(NEW YORK) — The famously “closed on Sundays” chicken sandwich fast-food chain could soon be required to fire up the fryers and serve hungry travelers in some locations.
The New York State Assembly has put forth a new bill, known as the Rest Stop Restaurant Act, that would require food and beverage companies contracted to provide services along the Thruway and at the Port Authority in New York and New Jersey to stay open seven days a week.
Applegreen, an Irish convenience store chain with a portfolio of companies including Chick-fil-A, took over the leases of all Thruway Authority service areas in 2021. To date, Chick-fil-A has opened at seven Thruway service areas. The fast-food chain currently operates 2,988 restaurants across 48 states.
“While there is nothing objectionable about a fast food restaurant closing on a particular day of the week, service areas dedicated to travelers is an inappropriate location for such a restaurant,” the bill states, in part. “Publicly owned service areas should use their space to maximally benefit the public. Allowing for retail space to go unused one seventh of the week or more is a disservice and unnecessary inconvenience to travelers who rely on these service areas.”
The only exception from the seven-day-a-week operations mandate in the new legislation is for “temporary concessions such as farmers markets or local vendors.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, Assemblyman Tony Simone, spoke to ABC News Albany affiliate WTEN-TV about the importance of ensuring that New York State’s transportation facilities offer reliable food services.
“You know, we get hungry when we’re traveling. We may not like our brother-in-law or sister-in-law’s cooking and wanna get a snack on Christmas Eve,” Simone said. “To find one of the restaurants closed on the thruway is just not in the public good.”
WTEN also reports that a Thruway official who also spoke with them said that, regarding the bill, “all 27 service areas that were a part of the $450 million project were built with no toll or tax dollars and that Chick-fil-A already signed a 33-year contract with the Thruway.”
Simone clarified that “the Thruways are meant to serve New York travelers first,” adding that he thinks it’s “ridiculous” that a food provider would be “able to close on Sunday – one of the busiest travel days of the week.”
Simone and the other bill sponsors are currently seeking co-sponsors to help pass the legislation during the current assembly session in Albany.
(NEW YORK) — Approximately 26,550 pounds of frozen TGI Fridays boneless chicken bites products have been recalled due to possible contamination with “clear, hard plastic,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced.
“The problem was discovered when the firm notified FSIS that it had received consumer complaints reporting that clear, hard plastic was found under the breading of the boneless chicken bites,” according to the recall announced Friday.
Simmons Prepared Foods issued the recall on its 15-ounce cartons of Honey BBQ flavor chicken bites that were produced on Oct. 3 by the Arkansas-based food manufacturer.
The recalled products bear the lot code KL3K03 and have a Best By date of Dec. 26, 2024, located on the side of the carton. The items also have an establishment number “P-20287” inside the USDA mark of inspection.
There have been no reports of injury or illness due to consumption of the chicken bites.
Those concerned about illness or an injury are encouraged to contact a health care provider.
“FSIS is concerned that some product may be in consumers’ freezers. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase,” the agency said in the recall notice.
Click here to see the full product label images and details.
Simmons Prepared Foods did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — When the Federal Reserve recently signaled interest rate cuts next year, the stock market soared to record highs and analysts voiced sunny hopes of a “soft landing.”
Arriving less than a year before the presidential contest, the announcement raised a separate consideration: What the rate cuts could mean for President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.
Analysts who spoke to ABC News said research shows that a strong economy benefits an incumbent presidential candidate, since voters factor their financial well being into an assessment of the leader’s job performance.
But the implications of interest rate cuts are more complicated, the analysts added.
“A good economy benefits an incumbent,” Ray Fair, a professor at Yale University who oversees a model that forecasts elections based on economic conditions, told ABC News. “A bad economy goes the other way.”
“How the economy does depends in part on what the Fed does, but it depends on other things, too,” Fair added.
He declined to comment on how this dynamic could be applied to the current presidential race.
In theory, lower interest rates make borrowing less expensive for businesses and consumers, propelling companies to invest in new projects and everyday people to stretch for bigger purchases. That all should help propel economic growth and buoy consumer optimism.
In turn, a major economic surge could benefit Biden, dispelling concern about a recession and improving the livelihoods of everyday people, some analysts said.
However, the benefits of forthcoming rate cuts could prove more limited, since rate moves take hold after a period of delay that can last months, some analysts said. Further, economic growth may not yield sufficient improvement in people’s direct experience, leaving sentiment about the economy unchanged, they added.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
By some key measures, the U.S. economy demonstrates good health: The unemployment rate hovers near a 50-year low, economic growth surged in a recent three-month period and inflation stands well below a peak last year.
Still, many voters find fault in Biden’s stewardship of the economy. Nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found in August.
The economy, therefore, poses a challenge for Biden, some analysts said, noting that the policy plans at the Fed could alleviate some of the difficulty.
Even before the Fed institutes a potential rate cut, the announcement of its plans alone has delivered economic benefits, Joseph Gagnon, fellow at the nonprofit Peterson Institute and a former senior economist at the Federal Reserve, told ABC News.
The central bank’s policy shift in recent days reduced yields on the all-important 10-year treasury bond. Lower bond yields make borrowing less costly for consumers on items big and small.
Last week, for instance, mortgage rates fell below 7% for the first time since August, Freddie Mac said in a statement.
“Bond yields fell and that actually does stimulate the economy,” Gagnon said.
The central bank’s pivot to rate cuts could also do away with a potential political liability for Biden: rate increases.
“That’s the absence of a negative political headwind for the Biden administration,” Steve Boms, founder and president of Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Allon Advocacy, told ABC News.
The most recent Democratic presidential candidate who failed to win reelection, Jimmy Carter, lost his bid amid a historic series of rate hikes at the Fed.
Still, some analysts warned that potential rate cuts could have minimal impact on Biden’s reelection hopes, since voters already disapprove of his handling of the economy and potential improvement could prove too little or too late to change that sentiment.
The challenge stems in part from the conundrum surrounding Biden, in which strong economic measures have not translated into approval of his job, Boms said.
“One of the primary motivations, typically, of the Fed reducing rates is to bolster employment and reduce unemployment,” Boms added. “But in the current situation we’re already at historically low unemployment levels.”
Moreover, the economic benefits brought by rate cuts often arrive months after the Fed imposes the policy, Gagnon said. If the Fed begins to cut rates midway through next year, he added, the economic improvement may not manifest itself ahead of election day.
“The window is closing,” Gagnon said.
When asked about next year’s election at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said, “We don’t think about politics.”
“We’ll do the things that we think are right for the economy at what we think is the right time,” Powell added.
However, the Fed’s fight against inflation carries significant implications for the presidential election, Fair wrote in an article in February.
Over the coming months, Fair said, “the media will be dominated by stories about political candidates, debates, poll results, [and] campaign spending issues.”
He added: “But behind the scenes is what really matters, namely how successful will the Fed be?”
(NEW YORK) — Nikola founder Trevor Milton was sentenced to four years in prison Monday due to fraudulent claims about his electric vehicle company.
In court Monday, Milton portrayed himself as a generous and honest yet unsophisticated businessman who grew up milking cows, lacked a college degree and did not mean to defraud investors in his electric truck company.
“My intent was not to harm others,” Milton told Judge Edgardo Ramos. “Let me have probation.”
Ramos did not comply with Milton’s request, sentencing him to four years in prison, a $1 million fine, forfeiture of a ranch Milton purchased with ill-gotten gains and restitution to victims.
Milton was convicted of wire fraud and securities fraud after prosecutors said he embellished the success of his company and deceived retail investors, who they said lost more than $660 million combined.
One model of the Nikola electric pickup truck called the Badger, lacked certain parts, such as airbags and an operable HVAC, and many of the interior lights were not operable and were merely backlit, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors described Milton’s business practices as a “sustained scheme to take advantage of individual, non-professional investors” in order to inflate Nikola’s stock price and enrich himself.
“Milton over and over again exaggerated or outright lied about Nikola’s success in a way that misled investors about the risks and likely returns of their investments,” prosecutors said.
The defense claimed investors lost no money from Nikola and asked for a sentence for Milton that did not include prison time.
In July 2021, Milton was the at the center of a nearly 50-page indictment, in which prosecutors accused Milton of preying on vulnerable retail investors who had turned to trading after losing income due to the pandemic. In some cases, these victims lost their retirement savings, authorities said, as they outlined his web of false promises related to an electric truck that was never operable.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Apple will halt sales of new models of its smartwatch due to a patent dispute, the company announced on Monday.
The move, which affects Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, centers on the devices’ blood-oxygen sensor.
In October, a federal trade agency found that Apple violated the patent of California-based medical technology company Masimo. The ruling set off a 60-day review period for the Biden administration, which ends on Dec. 25.
Apple has decided to preemptively stop sales of the smartwatches, the company said.
“Apple’s teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features,” according to the company’s statement. “Apple strongly disagrees with the order and is pursuing a range of legal and technical options to ensure that Apple Watch is available to customers.”
On Dec. 21, the company will halt sales of new smartwatch models online. Retail stores will also stop selling the smartwatches on Dec. 24. Sales of the smartwatches will continue outside of the U.S., Apple noted.
Separately, Apple has accused Massimo of stealing patented features from Apple for its smartwatch.
Masimo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Released in September, the Apple Watch Series 9 ranges in price from $399 to $749.
On its website, Apple calls the device’s blood-oxygen sensor a “breathtaking innovation.”
(WASHINGTON) — Southwest Airlines has been handed a record $140 million fine for its operational meltdown during the 2022 holiday travel season, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Monday.
The civil penalty leveled against the airline is about 30 times larger than any previous fine against an airline, DOT officials said in a press release.
The DOT said it will also require Southwest to start issuing a $75 flight credit to any passenger whose arrival is delayed more than 3 hours when it’s the airline’s fault, including mechanical issues.
“Today’s action sets a new precedent and sends a clear message: if airlines fail their passengers, we will use the full extent of our authority to hold them accountable,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
The $140 million fine adds to the about $600 million in refunds and reimbursements that had previously been agreed to over the meltdown, the DOT said. Officials said they will use the majority of the fine to compensate customers affected by future Southwest flight cancellations and other delays.
As a massive winter storm battered the United States during the 2022 holiday season, the airline cancelled more than 16,900 flights, stranding more than 2 million passengers, the DOT said.
Southwest said it had “learned from the event” and made new investments to improve customer service and “our resiliency.”
“We’re pleased to have reached this consumer-friendly settlement, which includes a new, industry-leading policy to compensate Customers during significant delays and cancellations,” the airline said in a press release.
Transportation officials said their investigation of the dayslong incident included “examining tens of thousands of pages documents, conducting several multi-day, in- person audits and site visits at Southwest’s headquarters, reviewing thousands of consumer complaints, and consulting with various third parties, such as airports.”
That investigation found that the airline had violated consumer protection laws on providing customer service, prompt flight-status notifications and prompt refunds, DOT officials said Monday.
DOT officials said they ordered Southwest to reserve $90 million in vouchers to cover the $75 flight credits the airline will be required to pay when flights are more than 3 hours late.
“Taking care of passengers is not just the right thing to do — it’s required, and this penalty should put all airlines on notice to take every step possible to ensure that a meltdown like this never happens again,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — The Quaker Oats Company has recalled dozens of granola products due to the risk of potential salmonella contamination.
The recall impacts more than 40 granola bar and granola cereal products, according to an announcement posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website on Friday.
Quaker said the listed products “have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella.” No further details were provided on the potential contamination.
“To date, Quaker has received no confirmed reports of illness related to the products covered by this recall. Quaker has informed the FDA of our actions,” the company said.
The products are sold throughout the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico, Guam and Saipan.
No other Quaker products are impacted, the company said.
See the full list of recalled items here.
Salmonella is a bacteria that can make people sick, and most types cause an illness called salmonellosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most people with salmonella infection experience symptoms such as diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps, which may occur hours to days after infection, the CDC states, though some do not develop symptoms for several weeks. In rare cases the infection can be fatal.
Infants, those ages 65 and older and people with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop severe infections, according to the CDC.
(WASHINGTON) — A Federal Reserve announcement rallied all three major stock indexes to one-year highs on Wednesday — and the enthusiasm owed little to what the central bank actually did.
In addition to pausing its benchmark interest rate, the Fed forecasted a series of rate cuts next year. The move would start to reverse a near-historic string of rate increases that has sent borrowing costs soaring.
The anticipated interest rate cuts would deliver relief for many consumers — but not all of them, financial experts told ABC News.
Rate cuts would ease the burden on borrowers for everything from home mortgages to credit cards to cars, making it cheaper to get a loan or refinance one. The cuts would also boost company valuations, potentially helping fuel returns for stockholders.
Savers, however, stand to lose income as interest rates decline for accounts held at banks.
“The Fed will come and take lots of pressure off of households next year,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told ABC News. “It won’t be for all households.”
Earlier this year, mortgage rates reached their highest level in more than two decades; while the average rate for credit card holders topped anything on record at the Fed. Interest rates for car loans have soared to levels last seen at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, Edmunds found.
Interest rate cuts would bring many of those payments down, delivering gains for borrowers. On Thursday, mortgage rates fell below 7% for the first time since August, Freddie Mac said in a statement.
“It’s a really big shift for consumer financing,” Derek Horstmeyer, a finance professor at George Mason University’s School of Business, told ABC News.
Christine Benz, the director of personal finance at Morningstar, echoed the sentiment. “Lower interest rates would obviously be fabulous news for anyone in the market for a home mortgage or loans with rates that are adjustable,” Benz told ABC News.
A potential set of rate cuts next year could also bring strong performance in the stock market, some experts said, since the value of companies often rises as interest rates fall. The three major stock indexes ticked up on Thursday in an apparent extension of the rally a day prior.
However, the market performance may not follow through on the surge in recent days because forward-looking investors are now anticipating the rate cuts, leaving less room for a boost when the policies go into effect, Zandi said.
“I wouldn’t count on stock prices continuing to rocket higher,” Zandi said. “The window on that is probably already closing.”
Meanwhile, the promise of largely good financial news turns sour for savers.
The aggressive series of rate hikes since last year has spurred an increase in interest rates for savings accounts at banks. Moreover, the trend has given rise to a surge of high-yield savings accounts that offer as much as 5% annual yield.
A reversal of the Fed’s policy would be sure to send those yields downward, experts told ABC News.
“Savings account yields are the most attractive that they’ve been in years, but they can change on a dime when interest rates do,” Benz said. “It’s a good reason to not park too much of your portfolio in safe investments with the expectation that high yields will persist indefinitely.”
“The possibility of interest-rate cuts next year underscores how transient the return you earn on safe investments is,” Benz added.
(NEW YORK) — Coca-Cola has voluntarily recalled three soda products across multiple states, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announcing in a report that the 12-ounce cans may have been contaminated with “potential foreign material.”
The recall, which includes 12-packs of 12-ounce cans, affected 1,557 cases of Sprite, 417 cases of Diet Coke and 14 cases of Fanta Orange, according to the agency.
The recall was initiated on Nov. 6 by the Alabama-based United Packers, LLC, according to the FDA report.
The sodas were distributed in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. As of time of publication, there had been no known reports of illness or injury in connection with the recall.
In an email statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for Coca-Cola clarified that the “limited quantity” voluntary recall impacted “a total of 48 stores in the following markets: Valparaiso, [Florida]; Robertsdale and Mobile, Alabama; [and] Gulfport and Ocean Springs, Mississippi.”
“No impacted product remains in the market, and all recall activities in those markets are complete,” the Coca-Cola representative added.
The Meta (formerly Facebook) logo marks the entrance of their corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Nov. 9, 2022. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — When Meta overhauled its policy toward election-denial claims in political advertising last year, many Republican midterm election candidates nationwide were espousing false claims of a stolen election in 2020.
At the time, some employees warned internally of potential harm to Meta’s standing with Republican elected officials and candidates if the company chose to ban political ads that denied the results of previous elections, including the 2020 contest, former Meta employees who were working at the company when these discussions took place, told ABC News.
Members of the company’s public policy team tasked with lobbying federal lawmakers indicated that an ad policy forbidding denial of previous elections could also elicit pushback from Democrats, noting for instance, that they could take issue with an ad policy barring claims that a prior election had been rigged by gerrymandering, a person familiar with the matter said.
Political ads on Meta-owned platforms denying the results of previous elections in the U.S., however, overwhelmingly came from rightwing politicians, groups and other accounts, people familiar with the matter said.
Policy development at Meta routinely includes discussion of a potential impact on the perception of the company in Washington, D.C., but deliberations in this case sparked concern among employees that such considerations had outweighed substantive issues, the people said.
Ultimately, the company decided in the summer of 2022 that political advertisements featuring false claims of a rigged election in 2020 would be permitted on Instagram and Facebook, according to a Meta content policy and people familiar with the matter.
Meta instituted a policy 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 rules apply to elections in the U.S., Brazil, Israel and Italy.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, Meta referred to information about the policy that it had previously shared with ABC News.
Since prior elections have been completed, the policy focuses on ongoing or future elections that can still be affected by ads, Meta previously told ABC News. Further, the company continues to enforce its Community Standards and bar other types of ads that may contain incorrect information about elections, Meta added.
To be sure, members of the public policy team also cautioned of possible political pushback in response to the policy that was ultimately adopted, the person said, noting that the public policy team typically voiced such concerns for each proposed policy option since it was their job to give insight into the political risks that could arise.
The Wall Street Journal first reported details of the policy change, which went into effect last year but had not drawn significant attention until last month.
Meta announced in November additional restrictions on ads, including a blackout period for political ads in the final week of the 2024 election.
Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta and a top decision-maker on the election-denial ad policy, viewed the prevalence of 2020 election denial among Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, as a political reality beyond the purview of ad restrictions at Meta, a person who says they heard him share his views at the time, told ABC News.
Clegg wanted to responsibly police content without interfering with a political position that played a sizable role in the campaign at the time, the person said, adding that Clegg believed denial of the 2020 election should be adjudicated by a democratically accountable institution rather than a private entity.
Clegg also weighed free-speech concerns tied to the election-denial ad policy, believing that Meta should ban ads claiming ongoing and future elections were rigged because such content posed a risk of immediate harm to voters who could in turn forgo participation in an election or lose faith in its results, the source told ABC News.
Political ads challenging the legitimacy of previous elections did not threaten direct harm because the elections had been completed, Clegg thought, and he supported putting the ads beyond Meta’s role as an arbiter of paid content, the source added.
Speaking at a Semafor event in September 2022, Clegg voiced similar general views on content moderation.
“Our lodestar is that we seek to act not when we think something is true or not true, or whether we like it or don’t like it,” Clegg said. “That’s not our role — that shouldn’t be the role of the private sector.”
“But there’s an exception to this if we think there is content on our platform or there are people seeking to propagate content on our platform which will lead to real-world harm,” Clegg added.
Clegg has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
The notion that political ads denying the 2020 election did not pose immediate harm drew concern from some employees who believed the claim had already contributed to political violence, including their belief that the spread of such misinformation had helped fuel the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, people said.
Some employees also thought that the denial of past elections could damage faith in the results of ongoing or future ones, the people added.
The company’s willingness to accept payment for putting 2020 election-denial content on its platforms also caused unrest among some employees, people said.
The company announced its approach to the 2022 midterms last August, Meta said, citing a blog post that included the following statement: “We will reject ads encouraging people not to vote or calling into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.”
The ads policies for the election garnered media coverage at the time, Meta added, linking to a Washington Post article published in August 2022. That article addresses the company’s policy toward posts featuring 2020 election-denial claims but does not specifically touch on Meta’s election-related ad policy.
An Axios story, published in the same month, noted that the company would reject ads “calling into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.”
Last year, Meta also updated the policy page devoted to election-related ad policies with details of the new rules.
The renewed attention to the 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 false claims about previous elections.
Katie Harbath, a former public-policy director at Facebook who was no longer at the company when it revamped the election-denial ad policy, said political considerations would “100%” be a part of the decision-making process at Meta on such a rule.
“It would be absolutely foolish to say that politics didn’t play a role in this,” Harbath told ABC News, noting that a Republican-controlled House and Senate could target Meta with public hearings.
Trump could put pressure on Meta if he wins next year’s presidential contest, added Harbath.
“I don’t think it was the only consideration, but the reality is it had to have been taken into account,” she said, adding that stewardship of a major company often includes paying attention to its perception among policymakers.
Trump faces federal and state charges over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election based in part on false claims of widespread voter fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and has denied any wrongdoing.
In 2021, then-Facebook spokesperson Corey Chambliss told Politico that the company’s content policy and public policy teams “operate independently.”
Meta’s content policy team uses input from a variety of departments at the company, among them: “Operations, Engineering, Legal, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Safety, Comms and Public Policy,” Chambliss said.
“In these instances Public Policy is just one of many groups consulted,” Chambliss added.
Harbath, an elections program lead at the advocacy group Integrity Institute and former digital strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said she probably would have made the same decision on the policy toward ads denying the 2020 election.
“I get really, really squeamish, as somebody who was at the company, when it comes to political rhetoric in terms of picking and choosing what’s acceptable and not acceptable, and how to do it at scale,” Harbath added.
Yael Eisenstat, a former senior elections integrity employee at Facebook, said the involvement of Meta’s public policy team in decisions about its platforms risks a perception that political influence holds sway in its policy moves.
“When the public policy team at Meta is involved in platform policy and the enforcement of policy, it makes it very hard for the company to argue that this is not politically influenced,” Eisenstat told ABC News.
Eisenstat, a former special advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden, criticized the ad-policy decision. “I don’t understand the logic of specifying which elections people can lie about and which they can’t,” Eisenstat said.
The updated election-denial ad policy at Meta came about after the company weighed banning political ads altogether last year, including months of preparation on potential policy and enforcement, people familiar with the matter said.
Clegg supported a policy banning political ads because he believed they posed challenges for the company while making up a small share of content on its platforms and ad revenue, a person familiar with the matter said.
Ultimately the plan to ban ads was scrapped, giving way to discussions of a revised version of a policy instituted in 2020, the sources added.
