Datasets:

---

idleengine

/

reddit_finance_posts_sp500

like 0

Follow

idleengine 1

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/22/ups-workers-approve-new-labor-contract.html\n\n* Part time workers will make $21 from currently $15.50.\n* Full time workers will be paid $49 an hour an increase of $7.50 over the contract. Total compensation with benefits will be $170,000. \n* Average base pay before overtime or benefits will be approximately $102,000.\n* The new contract includes pay raises for both part-time and full-time workers.\n* It also includes other improvements to work rules including an end to forced overtime.\n* Workers began voting on the new contract on August 2.\n\nAmerican Airlines also approved 46% increase in compensation and the UAW is also demanding 46% increase in compensation, voting on August 22nd whether or not to authorize a strike.\n\nUPS workers ratified a massive five-year labor deal that includes big wage increases and other improvements to work rules and schedules, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said Tuesday.\n\nThe deal passed with 86.3% of votes, the highest contract vote in the history of Teamsters at UPS, according to the union.\n\n“Teamsters have set a new standard and raised the bar for pay, benefits, and working conditions in the package delivery industry. This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.\n\nUPS and the Teamsters union, which represents about 340,000 workers at the delivery giant, reached a preliminary deal last month, narrowly averting a strike that could have rippled throughout the U.S. economy as the previous contract expiration on July 31 approached.\n\nUPS moves $3.8 billion worth of goods a day, about 5% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.\n\nThe parties had until July 31, when the previous labor contract was set to expire, to reach a deal and avoid a work stoppage. Workers began voting on the new contract on August 2. It’s the single largest collective bargaining agreement ever reached in the private sector, according to the union.\n\nPart-time workers will make no less than $21 an hour, up from a minimum of $15.50 currently, according to the union. Part-time pay was a sticking point during labor negotiations. Full-time workers will average $49 an hour. Current workers will get $2.75 more an hour this year and $7.50 an hour more during the five-year contract.\n\nUPS drivers will average $170,000 in pay and benefits at the end of the five-year deal, CEO Carol Tomé said on an earnings call earlier this month.\n\nThe company cut its full-year revenue and margin forecasts, citing the “volume impact from labor negotiations and the costs associated with the tentative agreement.”\n\nThe union is the latest labor organization to push a major U.S. company for better pay, schedules and other work rules in the wake of the pandemic and decades-high inflation.\n\nOn Monday, American Airlines\npilots ratified a four-year deal that includes roughly 46% increases in compensation, including 401(k) contributions, a deal the carrier sweetened after rival United Airlines reached a richer agreement with its pilots’ union. Delta Air Lines\n\n’ pilots approved their deal, which include more than 30% raises, earlier this year.\n\nSouthwest Airlines\n\nhasn’t yet gotten to a deal with its pilots’ union, which has laid the groundwork for a potential strike, though such stoppages in the airline industry are exceedingly rare under U.S. laws.\n\nFedEx pilots turned down a tentative agreement for a new labor contract earlier this summer."

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-officials-invest-in-companies-their-agencies-oversee-11665489653\n\nHidden records show thousands of senior executive branch employees owned shares of companies whose fates were directly affected by their employers’ actions, a Wall Street Journal investigation found\n\nThousands of officials across the government’s executive branch reported owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.\n\nMore than 2,600 officials at agencies from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, disclosed stock investments in companies while those same companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies. That amounts to more than one in five senior federal employees across 50 federal agencies reviewed by the Journal.\n\nA top official at the Environmental Protection Agency reported purchases of oil and gas stocks. The Food and Drug Administration improperly let an official own dozens of food and drug stocks on its no-buy list. A Defense Department official bought stock in a defense company five times before it won new business from the Pentagon.\n\nThe Journal obtained and analyzed more than 31,000 financial-disclosure forms for about 12,000 senior career employees, political staff and presidential appointees. The review spans 2016 through 2021 and includes data on about 850,000 financial assets and more than 315,000 trades reported in stocks, bonds and funds by the officials, their spouses or dependent children.\n\nThe vast majority of the disclosure forms aren’t available online or readily accessible. The review amounts to the most comprehensive analysis of investments held by executive-branch officials, who have wide but largely unseen influence over public policy.\n\n\nAmong the Journal’s findings:\n\n• While the government was ramping up scrutiny of big technology companies, more than 1,800 federal officials reported owning or trading at least one of four major tech stocks: Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.\n\n• More than five dozen officials at five agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, reported trading stock in companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions, such as charges and settlements, against those companies.\n\n• More than 200 senior EPA officials, nearly one in three, reported investments in companies that were lobbying the agency. EPA employees and their family members collectively owned between $400,000 and nearly $2 million in shares of oil and gas companies on average each year between 2016 and 2021.\n\n• At the Defense Department, officials in the office of the secretary reported collectively owning between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies on average each year examined by the Journal. Some held stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. was considering blacklisting the companies.\n\n• About 70 federal officials reported using riskier financial techniques such as short selling and options trading, with some individual trades valued at between $5 million and $25 million. In all, the forms revealed more than 90,000 trades of stocks during the six-year period reviewed.\n\n• When financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules. In most instances identified by the Journal, ethics officials certified that the employees had complied with the rules, which have several exemptions that allow officials to hold stock that conflicts with their agency’s work.\nNumber of federal officials who reported owning specific tech stocks, 2016-21\n\nFederal agency officials, many of them unknown to the public, wield “immense power and influence over things that impact the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans, such as public health and food safety, diplomatic relations and regulating trade,” said Don Fox, an ethics lawyer and former general counsel at the U.S. agency that oversees conflict-of-interest rules.\n\nHe said many of the examples in the Journal analysis “clearly violate the spirit behind the law, which is to maintain the public’s confidence in the integrity of the government.”\n\nSome federal officials use investment advisers who direct their stock trading, but such trades still can create conflicts under the law. “The buck stops with the official,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor and former ethics lawyer for the Washington, D.C., government. “It’s the official who could benefit or be harmed…. That can occur regardless of who made the trade.”\n\nInvesting by federal agency officials has drawn far less public attention than that of lawmakers. Congress has long faced criticism for not prohibiting lawmakers from working on matters in which they have a financial interest. The rules were tightened in 2012 by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, passed following a series of Journal articles on congressional trading abuses.\n\nJournal reporting last year on federal judges, revealing that more than 130 jurists heard cases in which they had a financial interest, led to a law passed this May requiring judges to promptly post online any stock trades they make.\n\nThis article launches a Journal series on the financial holdings of senior executive-branch employees and, in some instances, conflicts of interest hidden in their disclosure forms.\n\nU.S. law prohibits federal officials from working on any matters that could affect their personal finances. Additional regulations adopted in 1992 direct federal employees to avoid even an appearance of a conflict of interest.\n\nThe 1978 Ethics in Government Act requires senior federal employees above a certain pay level to file annual financial disclosures listing their income, assets and loans. The financial figures are reported in broad dollar ranges.\nimage\nA view of Washington, D.C.\n\nMost officials’ financial disclosures are public only upon request. The Journal obtained disclosure forms by filing written requests with each federal agency.\n\nSome made it difficult to obtain the forms, and several agencies haven’t turned over all of them. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t provided any financial records. (See an accompanying article on methodology.)\n\nUnder federal regulations, investments of $15,000 or less in individual stocks aren’t considered potential conflicts, nor are holdings of $50,000 or less in mutual funds that focus on a specific industry. The law doesn’t restrict investing in diversified funds.\n\nSome federal officials, especially those at the most senior levels, sell all their individual stocks when they enter the government to avoid the appearance of a conflict.\n\nThe Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the conflict-of-interest rules across the executive branch, is “committed to transparency and citizen oversight of government,” said a spokeswoman. She said the agency publishes financial disclosures of the most senior officials on its website, along with instructions for getting disclosures from other agencies.\n\nAt the EPA, an official named Michael Molina and his husband owned oil and gas stocks while Mr. Molina was serving as senior adviser to the deputy EPA administrator, according to agency records. Such companies stood to benefit from former President Donald Trump’s pledge to promote energy production by rolling back environmental regulations and speeding up projects.\n\nMr. Molina’s job gave him a front-row seat to deliberations about environmental regulations relating to energy. He “reviews and coordinates sensitive reports, documents and other materials,” said his job description, provided by the EPA in response to a public-records request. He served as a “personal and confidential representative” of the EPA deputy administrator in communications with the White House and Congress, according to the job description.\n\nIn the month he started the job, May 2018, Mr. Molina reported purchases totaling between $16,002 and $65,000 of stock in Cheniere Energy Inc., a leading producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas. He reported adding Cheniere stock five additional times over the next year. At the time, senior EPA officials were encouraging the production of natural gas in the U.S.\n\nReported trades in energy and mining firms;\n\nmade by spouse through a financial adviser\n\nThe trades were made through a financial adviser in his husband’s account, according to emails and disclosure forms reviewed by the Journal. Mr. Molina was required to enter the trades into the EPA’s electronic-disclosure system within 30 days of receiving notice of the transactions, under the 2012 STOCK Act.\n\nOfficials are responsible for ensuring that their holdings don’t conflict with their work, regardless of whether they use a financial adviser. The Journal’s review of disclosures shows that many federal officials tell their financial advisers to avoid investing in certain industries or to shed specific stocks.\n\nIn an interview on Sept. 28, Mr. Molina indicated that he didn’t know much about the energy trades. “I can say this on the record: I didn’t even know what Cheniere was until 36 hours ago,” he said.\n\nIn February 2019, Mr. Molina was promoted to EPA deputy chief of staff. He attended scores of meetings on environmental issues, reviewed matters for the then-head of the agency, Andrew Wheeler, and was sometimes asked his opinions in meetings, according to records reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with the matter.\n\nIn about 2½ years at the EPA, Mr. Molina reported more than 100 trades in energy and mining companies including Duke Energy Corp., NextEra Energy Inc. and BP PLC. About 20 of the transactions were for between $15,001 and $50,000 each, according to Mr. Molina’s disclosures. Those trades also were made for his husband by his financial adviser.\n\nIn the month he was promoted, February 2019, his husband made several stock purchases through the adviser in Cheniere and Williams Cos., which builds and operates natural-gas pipelines.\n\nTwo months later, Mr. Trump said the EPA would propose new rules to help the gas industry.\n\nAfter publication of this article, Mr. Molina said in a written statement: “Neither I nor my husband knew about or directed any of these trades. Our financial advisor had complete discretion to trade in the account, and these same trades were made on behalf of a ‘pool’ of several dozen clients—not for us individually.”\n\nMr. Molina left the EPA in January 2021. An EPA spokeswoman said the agency’s ethics office “counseled Mr. Molina on his ethics and financial disclosure obligations.” EPA officials signed Mr. Molina’s financial-disclosure statement in each year he worked at the agency, an indication they believed he was in compliance with the conflict-of-interest rules.\n\nU.S. law leaves it to individual agencies to decide whether they need rules to beef up the federal conflict-of-interest law. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission explicitly bars its officials from investing in natural gas, interstate oil pipeline, utility and other energy firms.\n\nThe EPA doesn’t have additional agencywide rules. A spokeswoman for the EPA said its officials may invest in energy companies so long as they aren’t working on policies that could affect their investments. Mr. Molina’s boss told ethics officials that he had no influence over public policy matters.\n\nGreg Zacharias was the chief scientist for the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation until last fall. He repeatedly bought stock in a defense contractor in the weeks before the Pentagon announced it would pay the company $1 billion to deliver more F-35 combat jets, while his division was overseeing testing of those planes.\n\nMr. Zacharias made five purchases of Lockheed Martin Corp. stock, collectively worth $20,700, in August and September 2021, according to figures he provided. On Sept. 24, 2021, the Defense Department said it was buying 16 F-35 jets from Lockheed for the Air Force and Marine Corps. Lockheed shares closed up 1.1% the next trading day. The stock made up a small part of Mr. Zacharias’s portfolio.\n\nMr. Zacharias’s office had been involved for years in overseeing testing of combat jets, and testing officials regularly met with the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office and with Lockheed directly, according to former defense officials. Mr. Zacharias, who provided scientific and technical expertise on how to assess the effectiveness of weapons systems, didn’t attend those meetings.\n\nIn an interview, Mr. Zacharias said he wasn’t involved in decisions on contracting and had no inside knowledge ahead of the contract, beyond the public information that the Pentagon remained committed to the F-35 program. He acknowledged that his role could have allowed him to access information about specific weapons systems. “I could always walk downstairs and ask them how it’s going. But that really wasn’t an interest of mine,” he said, adding that his focus was emerging technologies.\n\nMr. Zacharias said he wanted to buy stock in defense contractors, including Lockheed, because of their dominance of the defense market. He said he didn’t pay much attention to the timing of trades, adding: “I’m just the pipe-smoking science guy.”\n\nThe Lockheed investments were among more than 50 trades Mr. Zacharias reported in about a half-dozen defense contractors in 2020 and 2021, according to the Journal’s analysis.\n\n“I apologize that things don’t look good on the buy side,” Mr. Zacharias added. Of the trades in defense contractors, he said: “I just decided that would be a good investment at the time.”\n\nHe said ethics officials didn’t raise concerns about his trades in Lockheed or any of the other defense contractors he reported investments in, beyond periodically sending a letter reminding him not to take part in contract negotiations involving the companies. He said ethics rules could be “a little tighter.”\n\nA Pentagon spokeswoman said Mr. Zacharias “worked with his supervisor and ethics officials to implement appropriate disqualifications.” She said the department requires supervisors to screen their employees’ disclosures for conflicts in addition to the review conducted by ethics officials. Ethics officials certified that he complied with the law.\n\nSome conflicts of interest stemmed from agencies’ misunderstanding of their own rules.\n\nThe FDA prohibits employees, their spouses and their minor children from investing in companies that are “significantly regulated” by the agency. The FDA maintains an online list of the prohibited companies for officials to check.\n\nAn FDA official named Malcolm Bertoni disclosed that he and his wife owned stock in about 70 pharmaceutical, diagnostics, medical device and food companies regulated by the agency in 2018 and 2019, including drug giants Pfizer Inc. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. All were on the prohibited list.\n\nMr. Bertoni, a career executive, ran the FDA’s planning office from 2008 to 2019, researching and analyzing agency programs. Most of the investments he reported were in the range of $1,001 to $15,000, but his 2019 disclosure showed he and his wife owned between $15,001 and $50,000 in each of Allergan PLC, Sanofi SA, Takeda and Zoetis Inc.\n\nMr. Bertoni’s lawyer, Charles Borden, said Mr. Bertoni and his wife held these stocks despite the bans because they got bad advice from the FDA ethics office.\n\nThe stocks were in accounts managed by professionals who had discretion to trade without the knowledge of Mr. Bertoni or his wife, the attorney said. He said that years ago, Mr. Bertoni asked the ethics office how he should treat the accounts and was told they fell into an exception to the rules for mutual funds.\n\nThey did not. The ethics office discovered its error in a routine review of Mr. Bertoni’s forms in early 2019, Mr. Borden said. “The FDA’s Office of Ethics and Integrity took full responsibility for the inaccurate guidance given to Mr. Bertoni,” the attorney said in an email.\n\nAfter considering the tax and retirement-planning consequences of having to sell the stocks, and other personal factors, Mr. Bertoni chose to retire instead, his lawyer said.\n\nAn FDA spokesman said Mr. Bertoni was recused from matters involving the companies once he reported his family’s holdings in them. The spokesman declined to comment on the events leading up to his departure.\n\n“The FDA takes seriously its obligation to help ensure that decisions made, and actions taken, by the agency and its employees, are not, nor appear to be, tainted by any question of conflict of interest,” said the spokesman.\n\nWhen federal officials are found to have violated conflicts rules and are referred to criminal authorities, they often receive light punishment if any, according to records reviewed by the Journal.\n\nValerie Hardy-Mahoney, a lawyer who runs the National Labor Relations Board’s Oakland, Calif.-based regional office, held Tesla Inc. shares as her office pursued complaints against the auto maker and Chief Executive Elon Musk and considered whether to file more.\n\nMembers of the labor relations board, appointed by the president, review decisions made by agency administrative courts. Ms. Hardy-Mahoney acts as a prosecutor in those courts. She is a career employee who joined the NLRB in the 1980s.\n\nMs. Hardy-Mahoney’s office filed complaints against Tesla in 2017 and 2018. She reported holding Tesla shares worth $1,001 to $15,000 in 2019 while those cases were ongoing. The next year, her disclosure form shows, she owned Tesla shares valued at between $30,002 and $100,000 in E*Trade accounts. She purchased two chunks of Tesla stock in August 2020, each valued at between $1,001 and $15,000, according to her disclosure form.\n\nThe NLRB ruled in March 2021 that Tesla had illegally fired an employee involved in union organizing and that Mr. Musk, in a tweet, had coerced employees by threatening them with the loss of stock options if they unionized. It ordered Tesla to reinstate the employee and Mr. Musk to delete the tweet. Tesla has disputed the findings and has appealed the decision to a federal appeals court.\n\nMs. Hardy-Mahoney’s office has in other cases rejected charges against Tesla filed by employees, including allegations her office received in 2020, after she bought more Tesla stock, according to an NLRB case docket. An employee who worked at the Tesla Gigafactory alleged that the company interfered with workers’ rights. Ms. Hardy-Mahoney’s office dismissed the charge in January 2021.\n\nLast November, an NLRB ethics official declined to certify that Ms. Hardy-Mahoney was in compliance with ethics laws and regulations, according to her disclosure form.\n\nThe NLRB’s inspector general said in a report that his office had substantiated an allegation of violating federal law by participating in a matter in which an employee had a financial interest. An agency spokeswoman confirmed that the report involved Ms. Hardy-Mahoney.\n\nThe report said that the matter was referred to the local U.S. attorney’s office, but that federal prosecutors declined to take it. The report said the subject of the report—Ms. Hardy-Mahoney—received additional training regarding financial conflicts of interest and the case was closed.\n\nMs. Hardy-Mahoney declined to comment. She recused herself from Tesla cases last year and now is in compliance with conflict-of-interest rules, the NLRB spokeswoman said.\n\nAt the Federal Reserve, an economist named Min Wei reported trades in stock of a marijuana company after the Fed sought clarity about whether banks could serve cannabis businesses. A Fed spokeswoman said the trades were made by Ms. Wei’s husband.\n\nIn June 2018, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said publicly that the issue put the central bank “in a very, very difficult position.” Even though its mandate has nothing to do with marijuana, Mr. Powell said, he “just would love to see” a clear policy on the matter.\n\nBecause Mr. Powell didn’t dismiss the idea, investors saw the comment as bullish for cannabis companies such as Tilray Brands Inc., a leading producer. Tilray went public the following month, and its stock skyrocketed.\n\nIn early September 2018, Ms. Wei’s husband bought between $480,005 and $1.1 million of Tilray shares, according to her disclosure form and the Fed. The stock continued to surge.\n\nIt then became clear that neither the Fed nor the Treasury would take action; it would be up to Congress, with no quick fix in sight. In October, shares of cannabis companies began to fall.\n\nMs. Wei’s husband sold his Tilray stake in five sales in early October. By then, the shares had nearly doubled, worth between $800,005 and $1.75 million, according to Ms. Wei’s disclosure.\n\nThe Fed imposed new restrictions this year on investing by bank presidents, Fed board governors and senior staff after the Journal reported questionable trading by presidents of two Fed banks, who subsequently resigned. The new rules prohibit trading individual stocks and bonds and require that trades, even in mutual funds, be preapproved and prescheduled.\n\nThe new Fed rules for top people don’t apply to Ms. Wei because she isn’t senior enough. The trades were “permissible then and are permissible now,” said the Fed spokeswoman.\n\nMs. Wei referred questions to the Fed. The spokeswoman said Ms. Wei had “no responsibility or involvement with policy decisions related to bank supervision or the provision of banking services.” She said the Fed “did not assert any interest at the time in the Federal Reserve resolving the conflict between federal and state law in the area of cannabis companies and their access to banking services, but rather pointed out that the appropriate resolution of those issues should come from the Congress.”\n\nEthics lawyers said trading such large amounts of an individual stock while the Fed is publicly addressing an issue creates an appearance problem, even if Ms. Wei’s trades didn’t violate conflicts rules.\nimage\nThe Federal Reserve building in Washington.\n\nRoughly seven dozen federal officials reported more than 500 financial transactions apiece over the six-year period analyzed by the Journal. Some traded a single stock frequently, while others reported hundreds or even thousands of trades across a broad array of stocks, bonds and funds.\n\nIn one instance, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission permitted short sales contrary to one of the CFTC’s own rules.\n\nThe financial disclosure of Lihong McPhail, an economist at the CFTC, showed the most trading reported by any federal official in the Journal’s review. Her husband made more than 9,500 trades in 2020—an average of about 38 each trading day, according to her disclosure form and the CFTC.\n\nAbout one-third of those reported 2020 trades—2,994—involved shorting stocks, or betting on a fall in their price. They ranged from Amazon to Ford Motor Co. to Zoom Video Communications Inc. The CFTC said all the short sales were made by her husband.\n\nOver the years, to safeguard the CFTC’s integrity, Congress imposed tighter restrictions than at other agencies on employees’ investing. In amending the Commodity Exchange Act, Congress also declared that any breach by a CFTC employee of an investment rule set by the commission could be punishable by up to a $500,000 fine and five years in prison. The CFTC’s role doesn’t include regulating stocks, but in 2002, the agency adopted a rule banning short selling by its employees and their families.\n\nNonetheless, a CFTC ethics official approved short selling by Ms. McPhail’s husband, Joseph McPhail, a CFTC spokesman said, fearing that the commission “could possibly be sued by the employee if we said no.” The spokesman said the ethics office believed the regulatory provision exceeded the commission’s statutory authority.\n\nMr. McPhail referred questions to the CFTC. The CFTC spokesman said he didn’t speak for the McPhails. Ms. McPhail didn’t respond to requests for comment.\n\nAt the CFTC, “employees are required by statute and by regulations to adhere to strict ethical standards and to disclose personal investments to ensure that the work of the CFTC to oversee markets is free from any conflict of interest,” said the agency spokesman. “In this instance, several years ago the employee sought advice regarding their spouse’s investments and received approval from career ethics counsel.”\n\nMr. McPhail was a senior policy analyst at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. until September 2021. In a written statement, that agency said: “The FDIC expects our employees, as public servants, to devote their time and efforts to our mission to maintain stability and public confidence in the nation’s banking system.”\n\nThe Defense Department was among the federal agencies with the most officials who invested in Chinese stocks, even as the Pentagon in recent years has shifted its focus to countering China.\n\nAcross the federal government, more than 400 officials owned or traded Chinese company stocks, including officials at the State Department and White House, the Journal found. Their investments amounted to between $1.9 million and $6.6 million on average a year.\n\nReed Werner, while serving as deputy assistant secretary of defense for south and southeast Asia, in December 2020 reported a purchase of between $15,001 and $50,000 of stock in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.\n\nAt the time, discussions were under way at the Pentagon over whether to add the Chinese e-commerce giant to a list of companies in which Americans were barred from investing because of their alleged ties to the Chinese government.\n\nDefense and State officials pushed to add the company to the blacklist, while the Treasury feared this would have wide capital-markets ramifications. Mr. Werner had been involved over a period of months in some discussions about what companies to add to the blacklist, former defense officials said.\n\nNearly two weeks after the Alibaba purchase, the Treasury updated its list and didn’t include Alibaba. The company’s stock rose 4% that day.\n\nThree days later, Mr. Werner’s financial-disclosure form shows a sale of between $15,001 and $50,000 of Alibaba stock.\n\nThe sale came a day before a meeting where defense officials planned to press their case for adding Alibaba and two other companies to the blacklist. Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin ultimately blocked the effort.\n\nIn an interview, Mr. Werner acknowledged he was involved in discussions about adding Alibaba to the list, saying he attended a meeting in late 2020 and was on an email chain about the matter. He said that he wasn’t involved in blacklist discussions during the period the Alibaba trades were made, and that the trades resulted in a $1,556.51 gain. He declined to answer further questions.\n\nThe Pentagon spokeswoman said that the officials who formally compiled and approved the blacklist didn’t own stock in affected companies, and that supervisors and ethics officials review reports for holdings that could conflict with an employee’s duties. Ethics officials certified that Mr. Werner complied with the law.\n\nAt least 15 other defense officials in the office of the secretary reported that they or family members owned or traded Alibaba between 2016 and 2021, including Jack Wilmer, who served as senior cybersecurity adviser at the White House and then as the Pentagon’s top cybersecurity official.\n\nBetween 2018 and 2020, Mr. Wilmer reported at least six trades, which he said totaled around $10,000, in the Chinese companies Alibaba, search-engine giant Baidu Inc. and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp.\n\nMr. Wilmer said that a money manager handles his trades and that he didn’t direct any of those transactions. He said he wasn’t involved in policy-making decisions that would have affected those stocks and said he didn’t see a conflict between his job and investments. He left the government in July 2020, before Mr. Trump signed the executive order barring Americans from investing in certain Chinese companies.\n\nWithin federal agencies, ethics officials generally don’t consider it their job to investigate whether employees are making stock trades based on information they glean from their government jobs. Ethics officials’ ability to spot potential conflicts is limited because they usually don’t know what employees are working on.\n\nWhen ethics officials do see a potential violation, they can refer it to their agencies’ inspectors general, who refer cases on to the Justice Department if they find evidence of wrongdoing.\n\nA Journal review of inspector general reports showed that the offices rarely investigated financial conflicts. As more federal officials invest in the stock market, ethics officials say they have less time to look into possible wrongdoing. When findings have been referred to the Justice Department, prosecutors in most cases have declined to open an investigation.\n\nOne matter at the Securities and Exchange Commission involved an official who failed to report or clear his and his spouse’s financial holdings and trades for at least seven years. The trades included stocks that SEC employees and their families weren’t allowed to own, some of which the SEC inspector general determined posed a conflict with the official’s work, according to a report the inspector general provided to Congress.\n\nWhen a U.S. attorney declined to prosecute, the SEC’s inspector general reported the findings to SEC management. The unnamed official ultimately was suspended for seven days and gave up 16 hours of leave time.\n\nThe SEC declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on individual investigations but said: “We take all inspector general referrals seriously and bring charges when the facts and law support them, consistent with the principles of federal prosecution.”\nShare Your Thoughts\n\nAre stock trading rules for federal officials OK or should they be further restricted? Join the conversation below.\n\nMost federal agencies don’t have protocols to verify that officials’ financial disclosures are complete. One Agriculture Department official disclosed wheat, corn and soybean futures and options trades. The Journal discovered that he had made additional large trades in corn and soybean futures in 2018 and 2019 and omitted them from his reports.\n\nThe official, Clare Carlson, who is no longer at the USDA, said that he tried to be scrupulous in his disclosures, and that the omissions were honest mistakes. The Agriculture Department declined to comment.\n\nAt the EPA, Mr. Molina’s financial-disclosure reporting caught the attention of ethics officials.\n\nThe conflict-of-interest rules say executive-branch employees may not “participate personally and substantially” in matters that have a “direct and predictable effect” on their investments and those of family members.\n\nWhen the ethics officials contacted Mr. Molina about energy stocks he reported on his forms, they were told he didn’t have any influence over environmental policy.\n\nHis “duties are administrative in nature,” his boss, the EPA’s chief of staff at the time, told the ethics officials. “He provides logistical support to the principal but does not participate personally and substantially in making any decisions, recommendations or advice that will have any direct or substantial effect” on his financial interests, the chief of staff said, according to Mr. Molina’s financial disclosure.\n\nIn his time at the EPA, Mr. Molina clashed with ethics officials. Many of his financial disclosure reports were inaccurate and tardy, according to EPA emails reviewed by the Journal. At one point, he didn’t file accurate monthly trading disclosures for 12 months, according to the EPA emails. Mr. Molina reported the stock trades on his annual financial reports, as required.\n\nEthics officials said they contacted Mr. Molina “scores” of times to press him to file timely reports, according to the emails reviewed by the Journal.\n\nIn one email, a senior ethics official said his office had “provided you with at least 3-5 times more personal assistance than for any other agency employee, yet the required ethics reports were still late.”\n\nMr. Molina told EPA officials that he initially didn’t know he was supposed to complete regular stock-trading reports. He later struggled to keep up with the EPA’s electronic-disclosure system, according to the emails reviewed by the Journal.\n\nIn September 2020, the EPA fined Mr. Molina $3,200 for numerous failures to disclose stock trades to the agency on time. Mr. Molina refused to pay.\n\n“We have never before had an employee refuse to pay the late fee,” wrote one ethics officer in an email to Mr. Molina on Oct. 21, 2020, “so I will have to inquire about how to commence garnishment proceedings.”\n\nThe next month, Mr. Molina accused ethics officials of discriminating against him. “I feel that I am being targeted and have been asked to report more than anyone else,” he wrote in a Nov. 3, 2020, email.\n\n“If the intent of these filings is to curb any corruption or misbehavior,” Mr. Molina wrote, the EPA should open an investigation. “I believe that paying such an outrageous fine would be an admission that I have done something wrong in this regard.”\n\nEthics officials didn’t investigate Mr. Molina’s trades or refer the matter to internal investigators.\n\nOn the evening of Jan. 19, 2021, Mr. Molina’s final day working for the government, EPA ethics officials offered to end the matter if he paid a discounted fine of $1,067.\n\nMr. Molina wrote out a personal check to “U.S. Treasury” and sent it to officials in the EPA’s ethics office, including to Justina Fugh, an official with whom he had clashed."

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/california-requires-half-of-heavy-trucks-sales-to-be-electric-by-2035.html\n\nThe Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it’s granting California the legal authority to require that half of all heavy-duty truck sales in the state be fully electric by 2035, an ambitious standard that will go beyond federal requirements.\n\nThe Biden administration’s approval of California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) Regulation comes after the state last year banned the sale of new gasoline-powered cars starting in the same target year of 2035.\n\nThe two decisions make California, the country’s most populous state and center of U.S. car culture, a leader in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, which generates most of the country’s greenhouse gases.\n\nThe California Air Resources Board had sought waivers from the Clean Air Act to set stricter standards for heavy-duty vehicles such as garbage trucks, delivery vans and tractor-trailers. The approval of the new rule will likely have greater impacts beyond California and pave the way for other states to follow suit.\n\nCalifornia, which has committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2045, has considerable authority over the country’s auto industry. For instance, a federal waiver under the Clean Air Act gives the state authority to adopt stronger fuel economy standards than those of the federal government, which has set the precedent for the rest of the U.S. on how to address vehicle emissions.\n\nThe heavy-duty truck rule has already been adopted by six other states — New York, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts and Vermont — all of which were waiting for permission from the Biden administration to enact it.\n\n“Under the Clean Air Act, California has longstanding authority to address pollution from cars and trucks,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Today’s announcement allows the state to take additional steps in reducing their transportation emissions through these new regulatory actions.”\n\nThe state’s rule requires manufacturers to produce zero-emission trucks beginning in 2024 — three years ahead of the Biden administration’s most recent regulations — and raises production targets through 2035. The rule aims to put 300,000 zero-emission trucks on the road by 2035.\n\nThe requirement will curb climate pollution by nearly three million metric tons each year by 2040, according to estimates from the California Air Resources Board. Heavy-duty trucks represent nearly one third of the state’s nitrogen oxide and more than one quarter of its fine particle pollution from diesel fuel.\n\n“California has been hard at work passing landmark regulations to clean our air and protect our climate with zero emissions vehicles, so we’re heartened to see EPA stand with California today and grant this waiver,” Paul Cort, director of Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign, said in a statement.\n\nHowever, some of the country’s major truck manufacturers and their lobbying groups have argued that the requirements to sell a certain percentage of electric heavy-duty trucks are costly and difficult to implement.\n\nThe Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, an industry group that represents truck and bus manufacturers, has said that the standards would increase the cost of trucks and result in truck buyers delaying decisions to purchase new vehicles."

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/lucid-lcid-earnings-q4-2022.html\n\nElectric vehicle maker Lucid on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter revenue that fell short of expectations after building just 7,000 of its Air luxury sedans last year amid manufacturing challenges. But the company said it expects to make between 10,000 and 14,000 vehicles in 2023.\n\nShares of the company fell roughly 7% in afterhours trading.\n\nHere’s what the company reported for the fourth quarter of 2022:\n\nLoss per share: 28 cents\n\nRevenue: $257.7 million, vs. $303 million, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates\n\nLucid’s quarterly revenue marks a sharp increase from the same period last year, when it had just begun production of the Air sedan and brought in $26.4 million. The company’s bottom line likewise improved, coming in narrower than the 64-cent loss per share it posted in the year-ago period.\n\nThe company ended the year with about $4.4 billion in cash and roughly $500 million available via lines of credit, enough to last until the first quarter of 2024, chief financial officer Sherry House told CNBC. Lucid had $3.85 billion in cash as Sep. 30; it raised an additional $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and other investors via an equity offering in December. The Saudi public wealth fund owns about 62% of Lucid.\n\nLucid said in January that it produced 7,180 vehicles in 2022, well below its original expectation of 20,000 for the year but enough to beat the lowered guidance it provided in August. But it delivered just 4,369 of those Air sedans to customers before year-end.\n\n“Our goal in 2023 is to amplify our sales and marketing efforts to get this amazing product into the hands of even more customers around the world,” CEO Peter Rawlinson said.\n\nLucid said it had more than 28,000 reservations for its vehicles as of Feb. 21, down from “over 34,000” reservations in its last update on Nov. 7.\n\nThe company said in April that Saudi Arabia’s government had agreed to buy up to 100,000 of its vehicles over the next 10 years. Those vehicles aren’t included in its reservation totals."

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-14/apple-s-hotly-anticipated-headset-risks-being-delayed-until-2023\n\n“Apple Inc. is considering pushing back the debut of its mixed-reality headset by at least a few months, potentially delaying its first major new product since the Apple Watch in 2015, according to people familiar with the situation. \n\nThe headset -- a high-end device that blends virtual and augmented reality -- was targeted for an unveiling at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, followed by a release later in the year. But development challenges related to overheating, cameras and software have made it harder to stay on track, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.\n\n\nThat could push the announcement until the end of 2022 or later, with the product hitting shelves by 2023, the people said. A spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.\n\n\nApple shares, which had been up about 1% Friday, retreated on the news, dipping as low as $171.68. The stock gained 34% in 2021, outpacing the S&P 500 Index.\n\nThe delay would mark a setback for a product seen as one of Apple’s famous “next big things” -- a new category that can keep sales growing and help justify the tech giant’s nearly $3 trillion market valuation. The company hasn’t discussed the headset publicly, but the product has been years in the making and already delayed before.\n\nApple had previously planned to introduce the headset in 2021 and ship it this year, according to other people with knowledge of the matter. The company has been developing the device since around 2015 and is counting on it to be the first of many headsets that could eventually replace the iPhone a decade from now. \n\nThe hope is to create products with more appeal than current augmented reality goggles, which let users superimpose data and imagery on top of real-world views. Past AR headsets, such as Google Glass or Magic Leap, have either been fringe products or flops -- and have drawn ridicule for making users look creepy. \n\nVR headsets, meanwhile, have been more successful. Devices from companies like Meta Platforms Inc. shut out the real world and immerse users in a digital reality -- setting the stage for the so-called metaverse. But even VR hasn’t caught on much beyond a core group of gamers.\n\nApple’s product would combine both technologies in one device, letting the company plant a flag in the still-nascent industry. The headset isn’t expected to be an iPhone-like hit from the start -- it will be an expensive niche item -- but the device may set the stage for bigger moneymakers in the years ahead.\n\nThe challenge is getting such a product to customers. Apple recently informed supply-chain partners that the device probably won’t be released until 2023, according to the people familiar with the discussions. However, it is still pushing vendors to have units available at the end of this year so that they’re ready for the rollout.\n\nApple is planning to focus its 2023 developers conference on building virtual and augmented reality apps for the device, which will have an App Store, according to the people.\n\nIt’s also laying other groundwork for the headset. That includes building in support for the device in iOS 16, codenamed Sydney, a new version of the iPhone’s operating system that’s set to be unveiled in June.\n\nThat means Apple could still theoretically preview technical aspects of the headset or its software, without showcasing the full device, as early as this year’s developer conference. \n\nWhen it ships the product, Apple will face immediate competition. Meta, formerly Facebook Inc., is working on its own mixed-reality headset, known as Project Cambria, that’s likely to be cheaper than Apple’s. Apple has weighed price points north of $2,000 for its headset because of the inclusion of powerful chips, high-resolution screens and new audio technology.\n\nToday’s consumer VR market is led by Meta’s Quest 2 headset and products from HTC Corp., with both companies developing ecosystems of content and developer support around their hardware.\n\nThe first Apple headset will be a precursor to a more ambitious set of AR-only glasses, codenamed N421, that the company hopes to debut later this decade. By rolling out the more niche device first, it can educate consumers on the technologies, build an app ecosystem and prepare suppliers for future products. \n\nGiven the functionality and expected price of the device, Apple had estimated it would sell one unit per day per Apple retail store. Based on the company’s current forecast provided to supply-chain partners, it believes the product could sell 7 million to 10 million units during its first year.\n\nThe thermal challenges with the headset stem from its use of high-end chips normally placed inside professional laptops. The company is planning to include two processors in its first device, which is codenamed N301, with at least one of them being on par with the M1 Pro chip inside the latest MacBook Pro.\n\nIn earlier designs of the headset, Apple had looked to mitigate heat problems by placing the high-powered processors in an external device that would wirelessly transmit data. That plan was scrapped after Jony Ive, Apple’s former design chief, balked at the clunkiness of requiring a separate device, Bloomberg reported at the time.\n\nApple has also faced development challenges with on-board cameras, which will be used to enable augmented reality. Apple is looking to source its camera modules from LG Innotek Co., which plans to begin production of the parts as early as the second quarter of this year.\n\nMore than 2,000 Apple employees are now working on its VR and AR hardware as part of a unit called the Technology Development Group, or TDG. The group is run by Mike Rockwell, an ex-Dolby Laboratories Inc. executive, and Dan Riccio, Apple’s former head of hardware engineering who stepped down from that larger role in early 2021. \n\nIn recent months, Apple has seen a number of engineers from the unit leave for jobs at Meta. The company responded to the departures by offering key engineers one-time restricted stock unit bonuses worth as much as $180,000, Bloomberg reported in December.\n\nApple plans for its mixed-reality device to run its own operating system -- dubbed rOS, with the “r” likely standing for “reality.” The software, codenamed Oak, is designed to focus on communication tools and media consumption.\n\nVR/AR technology isn’t Apple’s only big bet right now, but it may be the closest to market. Other initiatives, such as a self-driving car, are expected to take longer.\n\nSince Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook took the reins from Steve Jobs more than a decade ago, the company has only pushed into one major new hardware category: the Apple Watch. But Apple has broadened its lineup with more Macs, iPhones, iPads and accessories like AirPods.\n\nWhen the company first rolled out the Apple Watch, it previewed the device in September 2014, held a follow-up launch to showcase additional features in March 2015 and then ultimately released it in late April that year. Its foray into the world of VR and AR could follow a similar path.”"

ERROR: type should be string, got "https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-hits-3-trillion-market-cap-184825195.html\n\n“Apple (AAPL) officially has a market capitalization of $3 trillion. The tech giant passed the $182.86 mark Monday, making it the first publicly traded company in history to hit such a market valuation. Shares were bouncing above and below the number during the day.\n\nApple’s rise to a $3 trillion market cap, which is based on its stock price, comes less than two years after its market cap hit $2 trillion. Microsoft (MSFT) is also potentially on its way to the $3 trillion mark after topping $2 trillion in June.\n\nApple’s rise to $3 trillion comes on the back of the incredible success of its iPhone line, which has spawned accessories like the Apple Watch and AirPods, not to mention services like AppleCare, the App Store, Apple Music+, and Apple TV+.\n\nApple’s latest generation of hardware has, however, been struck by the same supply chain issues affecting everything from car manufacturers to home appliance makers. According to Bloomberg, the company previously cut its iPhone production goal by 10 million units in October due to supply constraints.\n\nAnd Nikkei Asia reports that Apple’s manufacturing partners in China were getting days off when they would normally be working full throttle to ramp up device availability for the holiday season.\n\nStay ahead of the market\nBut Apple has also shown off some major innovations in 2021 including the launch of its powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chips for its MacBook Pro laptops. Those chips allow Apple to ditch Intel’s own processors, giving Apple far more control over design and performance.\n\nAnd then there are reports about Apple’s future devices including the obvious updates to stalwarts like the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, as well as entirely new product categories like augmented reality and virtual reality headsets.\n\nApple’s rise to $3 trillion hasn’t been without controversy, however. The company has repeatedly been called out for its cooperation with the Chinese government including its censorship policies and its need to store user data there. Apple, however, says it “complies with the laws pertaining to local entities that control customer data and provides data as legally required.”\n\nLike its Big Tech compatriots, Apple is also contending with antitrust issues. In August 2020, “Fortnite” maker Epic filed suit against Apple claiming it violates antitrust laws by requiring developers to use its in-app payment system, which automatically grants Apple a 30% fee for each purchase.\n\nWhile the company largely came out of suit unscathed, the judge in the case has called on Apple to allow third-party app developers to add external purchasing options to their apps. Apple is appealing the ruling.\n\nThe company is also reportedly staring down the prospect of an antitrust battle with the Department of Justice, which is said to be preparing its own case against the iPhone maker. That would likely focus on Apple’s control of the iPhone and its iOS operating system.”"