Business

To the casual observer, canned seafood, or “tinned fish,” appears to be having a moment.

Stacks of tins, filled with everything from mackerel to octopus, have been filling social media feeds, complete with intricate, colorful, and Instagram-friendly packaging. Brands like Fishwife, founded in 2020, tout “responsibly sourced tinned fish” for “heavenly hors d’oeuvres” and “charming charcuterie.”

In August, a colorful shop that specializes in canned seafood called The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine opened in New York City’s Times Square.

“The theme is kind of this magical library,” says Joanna Quaresma, the project manager for the shop. The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine is packed with floor-to-ceiling shelves of tinned fish, known as “conservas” in Portuguese culture.

“It’s something that is very, very cherished in our culture,” Quaresma tells ABC Audio.

She says the store sells more than 20 different varieties of tinned seafood, including a display of cans designed to look like gold bars. The $44 tins come with gold leaf inlays alongside meticulously skinned and de-boned sardines.

“The gold bar was us trying… and I think we managed, to elevate the sardine to its highest level,” says Quaresma.

But the shop, as well as the recent explosion of tinned fish content, divides opinion in the culinary community.

“There is a stunty, touristy, showy, kind of element to it now,” says Amy McCarthy, a staff writer for the food website Eater. “When something like tinned fish becomes a status symbol, that is such an opportunity for brands to jump on the train and, like, just start charging you a premium for a product that isn’t necessarily premium but has a really cool looking package.”

Dan Waber is the co-owner of the Rainbow Tomatoes Garden, a farm in Pennsylvania that, in addition to selling a full crop of heirloom tomatoes, also sells a huge variety of tinned seafood from around the world. Waber says the European locations of The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine are seen in the tinned fish community as a tourist trap, selling middling products at exorbitant prices. The company’s New York City location, he says, is more of the same.

“You have graduated from fleecing customers in Portugal to fleecing the world’s customers in, what is basically the center of the universe for fleecing tourists,” says Waber.

Quaresma says the gold bars are her company’s attempt to bring Portugal’s relationship with tendency food to the masses. She says prices at The Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine can be high because the company wants every part of their supply chain, from the fishermen to the workers in the factory, to be compensated fairly.

“Criticism, if it’s constructive, we appreciate it,” says Quaresma.

The process of canning fish stretches back to the mid-1800s. The first Portuguese tins of tuna, mackerel, and sardines were made by the Ramirez Canning Company in 1865. But the cuisine’s influence stretches far beyond Portugal.

“France, the Philippines, Japan, really any country with a coast, has a rich history of tinned seafood,” says Waber.

Sardines and tuna are just the start of the veritable ocean of seafood available in a can. The Rainbow Tomatoes Garden website advertises muscles nestled alongside allspice and bay leaf, mackerel with coriander and juniper, and white tuna stuffed inside sweet red peppers.

“The products are sensational. I mean that’s another huge factor,” says Waber. “People try them, and then they go, ‘there’s 700 of these things?'”

Waber says calling the current moment a “tinned fish trend” misses the mark. He says tinned fish has always been around, and always been popular, if you knew where to look.

“A significant portion of the population that has been consuming these products sort of in secret, or without telling anybody,” says Waber, adding that the rise of social media has contributed to the buzz.

Mei Liao makes culinary videos on TikTok and Instagram centered, in part, around the world of canned seafood. She even has a recurring series she calls “Tinned Fish Talk.”

“Each episode I introduce a type of fish or a concept related to tinned fish and try to provide a background and – almost more education-forward resource,” says Liao.

Liao is ethnically Chinese, and her parents are first-generation immigrants. She says tinned fish is fundamental to many food cultures around the world, including her own.

“A big part of the culture that I’m then able to inherit and understand my heritage though, is translated through cooking,” says Liao.

She says for her, and for many around the globe, tinned fish isn’t a trend. Rather, it’s a staple.

“To think of it as a trend food or to think of it as something that is only recently been discovered, I think does a disservice to the many cultures that incorporate tin fish as a really kind of key component of their diet and culture,” says Liao.

Waber says whether you’re new to the world of tinned seafood, or a seasoned pro, the important thing is to try as many different varieties as possible.

“The products are delicious, and convenient, and you should try some,” says Waber.

Hear the full story in “Let’s Eat” from ABC Audio:

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(NEW YORK) — The centerpiece for home holiday decorating could cost next to nothing if you live near a national forest and are willing to do some heavy lifting.

The U.S. Forest Service is encouraging Americans to cut down their Christmas trees at a nearby federally protected forest, and in a majority of participating locations, all it will cost is a mere $5 or $10 for a permit.

Cutting down Christmas trees actually improves forest health, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The permit system, offered at dozens of national forests throughout the country, helps to thin densely populated areas of small-diameter trees and allows other trees to grow larger, opening areas that provide forage for wildlife and reduce wildfire danger.

In untouched foliage, natural selection causes trees to grow smaller and closer together, Jill Sidebottom, seasonal spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association, told ABC News. The trees “compete” with each other for resources, including sunlight and water.

Cutting them down allows better growth for the trees that remain and builds resiliency to threats such as insects and disease, Sidebottom said.

Trees cut from the forest would likely be more “open,” allowing for more ornament placement, because they are not being sheared and packaged throughout the commercial process, Sidebotto said.

The areas that would most benefit from thinning trees, which tend to house trees the “perfect size for Christmas,” are pre-determined by local forest health experts, according to the Forest Service. The type of trees available depends on the forest of choice.

At Ocala National Forest in Florida, sand pine trees are the species that need to be thinned out, Jared Nobles, district silviculturist for Ocala National Forest, told ABC News.

About 306,000 permits have been sold annually since sales began on Recreation.gov in 2020, according to the Forest Service. The average number of permits sold in 2018 and 2019 was about 240,000. Most of the holiday tree permits are issued in November.

It was once a common occurrence for Americans living in rural areas to venture into a nearby forest to cut down a Christmas tree, prior to the evolution of the modern Christmas tree industry in the mid-20th century, Sidebottom said.

The tradition also connects people to their local forests, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Nobles described the act of finding and cutting a tree as an “adventure.”

“If you’re tight on a budget, come over here and get you a Christmas tree,” Nobles said.

Each year, the Christmas tree displayed at the U.S. Capitol is cut from a national forest.

This year’s U.S. Capitol tree originated from Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.

The permits serves as an alternative to purchasing a tree from a stand or tree farm, some of which across the country are experiencing shortages.

Tree cutting guidelines from the USDA:

• Contact the forest district office nearest you to obtain a permit for home firewood, Christmas tree and tree cutting instructions.
• The chosen tree must be at least 200 feet from main roads, recreation sites and campgrounds. Visitors should also stay away from the sides of streams, rivers, lakes and wet areas.
• Select a tree with a trunk of 6 inches or less in diameter. Prepare to cut the three no more than six inches above ground level.
• The wood of Christmas trees cannot be sold, and permits must be in the holder’s possession at all times while in the forest.
• Never cut a tall tree just for the top.
• Only cut one tree per tag.
• Bring a rope and tarp to move the tree from the harvest area to your vehicle.
• Check weather conditions and dress properly.
• Inform someone where you are going and when you will return.
• Check with your local district before cutting downed or dead trees, which could provide habitat to wildlife.
• Be aware of areas where trees may be weakened by storms, insect damage or fire.
• Bring emergency supplies, including water, food and a first aid kit.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SEATTLE) — The Justice Department announced Tuesday that the cryptocurrency giant Binance and its CEO are pleading guilty to violations of U.S. anti-money laundering laws while agreeing to pay more than $4 billion in fines.

Chengpeng Zhao, the company’s founder, pleaded guilty in federal court in Seattle on Tuesday for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and has agreed to resign as part of his plea deal, the Justice Department said. The company has also agreed to enter in a number of anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance programs and retain an independent monitor for the next three years.

The government says that by willfully ignoring their obligations to register as a money transmitting business, Binance allowed money to flow unfettered to terrorists, cybercriminals and child abusers who used their platform — the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. They also accuse the company of profiting off scores of illegal transactions between U.S.-based users and people in sanctioned countries like Iran, Cuba, Syria and Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine. In just a four year period, the department alleges Binance caused over $898 million in trades between U.S. users and users in Iran.

DOJ says the more than $4 billion in fines the company has agreed to pay amounts to one of the “largest corporate penalties in U.S. history.” Zhao has separately agreed to pay a $50 million fine as part of his plea deal.

While the felony charge Zhao pleaded guilty to carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, it’s not immediately clear what federal prosecutors will recommend he ultimately serve under the agreement. Officials told reporters at the Justice Department on Tuesday that they will recommend at least some period of incarceration.

According to the deal, however, it appears Zhao, who confirmed he plans to step down from his role, could ultimately return as CEO — given the terms of the plea agreement will lapse after a period of three years.

In plea documents filed today in Seattle, the department details how Binance executives were warned of the legal risks they could face by not implementing the proper protocols to flag or report suspicious transactions, and how their structure could ultimately attract criminals.

One compliance employee allegedly wrote, “we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days – come to binance we got cake for you.”

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(NEW YORK) — Months before OpenAI board member Ilya Sutskever would gain notoriety for his key role in the ouster of CEO Sam Altman, Sutskever co-authored a little-noticed but apocalyptic warning about the threat posed by artificial intelligence.

Superintelligent AI, Sutskever co-wrote on a company blog, could lead to “the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction,” since engineers are unable to prevent AI from “going rogue.” The message echoed OpenAI’s charter, which calls for avoiding AI uses if they “harm humanity.”

The cry for caution from Sutskever, however, arrived at a period of breakneck growth for OpenAI. A $10 billion investment from Microsoft at the outset of this year helped fuel the development of GPT-4, a viral conversation bot that the company says now boasts 100 million weekly users.

The forced exit of Altman arose in part from frustration between him and Sutskever over a tension at the heart of the company: heightened awareness of the risks posed by AI, on the one hand, and explosive growth in the release and commercialization of new products on the other, The New York Times reported.

To be sure, details remain scant about the reason for Altman’s departure. The move came after a review undertaken by the company’s board of directors, OpenAI said on Friday.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in a statement.

Altman was hired by Microsoft days after his exit, eliciting a letter on Monday signed by nearly all of the employees at OpenAI that called for the resignation of the company’s board and the return of Altman, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ABC News.

The OpenAI board, the letter said, “informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed ‘would be consistent with the mission’ of the company.

Stuart Russell, an AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley who co-authored a study on societal-scale dangers of the technology, said OpenAI faces a tension centered on its mission of developing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a form of AI that could mimic human intelligence and potentially surpass it.

“If you’re funding a company with multiple billions of dollars to pursue AGI, that just seems like a built-in conflict with the goal of ensuring that AI systems are safe,” Russell told ABC News, emphasizing that it remains unclear why exactly Altman left the company.

The divide over the existential threat posed by AI looms industry-wide as the technology sweeps across institutions from manufacturing to mass entertainment, prompting disagreement about the pace of development and the focus of possible regulation.

An open letter written in May by the Center for AI Safety warned that AI poses a “risk of extinction” akin to pandemics or nuclear war, featuring signatures from hundreds of researchers and industry leaders like Altman and ​​Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, the tech giant’s AI division.

For his part, Altman has said rapid deployment of AI allows for stress-testing of products and offers the best way to avert considerable harm.

Other AI luminaries, however, have balked at the purported risk. Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Meta, told the MIT Technology Review that fear of an AI takeover is “preposterously ridiculous.”

Warnings from industry titans about the risks of AI have arisen alongside an increasingly competitive industry in which the speedy development of products requires massive investment, which in turn places pressure on firms to pursue commercial uses for the technology, Anjana Susarla, a professor of at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business who studies the responsible deployment of AI, told ABC News.

“The very large investments needed to build these kinds of technologies means the companies have a tradeoff between the profits they would generate from these investments and thinking about some abstract benefit from artificial intelligence,” Susarla said.

The multi-billion dollar investment from Microsoft earlier this year deepened a longstanding relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI, which began with a $1 billion investment from the tech giant four years ago.

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015. As of last month, the company was set to bring in more than $1 billion in revenue over a year-long period through the sale of its artificial intelligence products, The Information reported.

In addition to uniting OpenAI employees behind Altman, his recent ouster appears to have resolved some of the tension with Sutskever.

“I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions,” Sutskever, a longtime AI researcher and co-founder of OpenAI, posted on X on Monday. “I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”

The choice of Altman’s replacement, meanwhile, could offer a hint of the company’s future approach to safety.

OpenAI appointed interim CEO Emmett Shear, the former chief executive at video game streaming platform Twitch.

In a podcast interview on “The Logan Bartlett Show,” in July, Shear described AI as “pretty inherently dangerous,” and placed the odds of a massive AI-related disaster in a range between 5% and 50% — an estimate that he called the “probability of doom.”

In September, Shear said on X that he favors “slowing down” the development of AI.

“If we’re at a speed of 10 right now, a pause is reducing to 0,” Shear wrote. “I think we should aim for a 1-2 instead.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — OpenAI was thrown into upheaval in recent days after the sudden departure of CEO Sam Altman, who just three days later landed at Microsoft. The ouster elicited a letter from about 600 employees at OpenAI, all of whom threatened to resign unless Altman returns.

As the worker protest unfolded, OpenAI – maker of the popular conversation bot ChatGPT – appointed a replacement for Altman: Interim CEO Emmett Shear, the former chief executive at video game streaming platform Twitch. Shear revealed the news Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying he’d received a call from the company offering him the position only hours earlier.

“It’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust,” said Shear.

“I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence,” he added. “When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.”

Here’s what to know about Shear, his attitude toward AI, and his plans for the company.

Who is Open AI interim CEO Emmett Shear?

Shear, who earned an undergraduate degree in computer programming from Yale University, is best known for his role as the founder and CEO of Twitch.

Launched in 2011, Twitch set out to become the preeminent online platform for livestream video content. Within two years, the site boasted 45 million unique visitors in a single month, Forbes reported. Amazon acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion in 2014.

Shear stepped down as CEO of Twitch last year, comparing the 16-year-old company to a teenager. “Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone,” Shear said.

Before Twitch, Shear co-founded a series of startups. One of the first, in 2005, was an early attempt at an integrated online calendar, called Kiko Calendar.

“Kiko Calendar was a story in repeated mistakes and failure,” Shear said at a 2014 event with startup accelerator Y Combinator, with which he has been affiliated on and off for nearly two decades. Kiko Calendar was later sold on eBay for $250,000, Shear said at the event.

What are Shear’s plans for OpenAI?

In his announcement on X accepting the role as interim CEO, Shear laid out his initial plans for the company over the coming weeks.

He vowed to hire an independent investigator to examine Altman’s ouster, to speak with an array of company stakeholders, and to reform the company’s management team as needed.

“Depending on the results everything we learn from these, I will drive changes in the organization – up to and including pushing strongly for significant governance changes if necessary,” Shear said.

Shear is among a large number of prominent tech industry figures who believe that AI poses an existential threat to humanity. In a podcast interview on “The Logan Bartlett Show,” in July, Shear described AI as “pretty inherently dangerous,” and placed the odds of a massive AI-related disaster in a range between 5% and 50% — an estimate that he called the “probability of doom.”

As recently as Wednesday, Shear “unironically” wondered aloud whether AI could largely replace one of corporate America’s most prominent job titles: the CEO.

“Most of the CEO job (and the majority of most executive jobs) are very automatable,” Shear declared on X.

He added, however, that “There are of course the occasional key decisions you can’t replace.”

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(NEW YORK) — Less than a year out from the next presidential election, former President Donald Trump and some Republican allies continue to falsely deny the results of the previous one.

Three in 10 adults believe that President Joe Biden only won the 2020 contest because of election fraud, a Monmouth poll in June found. More than two-thirds of Republicans espouse the debunked claim, the survey showed.

Despite the persistence of such falsehoods, political advertisements featuring incorrect assertions about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 contest will be permitted on Instagram and Facebook, a Meta content policy shows.

Meta, the parent company that controls the platforms, made a policy change allowing political advertisers to say past elections were fraudulently conducted but prohibiting ads that question the validity of future or ongoing elections, the policy says. The Wall Street Journal first reported the policy change.

The move raises concerns about the spread of false election-denial ads on Instagram and Facebook that could erode the public’s trust in U.S. democracy, some researchers who examine misinformation and disinformation told ABC News, noting that election-denial ads could also help fuel violent extremism like that on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I’m really worried that this is one crucial trigger that will make our election even more divisive, causing more conspiracy and disinformation activity,” Hazel Kwon, a professor at Arizona State University who leads its Media, Information, Data and Society Lab, told ABC News.

“The big concern is that this directly affects trust in democratic institutions,” Kwon added.

The researchers cautioned, however, that studies indicate limited influence of online political advertisements on voter sentiment, suggesting that the policy change could impact the electorate less than the immense user base of the platforms may lead some to think.

Some of the experts noted that the circulation of election-denial ads on social media could help shape the wider public conversation even if they do not change the minds of a large share of individual voters.

“I’m confident that there will be malefactors attempting to game the election,” Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who studies tech platforms, told ABC News. “It’s less clear how well this misinformation will work.”

The policy at Meta focuses on upcoming or ongoing elections that can still be impacted by political ads, rather than previous elections that have already become a matter of historical record, the company said in a statement.

In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the company pointed to a blog post in August 2022 detailing the Meta’s approach to that year’s midterm elections.

“We will reject ads encouraging people not to vote or calling into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election,” wrote Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta.

The reported move by Meta coincides with the loosening of election-related content restrictions at other major tech platforms. Google-owned YouTube announced in June that it would halt the removal of content claiming widespread voter fraud in 2020 and other past elections.

A civic integrity policy updated in August by X, formerly known as Twitter, does not address claims of voter fraud.

A potential rise in election-denial content on social media during a hotly contested 2024 election cycle could increase the likelihood of extremist violence, Edward Perez, Twitter’s former product director for civic integrity, which includes its election policies, told ABC News. Perez is now a board member at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to election security and integrity.

“There’s a very troubling area where we have people who take extremist behavior because they’ve been radicalized by what they’ve read on social media,” Perez said, pointing to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as well as David DePape, a far-right conspiracy theorist who was convicted on Thursday for attempted kidnapping and assault of the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The change in policy toward election-denial ads could also contribute to a political environment in which a wider swathe of people adopt the debunked claim of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, some experts said.

Some research has linked news consumption on tech platforms and belief in misinformation. A study by researchers at Northwestern University, released in September 2020, found that individuals who received their news from social media were more likely to believe in misinformation about coronavirus conspiracies and risk factors.

Still, some experts downplayed the influence of political advertising online, pointing to studies that show little effect on voter sentiment or election outcomes.

“Political ads don’t have large observable effects, just in general,” Zeve Sanderson, the executive director at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told ABC News. Direct posts from prominent people are more likely to sway users than ads, Sanderson added.

A study led by a researcher at Yale University, published last year, found that a nearly $9 million, eight-month ad campaign on social media across five swing states ahead of the 2020 election found “no evidence” that the program increased or decreased average voter turnout.

A separate study examining results from dozens of different political advertisements tested across nearly 60 groups of voters during the 2016 presidential election found small average effects on candidate favorability and voter choices.

While social media ads may hold little direct effect on voters, Kwon said, the election-denial messages could still elevate the false claims within the wider national conversation ahead of the 2024 election.

“If we just consider political ads on Facebook, it may not have a significant effect,” Kwon said. “However, the problem is that once it’s shared, the message can be picked up and propagated by others.”

“It gives more reason for extreme thinkers to talk about and share their opinions,” she added. “It’s a disturbing idea that this could influence public trust in the election process.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — Sam Altman is stepping down from his role as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.

The departure follows a review process undertaken by the company’s board of directors, OpenAI said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Members of the United Auto Workers voted to ratify a contract with General Motors, making it the first of the Big 3 U.S. carmakers to formally conclude a weekslong labor dispute that brought tens of thousands of autoworkers to picket lines and risked major economic disruption, balloting results posted online by the union showed.

Employees at General Motors voted to ratify the labor contract by a relatively narrow margin of about 55% to 45%, affirming a deal that top union officials touted as historic but a sizable minority of workers rejected, returns showed.

Soon afterward, Stellantis employees represented by the UAW voted to approve their agreement. A tentative agreement at Ford appears headed for ratification. The votes at Stellantis and Ford appear to have approved their respective agreements by a larger margin than the contract with General Motors, according to vote tallies posted online by the UAW on Friday.

The tentative deals reached with the Big 3 included a record 25% raise over four years, as well as significant improvements for pensions and the right to protest the closure of plants.

But the agreements fell short of some ambitious demands made by UAW President Shawn Fain at the outset of the strike in September. Initially, the union called for 40% wage increases over the four-year duration of the contract as well as a four-day workweek at full-time pay.

If union members had voted down the agreement, more than 50,000 employees at General Motors represented by the UAW would have potentially relaunched their strike against the company.

Ultimately, the deal with General Motors received majority support from union members at dozens of workplaces spanning from Michigan to Texas to Pennsylvania. However, the agreement appeared to elicit disapproval from many longtime workers, returns indicated.

A major GM plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, which employs more than 2,000 workers building the company’s Cadillac and Acadia vehicles, voted down the contract by a margin of 56% to 44%, the results showed.

A thousand-employee transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, which experienced a layoff of about 200 workers amid the strike, voted against the contract by a nearly identical margin, according to the results.

After reaching tentative agreements with each of the Big 3 automakers late last month, Fain touted the set of contracts as a victory not only for autoworkers but also for the broader working class.

President Joe Biden also praised the deals. Addressing UAW members at a car plant in Illinois last week, Biden described tentative contracts reached at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis as model agreements that he hoped would fuel a wave of unionization across the auto industry.

“I’m a little selfish,” Biden said. “I want this type of agreement for all auto workers.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — When Harry and Jen Appel lost their home in Big Pine Key, Florida, to Hurricane Irma in 2017, they thought their insurance policies would cover the cost to repair and they’d rebuild in the same location.

The couple showed ABC News’ meteorologist Rob Marciano the spot where their home used to be, now an empty lot covered in sea lavender and some shards of their former life.

“If we would have got paid by insurance the right amount of money, it would have been a you would have been standing in a new house,” Harry Appel said. “Insurance was tough — that was worse than a storm.”

In September 2017, Hurricane Irma barrelled across the Atlantic with winds reaching 185 miles per hour — the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Category 4 storm ravaged the Appel’s dream home, along with much of the region, leaving those hit hardest by the storm to contend with an insurance market already struggling to cover its claims.

Since moving into their home in Big Pine Key in 2015, the Appels paid into premium homeowner insurance policies — the National Flood Insurance Program provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“A week afterward, the guy came up from Texas — the underwriter for flood insurance for FEMA — and he came up and he looked at the house and for him to write a check on the spot for this entire policy, which was amazing. And at that point, I really felt better,” Harry Appel said.

Harry Appel told ABC News that FEMA paid out the $110,000 flood policy, but when the private insurance company responsible for the Appels’ wind coverage came to assess the damage, they claimed the damage had only been done by flooding, so the company wasn’t liable.

“We were entitled to this money,” Jen Appel said. “This was a contractual obligation that they did not live up to and it should have been paid.”

Home insurance isn’t mandatory by law, but banks often require homeowners to get insurance as a condition of a mortgage.

“The insurer’s goal is to collect more in premiums than they pay out in claims,” said Ben Keys, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business professor of real estate and finance. “We’re seeing higher costs of materials, higher costs of labor, and those are growing faster than inflation.”

In recent decades, the intensity of some hurricanes has exploded, fueled by the warming seas, according to experts.

“We’re having more disasters, we’re having more costly disasters, and importantly, more people live in harm’s way,” Keys said. “So any individual disaster now leads to more payouts coming from the insurers — and they’re recognizing that these costs are rising quickly, not just because of inflation, and they’re reacting accordingly.”

2023 marked the most “billion dollar disasters” on record for the United States, with 25 climate-related disasters, according to NOAA.

As these events have gotten more costly, some of the largest private insurance companies, like Farmers, have left states like Florida entirely.

Still, other companies have gone insolvent due to the increasing cost of claims, leaving a market with fewer options for residents to choose from.

Three-fourths of Florida’s 21.5 million residents live in coastal counties, according to the Insurance Information Institute, and it was Hurricane Andrew in 1992 that first exposed the vulnerabilities of the private insurance market in the state.

In the aftermath of Andrew, Florida created a last-resort state-run program called Citizens Property Insurance Corporation with the mission of insuring homeowners who can’t otherwise find coverage.

“We’ve seen a number of large insurers go belly up, and in response, we’ve seen a lot of homeowners who are now dependent on the state’s public insurance plan. So Citizens Property Insurance is now the largest homeowner’s insurer in the state,” Keys said. “And what that points to is a private insurance market that’s simply not working.”

Florida is just one of 32 states and the District of Columbia that offers a state-run FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan. Another of the 32, Louisiana, is struggling with some of the same issues.

Keys explained that sea level rise and more severe flooding after storms, “have continued to drive up costs for homeowners in that state.”

Tammy and Charles Guillory and their daughter Caylee lived inside the cramped quarters of an RV parked in their driveway for two years during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic after their home was hit by Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020.

“Some days I didn’t know how we was gonna make it, but we made it,” Tammy Guillory said. “It was hard.”

After the one-two punch of the hurricanes, just six weeks apart, the Guillorys turned to their insurance companies to pay out their policies.

“We did what we were supposed to do on our end of the bargain,” Tammy Guillory said. “Now it’s time for them to do what they are supposed to do.”

To have their policy paid, the Guillorys had to take their unmet claim to the courts.

They won their case, but the insurer appealed, so the family had to wait even longer.

“I was a client of this company for over 20 years with no missed payments — nothing,” Charles Guillory said. “But when it’s time for us to be able to receive, we have to go through this, and I don’t think it’s right.”

Attorney Michael Cox represented the Guillorys, along with hundreds of similar cases in the area.

“When you have this massive catastrophe, I think the insurance companies came in and they know statistically that most people will just walk away with the mistreatment — and they did,” Cox said. “Most people won’t fight like Charles and Tammy fought. They stood up for themselves and they were willing to go all the way to bat with this company.”

While the Guillorys eventually won their case, the story across the state doesn’t always have a happy ending.

Louisiana still has the third highest insurance premiums in the country, according to III. The market has been deteriorating since the state was hit by record hurricane activity in 2020, causing upwards of $23 billion in damage.

In the aftermath of the disasters, 12 insurers were declared insolvent because of their losses during that time and another 12 voluntarily withdrew from the state.

Over the last two years, Louisiana’s state-run insurance plan — Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp. — more than tripled the number of policies it carries, from 35,000 to 128,000, according to the Louisiana Department of Insurance.

“The drama in Louisiana was that the state insurance regulator increased premiums by 65% earlier this year for the state-run plan,” Keys said. “And that was a recognition that they simply didn’t have enough capital on hand to weather an even moderate storm.”

The state government approved a $45 million fund in February of this year to help stabilize the market.

Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon says it’s a first step to court companies to come back to the state.

“That’s a balance between the obligation we have to make insurance available, to attract companies and the obligation we have to make them responsive and fair with their policyholders,” Donelon said.

Reinsurance often creates another kink in the chain.

“Reinsurance is most easily thought of as insurance for insurance companies,” Keys explained. “So insurance companies are going to take on risky policies from homeowners all over the country, and they’re going to have a portfolio of risk, and they’d like to protect themselves from the worst case scenarios.”

As natural disasters become more costly around the country, the cost to stay for reinsurers is also increasing.

“They have a lot of influence in the decisions that insurers make,” Keys said. “They have invested heavily in climate modeling and they have some of the best data and the best models out there. And because this is the only business that they do, they have a lot of money at stake.”

As insurance issues continue across the Gulf Coast, some have looked to fortifying their homes to withstand these powerful storms as a possible solution.

At the University of Miami, researchers are testing how to fortify homes with their hurricane simulator, showing us that the way homes are built could be one key to reversing the insurance market retreat.

“Insurance companies, as well as reinsurance, rely heavily on numerical models,” UMiami assistant scientist Milan Curcic said. “How likely is it that certain areas will experience wind of this threshold, flooding of this level, and so on.”

While some can afford to fortify their homes and choose to self-insure, Keys said those who can’t should “shop around” for policies.

As for the Appels, they settled for a fraction of their policy payout after two years of litigation and being forced into escrow with their bank.

They now live in their bed and breakfast and have given up on rebuilding their home.

“When we don’t have a mortgage here, there will be no insurance here,” Jen Appel said. “So I’m joining the ranks with self-insuring, really self-insuring — don’t just say you’re going to self-insure. You better have a bankroll.”

While Harry is ready to move away, Jen says she doesn’t want to go.

“The only reason we’re still here is because I don’t want to go,” Jen Appel said. “But I didn’t go through all that to get to this point where I haven’t enjoyed any of it.”

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(NEW YORK) — Thousands of Starbucks employees nationwide are set to walk off the job on Thursday in the largest work stoppage in the five-decade history of the company, the union representing the workers said in a statement to ABC News.

Employees at hundreds of unionized stores will call on Starbucks to bargain labor contracts that would set conditions at those workplaces, such as pay, benefits and staffing levels, Starbucks Workers United said.

Since 2021, the union has organized more than 360 stores employing roughly 9,000 workers. But the union and Starbucks have yet to reach an agreement on a labor contract at any of the stores.

The strike will coincide with “Red Cup Day,” an annual promotion that brings many customers to the company’s stores for a free holiday-themed reusable cup.

Workers at stores in 30 cities, including New York and Philadelphia, walked off the job a day early on Wednesday and will remain on strike through Thursday, the union said.

Moe Mills, a Starbucks employee who works at a store in St. Louis, told ABC News that they plan to participate in the strike because the company has refused to bargain with the union over staffing decisions tied to the sales uptick associated with promotional events like “Red Cup Day.”

The store where Mills works typically brings in about $8,000 in sales each day but promotional events add at least an additional $3,000 in revenue, which amounts to a nearly 40% increase in business, Mills said.

Starbucks, however, leaves staffing levels unchanged on promotional days, leading to overworked employees and unsatisfied customers, Mills added.

“It’s degrading and embarrassing to work in stores that are so short staffed on promotional days that we give customers poor service,” Mills said. “When customers spend $10 or $12 on a drink, they shouldn’t have to wait 45 minutes or get a lukewarm drink when it should be hot.”

Mills said their store unionized in August 2022 but Starbucks representatives have only attended one bargaining session, which they walked out of after 15 minutes.

“Starbucks is promoting that it’s bargaining in good faith but that’s not what we’re experiencing,” Mills said.

In a statement to ABC News, a Starbucks spokesperson faulted the union for a failure to make progress in contract negotiations, noting that the walkout would involve a fraction of the company’s overall workforce.

“We are aware that Workers United has publicized a day of action at a small subset of our U.S. stores this week. We remain committed to working with all partners, side-by-side, to elevate the everyday, and we hope that Workers United’s priorities will shift to include the shared success of our partners and working to negotiate union contracts for those they represent,” the company spokesperson said.

“Despite escalating rhetoric and recurring rallies demanding contracts, Workers United hasn’t agreed to meet to progress contract bargaining in more than four months,” the spokesperson added.

The company pointed to two union contracts reached with United Steelworkers this summer and progress on a draft contract with the Teamsters as proof of its commitment to settling union agreements.

The single-day strike will draw attention to the labor campaign and direct public pressure at Starbucks, Art Wheaton, a labor professor at the Worker Institute at Cornell University, told ABC News.

Federal labor law requires Starbucks to bargain in good faith with the unionized workers but does not mandate that the company agree to a contract, Wheaton added.

“Starbucks has to continue to bargain but it never has to say, ‘yes,'” Wheaton said. “The workers have 350 stores that they’ve unionized and exactly zero labor agreements.”

“The strike can raise awareness and help boost union morale,” he said. “To get a contract you need solidarity events that get the membership engaged and the community engaged.”

The walkout is set to arrive less than two weeks after Starbucks announced that it would raise the hourly pay of U.S. retail employees by 3% at the outset of next year.

The minimum pay raise falls short of the annual pace of inflation, which stands at 3.2%.

In addition to the pay increase, Starbucks will reduce the minimum number of days an employee must work in order to qualify for paid vacation benefits, the company said.

Alex Yeager, a worker at a Starbucks store in Albany, New York, who belongs to the union, previously told ABC News in a statement that he expects the company to provide the raises to nonunion stores only.

“Once again, Starbucks is responding to our bargaining demands, but they’re implementing them in nonunion stores and denying these new benefits to workers in stores that are unionizing or already voted to join the union,” Yeager said.

A labor board judge ruled in September that Starbucks had illegally provided previous pay increases and benefits to nonunion employees without offering them to unionized workers. Bloomberg Law first reported on the ruling.

In a statement to ABC News, Starbucks rebuked the union’s allegation that the raises would only be provided to workers at non-union stores.

“All union-represented stores will receive annual wage increases consistent with our practice of providing yearly wage increases,” Starbucks said. “Wherever we can quickly and broadly improve partner benefits and perks we have and always will.”

“Starbucks has adhered to long-standing legal obligations, which require the company to differentiate between unionized or organizing partners and partners in all other stores,” the company added.

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