Vivian Chang works on a narrow Philadelphia street that would have been consumed by a Phillies stadium had Chinatown activists not rallied to defeat the plan in the early 2000s. Instead of 40,000 cheering fans, the squeals of young children now fill the playground at Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, which opened in 2007.

“We’re standing right where the baseball stadium would have been,” Chang said in late September. “And now it’s 480 students—a lot of immigrants, a lot of students of color from across the city.”

Chang, 33, leads Asian Americans United, which flexed its political muscle during the stadium fight and is now experiencing déjà vu as it tries to stop a planned $1.3 billion basketball arena for the Philadelphia 76ers at the other edge of Chinatown.

Mayor Cherelle Parker hopes a glitzy, 18,500-seat arena can be the catalyst to revive a distressed retail corridor called Market East, which runs for eight blocks, from City Hall to the Liberty Bell. The plan now moves to city council for debate this fall. Team owners say they need the council’s approval for 76 Place by year’s end so they can move into their new home by 2031.

“I wholeheartedly believe this is the right deal for the people of Philadelphia,” Parker said in announcing her support in September, while pledging to protect what she called “the best Chinatown in the United States.”

Few would deny that Market East needs a savior. But some are less sure it should be the Sixers. Critics fear gridlock on game days and a dark arena at other times, along with gentrification, homogenization and rising rents. Chinatown sits just above Market East and the LGBTQ+ friendly “Gayborhood” a few blocks below it.

“The arena is a uniquely bad use for that land,” said local activist Jackson Morgan, who fears the Gayborhood could lose its identity. “It would make Center City virtually unlivable for hours at a time.”

Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies stadium issues, said arenas can bring an economic bounce to downtown business districts, but only a limited one.

“They don’t have much of an effect once you get beyond a couple of blocks,” he said.

Market East, a once-bustling stretch of historic Market Street, has withered over the last half-century amid a series of cultural shifts: the growth of suburban shopping malls in the 1960s and ’70s, the financial crises that crippled U.S. cities in the 1980s, and, more recently, the twin blows of online shopping and the pandemic.

And while much of Philadelphia is thriving as more young people settle downtown, Market East has resisted renewal efforts. All but one of its fabled department stores are long gone.

Enter the 76ers, owned by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, who want to shed their Wells Fargo Center lease with Comcast Spectacor and move from the city’s South Philadelphia sports complex to their own facility.

The partners, who also own the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and have a controlling interest in the NFL’s Washington Commanders, say the project will be privately financed and bring thousands of jobs and more than $2 billion in economic growth to downtown. They also hope to build an adjacent $250 million apartment tower.

“I think the arena is a good thing,” said Dante Sisofo, 28, who lives nearby. “I could see a lot of families gathering and getting a nice bowl of Vietnamese pho — my favorite dish — and then heading to the game.”

Parker shares his optimism, and has tried to address concerns by noting the $50 million in local benefits the team has promised, a sum that includes a $3 million loan fund for Chinatown businesses.

But others wonder if sports fans would really patronize mom and pop stores. Arenas, they say, are designed to keep fans inside, spending their money on increasingly upscale dining and entertainment.

“The Sixers’ owners, they don’t make money by people going to the quaint little sports bar across the street. They make money by having people buy those $14 beers inside the stadium,” Matheson said.

The owners have pledged not to ask the city for any construction funding, although they are free to seek state and federal funds. Instead of property taxes, they would pay about $6 million in annual Payments in Lieu of Taxes. Over the 30-year agreement, the potential savings to the team—and loss to the city and its cash-strapped schools—could be tens of millions of dollars or more, by some economists’ measure.

“Historically, city officials have been extremely poor poker players when it comes to staring down and bluffing billionaire sports owners,” Matheson said.

“And of course, that’s the exact reason why you have them playing footsie with Camden,” he said, referring to a last-minute flirtation from New Jersey to have the Sixers move across the Delaware River, where the team already has a practice facility, for $400 million in tax breaks.

Still, Parker called the deal the best ever struck with a city sports team, given that the three venues in South Philadelphia—the Wells Fargo Center, Citizens Bank Park and Lincoln Financial Field—were all built with huge public subsidies.

Back in Center City, rising rents already are a reality for Debbie Law’s family.

It ran a variety store in the heart of Chinatown for 35 years until the landlord tripled the rent in 2022, when the arena plan surfaced. The family reluctantly moved around the block to a smaller, less visible location that faces the hulking back side of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, another economic development project that hems in Chinatown.

“I grew up in that shop. It was a community center of sorts,” said Law, 42, as her aunt tended the register at the new store one recent day. Local residents, she said, rely on them for Chinese-language magazines, newspapers and cultural items they would struggle to find if the store is displaced again.

The Chinatown community, which dates to 1871, has worked to fend off sometimes dubious development since at least the 1960s: casinos, a prison, the stadium, a highway. They have won some fights and lost others. The six-lane, sunken Vine Street Expressway opened in 1991, cutting off the top of Chinatown, where the charter school sits. Only now are pedestrian overpasses being built to try to stitch the neighborhood back together.

“Every single time that Chinatown has been targeted for a project like this, people say Chinatown will survive,” Chang said. “But is that really how we should be treated as a community?”

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

—Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press

A federal appellate court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is reviewing a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”

The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish.

The plaintiffs note that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.

The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.

The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.

In the Louisiana case, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2023 dismissed the lawsuit largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their complaint too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”

Barbier said the lawsuit hinged primarily on the parish’s 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites. The plaintiffs missed the legal window to sue the parish, the judge ruled.

Yet the parish’s land-use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing ongoing discrimination against Black residents in the parish, said Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. They are challenging Barbier’s ruling under the “continuing violations” doctrine on the grounds that discriminatory parish governance persists, allowing for industrial expansion in primarily Black areas.

The lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.

These community members “have tried at every turn to simply have their humanity and dignity be seen and acknowledged,” Spees said. “That’s just been completely disregarded by the local government and has been for generations.”

Another part of the complaint argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.

At its core, the complaint alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.

Lawyers for St. James Parish said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.

“The Civil War ain’t never been over,” said lifelong St. James Parish resident Gail LeBoeuf, 72, a plaintiff in the case who co-founded the local environmental justice organization Inclusive Louisiana. “They’re trying to destroy the Black people in this country in any way they can.”

LeBoeuf, who lives 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from an alumina plant, was diagnosed with cancer in 2022 and blames her illness on the high levels of industrial pollution she has been exposed to for decades. She acknowledges the link cannot be proven but counters there is no way to prove industrial pollution was not the reason.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found in a 2003 report that St. James Parish ranked higher than the national average for certain cancer deaths. In August, a federal judge barred the EPA from using the Civil Rights Act to fight industrial pollution alleged to have disproportionately affected minority communities in Louisiana.

Besides a moratorium on industrial expansion in the parish, LeBoeuf’s organization calls for real-time air monitoring of pollution and buffer zones around residential areas.

Community groups have battled for years against plans by Taiwanese company Formosa to build a $9.4 billion plastics plant near a predominantly Black town in the parish.

LeBoeuf and other prominent, local environmental activists met with White House officials in September to discuss the Biden administration’s progress in responding to concerns raised by United Nations human rights experts over industrial expansion in the Chemical Corridor.

LeBoeuf said she had rescheduled a doctor’s appointment to meet with White House officials. She believes her advocacy for environmental justice is just as important a cure for her community as her ongoing chemotherapy treatment is for her body.

“Both are medicine,” LeBoeuf said. “Fighting is medicine.”

Jack Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.

—Jack Brook, Associated Press

On Sunday, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the popular Call Her Daddy podcast to discuss reproductive rights, address criticisms from Republicans Donald Trump and JD Vance, and set the record straight on her own family. 

Plenty of clips from the show—which is the most listened-to podcast by women on Spotify—quickly picked up traction on platforms like X and TikTok. But many women are especially struck by one moment in particular: Harris’s assertion that women don’t have to “aspire to be humble.”

The comment has sparked discussions about deeply ingrained—and often unquestioned—expectations for women’s behavior in the workforce, with male peers, and in society more generally.

The statement came after host Alex Cooper asked Harris how she felt about an assertion by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, who said her own children “keep her humble,” whereas Harris “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

The comment was a jab at the fact that Harris doesn’t have biological children, despite the fact that she shares two stepchildren with her husband, Doug Emhoff. 

Harris responded, “I don’t think [Sanders] understands that there are a lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble [. . .] Two, a whole lot of women who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life, and I think it’s really important for women to lift each other up.”

How society conditions women to be “humble”

Aside from highlighting the misogynistic undertones of Sanders’s analysis, Harris struck a chord with women through her casual rejection of the need to be humble.

“Never once have I seen someone tell women that we don’t have to ‘aspire to be humble,’ and to have it be an elected official, wow,” one TikTok user wrote. “Thirty-seven years of life and I’ve never heard a woman say that she doesn’t aspire to be humble,” another said. One creator even said that the moment “healed me.”

There’s actually a scientific basis for women’s strong reaction to the assertion that Harris was challenging. Women are deeply conditioned to behave “humbly,” more so than their male counterparts—so much more so, in fact, that it becomes a part of their own internal thought processes.

Despite the fact that men and women have been shown to generally possess equal intelligence, when asked to provide an estimation of their own intelligence, women consistently rate themselves lower than men, studies have found.

“Indeed, this pattern of gender differences in self-estimated intelligence (SEI) is so universally found across different samples, ages, ethnicities, and cultures that it has been termed the male hubris, female humility (MHFH) problem by Furnham et al. (2001),” researchers from Griffith University’s School of Applied Psychology wrote in a study on the topic published in 2022. In that same study, female respondents underestimated their own intelligence by an average of 6.32 IQ points and reported significantly lower self-esteem than male respondents.

The cost of lowered self-estimation

As one might expect, this lower self-estimation has real consequences for women in the workforce (and everywhere else).

In a LinkedIn post this January, female founder Piyu Dutta wrote about this phenomenon as something she termed Inherent Modesty Syndrome (IMS). She recalled an event during which female executives were reluctant to share their own accomplishments for fear of seeming too proud—and when they did, they were self-deprecating.

“Both in this group but also as a broader pattern that I have noticed throughout my career, women seem conditioned to be intrinsically modest and humble,” Dutta wrote, adding that the biases powering these patterns are held both by men and by women.

“IMS costs us when it comes to our annual performance review at our jobs or at the time of negotiating our salaries or asking for a promotion,” Dutta wrote. “It costs us when we fail to challenge lazy assumptions about our capabilities or professionalism (in turn, often masquerading as faux concern for our needs for work-life balance or our biological clock). It costs us when we talk ourselves out of applying for roles for which we may be a decent but not a perfect fit (a timidity that as per research, men are far less likely to suffer from).”

While women face a healthy dose of internal pressure to remain humble, there’s plenty of external pressure to do so too. On the internet (notably, in far-right circles), a recent trend of men “humbling” confident women (just search “I had to humble her” on TikTok) has inspired countless think pieces. This exhausting discourse adds to the subconscious narrative that women need to appear more outwardly modest if they want to avoid public shaming. 

To many women, Harris’s brief comment brought these internalized feelings to the forefront—and demonstrated that there’s no shame in refusing to be “kept humble.”

For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021—out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.

That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris‘ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.

“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.

Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.

“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.

Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.

Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.

When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.

In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.

“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.

But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.

Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.

Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.

Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”

“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.

Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.

It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.

That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.

There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.

“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.

Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.

In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.

“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.

“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”

“I’m tired already.”

Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

—Jesse Bedayn and Arushi Gupta, Associated Press/Report for America

When it comes to energy, Jarand Rystad is the numbers guy. The former McKinsey & Company partner founded Oslo-based Rystad Energy, an independent research and energy intelligence company that sells data and analysis on oil, gas, coal and renewable forms of energy.

A physicist by training, Rystad is an optimist about the chance of containing climate change through introducing new technologies. He brings numbers to back up his views, based on the company’s extensive databases.

Q: When are we going to see peak oil consumption, peak fossil fuel consumption?

A: I think peak coal is very soon. It could even be this year or next year. We are close to peak thermal in China, most likely this year or next, meaning coal and gas electricity generation. China is half of the coal market, so it’s very relevant.

In Europe and the U.S. coal has been trending down for many years. The trend down in Europe and America is balancing the trend up in India and Indonesia and a few other countries and Pakistan, and then China’s peaking. So they are very close to peak coal.

Peak oil, we were in a very good place with EV adoption in Europe and America though it has stalled a little bit due to lack of subsidies. And then we have peak gas, which as you know, consumption is going down in Europe much faster than anyone believed. So taking these three fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—in aggregate, I think we are talking about maybe the end of this decade will be a peak for fossil, maybe even slightly before.

Q: Is that good news?

A: I think it’s good news, of course. The only way to get rid of oil, gas and coal is to compete with the use of oil, gas and coal through introducing new technologies. So what you need to work on is solar, wind, batteries, geothermal, EVs, etc. All these technologies will make the use of fossil fuel no longer competitive.

Q: Where are oil prices going?

A: OPEC is managing the market because there’s actually too much oil in the market. So OPEC is cutting 3 million barrels, without that there would be an even bigger difference between the fundamental supply and demand.

I see weaker fundamentals meaning I see weaker prices and with a small risk of asset price collapse as well. The price collapse will not last for very long, but typically it is almost a V-shape and these could go deep down and they could go up again.

Q: You said there were 24 key technologies. What are the top five?

A: So let’s say that it’s 38 gigatons of emissions that you need to mitigate. Solar photovoltaic alone will mitigate 11 gigatons. Batteries and EVs separately are the next important, which is about 5.5 gigatons each. And CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) also has the potential to mitigate 5.5 gigatons. The fifth is wind, which is also like 5.5 gigatons.

Q: What’s the one technology no one has heard about yet?

A: For instance, high temperature energy storage. One is called “the sun in the box,” this big block of graphite, or black carbon, and you can heat the block to 2,000 degrees, and you do that when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.

You can have solar panels inside producing electricity from the wavelength radiation from the block, and you have pipes into it with super hot high pressure water, so you can choose whether you want to take out the energy as electricity or as hot over-pressurized water, for instance for metal production . . . Just one example of a new long duration storage technology.

Q: I haven’t heard the word “hydrogen” in our conversation.

A: It’s very inefficient to take it from electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity. This will only be a special application, more a niche than a pillar for applications like steel, chemicals, shipping fuel, ammonia production. I don’t believe we’re going to be driving hydrogen cars because it’s not competitive with electricity.

Q: The energy transition is sometimes viewed as a matter of banning things and introducing things that are going to cost more. Can you speak to that?

A: If you look at those technologies that are really taking off like like solar and batteries, they are taking off because they are cheaper and better than thermal. So they’re already past a tipping point . . . The cheapest option by far will be solar. Even if you are installing batteries to deal with the intermittency, it will be competitive versus building new thermal plants.

Q: What can be expected from the United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan next month?

A: Some countries like Germany for instance have suddenly slowed down their incentives for electric vehicle adoption. They need to keep up these kinds of measures. And you need this kind of international pressure. The difference between active policies and weak policies is at least 0.4 degree of global warming. We have a lot of technologies that will drive a green shift regardless of policies. But with policies, you drive it faster.

Q: Are you an optimist or a pessimist about holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century?

A: Some people call me climate optimistic but I’m quite fact-based on this. It is possible, for CO2 alone, to limit emissions to 650 gigatons, which corresponds to 1.6 degrees warming, and if you do something with methane on top of that, 1.5 degrees is still within reach.

The iPhone disrupted the media, and solar and batteries will be such a disruptive technology, because they’re cheaper and better. People underestimate how fast it will go. In 1945 it was all steam locomotives and by 1960 they were all diesel electric, only 15 years to change a gigantic system, because the new technology was cheaper and better.

—David McHugh, Associated Press business writer

BP has abandoned a target to cut oil and gas output by 2030 as CEO Murray Auchincloss scales back the firm’s energy transition strategy to regain investor confidence, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.

When unveiled in 2020, BP’s strategy was the sector’s most ambitious with a pledge to cut output by 40% while rapidly growing renewables by 2030. BP scaled back the target in February last year to a 25% reduction, which would leave it producing 2 million barrels per day at the end of the decade, as investors focused on near-term returns rather than the energy transition.

The London-listed company is now targeting several new investments in the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico to boost its oil and gas output, the sources said.

Auchincloss took the helm in January but has struggled to stem the drop in BP’s share price, which has underperformed its rivals so far this year as investors question the company’s ability to generate profits under its current strategy.

The 54-year-old Canadian, previously BP’s finance head, has sought to distance himself from the approach of his predecessor Bernard Looney, who was sacked for lying about relationships with colleagues, vowing instead to focus on returns and investing in the most profitable businesses, first and foremost in oil and gas.

The company continues to target net zero emissions by 2050.

“As Murray said at the start of year… the direction is the same – but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused, and higher value company,” a BP spokesperson said.

BP shares were up 0.8% by 0912 GMT.

Auchincloss will present his updated strategy, including the removal of the 2030 production target, at an investor day in February, though in practice BP has already abandoned it, the sources said. It is unclear if BP will provide new production guidance.

Rival Shell has also slowed down its energy transition strategy since CEO Wael Sawan took office in January, selling power and renewable businesses and scaling back projects including offshore wind, biofuels and hydrogen.

The shift at both companies has come in the wake of a renewed focus on European energy security following the price shock sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

BP has invested billions in new low-carbon businesses and sharply reduced its oil and gas exploration team since 2020.

But supply chain issues and sharp increases in costs and interest rates have put further pressure on the profitability of many renewables businesses.

A company source said that while rivals had invested in oil and gas, BP had neglected exploration for a few years.

Back to the Middle East

BP is currently in talks to invest in three new projects in Iraq, including one in the Majnoon field, the sources said. BP holds a 50% stake in a joint venture operating the giant Rumaila oilfield in the south of the country, where it has been operating for a century.

In August, BP signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to develop and explore the Kirkuk oilfield in the north of the country, which will also include building power plants and solar capacity. Unlike historic contracts which offered foreign companies razor-thin margins, the new agreements are expected to include a more generous profit-sharing model, sources have told Reuters.

BP is also considering investing in the re-development of fields in Kuwait, the sources added.

In the Gulf of Mexico, BP has announced it will go ahead with the development of Kaskida, a large and complex reservoir, and the company also plans to green light the development of the Tiber field.

It will also weigh acquiring assets in the prolific Permian shale basin to expand its existing U.S. onshore business, which has expanded its reserves by over 2 billion barrels since acquiring the business in 2019, the sources said.

Auchincloss, who in May announced a $2 billion cost saving drive by the end of 2026, has in recent months paused investment in new offshore wind and biofuel projects and cut the number of low-carbon hydrogen projects down to 10 from 30.

BP has nevertheless acquired the remaining 50% in its solar power joint venture Lightsource BP as well as a 50% stake in its Brazilian biofuel business Bunge.

—Ron Bousso, Reuters

Dmitry Zhdannikov contributed to this report.

ASMR videos are everything political ads are not. Soft and soothing, they’re a sensory experience listeners say they like for relaxation, insomnia, and stress relief. By contrast, political ads tend to be loud, obnoxious, and unavoidable when you’re forced to watch and listen to them during commercial breaks.

There’s now some overlap in the Venn diagram between ASMR and politics, though. The creators of an ad in support of Vice President Kamala Harris applied the techniques of ASMR to political persuasion for a spot that quietly sells Harris’s record of lowering healthcare costs.

The ad, from the political committee ProgressNow AZ-Federal, shows hands with brat green nails tapping an inhaler. “The Biden-Harris administration capped the cost of inhalers at just $35 for millions of Americans,” the narrator whispers. “Kamala Harris will continue to take on Big Pharma and lower costs for everyday American.”

The rest of the ad shows the disembodied hands bejeweling the inhaler: The tiny jewels rattle as they’re shaken in their bottle, then tinkle as they’re poured in a bowl. The end card reads “Vote For Kamala Harris” in a pink serif font. ProgressNow AZ did not respond to a request for comment.

ASMR has grown in popularity since the term, for autonomous sensory meridian response was coined by Jennifer Allen in 2010. Today on YouTube and social media, videos of clicking, whispering, and brushing can draw millions of subscribers and followers.

That the style and sound of ASMR has found its way to presidential campaign advertising represents a new mainstreaming of the phenomenon, but it’s not the first example of political ad makers turning to quieter ways to sell their candidates this year. Make America Great Again, a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump, began airing ads this summer modeled on YouTube’s “Enjoy The Zen” ad breaks.

Instead of ASMR-style whisper narration, like in the pro-Harris ad, these pro-Trump ads use white noise as their soundtrack to argue for Trump’s competence without uttering a word. The combined sights and sounds of scenes, like a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle driving over gravel alongside a quiet border wall, or a U.S. warship sailing through calm waters, are used to suggest that returning Trump to office will make the U.S. and world affairs more stable.

Not everyone likes ASMR, just as not everyone who lived through the four politically tumultuous years under Trump will find the underlying argument of MAGA’s “Enjoy The Zen”-style ads convincing. Still, the muted approach these ads take is creative. Sometimes, a whisper can speak louder than a shout.

As the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court begin their latest nine-month term, the biggest case on the docket could be one that’s currently not scheduled.

The 2024 Election may well become an early focus of the Court as lawsuits about the decision are almost certain, regardless of who wins. And with public opinion about the Court at what could be all-time lows, that could put the controversial judicial body under an even more intense microscope than it has faced in recent months.

With the election still a month away, however, the six conservative and three liberal Justices will focus, for now, on the docket before them. And there’s plenty to debate, all touching on hot-button issues, ranging from transgender care to gun control to free speech.

A potential ban for gender-affirming care (United States v. Skrmetti)

For the first time, Justices will examine state laws that ban gender-affirming care for minors. This hearing will revolve around a Tennessee law that prevents teens and minors from accessing puberty blockers. The 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to go into effect roughly a year ago.

The state maintains the Constitution does not grant anyone the right to demand “medical interventions for children that a state has found to be unproven and excessively risky.” The Biden administration, however, argues the law discriminates against transgender people and that the 6^th Circuit’s ruling conflicts with other appeals courts around the country. Keeping the law in place, it argues, “would needlessly leave transgender adolescents and their families in limbo and inflict particularly acute harm in Tennessee and other States where these laws have taken effect.”

Ghost gun regulation (Garland v. VanDerStok)

In 2022, a federal rule went into effect that required homemade kits that can be assembled into firearms to include serial numbers and require background checks. Last year, the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down that rule, saying it was an “unlawful agency action.”

The Biden administration, along with attorneys general from more than a dozen states, is worried about people using weapons that cannot be traced by law enforcement officials and is seeking to have that Appeals Court opinion overturned, citing public safety concerns.

At issue is whether the kits can be counted as firearms as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the Appeals court decision would allow “a flood of untraceable ghost guns” nationwide.

Medicare reimbursement rates (Advocate Christ Medical Center, et al. v. Becerra)

More than 200 hospitals have asked the Supreme Court to overrule a lower-court ruling that lets the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reimburse them at a lower rate for treating a high proportion of low-income patients. That could impact more than $4 billion in federal funds and would follow a 2022 Supreme Court decision on the Medicare program that reduced payments to “disproportionate share hospitals” (DSH, or those that treat a high number of low-income patients, who are often in worse health and more costly to treat).

“By reducing compensation to hospitals already operating on the brink of insolvency, improperly suppressed DSH payments leave patients served by safety net hospitals in peril,” the petition reads.

The status of flavored vapes (FDA v. Waged and White Lion Investments dba Triton Distribution)

Flavored vapes are at the center of this case, specifically the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s rejection of two companies’ applications to begin selling those products. The Biden administration asked the Court to take up the case after a lower court ruled the FDA had failed to follow legal procedures in denying those applications. The FDA says it hasn’t unilaterally banned flavored e-cigarettes, but it has not approved any applications for the products yet, saying applicants must clear a higher legal bar since the product poses a “substantial risk to youth.”

Age restrictions and online porn (Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton)

Several states have enacted age restriction laws to access websites that feature pornography, but a Texas law is the focus of these hearings. The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), which represents the adult entertainment industry, says age restriction laws violate the free speech protections porn studios enjoy. The FSC managed to successfully challenge the law at the district court level, but the Fifth Circuit overturned that ruling on appeal.

This is a case that could have broad impact, not just on porn sites, but also social media that allows adult and sexually graphic images. It also could reverse previous rulings that gave more weight to the free speech rights of adults than any potential harm to minors.

When Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina on September 27, Asheville’s reputation changed from charming vacation destination to epicenter of devastation. With flooding wiping out whole neighborhoods in Asheville and surrounding Buncombe county, an official death toll approaching 100, and a water system offline for the foreseeable future, the priority has been providing basic necessities to roughly 270,000 people.

But as aid pours in, power starts returning, and gas stations reopen, Asheville and surrounding towns including Black Mountain are turning to the next step: rebuilding the economy as quickly as possible.

Asheville is a famous tourist destination—hosting hikers, foodies, arts and crafts collectors, and countless bachelorette parties. Even hotels and restaurants that are unscathed can’t reopen until the ruined public water system comes back online in weeks or months. But many local businesses that sell far beyond Asheville are ready for customers.

“We have inventory, and we are desperately looking for opportunities to send it out and keep our business going,” says Allison Blake, cofounder and CEO of handcrafted jewelry manufacturer Soulku.

The company sells online and through about 1,300 stores nationwide. It employs around 20 craftspeople, all moms who mostly work from home. “By our business staying afloat, by my employees getting paychecks, they are able to stay in Asheville and help rebuild our town,” she says.

Manufacturing employs 21,300 people in Buncombe and neighboring counties, according to the local Economic Development Coalition and Chamber of Commerce. Other local manufacturers, such as Moonlight Makers, a popular seller of humorous T-shirts, mugs, and other products, just resumed national shipments.

Harder-hit companies are salvaging what they can. “It has been a massive job getting everything wet thrown away,” wrote Emma Allen, founder of skincare-products maker Everyday Oil, in an email. With its main building flooded, the company has set up a fulfillment center in a hut on the property.

Pirani, a maker of vacuum-insulated cups, is cleaning off up to $6,000 worth of product it may have to sell at a steep “scratch and dent” discount. (Disclosure: I became friends with the owners of Pirani while living in Asheville.)

Rebuilding in “Beer City”

Asheville, which bills itself as “Beer City USA,” faces bigger challenges with its signature product. “Our two brewing facilities weren’t damaged in the flood, but . . . the water system in Asheville is out for an indeterminate amount of time,” says Adam Charnack, owner and CEO of Hi-Wire Brewing—one of more than 50 breweries in the county. “We’re really probably looking at months, and that’s just to get the system on, to get us caught up, to refill what was lost.”

Buying bottles of Hi-Wire won’t help the company directly, as distributors have already paid for them. But clearing the shelves could help its long-term survival, says Charnack. “We want to be able to tell the story to our retailers that people are supporting us during this time, so that we can continue to grow our business with those retailers.” Hi-Wire also operates tap room bars in eight other cities.

A similar dilemma faces gourmet confectionery French Broad Chocolate, named for one of the rivers that inundated Asheville. “[We] watched cars float by, watched telephone poles float by, just watched the river rise really fast and rise up to our front door,” says cofounder and CEO Jael Skeffington.

Though the factory floor of its building was barely scathed, it’s useless without a water supply. “We’re trying to figure out if there are any creative ways to truck in water and be able to manufacture,” she says.

How you can help right now

French Broad Chocolate sold its remaining inventory in the days after the flood. Like several Asheville businesses, it’s now selling gift cards that customers can utilize whenever production resumes. “Buying chocolate to support a community is a pretty easy sell. Gift cards might be slightly less compelling,” says Skeffington.

Corey Reid, VP of accounts for ecommerce site developer on/Sight, has evacuated to Charlotte, where he spoke with a woman who snapped up some of the last sweets.

“Someone who doesn’t live in Asheville found a way to support a business, using the income that they’re going to use for their Christmas gifts already,” says Reid. “And I was like, ‘Well, I work for an ecommerce agency. We can design and develop a site really quickly.’”

The result is Brands Of WNC, a directory of Asheville businesses searchable by categories such as boutiques, dining, and local artists. The site launched on Sunday and continues to add companies that submit their information.

Venture Asheville, a startup support initiative of the Economic Development Coalition, has also created a directory of local companies to support. “Because of the health and vibrancy of our leisure hospitality market, people want to bring Asheville products back home,” says Venture Asheville’s executive director Jeffrey Kaplan.

The largest supplier of drinking water and wastewater services in the U.S. is the latest target to be hit by hackers. 

American Water Works, which provides drinking water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people in 14 states and on 18 military installations, said hackers breached its computer networks and systems on Thursday. 

Taking protective steps after becoming aware of the unauthorized activity, including shutting down certain systems, the New Jersey-based utility does not believe its facility or operations were impacted by the cybersecurity incident. However, it is “currently unable to predict the full impact,” it stated in a regulatory filing. 

An American Water Works spokesperson told CBS News in an email, “In an effort to protect our customers’ data and to prevent any further harm to our environment, we disconnected or deactivated certain systems. There will be no late charges for customers while these systems are unavailable.” They added that the company is “working around the clock to investigate the nature and scope of the incident.”

The company said law enforcement has been notified and they are cooperating with them. Just earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned in a letter to state governors that drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks. This is because they “often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices,” they wrote.

However, it is not just the water services that are under attack. The number of reported data breaches in the U.S. hit a record 3,205 in 2023, up 78% from 2022, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center. At the same time, organizations spent an estimated $188 billion globally on cybersecurity in 2023. That figure is expected to hit almost $215 billion in 2024. Whether these efforts will pay off is yet to be seen. 

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When assessing home price momentum, it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate potential future pricing weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings could suggest a market that is heating up.

Generally speaking, local housing markets where active inventory has returned to pre-pandemic levels have experienced softer home price growth (or outright price declines) over the past 24 months. Conversely, local housing markets where active inventory remains far below pre-pandemic levels have generally experienced stronger home price growth over the past 24 months.

National active listings are on the rise (up 34% between September 2023 and September 2024); however, we’re still well below pre-pandemic levels (down 23% below September 2019).

Here’s how the total September inventory/active listings compare historically, according to Realtor.com:

September 2017: 1,308,607

September 2018: 1,301,922

September 2019: 1,224,868

September 2020: 749,395 (overheating during the Pandemic Housing Boom)

September 2021: 578,070 (overheating during the Pandemic Housing Boom)

September 2022: 731,496 (mortgage rate shock starts)

September 2023: 702,430

September 2024: 940,980

Among the biggest inventory jumps: Florida.

In Florida, the biggest inventory increases initially over the past two years were concentrated in sections of Southwest Florida. In particular, in markets like Cape Coral, Punta Gorda, and Fort Myers, which were hard-hit by Hurricane Ian in September 2022. This combination of increased housing supply from the damaged homes coming up for sale coupled with strained demand—the result of spiked home prices, increased mortgage rates, higher insurance premiums, and higher HOAs—translated into market softening across much of Southwest Florida.

However, the inventory increases in Florida now expands far beyond SWFL. Markets like Jacksonville and Orlando are also above pre-pandemic levels, as are many coastal pockets along Florida’s Atlantic Ocean side.

One reason for this is that Florida’s condo market is dealing with the aftereffects of regulation passed following the Surfside condo collapse in 2021.

In August 2024, only four states had returned to or surpassed pre-pandemic 2019 active inventory levels.

In September 2024, that number grew to seven: Tennessee, Texas, Idaho, Florida, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. It’s nearly eight states if you include Washington State—which was just 35 homes below pre-pandemic levels.

Other states likely to soon join that list include Oklahoma, Alabama, and Oregon.

Why are Sun Belt and Mountain West markets seeing a faster return to pre-pandemic inventory levels than many Midwest and Northeast markets?

One factor is that some pockets of the Sun Belt and Mountain West experienced even greater home price growth during the pandemic housing boom, which stretched affordability too far beyond local incomes. Once pandemic-fueled migration slowed and rates spiked, it became an issue in places like Colorado Springs and Austin.

Unlike many Sun Belt housing markets, many Northeast and Midwest markets have lower levels of homebuilding. As new supply becomes available in Southwest and Southeast markets, and builders use affordability adjustments like buydowns to move it, it has created a cooling effect in the resale market. The Northeast and Midwest don’t have that same level of new supply, so resale/existing homes are pretty much the only game in town.

Big picture: This year we’ve observed a softening across many housing markets as strained affordability tempers the fervor of a market that was unsustainably hot during the pandemic housing boom. While home prices are falling in some areas around the Gulf, most regional housing markets are still seeing positive year-over-year home price growth. The big question going forward is whether active inventory and months of supply will continue to rise and cause more housing markets to see outright price declines?

A federal judge said the Federal Trade Commission can proceed with its landmark antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. But, he also gave the company a small victory by tossing out a few claims made by states involved in the legal fight.

The order, issued last week by Judge John H. Chun and unsealed on Monday, is a major defeat for Amazon, which has tried for months to get the case tossed out in court. A trial in the case is slated to be held in October 2026.

“We are pleased with the court’s decision and look forward to moving this case forward,” FTC spokesperson Doug Farrar said in a prepared statement. “The ways Amazon illegally maintains its monopolies and the harm they cause—including suppressed competition and higher prices for shoppers and sellers—will be on full display at trial.”

The FTC and the attorneys general of 18 states, plus Puerto Rico, have alleged in court the e-commerce behemoth is abusing its position in the marketplace to inflate prices on and off its platform, overcharge sellers and stifle competition that pops up on the market.

The lawsuit, which was filed in September 2023, is the result of a yearslong investigation into the company’s business and is one of the most significant legal challenges brought against Amazon in its nearly 30-year history.

U.S. regulators and state attorneys general are accusing the online retailer of violating federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws.

In the order, Judge Chun, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, allowed the federal challenges and many of the state claims to proceed. But he dismissed some claims made by New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Maryland under state antitrust or consumer protection laws.

Amazon, for its part, expressed confidence that it could prove its argument in court as the case proceeds

“The ruling at this early stage requires the court to assume all facts alleged in the complaint are true. They are not,” Tim Doyle said in a statement, adding that the agency’s case “falsely” claims consumers only consider popular sites Walmart.com, Target.com, Amazon, and eBay when shopping for household products.

“Moving forward the FTC will have to prove its claims in court, and we’re confident those claims will not hold up when the FTC has to prove them with evidence,” Doyle said. He also asserted the FTC’s approach “would make shopping more difficult and costly.”

The FTC is also suing Meta Platforms over alleged monopolistic practices, while the Department of Justice has brought similar lawsuits against Apple and Google, with some success.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine is illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation.

—Haleluya Hadero, AP reporter

A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Alphabet’s Google to overhaul its mobile app business to give Android users more options to download apps and to pay for transactions within them, following a jury verdict last year for Fortnite maker Epic Games.

The injunction by U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco outlined the changes Google must undertake to open up its lucrative app store, Play, to greater competition, including making Android apps available from rival sources.

Donato’s order said that for three years Google cannot prohibit the use of in-app payment methods and must allow users to download competing third-party Android app platforms or stores.

The order restricts Google from making payments to device makers to preinstall its app store and from sharing revenue generated from the Play store with other app distributors.

Google and Epic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alphabet shares were down 2.2% following the ruling. Donato said Epic and Google must establish a three-person technical committee to implement and monitor the injunction. Epic and Google each get a pick, and those two members will select the third person.

Google has said it plans to appeal the verdict that led to the injunction, and it could ask the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pause Donato’s order pending appeal.

Donato said his injunction would go into effect on Nov. 1, which he said will give Google time to “bring its current agreements and practices into compliance.”

Epic’s lawsuit, filed in 2020, accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions.

The Cary, North Carolina-based company persuaded a jury in December 2023 that Google unlawfully stifled competition through its controls over app distribution and payments, paving the way for Donato’s injunction.

Google had urged Donato to reject Epic’s proposed reforms, arguing they were costly, overly restrictive and could harm consumer privacy and security. The judge mostly dismissed those arguments during an August hearing.

“You’re going to end up paying something to make the world right after having been found to be a monopolist,” he told Google’s lawyers.

In a separate antitrust case in Washington, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Aug. 5 ruled for the U.S. Justice Department and said Google had illegally monopolized Web search, spending billions to become the internet’s default search engine.

Google also began a trial in September in Virginia federal court in a Justice Department lawsuit over its dominance in the market for advertising technology.

Google has denied the claims in all three cases.

—Mike Scarcella, Reuters

Retailers are ramping up hiring for the holiday shopping season.

For the second consecutive year, Amazon said it is hiring 250,000 full-, part-time, and seasonal workers across the U.S., rounding out a series of recent hiring announcements by top retailers including Target, Macy’s, JCPenney, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

The holiday hiring sprees will help retailers maintain operations during their busiest time of year. Some have already announced discounts and deals to encourage consumers to start shopping earlier: On Tuesday, Amazon kicks off Prime Days at the same time Walmart drops six days of October Circle Week savings.

If you’re looking for a seasonal job, read on as we break down the numbers on how many workers these companies are hiring and how much they’re paying.

Amazon

• Amazon is hiring 250,000 full-, part-time, and seasonal workers for customer fulfillment and transportation positions.
• All seasonal employees make at least $18 per hour.
• Average total compensation for fulfillment and transportation employees is more than $29 per hour, which includes benefits.
• Full-time employees are also eligible for first-day benefits that include healthcare coverage and education tuition assistance.
• Nearly one-third of people who work as a holiday hire return to the company.

Target

• Target is hiring 100,000 seasonal team members across its 2,000 stores and more than 50 supply chain facilities.
• Seasonal pay starts at $15 to $24 per hour.
• The retailer offers current employees extra hours first before it makes seasonal hires.
• Many seasonal team members—including more than half of last year’s—are offered an opportunity to stay on with Target after the holiday season.

Macy’s

• Macy’s is hiring more than 31,500 seasonal workers (a scaleback from last year, when the company added 38,000 workers).
• Seasonal sales associate hourly pay is $14 to $17, according to Glassdoor.
• Locations include Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Bluemercury stores, as well as its distribution centers. The best hiring opportunities are in:
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • Chicago, Illinois
  • Houston, Texas
  • Los Angeles, California
  • Miami, Florida
  • Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • New York, New York
  • Northern New Jersey
  • San Diego, California
  • San Francisco, California
  • Washington, D.C.

JCPenney

• JCPenney is hiring more than 10,000 associates this holiday season.
• Positions include customer service and truck team roles.
• The company is holding a national hiring event October 16-18, in stores and online.
• Seasonal associates have the opportunity for continued employment and advancement after holiday season.
• Stores are closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
• Fast Company reached out to JCPenney to clarify hourly pay and will update this post if we hear back.

Dick’s Sporting Goods

• Dick’s Sporting Goods is hiring 8,000 seasonal “teammates” for the 2024 holiday season.
• A “National Signing Day” on October 8 will kick off holiday recruiting at Dick’s Sporting Goods, Dick’s House of Sport, Public Lands, and Going, Going, Gone! stores.
• The company says pay is “competitive,” but does not specify further. Fast Company reached out to clarify hourly pay, and will update this post if we hear back.

T.J. Maxx

• In a statement to Fast Company, T.J. Maxx said it does not provide the specific number of additional holiday associates.
• However, it said the majority of seasonal hiring in stores will be part-time employees, and the majority of seasonal hiring in distribution centers and fulfillment centers will be for full-time roles with opportunities for regular employment.

Walmart

• Walmart has not officially announced how many people it will be hiring this holiday season.
• In a statement to Fast Company, Walmart said, “Our approach to holiday hiring is consistent with what we’ve been doing for a few years now. . . . We first offer our current associates the option to pick up additional hours over the holidays. This is something our associates asked that we do. If any store has additional hiring needs, that will happen on a store-by-store basis.”
• In 2022, Walmart hired 40,000 seasonal associates and full-time roles across the business.
• Walmart told Fast Company that its average hourly wage in the U.S. is close to $18.

Elon Musk achieved platinum meme status and got ridiculed on Saturday Night Live for gleefully leaping onstage at a Trump rally over the weekend. But a photo of Trump glowering as the Tesla tycoon flung himself skyward was far from Musk’s most egregious moment at that rally.

What’s more disturbing is Musk’s hard-launch of a new line of attack against Kamala Harris and the Democrats, one that should be familiar to anyone paying close attention to this election.

During his speech, Elon Musk claimed that Trump must win in order “to preserve democracy in America,” predicting that if Harris wins instead, “this will be the last election.” It’s the exact obverse of the terms some Democrats employ to frame the dangers of Trump winning—and it’s a perfect encapsulation of Musk’s reckless, childish approach to politics.

Elon Musk: And then make sure they actually do vote. If they don't, this will be the last election. That's my prediction. pic.twitter.com/dEEUhdZdwM

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2024

Musk provided no evidence in his speech for why, if Harris won, this election would be America’s last. When he previously floated this idea on X, however, he did indeed build in an explanation. On September 29, Musk tweeted the same “last election” rhetoric from the rally, adding that “If even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years.” He went on to suggest without proof, in the same voluminous tweet, that the Biden administration has been flying in, and fast-tracking citizenship for, asylum seekers in swing states, in an effort to change the electoral map and create “a one-party state.” 

In other words, Elon Musk’s professed reason for why a hypothetical Harris administration would mean the end of democracy in America is essentially just The Great Replacement Theory. While Democrats have called Trump a threat to democracy because he still won’t concede losing the 2020 election, and occasionally embraces the title of “dictator,” Musk is doing it because of a radical conspiracy theory—one that was once considered a fringe fantasy until people like Musk and Tucker Carlson mainstreamed it in recent years.

Of course, Musk’s stated justification for using this language might not be the whole story. The real reason is probably much simpler: that it’s a standard troll-move to simply accuse the other side of doing whatever they’ve accused your side of doing. (This also happens to be a classic Trump tactic.) According to recent national polling from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 81% of likely voters in the U.S. believe that democracy is under major threat. If both sides are hurling end-of-democracy rhetoric at those voters, it dilutes the potency of the accusation and confuses the issue. Any undecided folks encountering the allegation on both sides are liable to throw up their hands and dismiss both charges as equally overblown—even though one side’s charge has no basis in fact.

The timing couldn’t have been more chaotic, either. While Harris has largely favored a “We’re not going back” message over Biden’s “Democracy is on the ballot” approach since assuming the nomination back in July, she’s recently emphasized Trump’s efforts to hold onto power after he lost the 2020 election. If Musk continues with his counterattack while stumping for Trump, voters may be saturated for the next four weeks with the sound and fury of anti-democracy accusations on all fronts.

What’s also alarming about Elon Musk’s rhetoric is that many prominent Republicans, including the two at the top of the ticket, blame Democrats’ identical rhetoric for inspiring recent assassination attempts on Trump. But if their premise is that this kind of talk is beyond the pale, isn’t Musk knowingly endangering Harris’s life? (It wouldn’t be the first time—Musk previously tweeted that “no one is even trying to assassinate” Biden or Harris, a tweet which brought Musk to the Secret Service’s attention.) It’s not as if he is unaware that Republicans have painted Democrats’ rhetoric in that light; on X, Musk has accused Dems of “actively encouraging people to kill Trump.” He either believes that making such allegations might incite direct action, and he’s still doing it anyway, or he doesn’t believe it, and he’s inadvertently exposing the GOP’s blame game as a bad-faith attempt to shame Democrats into dropping one of their talking points.

Considering his recent actions, Musk has made it abundantly clear he’s brought his ferocious, fact-avoidant X persona to the campaign trail, rather than the savvy entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX. And with just four weeks remaining in the race, the worst may be yet to come.

Over the weekend, Musk reportedly annexed the X handle “America” and started using it for his own well-funded pro-Trump Super PAC, America PAC. He is now directing users to @America in the bio of his account, the most followed account on the entire platform. Previously, Musk took the X handle “X” from its original owner, but that appeared to be a clear-cut business decision. The same could not be said about appropriating the @America handle in order to boost Trump.

It’s hard not to see a metaphor in the world’s richest man claiming America for his own purposes, just because he can. As Musk himself might say, “Extremely concerning!”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts are under attack in the private and public sectors, but research has found that companies with diverse boards perform better than those with nondiverse boards.

Cosmetics brand E.l.f. Beauty has partnered with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to release a new report that draws on board membership data over the past five years, as well as findings from previous studies. Here are key findings:

1. Diverse boards perform better

S&P 500 companies with higher board gender diversity had 15% higher ROE and a 50% reduction in earnings risk compared to less diverse peers. A 2021 study found that corporate social responsibility and financial performance are correlated and the magnitude of the relationship depends on how diverse a board is. Meanwhile, companies with three or more women or minority directors had a lower likelihood of lawsuits.

2. Diversity is still hard to achieve

The typical board is 78% white, 73% male, and 58% white male. In general, boards tend to hire people who are similar to their members and achieve racial or gender diversity but not both. In an analysis of the 100 most gender-diverse boards, women made up 59% of total members and white members had 73% of the seats. In the 100 most racially diverse boards, 80% of the seats were held by people of color and 77% by men.

3. Progress is happening but it is unequal

White women make up 72% of the board seats held by women. Black Americans make up 14.4% of the U.S. population, but they only hold 7.3% of board seats.

“[Increasing] boardroom diversity is one of the best strategies on the table,” the report’s authors wrote. “[Improving] diversity on your board does not have to come at the expense of board members. Board expansion . . . may be a good approach to improving diversity as it allows the company to retain the expertise of the existing board while creating an opportunity for additional perspective and fresh thinking that a new board member can bring.”

Hyundai has begun producing electric SUVs in Georgia less than two years after breaking ground on its sprawling, $7.6 billion manufacturing plant west of Savannah.

Hyundai’s factory in Georgia held an “employee-focused celebration” Thursday as its first EV for commercial sale rolled off the assembly line, Bianca Johnson, spokesperson for Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, said in a statement provided Monday to The Associated Press.

“After validating its production processes to ensure its vehicles meet Hyundai Motor Group’s high quality standards, HMGMA has started initial production of customer vehicles ahead of schedule,” Johnson said.

She said a grand opening celebration at the Georgia plant is expected in the first quarter of 2025.

The South Korean automaker and battery partner LG Energy Solution plan to employ 8,500 total workers at the Bryan County site, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Savannah, once the plant is fully operational. Hyundai has said it will produce up to 300,000 EVs per year in Georgia, as well as the batteries that power them.

The plant’s vehicle production areas have been completed and are being staffed by more than 1,000 workers, Johnson said. Its battery-making facilities remain under construction.

The first vehicles being produced at the Georgia site are 2025 models of Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 electric SUVs. Johnson said those American-made EVs will arrive at U.S. dealerships before the end of this year.

During the first half of 2024, the Ioniq 5 was America’s second-best-selling electric vehicle not made by industry leader Tesla.

Hyundai broke ground on its Georgia plant in late October 2022. It’s the largest economic development project the state has ever seen, and came with a whopping $2.1 billion in tax breaks and other incentives from the state and local governments.

Hyundai rushed to start making EVs in Georgia within two years of groundbreaking, spurred by federal electric vehicle incentives that reward domestic production.

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022 with provisions intended to combat climate change, includes a tax credit that saves EV buyers up to $7,500, but only on cars made in North America with domestic batteries. Though Hyundai executives complained the law was unfair, Hyundai President and Global Chief Operating Officer Jose Munoz has also said it caused the automaker to push to open sooner in Georgia.

—Russ Bynum, Associated Press

FTX received court approval of its bankruptcy plan on Monday, which will allow it to fully repay customers using up to $16.5 billion in assets recovered since the once-leading crypto exchange collapsed.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved the wind-down plan at a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, saying FTX’s success made it “a model case for how to deal with a very complex Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding.”

The plan is built on a series of settlements with FTX customers and creditors, U.S. government agencies, and liquidators appointed to wind down FTX’s operations outside the U.S.

The settlements allow FTX to use its assets to repay customers of its crypto exchange first, before paying potentially competing claims filed by government regulators. FTX plans to repay 98% of its customers—those who held $50,000 or less on the exchange—within 60 days after the plan’s effective date, which has not yet been determined.

Once among the world’s top crypto exchanges, FTX collapsed after news surfaced that founder Sam Bankman-Fried took customer money to pay off risky bets made by his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for stealing from FTX customers, and he has appealed his conviction.

FTX remains in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice over $1 billion that the government seized during the criminal prosecution of Bankman-Fried. FTX shareholders, who would normally receive nothing in a bankruptcy proceeding, could receive up to $230 million from the funds seized by the DOJ, according to court documents.

FTX has estimated that it will have between $14.7 billion and $16.5 billion available to repay creditors, enough to pay customers at least 118% of the value in their accounts as of November 2022, the date that the company filed for bankruptcy.

U.S. government agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Comission and Internal Revenue Service, agreed to let FTX prioritize customer repayment over fines and tax debts, and a liquidator appointed in the Bahamas agreed to work with FTX after previously challenging the company’s authority to file for bankruptcy in the U.S.

FTX said the result was a victory for creditors, made possible by its ability to recover cash and crypto assets that had gone missing during the company’s chaotic collapse. The company also raised additional funds by selling off other assets, including its investments in tech companies like the artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic.

“Today’s achievement is only possible because of the experience and tireless work of the team of professionals supporting this case, who have recovered billions of dollars by rebuilding FTX’s books from the ground up and from there marshaling assets from around the globe,” FTX CEO John Ray said in a statement on Monday.

Customers have had a mixed response to the plan, with many expressing disappointment that FTX’s demise caused them to miss out on a strong rebound in crypto prices since the market bottomed out in 2022. Some customers had objected to the plan, demanding higher repayments reflecting recent rises in cryptocurrency values.

David Adler, an attorney representing four objecting creditors, said that the price of a bitcoin, for example, has risen to over $63,000 from its November 2022 price of $16,000. Customers that deposited bitcoin on FTX’s exchange are finding it difficult to accept FTX’s claim that they are receiving a 100% recovery based on those lower prices of two years ago, Adler said.

FTX said it was not possible to simply return the crypto assets customers had deposited, because customers’ assets were gone, misappropriated by Bankman-Fried.

At the time of its bankruptcy filing, FTX.com held only 0.1% of the bitcoin that its customers believed they had deposited on the exchange, according to the company. One of FTX’s financial advisers, Steve Coverick, testified on Monday that it would “exorbitantly expensive” to purchase billions of crypto assets on the open market in order to repay customers with the same types of cryptocurrency they had before the bankruptcy.

—Dietrich Knauth, Reuters

As the Hurricane Helene-driven waters rose around the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, Boone McCrary, his girlfriend and his chocolate lab headed out on his fishing boat to search for a man who was stranded by floodwaters that had leveled his home. But the thick debris in the water jammed the boat’s motor, and without power, it slammed into a bridge support and capsized.

McCrary and his dog Moss never made it out of the water alive.

Search teams found McCrary’s boat and his dog’s body two days later, but it took four days to find McCrary, an emergency room nurse whose passion was being on his boat in that river. His girlfriend, Santana Ray, held onto a branch for hours before rescuers reached her.

David Boutin, the man McCrary had set out to rescue, was distraught when he later learned McCrary had died trying to save him.

“I’ve never had anyone risk their life for me,” Boutin told The Associated Press. “From what I hear that was the way he always been. He’s my guardian angel, that’s for sure.”

The 46-year-old recalled how the force of the water swept him out his front door and ripped his dog Buddy—”My best friend, all I have”—from his arms. Boutin was rescued by another team after clinging to tree branches in the raging river for six hours. Buddy is still missing, and Boutin knows he couldn’t have survived.

McCrary was one of at least 230 people killed by Hurricane Helene’s raging waters and falling trees across six states—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia—and was among a group of first responders who perished while trying to save others. The hurricane caused significant damage in nearby Unicoi County, where flooding swept away 11 workers at an plastics factory and forced a rescue mission at an Erwin, Tennessee, hospital.

McCrary, an avid hunter and fisherman, spent his time cruising the waterways that snake around Greeneville, Tennessee. When the hurricane hit, the 32-year-old asked friends on Facebook if anyone needed help, said his sister, Laura Harville. That was how he learned about Boutin.

McCrary, his girlfriend and Moss the dog launched into a flooded neighborhood at about 7 p.m. on Sept. 27 and approached Boutin’s location, but the debris-littered floodwaters clogged the boat’s jet motor. Despite pushing and pulling the throttle, McCrary couldn’t clear the junk and slammed into the bridge about two hours into the rescue attempt.

“I got the first phone call at 8:56 p.m. and I was a nervous wreck,” Harville said. She headed to the bridge and started walking the banks.

Harville organized hundreds of volunteers who used drones, thermal cameras, binoculars and hunting dogs to scour the muddy banks, fending off copperhead snakes, trudging through knee-high muck and fighting through tangled branches. Harville collected items that carried McCrary’s scent—a pillowcase, sock and insoles from his nursing shoes—and stuffed them into mason jars for the canines to sniff.

On Sunday, a drone operator spotted the boat. They found Moss dead nearby, but there was no sign of McCrary.

Searchers had no luck on Monday, “but on Tuesday they noticed vultures flying,” Harville said. That was how they found McCrary’s body, about 21 river miles (33 kilometers) from the bridge where the boat capsized, she said.

The force of the floodwaters carried McCrary under two other bridges, under the highway and over the Nolichucky Dam, she said. The Tennessee Valley Authority said about 1.3 million gallons (4.9 million liters) of water per second was flowing over the dam on the night McCrary was swept away, more than double the flow rate of the dam’s last regulated release nearly a half-century ago.

Boutin, 46, isn’t sure where he will go next. He is staying with his son for a few days and then hopes to get a hotel voucher.

He didn’t learn about McCrary’s fate until the day after he was rescued.

“When the news hit, I didn’t know how to take it,” Boutin told the AP. “I wish I could thank him for giving his life for me.”

Dozens of McCrary’s coworkers at Greenville Community Hospital have posted tributes to him, recalling his kindness and compassion and desire to help others. He “was adamant about living life to the fullest and making sure along the way that you didn’t forget your fellow man or woman and that you helped each other,” Harville said.

McCrary’s last TikTok video posted before the hurricane shows him speeding along the surface of rushing muddy water to the tune, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” He wrote a message along the bottom that read:

“Some people have asked if I had a ‘death wish.’ The truth is that I have a ‘life wish.’ I have a need for feeling the life running through my veins. One thing about me, I may be ‘crazy,’ Perhaps a little reckless at times, but when the time comes to put me in the ground, you can say I lived it all the way.”

—Martha Bellisle, Associated Press

In a broadcast on NBC 6 South Florida, meteorologist John Morales became emotional while discussing Hurricane Milton, which is expected to hit Florida’s west coast on Wednesday. The storm briefly reached Category 5 status, before its wind speeds reduced it to a Category 4 storm Tuesday morning. 

“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” Morales says, beginning to choke up. “I apologize,” he says as he takes a pause. “This is just horrific.”

Morales has decades of experience—he’s the longest tenured broadcast meteorologist in South Florida, according to NBC 6—adding weight to the intensity of this hurricane, and his forecast.

Millibars are a unit of measurement of a storm’s atmospheric pressure, and a drop in pressure indicates a storm approaching. That pressure drop also indicates a cyclone rapidly intensifying, according to the National Weather Service. By Monday night, Hurricane Milton had maximum wind speeds of 180 miles per hour. It’s expected to be the worst storm to impact the Tampa, Florida, area in more than 100 years. 

Morales was also blunt about what is fueling this storm. Hurricane Milton gained strength as it moved across the Gulf of Mexico, “Where the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot—record hot,” he says. “You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: global warming, climate change.”

Ocean temperatures have broken records in recent years, and while El Niño is partly to blame, experts say global warming and climate change caused by our emissions underlies the change. As we put more warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, much of that heat is absorbed by the oceans. A 2020 study explained the magnitude of change as if we’d dropped 3.6 billion atomic bombs into our oceans.

Hurricane Milton moved past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, before moving across the Gulf to Florida. In the Yucatan, Morales said, many residents have “just the basics, and it’s going to be very tough.” The storm is expected to weaken as it approaches Florida, but because it’s “so incredibly strong,” he added, “you’re going to find it very difficult to be nothing less than a major hurricane in Florida.” The storm surge where it hits could top 12 feet. 

That Hurricane Milton did get downgraded to a Category 4 does not mean it is completely weakening. “While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” the National Weather Service said.

Hurricane Milton comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused destruction across Florida and multiple southern states, including historic flooding in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina. The successive storms point to the effects of climate change, as hot ocean temperatures fuel more and more storms.  

Morales isn’t the only expert to emphasize the intensity of Hurricane Milton. Noah Bergren, a meteorologist with Fox 35 Orlando, took to X on Monday night to say that “This is nothing short of astronomical. I am at a loss for words to meteorologically describe you the storm’s small eye and intensity.” Hurricanes with small eyes, sometimes called pinhole eye hurricanes, generally have stronger winds and are more intense; that small eye can spin faster than a larger one. Milton is the fifth strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure “on this side of the world,” he added. “This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.”

Much of Florida’s west coast is under the hurricane warning, and 11 counties are under a mandatory evacuation (more are under voluntary evacuations). With potentially millions of people fleeing their homes, some gas stations are already reportedly out of fuel and miles-long traffic has clogged Florida highways.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor emphasized the intensity of the storm to residents in a broadcast on CNN on Monday. “This is literally catastrophic,” she says. “And I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die.”