(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of a sluggish November jobs report, President Joe Biden on Friday touted the country’s employment landscape as improving despite there being fewer jobs added last month than economists expected.
“We’re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. Simply put, America — America is back to work. And our jobs recovery is going very strong,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on Friday morning. “Today’s historic drop in unemployment rate includes dramatic improvements for workers who have often seen higher wages and higher levels of unemployment.”
With Biden sounding congested for the second day in a row, a reporter said his voice sounded “different” and asked the 79-year-old president if he was OK.
“I’m OK. I have a test every day to see — a COVID test,” Biden said. “I have a 1-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop.”
“But it’s just a cold,” the president said with a smile.
Friday’s remarks came as concerns climbed over the potential economic and health impacts of the new omicron variant detected in five states so far.
The Labor Department released its report ahead of Biden’s remarks revealing that 210,000 jobs were added in November, the fewest in nearly a year — a number well below economists’ expectations of more than 550,000 jobs.
Biden, instead, focused on the report showing that the nation’s unemployment rate fell sharply from 4.6% to 4.2% — the lowest it’s been since the pandemic began but still higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5%. Still, he touted the report as “incredible news” and a sign that the economy is “stronger” than it was a year ago.
The president said the unemployment falling more than two percentage points since he took office marked the “fastest decline on record and three times faster than any other president in their first year in office.”
With inflation still at a three-decade high amid ongoing worker shortages and supply chain issues, the November jobs report still reflects a resilient economic recovery nearly two years after COVID-19 arrived on U.S. soil.
“Even after accounting for rising prices, the typical American family has more money in their pockets than they did last year. In fact, we are the only leading economy in the world where household income and the economy as a whole are stronger than they were before the pandemic,” Biden said.
Despite the progress the president noted, he said he recognizes Americans are still “anxious.”
“But I also know that despite this progress, families are anxious. They’re anxious about COVID. They’re anxious about the cost of living, the economy more broadly. They’re still uncertain. I want you to know I hear you,” he added. “You need to see it and feel it in your own lives around the kitchen table and in your checkbooks.”
To that end, he reiterated his nine-point plan to combat COVID-19 this winter as a way to show that the administration is aiming to protect the economy as the pandemic continues and the new omicron variant spreads.
While he said it’s impossible to “build a wall around America” to keep the virus out, Biden said the new measures he announced Thursday are “sufficient” to deal with the omicron variant, and the White House is not considering any new measures for domestic travel, such as requiring travelers be vaccinated.
ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — On the heels of a sluggish November jobs report, President Joe Biden on Friday touted the country’s employment landscape as improving despite there being fewer jobs added last month than economists expected.
“We’re looking at the sharpest one-year decline in unemployment ever. Simply put, America — America is back to work. And our jobs recovery is going very strong,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on Friday morning. “Today’s historic drop in unemployment rate includes dramatic improvements for workers who have often seen higher wages and higher levels of unemployment.”
With Biden sounding congested for the second day in a row, a reporter said his voice sounded “different” and asked the 79-year-old president if he was OK.
“I’m OK. I have a test every day to see — a COVID test,” Biden said. “I have a 1-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his pop.”
“But it’s just a cold,” the president said with a smile.
Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, later released a letter saying it’s “readily apparent” that he’s been experiencing congestion this week and is currently taking over the counter medication. O’Conner said Biden was tested three times this week for “COVID-19, other coronaviruses, influenza, streptococcus” among others, and were all negative.
Friday’s remarks came as concerns climbed over the potential economic and health impacts of the new omicron variant detected in five states so far.
The Labor Department released its report ahead of Biden’s remarks revealing that 210,000 jobs were added in November, the fewest in nearly a year — a number well below economists’ expectations of more than 550,000 jobs.
Biden, instead, focused on the report showing that the nation’s unemployment rate fell sharply from 4.6% to 4.2% — the lowest it’s been since the pandemic began but still higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate of 3.5%. Still, he touted the report as “incredible news” and a sign that the economy is “stronger” than it was a year ago.
The president said the unemployment falling more than two percentage points since he took office marked the “fastest decline on record and three times faster than any other president in their first year in office.”
With inflation still at a three-decade high amid ongoing worker shortages and supply chain issues, the November jobs report still reflects a resilient economic recovery nearly two years after COVID-19 arrived on U.S. soil.
“Even after accounting for rising prices, the typical American family has more money in their pockets than they did last year. In fact, we are the only leading economy in the world where household income and the economy as a whole are stronger than they were before the pandemic,” Biden said.
Despite the progress the president noted, he said he recognizes Americans are still “anxious.”
“But I also know that despite this progress, families are anxious. They’re anxious about COVID. They’re anxious about the cost of living, the economy more broadly. They’re still uncertain. I want you to know I hear you,” he added. “You need to see it and feel it in your own lives around the kitchen table and in your checkbooks.”
To that end, he reiterated his nine-point plan to combat COVID-19 this winter as a way to show that the administration is aiming to protect the economy as the pandemic continues and the new omicron variant spreads.
While he said it’s impossible to “build a wall around America” to keep the virus out, Biden said the new measures he announced Thursday are “sufficient” to deal with the omicron variant, and the White House is not considering any new measures for domestic travel, such as requiring travelers be vaccinated.
ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — At least until June 2021, Facebook had significant gaps in its efforts to tackle COVID-19 misinformation from one of the most prominent anti-vaccine groups in the world, according to a study from ISD Global, a U.K.-based think tank that studies polarization, extremism and misinformation.
During the first year of the pandemic, Facebook pages associated with the World Doctors Alliance — an anti-vaccine group whose members regularly post false information about COVID-19 — ballooned in popularity, according to ISD Global, despite consistent breaches of Facebook’s own COVID-19 and vaccine policies. The group’s primary page was removed from the platform in July 2021.
“The World Doctors Alliance is a collective of pseudo-science influencers … that hijacked the pandemic to build up a significant audience online in a multitude of languages in multiple continents,” Ben Decker, CEO of Memetica, a digital investigations consultancy firm, told ABC News.
On its website, the WDA lists 12 key members from seven different countries, a number of whom have become leading voices within the COVID-denier and vaccine-skeptic movements.
The ISD Global study also says that Facebook failed to implement its own policies “at a very basic level.”
For example, the report outlines some of the false claims from members of the WDA group that were allowed on Facebook, from claims that the COVID-19 virus does not exist, to others acknowledging its existence but downplaying its severity.
The report also claims that other WDA members have propagated overarching conspiracy theories that allege the entire pandemic has been a “scam” or “hoax” “perpetrated by governments, health care authorities and the media.”
Last October, documents released by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that employees were concerned about how the social media giant was handling COVID-19 misinformation.
Researchers at ISD Global looked at the WDA’s presence on other social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and TikTok but primarily focused on Facebook as it’s where the group has the largest following. WDA is also an international group with members posting in multiple languages, even though the members with the largest followings come from English-speaking countries.
According to the research, Facebook is fact-checking some of the COVID-19 misinformation posted by the group but failing to take appropriate action and in many other cases failing to detect the misinformation altogether. The data also suggests that Facebook’s fact-checking in languages other than English is insufficient and almost nonexistent in some languages.
“Facebook should use the knowledge of fact-checking organizations to take action on misinformation super-spreaders”, the study author, Aoife Gallagher, told ABC News. “Our report highlights how often some of the WDA members have been featured in fact-checks, yet no decisive action seems to be taken.”
The Facebook pages of WDA members have increased their number of followers by 13% since the start of the pandemic, according to ISD Global. Their posts have garnered 5.7 million interactions since January 2020 and those numbers have increased by 85% in the first six months of 2021. The data also showed that the Facebook posts containing false claims and misinformation got more engagement (likes, views etc.) than others.
Dr. Scott Jensen (with 394,857 Facebook followers) and Dr. Dolores Cahill (with 128,942 Facebook followers) are responsible for the vast majority of the group’s followers, according to the study.
Jensen is a Minnesota state senator who came to prominence with anti-vaccine groups when in an interview he gave to Fox News he expressed concerns that COVID-19 fatality numbers could be exaggerated.
Subsequent studies found that the number of deaths due to COVID-19 was actually likely underestimated. Four anonymous complaints challenging his medical license based on his COVID-related comments were investigated and dismissed by state regulators last year, a CBS Minnesota news outlet reported.
Cahill is an Irish scientist who lost her job as a professor at University College Dublin earlier this year, after the college’s student union called for an investigation into her for “gross misconduct, ” according to Irish newspapers. She was also fined for breaching U.K. lockdown restrictions.
Cahill did not respond to ABC News when asked for comment on the ISD Global study and the fine.
Facebook uses third-party investigators to fact-check posts to determine whether a post containing false or misleading information needs to be either labeled or removed. However, the study states there was “minimal application of these labels across the 50 most popular posts mentioning the World Doctors Alliance or its members in English, Spanish, Arabic and German, despite these posts containing problematic claims.” Only 13% of English-language posts were labeled and even less in German (8%) and Spanish (4.5%).
Moreover, the report states that the labeled posts received even more engagement from Facebook users than the posts which were not labeled.
According to Decker, a relatively small number of independent fact-checkers can never hope to police the billions of Facebook posts on the platform. “Fact-checking has always been a Band-Aid on a broken leg to this problem because fact-checking can’t address scale,” he said.
There was also a huge disparity in fact-checking across different languages, according to the report. The study examined 189 fact-checking articles mentioning the WDA. There were 61 articles written in English, 26 in Spanish and 13 in German, but there were none at all in Romanian, Hungarian, Swedish and Italian despite there being more than 5,528 posts mentioning the WDA in those languages.
Report author, Aoife Gallagher, called on Facebook to put more human resources into its fact-checking efforts but also to improve its automated detection methods. The ISD found examples of one video in English which was labeled as containing misinformation but the exact same video translated into Spanish was not labeled and seemingly went undetected. There were other examples such as an interview Dolores Cahill did with infamous spreader of COVID-19 misinformation, Del Bigtree, which was fact-checked and labeled, yet clips of the same video that were in the form of embedded videos uploaded to Facebook, went undetected.
“It’s not about new rules, it’s about enforcing the ones they already have,” said Gallagher. “Facebook’s policies on COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation go into a lot of detail on what content is prohibited and removed, but this report shows they are failing to implement these at a very basic level,” she added.
Decker of Memetica said that Facebook should be using the same automated technology to track COVID misinformation that it uses to detect ISIS content and child pornography. “You could feed 5,000 COVID-19 conspiracy memes into a system and it would learn to go seek out those things and either prevent them getting uploaded, prevent engagement or apply a fact-check label,” said Decker. “The question is why are these resources not being made available.”
ABC News reached out to all 12 members of the WDA for comment.
Only Belgium’s Dr. Johan Denis, who had his medical license suspended earlier this year after a Belgian provincial commission found he was placing patients and the public health at risk by violating mask requirements, responded by calling the study “revolting” and incorrectly claiming that COVID-19 is a “scam.”
Facebook responded to ABC News saying that the study only looked at a narrow sample of 14 accounts. “This small sample is in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook,” according to a Facebook spokesperson. However, when asked, Facebook did not provide ABC News with data to support a claim that this sample was not representative of a wider trend.
Facebook also said, “Since the pandemic began, our goal has been to promote reliable information about COVID-19, take more aggressive action against misinformation, and encourage people to get vaccinated. So far, we’ve connected over 2 billion people to authoritative information from health experts, removed 24 million pieces of COVID misinformation, and labeled more than 195 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners.”
The study authors told ABC News that one of the reasons they chose this group was that it was a prominent well-known spreader of misinformation which, in theory, should be easier to police than lesser-known accounts.
“I think it’s just a sliver of the pie, just a tiny part of how bad the actual problem is,” said Decker. “What about other [Facebook]-owned properties like Instagram and even worse, WhatsApp, where disinformation can spread really quickly because it’s already in these kind of baked-in trusted family and local communities,” he added.
Decker also said that after the improvements Facebook promised following the 2016 election that the pandemic was a real stress test to see if Facebook has learned anything. “My inclination is that based on what we see now that they haven’t really learned anything,” he said.
Though ISD Global has publicly released its methodology, the study has not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.
(NEW YORK) — Microsoft Corp. shareholders voted on Tuesday to force the company to more transparently address sexual harassment claims via independent investigations and public reporting.
The proposal, approved during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, was brought by Arjuna Capital, an investment firm known for its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) activism. The vote may be seen by some as a win for activist investors seeking to drive change from the inside out in the private sector.
Under the proposal, Microsoft would have to prepare and release a report “assessing the effectiveness of the company’s workplace sexual harassment policies, including the results of any comprehensive independent audit/investigations, analysis of policies and practices, and commitments to create a safe, inclusive work environment,” according to a statement released by the investment firm.
Microsoft’s board urged shareholders to strike down the proposal, citing existing policies and mechanisms in place to tackle sexual harassment in the workplace.
Still, some 78% of shareholders voted for the proposal, Arjuna Capital said after the meeting. The firm said that, immediately following the vote, Microsoft committed to a third-party, independent assessment of its sexual harassment processes, in addition to public reporting on them.
“A majority of Microsoft’s investors are now calling on the company to shine a bright light on sexual harassment. The fact that executives responded so quickly following the vote is a sea change from how Microsoft has dealt with this issue in the past,” Natasha Lamb, managing partner at Arjuna Capital, said in a statement.
Microsoft confirmed the proposal had been approved in a statement following the meeting, adding that, “Microsoft already shares with employees annual data on the volume of sexual harassment concerns raised and the results of harassment investigations and has adopted plans to begin annual public reporting.”
During the question-and-answer portion of the shareholder meeting, Microsoft’s President and Vice Chair Brad Smith said the issue of sexual harassment is “of enormous importance” to Microsoft.
“There are new steps that we are going to take that we were thinking about, and I think that the resolution and the dialogue we’ve had has helped us advance our decision-making,” Smith added. “So for one, we will take new steps to be more transparent as a company. We have been sharing more data internally. We recognize that there are shareholder interest, and so we’ll share more data externally as well. You’ll see us publish more reports, just to reflect where this is going.”
Smith also pledged to bring in a third party to do an “independent assessment of all of the work that we do to investigate” sexual harassment cases.
“We’ll share what that independent report says and we will listen,” he added. “And if there’s recommendations for change, we will think hard about making them.”
(NEW YORK) — In a rare move, the National Labor Relations Board has ordered a union election do-over for Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama.
A date has not yet been determined for the second vote, but the looming new union election comes as the labor movement has gained new steam in recent months, propelled by unique market conditions and increased workplace activism seen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the initial election in April, Amazon warehouse workers overwhelmingly voted against forming a union at the Bessemer warehouse despite high-profile support for unionization at the time from lawmakers and even President Joe Biden.
The order for a new election stands unless Amazon files a request for review with the NLRB, which the board could reject (allowing the second union election to proceed) or grant (which would reverse the order for a second election). It also has not yet been determined whether the do-over vote will be in-person or by mail.
The re-run decision comes after the objections to the initial vote last April that were filed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which sought to represent the workers.
At the core of the union’s objections was Amazon’s installation of a Postal Service box outside the warehouse, which they said was aimed to make voting easier and improve turnout, but the union argued gave the impression that Amazon oversaw the election.
“The Employer’s flagrant disregard for the Board’s typical mail-ballot procedure compromised the authority of the Board and made a free and fair election impossible,” NLRB Regional Director Lisa Henderson wrote in her decision calling for a second election.
“By installing a postal mailbox at the main employee entrance, the Employer essentially hijacked the process and gave a strong impression that it controlled the process,” Henderson added. “This dangerous and improper message to employees destroys trust in the Board’s processes and in the credibility of the election results.”
Stuart Appelbaum, president of the RWDSU, welcomed the board’s decision in a statement, saying it “confirms what we were saying all along — that Amazon’s intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace.”
“Amazon workers deserve to have a voice at work, which can only come from a union,” he added.
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, called the decision “disappointing” in a statement, adding that the company believes in the benefits of direct relationships with employees without a union in the middle.
“Our employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union, and they overwhelmingly chose not to join the RWDSU earlier this year. It’s disappointing that the NLRB has now decided that those votes shouldn’t count,” Nantel said. “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Every day we empower people to find ways to improve their jobs, and when they do that we want to make those changes — quickly.”
“That type of continuous improvement is harder to do quickly and nimbly with unions in the middle. The benefits of direct relationships between managers and employees can’t be overstated — these relationships allow every employee’s voice to be heard, not just the voices of a select few,” Nantel added. “While we’ve made great progress in important areas like pay and safety, we know there are plenty of things that we can keep doing better, both in our fulfillment centers and in our corporate offices, and that’s our focus — to work directly with our employees to keep getting better every day.”
Union membership has dwindled in recent decades, falling to 10.8% in 2020 among salaried and wage-earning workers in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1983, the first year the BLS collected this data, that figure was 20.1%.
Despite the slumping figures, approval for labor unions in the U.S. is at its highest level since 1965, according to Gallup data. Some 68% of Americans approve of labor unions in 2021, the highest recorded by Gallup since a 71% mark in 1965.
Some labor economists have attributed this gap between support for unions and union membership rates to increased employer resistance to unionization and outdated labor laws that make it difficult to organize in the workplace.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is back on the stand Tuesday, facing questions from prosecutors after she tearfully told the jury Monday about what she described as nearly a decade of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her former romantic partner and company COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
Holmes, 37, said that Balwani, 56, forced her to have sex with him and “prescribed” her a schedule which included who to meet with and what to eat.
“He impacted everything about who I was,” said Holmes, who paused before continuing. “And I don’t fully understand that.”
“He would force me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to because he would say that he wanted me to know that he still loved me,” Holmes also told the court while being questioned on the stand by her lead attorney, Kevin Downey.
Balwani was charged as her co-defendant but was granted a severed trial in March after learning that Holmes’ lawyers might use the abuse claims as part of their defense.
Balwani’s trial is scheduled for early 2022. He denies all allegations.
The former Theranos CEO, who dropped out of college at 19 and went on to launch the once burgeoning biotech start-up that promised to revolutionize blood testing, is charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She could face decades in prison if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Holmes testified that Balwani did not force her to make misleading statements to the press and investors. But the impact of Balwani’s alleged abuse on her was pervasive, she said.
Holmes also testified that before she met Balwani, she was raped by someone else while attending Stanford University, which she said factored into her decision to drop out and “pour” herself into building Theranos.
“I decided I was going to build a life by building this company,” she told jurors.
Holmes was 18 years old when she met Balwani, then 38, overseas in China. She said she understood at the time he was a “really successful business person” and asked his advice on building a company.
The pair dated from 2005 to 2016, a relationship Holmes characterized as persistently abusive.
“He told me that I didn’t know what I was doing in business … that he was astonished at my mediocrity … and that I needed to kill the person that I was to become what he would call a new Elizabeth who could be a successful entrepreneur,” Holmes said.
Santa Clara Law professor Ellen Kreitzberg said the bombshell allegations about Balwani could be used by her counsel to argue she had no intent to defraud — a key element of the charges leveled against her.
Prosecutor Robert Leach should be “very focused on her intent to defraud in [his] questions,” she said.
“[His] tone should also be non-confrontational, especially to start since she projected a sympathetic figure yesterday,” Kreitzberg added. “They need to be able to argue that, even if she was influenced by Balwani, she knew information was false, she intentionally gave it to investors, and she did so to get money from them.”
(NEW YORK) — As holiday shopping season ramps up, Walmart CEO John Furman addressed the concerns of prices and how long supplies will last.
Furman told Good Morning America that President Joe Biden, who met with retail executives this week, and his administration have “been a great help.”
“We’re all working together to make sure that customers have what they need over the holiday season and ended our third quarter up in inventory,” Furman said. “It took a lot of work on behalf of our team and they’re working really hard.”
As the calendar dwindles down on 2021, Furman said that “it’s always a good idea to shop early” and “just like every year there’s something hot, a hot toy — like game consoles — but we have a couple things we can help with.”
“Last week we had our biggest day ever in terms of delivery,” he said of their Walmart Plus membership program. “But there’s some categories like Christmas decor — that are selling quick.”
Other trends that Furman said Walmart has seen and prepared for, are people “spending a lot more time together in groups.”
For Thanksgiving alone, he said “we sold over 10 million turkeys, which is about 2 million more than last year, so it tells you a bit about how many families are getting together and spending time together.”
The Federal Trade Comission has launched a probe into the supply chain issues, which Furman said Walmart just learned about, and said he is optimistic about the company’s position in the market.
“A lot of what you see in stores and online, all the products and what’s available, these are the results of plans, in most cases, that started over a year ago. Our merchants work about 12 months out to determine what they think the trends are, what people will be looking for,” he said. “And we’re proud of our inventory position at this point.”
(NEW YORK) — Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday? Tuesday marks a potentially big day for saving if you’re looking to snag a deal on a trip in 2022.
“A lot of folks in the travel industry are trying to encourage people to not just buy things over the holiday weekend, but buy experiences as well,” Scott Keyes, Scott’s Cheap Flights founder and author of Take More Vacations, said. “Buy travel and treat yourself to that gift of those lifetime memories from trips you take.”
Paul Couch, a city surveyor from Akron, Ohio, is looking to do just that. He will be scouring the airlines’ websites for a reasonably-priced getaway this travel holiday.
“I’m hoping for the best,” he said. “Just kind of checking the different locations out and if something strikes my eye, you know a place I haven’t been to, then I’ll look for travel dates and book a flight and hotel and all that.”
In 2019, before the pandemic, online booking platform Hopper said it saw more flights discounted on Travel Tuesday than on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
“We typically see about 34 deals per second here at Hopper,” Hopper economist Adit Damodaran told ABC News. “That’s 30% more than we usually see on any other day throughout the year. So, that’s really a great time to be booking those flights for 2022.”
Several airlines have announced promotional discounts over the last few days: JetBlue is offering $50 off one-way and $100 off round trip tickets; Aer Lingus is offering up to $200 off economy fares and up to $300 off business class fares from the U.S.; Air New Zealand, Fiji Airways, Icelandair, and many more are offering discounts for certain destinations.
But Keyes says the real “hidden secret of the travel world” is that the best deals actually come from un-advertised sales.
“Just in the past two or three days alone, we’ve seen flights nonstop to Hawaii for $158 round trip nonstop, to Costa Rica for $176 round trip nonstop, down to Aruba for $226 round trip,” he said. “These are fares that have been popping up that are not getting any advertising dollars behind them. You’re not going to see them in your inbox from the airlines promoting them, but they’re quietly offering these fares, and so the key is to be able to find out about them before they disappear.”
If you’re looking for a deal tomorrow, Keyes recommends looking at the fine print.
“You’re going to see a lot of airlines say ‘25% off,’ ‘50% off,’ ‘This is one of our biggest sales of the year,'” he warned. “But oftentimes, that doesn’t include taxes and fees, all of these types of things that oftentimes can make up the majority of what a ticket costs. So, seeing what the actual price looks like, and then trying to compare it to well, is this a good deal? Is this significantly cheaper than what I might have expected to pay last week or what I might expect to see next week?”
And don’t worry if you can’t find that perfect price, Keyes says, you still have plenty of time.
“Cheap flights are constantly popping up throughout the year, and so don’t put extra pressure on yourself to book something on Travel Tuesday,” he said. “If it just seems like an OK deal you can rest assured that constantly deals are going to continue to pop up throughout the rest of this year and certainly into next year.”
(NEW YORK) — The holiday season is in full swing and tree farmers across the country are preparing for the Christmas crowds.
At Boyd Mountain Christmas Tree Farm in Waynesville, North Carolina, customers can cut down their own Christmas tree. Darren Nicholson, who works at the farm, said he is grateful to see people “coming out in record numbers to get the perfect Christmas tree.”
Across the country, wholesale tree grower The Jonsteen Company packages live tree saplings and seed growing kits. The California-based company specializes in Giant Sequoias and Coast Redwoods but offers a variety of different trees, including evergreens, giving customers a chance to plant their own Christmas tree and watch it grow over the years.
One Jonsteen customer, Martin Harmon, and his family, who live south of Atlanta, planted their Christmas tree years ago and now it’s a full-grown evergreen.
The Fowler family from Lexington, Kentucky, planted their Jonsteen tree in their front yard and have already decorated it with lights.
Other small businesses all over the country are gearing up for the holiday rush, like Authenticity50. The California-based bedding and home goods company was co-founded by husband and wife Jimmy and Steph McDonald.
Last year, they started using their materials to sew masks in the middle of the pandemic.
All of their products are 100% American made. The McDonalds said the cotton is from California, the yarn is spun in Georgia, the sheets they sell are cut and sewn in South Carolina, their button are from Connecticut and their packaging is made in Illinois.
The McDonalds said the advantage of having their products made in the U.S. is that they are fully stocked during ongoing supply chain shortages.
“We haven’t had to deal with container ships stuck at port,” said Jimmy McDonald.
“Buying local helps us sustain our small business and 1,000 local jobs from coast to coast,” added Steph McDonald.
(NEW YORK) — Japanese car giant Nissan Motor Co. said it plans to invest $17.6 billion to accelerate its electrification plans, as the industry as a whole pivots away from gas-powered autos.
Nissan said it will invest 2 trillion Japanese yen over the next five years (just under $17.6 billion) and will launch 23 new electrified models, including 15 new electric vehicles.
The company said it is aiming to have a 50% electrification lineup by 2030 as part of its “Nissan Ambition 2030” initiative, which will put electrification at the center of its long-term strategy.
“The role of companies to address societal needs is increasingly heightened,” Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said in a statement. “With Nissan Ambition 2030, we will drive the new age of electrification, advance technologies to reduce carbon footprint and pursue new business opportunities.”
“We want to transform Nissan to become a sustainable company that is truly needed by customers and society,” Uchida added.
Nissan wants to launch an electric vehicle with its proprietary all-solid-state batteries by fiscal year 2028 and prepare a pilot plant for EVs in Yokohama, Japan, as early as fiscal year 2024. The company promises that its all-solid-state batteries will significantly reduce charging time and make electric vehicles more efficient and accessible.
Nissan was among the original pioneers of mainstream electric vehicles with its battery-powered Leaf, which first launched in 2010. A growing number of major carmakers, from Ford to General Motors, have similarly announced recent plans to invest heavily in electrification.
“We are proud of our long track record of innovation, and of our role in delivering the EV revolution. With our new ambition, we continue to take the lead in accelerating the natural shift to EVs by creating customer pull through an attractive proposition by driving excitement, enabling adoption and creating a cleaner world,” Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta said in a statement Monday.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced a set of actions aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks and signed an executive order that set a goal of having half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 be zero emissions vehicles.
