up and said that he “misspoke.” Both Walz’s indirect answer and the redness of his face showed his feelings of embarrassment.

For most people, the pooling of the blood under the skin is an involuntary reaction to embarrassment. But it actually has the effect of making them seem more trustworthy because blushing reliably relates concern for others—and predicts attempts to make things better as a result. At the same time, Walz’s closed eyes and the pulling of his lip corners down while his lower lip was pushed up suggests a degree of disappointment in himself.

Most Americans already know who they will vote for, and few might have their minds changed by Vance’s and Walz’s debate performance. What might matter more is the candidates’ nonverbal behavior, and the insight this gives into how either of the candidates might behave in office. Facial behavior generally—and smiles more specifically—provide insights into personality traits, while body movement more generally is connected with charisma.

Regardless of who wins, it makes sense to pay attention not just to what candidates say, but also how they smile, sneer and scowl.

Patrick Stewart is a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Few people expected the campaign to elect the first woman president to spark a referendum on masculinity, but what it means to be a man has become “arguably the most dominant theme of this year’s elections,” according to MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones.

The debate between vice presidential nominees Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance on Oct. 1, 2024, showcased two candidates who not only had contrasting debate styles but also competing views of women’s and men’s autonomy.

As a political communication scholar, I have written about how gender shaped the dynamics of presidential and vice-presidential debates featuring opponents of different genders. The 2024 Walz-Vance debate illustrated how gender can become a focal point in a debate between two men.

Trust was an important theme throughout the debate, one that—perhaps surprisingly—revealed a key distinction between Walz, Vance and their respective political parties.

During an extended discussion about abortion rights, Vance reinforced his running mate Donald Trump’s assertion that women’s reproductive health care decisions should be made by state legislatures. Vance then introduced a new argument, suggesting that what the GOP should focus on is earning women’s trust by proving that the party can somehow make it more palatable for women to . . . not have an abortion.

Later in the debate, Vance stated that he supports “a family care model that makes choice possible,” but the range of choices referred to child care options, not choices about whether to have children.

Walz, conversely, urged that women should be free and trusted to make their own reproductive and child care decisions.

Throughout the debate, Vance subtly suggested that authority and autonomy are the purview of men, reinforcing how patriarchy is shaping the Republican strategy.

Masculinity on the campaign trail

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have featured masculinity prominently in their campaigns for the White House.

Although Vance and Walz have each presented themselves as typical “Midwestern guys,” they differ on what that means.

Walz has embraced the moniker of “America’s dad” in ways that are both recognizable and revolutionary.

Esquire reported that he inspired “social media posts by the thousands” that “imagined Walz doing nice, midwestern-dad-like things.”

Using the “BigDadEnergy” hashtag, Walz supporters imagined, “Tim Walz will take your little league team to Dairy Queen even after you lose a game, because doggonit, you played your best” and “Tim Walz brushed the snow off of your car too, since you were parked next to him and he already had the darn brush out.”

But he also expanded that stereotype by ceding his status as patriarch to become Kamala Harris’s dutiful running mate and proving that pheasant-hunting football coaches can also advocate for gay and trans kids.

Vance featured his dad credentials in his speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, but his status as a prominent member of the “manosphere”—an unofficial network of reactionary men’s groups promoting the supremacy of patriarchy—has given his masculine persona a hard and sometimes extreme edge.

Independent political groups have also made masculinity one of the presidential campaign’s central concerns. The Lincoln Project—an organization comprised of current and former Republicans opposed to Donald Trump—recently released a campaign ad aimed at moderate swing voters that featured the iconography of the American heartland made famous by President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” re-election campaign ad.

The ad is voiced by actor Sam Elliott, a frequent silver-screen cowboy with a deep bass drawl, who asks voters, “So, what the hell are you waiting for? Because if it’s the woman thing, it’s time to get over that. . . . It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman.”

The group “White Dudes for Harris” took a different approach to the same pitch, putting out an ad with a brash male narrator who observes that men are “pretty sick of hearing how much we suck,” but contends that “Trump and all his MAGA buddies are out there making it worse, shouting nonsense in their stupid red hats and acting like they speak for us when they don’t.”

The narrator then says that Harris and Walz “are actually talking to guys like us” and offering “real solutions that protect our freedoms and help us take care of the people who matter.” The ad concludes: At the “end of the day, you’re your own man. It’s your call. But if anyone gives you crap about it, tell them it’s none of their damn business,” echoing one of Walz’s most popular applause lines.

The debate put Walz’s and Vance’s competing views of masculinity in direct competition as they made their pitches to swing voters.

Deference and doubling down during the debate

Before the debate, Washington Post politics reporter Ashley Parker wondered whether Walz’s “flannel-wearing, gutter-clearing, football-coaching Everyman shtick” might play better in front of a “friendly rally crowd” than it would “while facing an attack dog opponent.”

Vance, conversely, has embraced the vice-presidential nominee’s traditional role of “attack dog.” He campaigns by “borrowing his boss’s playbook of openly sparring with the media and rarely, if ever, apologizing for what he says,” as Vivian Salama of The Wall Street Journal reports.

But Vance took a different tack during the debate, making confident but cordial assertions while magnanimously agreeing that he and Walz shared good intentions for the American people.

He was less magnanimous when speaking to or about women.

Twenty-eight minutes into the debate, Vance’s mic was turned off after he mansplained immigration law to moderator Margaret Brennan.

Brennan, importantly, was correcting Vance’s claim that illegal immigration was harming the citizens of Springfield, Ohio, noting that the influx of Haitian migrants to Springfield was a product of legal immigration.

After Vance continued to speak beyond his allotted time, producers turned off his mic. Tellingly, Vance violated the rules of the debate when a woman moderator corrected him.

Vance also indicated, repeatedly, that Walz could be trusted but Kamala Harris could not.

It is, of course, not unusual for a vice-presidential candidate to attack the opposing ticket. Traditionally, that’s a vice-presidential candidate’s first priority in the VP debate.

But Vance took particular care to defer to his white, male counterpart and insist that the Black woman leading the Democratic ticket was the real problem.

For example, when responding to a question about housing prices, Walz argued that immigrants should not be blamed for the rising costs of housing, responding to a claim that Vance made about housing in Springfield, Ohio.

Rather than objecting to Walz’s fact check—as he had Brennan’s earlier in the debate—Vance said, “Tim just said something that I agree with. We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting in millions of illegal aliens into this country, which does drive up costs, Tim.”

Vance was careful to defer to his white male opponent while doubling down on criticism of immigrants and the Black woman running for president.

It’s a subtle strategy, but one that could be potentially effective with swing voters who have responded positively to Walz’s “Big Dad Energy” but who, consciously or unconsciously, are inclined to be skeptical about voting for a Black woman candidate.

Karrin Vasby Anderson is a professor of communication studies at Colorado State University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Clearly, something had to change. The numbers were in, the people had spoken, and they were not happy with what they’d been consuming. It was time for a hard reset.

And that’s when Domino’s Pizza went back into the kitchen for a do-over.

In 2010, the company splashed out on a massive national campaign responding to criticism from unsatisfied customers. Its pizza crust, Domino’s bravely admitted, tasted “like cardboard” to some focus group members, while the sauce was “like ketchup.” With all the marketing might that its agency CP+B could muster, the pizza chain announced what it called The Pizza Turnaround. It had taken all the complaints to heart and reformulated its recipe. 

“There comes a time when you know you’ve got to make a change,” company president Patrick Doyle says in the launch ad. Shortly after announcing the Turnaround, Domino’s stock soared.

During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio seemed to similarly acknowledge that the Republican party needs a Turnaround regarding reproductive rights. (You might say his less-combative-than-usual demeanor suggested a tacit admission of needing a Turnaround for his entire historically unpopular candidacy.) There’s just one glaring difference, however, between the would-be Veep and Domino’s: Vance offered no indication whatsoever that either he or his running mate, former president Donald Trump, plan to change their detested recipe.

“We’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue where they, frankly, just don’t trust us,” the candidate said on the topic of abortion during the debate. “That’s one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us as a Republican Party to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.”

He later repeated the line about needing to earn trust back in another answer, further making the case that he has received America’s unhappy feedback.

It’s hard to imagine how he could have missed it.

Abortion is one of the top issues on voters’ minds in this election, according to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, second only to the economy for women. More concerning for Vance, in every election since SCOTUS struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, voters have demonstrated the sky-high unpopularity of abortion bans. Last year, even the senator’s home state of Ohio voted to approve a measure that would protect reproductive rights.

At the time, Vance responded by going on the offensive. “There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children,” he wrote on X in response to the vote. “So let’s keep fighting for our country’s children, and let’s find a way to win.”

But that was way back in the bygone era of . . . less than a year ago. On the debate stage this week, Vance seemed more interested in winning back voters turned off by his stance on abortion than winning the fight “for our country’s children.” Instead of offering any practical solutions, though, he attempted to paint a rosy picture of leaving the abortion question up to individual states, and mounted a half-assed effort at making himself and Trump sound more compassionate.

In response to the first part, Vance’s opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, was quick to point out the flaws in letting states decide. He steered the discussion toward the plight of women like Georgia resident Amber Thurman, who died in 2022 after delays in her medical care due to the state’s current ban on abortions after only six weeks.

“The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography?” Walz asked his opponent. (Vance agreed that Thurman “should be alive today,” but offered no practical solutions that would prevent other women from suffering the same fate in the future.)

As for making himself and Trump seem more compassionate, well, it’s hard to tout a turnaround on pizza that tastes like cardboard when it still clearly tastes that way.

Although Vance denied supporting a national abortion ban during the debate—downplaying his previous no-abortions-after-15-weeks stance as “a minimum national standard”—he told an Australian podcaster in 2022, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” 

More importantly, though, if Vance indeed understands that the current situation around abortion is why Americans “don’t trust” his party on the issue, why has his running mate outright bragged, time and time again, that he is directly responsible for thrusting America into this situation through his choice of SCOTUS appointees? Why does Trump also paradoxically claim that striking down Roe was a universally popular decision? 

“Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social just weeks ago.

Apparently, in the former president’s eyes, America loves cardboard pizza.

Many people watching the debate, however, disagreed. 

According to a CBS/YouGov poll, 62% of voters responding claimed that Walz was better than Vance on the topic of abortion. Despite all of his bluster about needing to improve, viewers apparently still find what Vance is offering hard to stomach.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Senator JD Vance of Ohio are both Midwesterners running for the same job.

They’re also both fans of Diet Mountain Dew—making it the unofficial pop (that’s “soda” or “soft drink” for those outside the Midwest) of the vice presidential debate. And PepsiCo., its parent company, didn’t miss the opportunity to play into the news-making taste palettes of the candidates and advertise accordingly.

A pre-debate commercial showed security footage of a man delivering a cart full of Diet Mountain Dew backstage at the debate. When security tries to stop him, he says, “they asked for Diet Dew.” The brief 15-second ad ended with the message “VP Debate Starts Soon,” as if Mountain Dew was the spokesperson for the event itself.

At a time when many brands find current events too hot to touch, Diet Mountain Dew managed to insert itself into a political conversation in a way that was inclusive and not divisive, showing it’s still possible for brands to acknowledge news and politics in their advertising, while winking at its own 15 minutes of political fame.

“Many brands will want to advertise during debates because it’s obviously a high visibility event, but more strategically, it’s an opportunity to show neutrality—that their brand is for both sides and stands for something apolitical, a larger human truth or need that cuts across party lines,” says Dave Mayer, Senior Partner, Brand Strategy at global creative consultancy Lippincott.

The late 2010s saw brands speaks out on social issues like equality, a trend that peaked in 2020 amid protests over racial justice following the death of George Floyd and amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a contentious presidential campaign. But brands have since experienced a marked depoliticization following conservative backlash and changing attitudes. A CNBC survey last year found 58% of Americans believe it’s inappropriate for companies to take a stand on issues compared to 32% who believe it is appropriate.

Diet Mountain Dew was lucky in that it didn’t have to take a stand on any issue of real cultural consequence in order to plug in to the current conversation around its product, making the move low-risk in terms of public perception, and potentially high reward in terms of engagement and brand lift. It was able to simply highlight its bipartisan appeal, which at least one politician has learned not to cross.

After Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear demeaned the drink in July, he winkingly walked it back during a subsequent press briefing. “To Diet Mountain Dew, very sorry, didn’t mean to say negative things about you,” he later said, cleaning up his remarks to a few chuckles from reporters in the room.

Johnsonville, a Wisconsin sausage company, also aired an ad that referenced politics during the debate. The narrator of the 30-second “Townhall” suggested sausage may or may not be “the key to forming a more perfect union,” but either way, “it can’t hurt.” The ad blamed stale coffee and doughnut holes for our angry politics and put the swing state-based sausage brand at the heart of a diverse neighborhood block party.

The message of both ads was that food can bring people together, and that emphasis on unity mirrored comments from the candidates themselves, who spoke frequently during the debate about shared values and areas of agreement. For as divisive as politics seems today, that brands and political campaigns land on some of the same messaging shows they all see a public that’s thirsty for something to agree on.