(WASHINGTON) — United Airlines expects travel to surge in December as more people look to get away for the holidays.
“We’re seeing a lot of pent-up demand in our data and are offering a December schedule that centers on the two things people want most for the holidays: warm sunshine and fresh snow,” Ankit Gupta, vice president of network planning and scheduling at United, said in a press release.
To meet the demand, United plans to fly 3,500 daily domestic flights in the last month of the year — making it the airline’s largest schedule since the start of the pandemic. In comparison, United flew just 649 flights in a single day in April 2020.
“We know families and friends are eager to reunite this holiday season, which is why we’re thrilled to add new flights that will help them connect and celebrate together,” Gupta said.
In December, United will begin offering new direct flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix from Cleveland, and to Orlando from Indianapolis. United will offer up to 195 daily flights to 12 destinations in Florida this winter, the most flights to the state in company history. The carrier will also have 66 daily flights to over a dozen ski destinations across the U.S. in its schedule.
The airline expects the busiest travel days for the Thanksgiving holiday to be Wednesday, Nov. 24 and Sunday, Nov. 28. United said popular days for winter holiday travel are expected to be Thursday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Jan. 2.
If you’re looking to travel over the holidays and have not booked yet, experts say now is the time.
“We expect that prices will remain relatively low until about Halloween, so that’s kind of the day where if you know you get to Halloween, that’s when you should definitely book if you haven’t booked yet,” Adit Damodaran, an economist at Hopper, said in an interview with ABC News. “Because after Halloween, we’re expecting prices for Thanksgiving to start rising about 40% for domestic and international flights for Christmas.”
After Halloween, Hopper said travelers should expect domestic fares to spike 40% leading up to Thanksgiving week, and an additional 25% for any last-minute flights.
(WASHINGTON) — Americans will soon be seeing new, empowering faces on some U.S. quarters.
On Wednesday, the United States Mint announced its quarter designs for 2022, which feature five trailblazing American women.
The five women featured are Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood; Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman to soar into space; award-winning writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou; Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and an activist for Native American and women’s rights; and Nina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools.
“These inspiring coin designs tell the stories of five extraordinary women whose contributions are indelibly etched in American culture,” the United States Mint’s acting director, Alison L. Doone, said in a statement.
The designs are part of the American Women Quarters Program, a four year program featuring coins with reverse (tails) designs of women who have made their mark in American history.
For each year until 2025, the Mint will issue five quarters honoring individuals with a wide range of accomplishments and fields, including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space and the arts.
“Generations to come will look at coins bearing these designs and be reminded of what can be accomplished with vision, determination and a desire to improve opportunities for all,” Doone said.
(NEW YORK) — As Americans continue to cook, do laundry and use more electricity at home amid the pandemic, utility bill prices are predicted to rise this winter.
Ken Gurny, a homeowner in New York told Good Morning America their family has tried to conserve energy since the pandemic sent their utility bill sky high.
But even as residents work to lower electricity consumption, the cost to heat homes is going up.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association predicts gas bills in the U.S. could rise up to 30% this winter.
“Going forward this year, there are no signs of these prices coming down,” executive director Mark Wolfe told GMA.
The Natural Gas Association of America told GMA in a statement that while it does not expect shortages, “natural gas market prices are higher due to the economic recovery, strong natural gas demand from last winter, and slower than anticipated production.”
From January to March last winter, the Gurney family said they paid roughly $2,300 to heat their home which means this year, that number could go up by $700 for a total of $3,000 in the same time period.
Beyond putting on a sweater inside and lowering the thermostat, there are other savings strategies to consider.
A smart thermostat like the Nest lets people program a lowered temperature at specific times of day via a smartphone app. The company estimates it saves users 10-12% on heating costs each year.
Amazon has entered the market with its Alexa-compatible smart thermostat due on the market in November.
The U.S. Energy Department suggests a simpler fix: Swap out an old, dirty filter on the furnace to save between 5 to 15% on a heating bill.
The Natural Gas Association suggests: “if customers have trouble paying their natural gas bills, there are programs that can help.”
Wolfe said the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is a “federal program that helps people pay their energy bills, they have enough money to do so — but it’s not just for poor people, a family can have to $40,000 a year and still qualify.”
Additionally, experts suggest heat loss can be prevented by checking for cold spots with a thermal gun. Point the device at the ceiling, wall and doors to see where weatherstripping could help, replace insulation or patch up cracks.
More heating and cooling units will also run off electricity rather than gas or oil, providing greater energy efficiency and serving as better options for the environment.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — A juror was excused from Elizabeth Holmes’ trial Wednesday, citing religious beliefs.
“I am a Buddhist, and so I practice for compassion, you know, for loving and forgiveness,” juror No. 4 told U.S. District Judge Edward Davila.
She told the court that she had become anxious anticipating how Holmes would be “punished by the government” if she were to find Holmes guilty.
“I keep thinking about this every day,” she added. She was excused per prosecution’s request; the defense did not object.
The alternate juror slated to replace juror No. 4, however, also expressed anxiety. “She’s so young,” the alternate told Davila, referring to Holmes.
“It’s my first time in this situation and it’s her future,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m 100% ready to participate in something like this.”
Davila elaborated on how the process would work, and how jurors would have no part in Holmes’ sentencing — adding that “punishment” should not be at all considered as the jury deliberates. Neither lawyers objected to her remaining on the jury, and the judge ruled she was fit to take juror No. 4’s place. She took the place of juror No. 4 Wednesday morning.
Now that juror No. 4 is excused, there are 15 jurors remaining: 12 active and three alternates.
Wednesday marked only the 12th day of Holmes’ trial — which was previously delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Holmes’ pregnancy. Davila expects the trial will conclude in December, but the schedule is already delayed a day, due to a false alarm coronavirus scare amongst the jury in the trial’s first week.
Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 and claimed the company was developing blood testing technology that could perform hundreds of blood tests using only a few drops of blood. Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, also Holmes’ ex-boyfriend, face a dozen charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with what prosecutors call a multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors and patients.
Originally, the pair were to be tried together, but in December of 2019, the trials were severed due to allegations of abuse by Balwani against Holmes, which Balwani has denied.
Both this week and last, jurors heard from former Theranos lab director Dr. Adam Rosendorff, who claims he warned Holmes about Theranos device failings. He told the court he attempted to delay the company’s Walgreens launch, pleading with a “nervous” Holmes, who went forward nonetheless. In cross-examination, defense attorney Lance Wade attempted to discredit Rosendorff.
(NEW YORK) — Owen Diaz, the former Tesla employee who sued the electric car company over allegations of racism, is opening up about his experience.
“[Tesla] decided not to follow through, they decided to kill investigations,” Diaz said on “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “Tesla, as a company, as a whole, needs to wake up. You know you can’t keep treating workers like this.”
Diaz was hired as a contract elevator operator at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California. He worked there from June 2015 to July 2016. Diaz claimed fellow workers called him the “n-word,” was told to “go back to Africa” and saw racist and derogatory images in the factory’s bathroom stalls.
Diaz said he complained to Tesla about his treatment but his supervisors failed to stop the abuse. He left the company four years ago, filing a lawsuit in October 2017 that claimed “Tesla’s progressive image was a facade papering over its regressive, demeaning treatment of African-American employees.”
Now, after receiving one of the largest awards in a racial harassment case in the history of the United States, Diaz said he feels justice was served. A San Francisco federal jury awarded him $137 million on Monday.
“It’s God’s justice that this happened, you know, and allowed me to talk for people who can’t talk for themselves. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. They have to take choose to either take the abuse that these billion-dollar companies are putting out or feed their families,” Diaz said.
Mr. Diaz’s attorney, Lawrence Organ of the California Civil Rights Law Group, spoke to “Good Morning America” as well and said the verdict “makes Tesla take notice of these horrid conditions, and hopefully it will make them change and make other companies change and realize, racist conduct has no place in the workplace.”
In an internal email to employees, Valerie Capers Workman, Tesla’s vice president of people, said Tesla of 2015 and 2016 “is not the same as the Tesla of today.” Tesla published Workman’s email in a blog post on its website following the verdict.
“While we strongly believe that these facts don’t justify the verdict reached by the jury in San Francisco, we do recognize that in 2015 and 2016, we were not perfect. We’re still not perfect. But we have come a long way from 5 years ago,” Workman said in her email.
Tesla had responded to Diaz’s complaints of harassment by firing two contractors and suspending a third contractor, according to Workman.
This is not the first time Tesla faced claims of a hostile, racist work environment. The company had to contend in court with similar lawsuits, including a class-action civil rights lawsuit filed in 2017 in Alameda County Superior Court. That case is still pending.
In August, a court ruled that Tesla must pay a million-dollar fine in the case of Melvin Berry, a former black employee, who was allegedly subjected for years to racial insults from his colleagues. Tesla has denied all claims.
Tesla employees are bound by mandatory arbitration contracts when they start their jobs, preventing them from suing the company. Diaz was a contract worker.
Diaz said he knows that his case is “bigger than him.”
“This is not really about me. This is about a verdict that a jury made to let Tesla know that they’re being put on notice to clean up their factories,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Holiday shopping season has kicked off earlier than ever.
Amazon announced Monday it is offering “Black Friday-worthy deals” and early access to deep discounts across every category.
Target launched its own “Deal Days” promotion from Oct. 10 – 12 that boasts savings on thousands of items online, through their app and in nearly 2,000 stores. The major retailer also launched a holiday price match guarantee, according to its website.
Jennifer Smith, a logistics and supply chain reporter for the Wall Street Journal said retailers are in a unique position this holiday shopping season.
“They’re balancing, on the one hand, the need to make sure they have items in stock when people do start shopping with wanting to make sure that they have plenty of time to get them because it could take a little bit longer, particularly for e-commerce, for things to arrive at your home,” she told Good Morning America.
October typically marks the busiest shopping month of the year as retailers stock up for Black Friday, but with just three months ahead of Christmas, the supply chain in the U.S. has faced massive pandemic-related shipping issues, shortages and delays.
Microsoft reported issues getting parts needed to build its new Xbox consoles.
“There are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it’s going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year,” XBOX’s head of gaming Phil Spencer said in a statement.
Nike has felt the recent supply crunch and as first reported by NBC, is working to shift footwear production out of Vietnam where factories remain closed due to COVID restrictions to places like China and Indonesia in an attempt to prevent further delays.
Fast fashion clothing companies like H&M and BooHoo said their profits are likely to suffer because of rising supply chain costs and bottlenecks in major ports coast to coast.
Other retailers have attempted to alleviate product shortages by flying in goods by air freight, while Target, Walmart and Home Depot have chartered their own ships to avoid backlogged ports and to make sure they’re stocked for holidays.
The CEO of MGA Entertainment Inc., one of the world’s largest toymakers, said supply issues are the worst he’s seen in over 40 years.
“You have the jams you have all the backlog, logistic problems and inflation, they’re all gathered up,” Isaac Larian told GMA. “So it’s going to be a tough couple of years, in my opinion.”
Like many other experts have urged, Larian added, “my kind of advice is — please shop early.”
(NEW YORK) — On Monday, the crash of Facebook and the company’s apps threw the Internet into disarray and plunged billions of users into digital darkness. The outage illustrated how essential Facebook’s services have become as well as the risks of its dominance, particularly in developing countries.
Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday the crash was caused by an error during routine maintenance, which took down global data servers.
During the outage, Facebook’s website and app were inaccessible, as were WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the company’s most popular acquisitions.
While the outage was relatively brief — around six hours — some researchers said it points to the downsides of a growing reliance on a single company’s services.
“I think it speaks to the vulnerability of our dependence on these platforms,” said Philip Roessler, a professor at William & Mary, at which he co-directs the Digital Inclusion and Governance Lab.
Roessler said that in countries where he does his research — places like Kenya and Malawi — WhatsApp is an essential part of the communications infrastructure, especially as mobile customers take advantage of WhatsApp-dedicated bundles that are much cheaper than standard mobile data.
“It’s become this kind of backbone of these emerging economies,” he said, highlighting how businesses use WhatsApp to communicate with customers and suppliers alike, while workers use it to find jobs.
WhatsApp is also valuable in places without universal literacy, Roessler said, because the platform allows users to send voice-based messages.
In Brazil, local broadcaster Globo reported that the outage temporarily crippled some small businesses, rendering them unable to fill orders.
The implications of a growing dependence on Facebook’s services go beyond the economic, according to Ryan Shandler, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford who highlighted the role played by social media platforms in aiding free speech and assembly.
“People have become dependent on this platform to realize basic civil and human rights,” he said.
In 2014, Facebook paid $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp. The messaging app’s rise to prominence, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jon Callas, was due in part to cost. The data required to use the service, Callas said, could be cheaper than a traditional text message, also known as SMS.
“It was fantastically cheap and it was certainly as good as SMS, so lots and lots of people started using it as a replacement for that,” Callas said.
According to data from the digital analytics company Similarweb, Whatsapp is the most popular mobile messaging app in several of the world’s most populous countries, including India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil.
In July, Facebook said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that its apps had around 3.51 billion users.
While the crash sparked a range of humorous responses — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey joked on his own platform about buying Facebook.com, which was erroneously listed as for sale during the outage — its consequences could have been more serious, said Roessler, adding: “If it had lasted much longer, you know, the effects would have been quite deep and severe.”
(NEW YORK) — Volvo is recalling over 460,000 cars due to an air bag defect that could result in passenger injury.
The recall affects older sedans, including 2001-2009 S60s and 2001-2006 S80s.
According to documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the driver’s air bag inflator “may explode during deployment,” which could result in sharp metal fragments striking the driver or other occupants. There has been at least one death due to the defect, according to the documents.
“Our investigations have identified an issue where driver airbag inflators may under certain circumstances be subjected to excessive pressures during deployment potentially resulting in an inflator rupture,” a Volvo spokesperson said. “The excessive pressure can occur if the inflator has been subjected to elevated levels of moisture and high inflator temperatures frequently during its lifetime.”
To remedy the issue, Volvo will contact owners of cars subject to the recall. Dealerships will replace the driver’s air bag for free.
(NEW YORK) — Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers on Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, which found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls. Among the findings were that Instagram made body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teens.
The Journal’s reporting has sparked a fierce backlash amid accusations the tech giant publicly downplayed what it knew about how potentially harmful Instagram could be while also doing nothing to prevent it.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Committee Chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in his opening remarks. “This month, a whistleblower approached my office to provide information about Facebook and Instagram. Thanks to documents provided by that whistleblower, as well as extensive public reporting by The Wall Street Journal and others, we now have deep insight into Facebook’s relentless campaign to recruit and exploit young users.”
“We now know that Facebook routinely puts profits ahead of kids’ online safety,” he added. “We know it chooses the growth of its products over the well-being of our children, and we now know that it is in defensively delinquent in acting to protect them.”
In the wake of the Wall Street Journal expose, Facebook announced earlier this week that it was “pausing” development of an Instagram for Kids platform, but stopped short of scrapping it.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, faced bipartisan scrutiny as she defended the company during the hearing that lasted some three hours. She denied Blumenthal’s claims.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Davis stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
“We undertook this work to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram,” she added. “It did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues.”
Davis said the reporting “implied that the results were surprising and that we hid this research,” which she said wasn’t true and that the company has discussed the “strengths and weaknesses of social media and well-being publicly for more than a decade.”
She also highlighted aspects of Facebook’s in-house research that she said the Journal didn’t include in recent stories, such as reports that Instagram made “sadness” and “loneliness” better for a majority of teenage girls.
Davis said they have removed some 600,000 accounts on Instagram alone between June and August for not meeting the age requirement of 13 years old. She also said the company has “put in place multiple protections to create safe and age-appropriate experiences for people between the ages of 13 and 17.”
The hearing comes as Big Tech has come under increased scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over myriad issues, from allowing the spread of misinformation to allegations of political censorship. Lawmakers on Thursday compared Instagram’s policies to Big Tobacco’s previous tactics to attract users before there was government intervention.
Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor of communication at Cornell University whose research focuses on the intersection of media, culture and technology, told ABC News via email on Thursday that Big Tech’s self-regulation hasn’t worked.
Remarks from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., referring to “traditional media’s regulation of material for children — including limitations on advertising that have long guided the television industry — attest to a growing recognition that external regulation of the platforms is critical,” Duffy said. “While Big Tech has long flaunted its mechanisms of self-regulation, these have failed — and continue to fail — its users.”
Duffy said another key takeaway from Davis’ testimony was “a refusal to agree to a long-term promise to abandon plans of further developing Instagram for Kids.” She called the initiative “part of a long-term strategy by Big Tech to court younger — and less witting — users who the platforms can inevitably collect data from.”
Lawmakers on Thursday called for the need to update the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
In prepared remarks, Davis defended building an Instagram “for tweens,” noting that other companies such as YouTube and TikTok already have developed versions of their app for those under 13.
“The principle is the same: It’s much better for kids to use a safer, more age-appropriate version of social media apps than the alternative,” Davis said. “That said, we recognize how important it is to get this right.”
“We have heard your concerns, and that is why we announced that we are pausing the project to take more time,” she added. “We’ll keep listening to parents, keep talking with policymakers and regulators, keep taking guidance from experts and researchers, and we’ll revisit this project at a later date.”
(WASHINGTON) — A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday is hearing from a whistleblower who claims Facebook manipulated content it knew was harmful to young users, a day after the social media giant experienced an apparently unrelated massive outage.
Frances Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” has been cooperating with a Senate Commerce subcommittee as part of its ongoing efforts to assess potential regulations for the platform. Haugen is expected to tell lawmakers on Tuesday about evidence she reportedly has showing that the company intentionally ignored proof of its potentially harmful impact on users.
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” she told “60 Minutes.”
Facebook has publicly refuted Haugen’s claims.
Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:
Oct 05, 8:57 am
Whistleblower to testify before Senate panel
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee at 10 a.m. on Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users in a hearing entitled, “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower. “
Beyond alleging Facebook’s knowledge of its platforms’ negative impact on teenagers and young girls, Haugen has reportedly come forward with documents showing the social media giant has also ignored but is aware of how hate speech and misinformation are emphasized on their sites.
Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” has been cooperating with the offices of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., chair and ranking member of the Senate committee that is assessing potential regulations for the social media giant.
