Category: Business Insider

• Boeing has said there's no documents of work done on the door plug that came off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max.
• Ed Pierson, a former Boeing manager, testified that another whistleblower gave him these documents.
• Although the NTSB chair said she believes these are different documents than the ones it's looking for.

A Boeing whistleblower said there is a "criminal coverup" surrounding January's Alaska Airlines blowout.

Ed Pierson was one of four people who testified Wednesday in front of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Pierson was a senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory and retired in 2018, before the first Max 8 crash.

He has consistently raised concerns that the narrowbody jet is unsafe and says he once got off a 737 Max before it took off when he realized which plane model he had boarded.

Pierson's testimony on Wednesday included a significant fresh allegation about the Alaska Airlines blowout investigation. "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, this is a criminal coverup," he said.

After a 737 Max 9 lost its door plug in midair — leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage — the National Transportation Safety Board said key bolts designed to secure it were missing.

The NTSB said the door plug had been removed in Boeing's factory to fix some broken rivets, but the planemaker told investigators it didn't have documentation of this work.

"With respect to documentation, if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share," Boeing said in a statement last month.

But Pierson said on Wednesday: "Records do in fact exist. I know this because I personally passed them to the FBI."

Asked for more detail about this by Ranking Member Ron Johnson, Pierson said an "internal whistleblower" sent him the documents about the work done on the door plug.

"For the last couple months, there's been talk that there's no records, and that's obviously not the case," Pierson added. "It has been available for months."

The FBI is looking into whether criminal charges should be brought against Boeing as a result of the blowout. Passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight were sent letters from the FBI saying that they might be victims of a crime.

The embattled planemaker has seen its stock fall by a third since the start of the year, per Markets Insider data.

Citing people familiar with the situation, The Seattle Times reported that Pierson was referring to an informal database used to track problems at the 737 Max factory, called the shipside action tracker.

Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, told FlightGlobal: "I believe the whistleblower has the shipside tracker, which we already have, [and] is not the documents we are looking for."

Boeing did not comment directly on Pierson's remarks when reached by Business Insider. In a statement about its safety culture, the planemaker said: "Since 2020, Boeing has taken important steps to foster a safety culture that empowers and encourages all employees to raise their voice."

"We continue to put safety and quality above all else and share information transparently with our regulator, customers and other stakeholders," it added.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/oj1DdNB
via IFTTT

• Colorado lawmakers have signed a bill aimed at protecting privacy in the burgeoning field of neurotech.
• The act expands the definition of "sensitive" data to include our neural information.
• The law came in response to the largely unregulated consumer neurotechnology industry.

Lawmakers in Colorado have passed a law aimed at protecting a new frontier in privacy: your brain activity.

Gov. Jared Polis signed the new law after it passed in the Colorado House by a vote of 61-to-1, and in the Senate 34-to-0.

The bill takes aim at the growing neurotechnology industry.

In simple terms, the Protect Privacy of Biological Data Act expands the definition of "sensitive data" in the state's privacy laws to encompass biological and neural data.

"Data concerning the activity of the human brain and wider nervous systems, or 'neural data,' is extremely sensitive and can reveal intimate information about individuals, including information about health, mental states, emotions, and cognitive functioning," the bill stated.

Because every brain is different, the storage of neural data "always contains sensitive information that may link the data to an identified or identifiable individual," it added.

While we've grown more accustomed to the storage, processing, and increasingly the sale of private data harvested from areas like social media and wearable tech, many may balk at sharing neural data so readily.

Jared Genser, cofounder of the Neurorights Foundation, which supported the bill's passage, told The New York Times that data processed by consumer neurotechnology remains largely unregulated.

He said it escapes the kind of protections offered to, for example, patient data in a healthcare setting.

The consumer neurotechnology industry has few household names — Elon Musk's Neuralink being one of the few to reach wider public awareness.

Even so, it has potential applications in almost every area of human life.

Neural interfaces are being developed to do everything from picking up subtle signs of hard-to-track health conditions, to monitoring workplace productivity, to even seeing how the brain responds while shopping online.

But the fanfare around Neuralink's first human patient back in March came with a chorus of ethical concerns — not only around the widely-hyped uncharted territory of AI, but also around privacy.

A report published by the Neurorights Foundation found worrying signs of the potential for neurotechnology start-ups to share data with third parties, The Times reported.

"The things that people can do with this technology are great," Rep. Cathy Kipp, who introduced the Colorado bill, told the Times. "But we just think that there should be some guardrails in place for people who aren't intending to have their thoughts read and their biological data used."

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/odbunWI
via IFTTT

• A Walmart Supercenter in St. Louis, Missouri, is removing self-checkout.
• The change follows a similar move last year at three locations in New Mexico.
• Major retailers have taken other steps to address some of the problems raised by self-service tech.

A Walmart in Missouri is in the process of ditching self-checkout lanes in an effort to improve the in-store experience.

The company confirmed the decision to USA Today, saying the St. Louis-area Supercenter's changeover process will last for about two weeks in total.

Spokesperson Brian Little told the newspaper the decision was based on feedback from employees and customers, as well as local shopping patterns.

"We believe the change will improve the in-store shopping experience and give our associates the chance to provide more personalized and efficient service," he said.

If the news sounds familiar, that's because three Walmart stores in New Mexico did the same thing last year.

Meanwhile, discount stores Dollar General and FiveBelow have each said they will scale back or eliminate self-checkout from their stores as those retailers grapple with high rates of missing inventory.

Walmart has over 4,700 US locations, and the company said at the time there was no plan to remove self-service kiosks from stores at a widespread scale.

Apart from removing the technology altogether at some stores, retailers, including Walmart, have taken a number of steps to address some of the challenges posed by self-checkout.

Earlier this year, BI reported several Walmart locations were limiting access to self-checkout lanes to users of either the company's Walmart+ or Spark delivery apps.

Target instituted a change that capped item counts to ten or fewer in the self-service lanes — a move the company said helped make the checkout process twice as fast as when there were no limits. Some stores also began limiting the hours that the self-checkout lanes were open.

Researchers found that self-checkout drives a phenomenon known as "partial shrink," where inventory is lost due to customers failing to properly scan and pay for all of the items in their transactions.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/DW75tVq
via IFTTT

• US recycling centers lose up to $1 million annually due to valuable materials ending up in landfills.
• AI startups, including EverestLabs, use robots and machine learning to recover more recyclables. 
• Aluminum and plastic are valuable as companies use more recycled content to hit climate goals.

It's well known that the US is bad at recycling.

Companies don't make enough recyclable containers and packaging, and people are confused about what can go in the blue bin. A patchwork of state and local collection systems doesn't help.

Even when aluminum cans, laundry jugs, and soda bottles do make it to recycling centers, some 27% of those potentially valuable materials still end up in landfills, according to a study by EverestLabs, an AI robotics company that's trying to solve the problem. That means US recycling centers could be losing up to $1 million every year on materials that could be sold to manufacturers and made into something new.

EverestLabs is among a group of AI startups disrupting the waste sector by using 3D cameras, machine learning, and robots in recycling centers to help recover more materials, boost profits, and ideally reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. If more aluminum, plastic, cardboard, and glass get recycled, fewer virgin materials would need to be extracted from mining and fossil-fuel production.

"Recycling plants have been using outdated technologies," JD Ambati, the CEO and founder of EverestLabs, told Business Insider. "They're focused on processing volume at a high throughput, which has the unintended consequences of a lot of material getting shoved into the conveyor lines that send the materials to the landfill."

As part of its study, EverestLabs spent two years monitoring the waste stream at dozens of recycling centers across the country. Each of the centers processed hundreds of tons of materials a day. The study measured losses of the most valuable recycled commodities, aluminum and certain types of plastic, but didn't cover cardboard or glass.

Ambati said aluminum and plastic are in high demand because companies selling packaged food, beverages, and household products are trying to use more recycled content to meet sustainability goals. Some US states, the European Union, and Australia also have regulations requiring a certain percentage of plastic containers to be made with recycled content to help reduce waste piling up in landfills and the environment.

About 76% of recyclables in the US are being lost in the trash at home, according to The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit group that conducts research and works with companies and governments to fund new infrastructure and education projects. Only about 3% of recyclables are lost at processing centers, but new technology is needed to sort and process more materials, the group said.

"A million-dollar loss is substantial for these recycling plants," Ambati said, adding that the waste industry is starting to see the benefits of investing in AI. "They wanted to get comfortable with what this technology can do."

EverestLabs' customers are some of the biggest waste haulers and recyclers in North America, including Republic Services, Novelis, and Balcones Resources.

Last year, Caglia Environmental, which serves the Fresno and San Joaquin Valley region in California, installed EverestLabs' technology on one of its "last chance" lines to identify aluminum cans mistakenly destined for the landfill. It is expected to divert more than 1 million cans away from landfills and back to recycling plants that sell the material to manufacturers.

"Every time an aluminum can is thrown in the trash, it's just a horrendous waste to the Earth," Ambati said. "It is infinitely recyclable and can become part of your car door, washing machine, window frames, you name it. That is what people are missing."

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/vxqD4P3
via IFTTT

• Bitcoin is a "fraud," a "Ponzi scheme," and cannot serve as a currency, Jamie Dimon said.
• The JPMorgan CEO said cryptos that enable smart contracts and blockchain apps might have value.
• Dimon has dismissed bitcoin as a "pet rock" in the past, and slammed it for enabling criminals.

Bitcoin is a scam and fails as a currency, Jamie Dimon said.

"If you mean crypto like bitcoin, I've always said it's a fraud," the JPMorgan CEO told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.

"If they think they're a currency, there's no hope for it. It's a Ponzi scheme," he added.

However, the billionaire banker did say tokens that serve a purpose may not be worthless.

"If it's a crypto coin that can do something like a smart contract, that has value," he said. "There will be smart contracts, and blockchain works — to the extent crypto is accessing certain blockchain things, yeah, that might have some value."

Dimon has trashed bitcoin repeatedly in recent years. He's compared it to smoking a cigarette, warned it's "dangerous" to own, urged people not to buy it, and called on governments to ban it.

The Wall Street heavyweight has also decried the most popular crypto as a "waste of time," a "hyped-up fraud," and a "pet rock."

Moreover, he's bemoaned the anonymity it provides and the lack of regulation around its use, saying it enables crimes such as fraud, tax avoidance, money laundering, sex and drug trafficking, and terrorism financing.

Dimon may be vehemently opposed to bitcoin, but that hasn't stopped it from hitting record highs — albeit with plenty of volatility on the way.

The token's price soared from $10,000 in September 2020 to more than $65,000 in November 2021, then crashed to about $16,000 over the next year.

However, it rebounded above $70,000 last month and now trades around the $63,000 mark, giving it a market value of $1.2 trillion.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/9aMdoJg
via IFTTT

• Sen. Elizabeth Warren led a letter urging Navient to cancel predatory private student loans.
• The letter cited the Holder Rule, which permits relief for borrowers with fraudulent loans.
• The lawmakers requested this relief happen before Navient outsources its servicing to MOHELA.

A major private student-loan company is leaving the servicing industry. But before that happens, a group of Democratic lawmakers want it to give some borrowers debt relief.

On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren led eight of her Democratic colleagues in sending a letter — first reviewed by Business Insider — to Navient's CEO David Yowan, requesting that the company cancel "decades-old predatory private student loans" using a consumer protection law established by the Federal Trade Commission.

In January, Navient announced it would be outsourcing servicing of its private loans and commercially held loans in the Federal Family Education Loan program to MOHELA — one of the largest federal student loan servicers. This transition is expected to impact about 2.7 million borrowers, and the Democratic lawmakers wrote in their letter that "a large portion of these loans are eligible for cancellation."

That's because, the lawmakers wrote, some of those borrowers may have attended schools the Education Department later determined were fraudulent by misrepresenting their programs and pushing students to take on more debt than they could afford. While the Education Department has canceled federal student loans for some borrowers using a process known as the borrower defense to repayment, those who may have attended the same fraudulent schools but had private loans held by Navient did not get the same relief.

But there might be an avenue to still get those borrowers debt cancellation. Warren and her colleagues pointed to the Holder Rule — a consumer protection tool allowing the borrower "to cancel existing debt if a school fraudulently induced the student to enroll and had some relationship with the lender," per the Minnesota Attorney General's office.

Prior lawsuits have pointed to Navient's relationships with some for-profit schools. In 2022, Navient reached a $1.7 billion settlement with 39 states after being accused of working with for-profit schools to hand out private loans to students with high default rates. However, the settlement only included borrowers who were in default for at least seven consecutive months before June 2021. Navient did not admit any wrongdoing, and it has a process for borrowers to apply for relief. The group of lawmakers wants that process automated.

"Navient should stop making borrowers apply for relief and instead automatically cancel student debt using information the company already has about whether borrowers attended schools that would entitle them to relief," they wrote.

The lawmakers are requesting that this relief happen before Navient outsources its servicing to MOHELA. Additionally, they requested Yowan provide additional information by April 29, including the number of borrowers the company services who attended for-profit schools, how many borrowers have applied for relief using Navient's application, and how the company takes into account the Holder Rule.

While it's unclear how any debt cancellation would impact the transition of servicing responsibilities from Navient to MOHELA, Navient previously said in its announcement that the two companies would "work toward ensuring a seamless transition in the coming months and providing customers with uninterrupted servicing of their loans."

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/eyLNjkV
via IFTTT

• Runaway US debt levels at risks to global stability, the International Monetary Fund said in a report.
• Spiking Treasury yields are associated with exchange rate turbulence and higher interest rates elsewhere.
• The Congressional Budget Office projects debt-to-GDP levels to reach 116% by 2054.

Ballooning US debt will weigh on more than just Washington, as spiraling borrowing costs have the potential to distort the global economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

In its latest Fiscal Monitor report, the fund expects US deficit to more than triple overspending levels in other advanced economies by 2025, projected to hit 7.1%.

"Loose fiscal policy in the United States exerts upward pressure on global interest rates and the dollar," Vitor Gaspar, director of the IMF's fiscal affairs department, said in a related press briefing. "It pushes up funding costs in the rest of the world, thereby exacerbating existing fragilities and risks."

Specifically, the report made reference to the impact that debt has on Treasury yields, as the government must increasingly offer higher returns in order to keep attracting buyers. 

But such large and sudden rate increases are often associated with exchange rate turbulence across global markets, while a 1 percentage point spike in US interest can lead to a ramp up in foreign long-term nominal rates.

Markets have already gotten a taste of debt-related yield jumps, after a US credit downgrade sent 10- and 30-year rates surging above 5% in October. 

The IMF didn't just raise flags on the US, but warned that China's deficit and debt levels were concerning: "How these two economies manage their fiscal policies could therefore have profound effects on the global economy and pose significant risks," the report warned.  

For its part, Washington has undergone "remarkably large fiscal slippages," the IMF said, referencing falling taxes and a doubling in government spending between 2022 and 2023, despite strong growth.

If this trend continues, the Congressional Budget Office expects US debt to reach 116% of GDP by 2054, where it currently equaled 97% in 2023. Some analysts have called this unsustainable, and a path towards national default.

Others have touted that solutions are straightforward, as long as political backing can be secured. That includes a bipartisan willingness to cut spending, as well as tax hikes across income levels. 

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/kGTajPI
via IFTTT

• An employee of a UK grocery chain was fired for not paying for grocery bags at checkout.
• He reportedly took multiple bags which each cost less than $1.
• Many retailers have been rethinking their approach to self-checkouts after issues of theft. 

An employee of the UK grocery chain Sainsbury's, who had worked there for nearly 20 years, was fired after he didn't pay for plastic grocery bags at self-checkout, the BBC reported.

The employee reportedly purchased £30 ($37) of food, pillows, and bedding from the store after working the night shift.

When he went to pay at the self-checkout, he clicked "zero bags used" despite having used multiple bags. His employer saw the footage on CCTV and took this as grounds for his dismissal.

Sainsbury's charges between 30 pence ($0.37) and 65 pence ($0.80) for its plastic grocery bags after a law came into effect in the UK requiring customers to pay for these bags.

The case was brought to an employment tribunal where the employee said he was tired and made an unintentional mistake, per the BBC. But the judge ruled that Sainsbury's was within its right to fire him, finding that he "committed theft."

Retailers have been rethinking their approach to self-checkouts in recent years. The chains have realized they still need employees to help check receipts, combat theft, and assist with purchases.

Some US retailers have found that self-checkout lanes open them up to issues like theft. Walmart has removed self-checkout in some of its stores recently, as employees and customers complained of theft.

Costco has also been clamping down by asking customers to show their membership cards at the self-checkout and have staff assist with scanning items. Target has put in place 10-item limits for self-checkout at many of its stores and says it's also helping to speed up the shopping experience.

One UK supermarket chain, Booths, did away with them completely last year after customers found them too slow and impersonal, and some workers say they prefer it.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/ZFgvhLa
via IFTTT

• A woman in Brazil was arrested after seemingly trying to secure a bank loan using her dead uncle's signature.
• The woman appeared to bring her uncle's body to the bank in a wheelchair and tried to use it to sign papers.
• Bank staff became suspicious when the man was unresponsive and his head kept lolling, local media said.

A woman in Brazil was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of theft by fraud and violating a corpse after she brought her uncle to a bank to sign a loan agreement, local media outlets reported.

She had raised suspicion after she entered a small branch of Itaú Bank in a Rio suburb with a man in a wheelchair, who she called her uncle, local news organization O Dia reported, per a Business Insider translation.

The woman, named by local media as Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes, reportedly told the clerk they were there to sign off on a 17,000 reais ($3,250) loan.

In security camera footage shared by O Dia, the woman can be seen picking up the man's hand and repositioning his head to try to get him to sign the document in front of him.

"Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign. If you don't sign, there's no way, because I can't sign for you," Nunes can be heard saying in the video.

"He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is," she tells the clerk when he doesn't reply. "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital."

But the man's unresponsive nature and lolling head caused concern among bank employees who called the local ambulance services.

On arriving, the doctors confirmed that the 68-year-old man had been dead for several hours, O Dia reported.

His body was taken to a morgue, and Nunes was arrested on suspicion of attempted theft by fraud and violating a corpse.

The woman's lawyers argue that the man, Paulo Roberto Braga, died at the bank in his wheelchair and said they had witnesses who would testify at the appropriate time, Brazil's national newspaper Correio Braziliense reported.

A preliminary forensic analysis concluded that Braga had died between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday from breathing difficulties and heart failure.

Nunes had arrived at the bank at 1:02 p.m, the report noted, according to Correio Braziliense.

An expert who signed the report said that there was not enough medical or technical evidence at this point to confirm whether Braga died on his way into or inside the bank or had already been dead.

However, the autopsy also indicated that he had likely died while lying down due to the position of blood clots in his neck.

The police were not ruling out the possibility that more people were involved.

Brazil's economic stagnation

Brazil's economy has stagnated in recent months, with growth flatlining in the final quarter of 2023 amid sky-high interest rates. The country, the largest economy in South America, currently has a rate of close to 11%.

"The stagnation in Brazil's GDP in the fourth quarter and the decline in household consumption confirmed that the economy lost momentum sharply," Capital Economics' chief emerging markets economist William Jackson said in a note in March, per Reuters.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/EfxZ05H
via IFTTT

• Squatters have taken over the former headquarters of 20th Century Fox in central London.
• It's the latest example of squatters occupying buildings in the city, including a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.
• The building was vacated in 2019 after Disney acquired the company.

The former London headquarters of 20th Century Fox has been taken over by squatters, The Evening Standard reported.

It's the third high-profile London address taken over by squatters in recent weeks.

Last week, London's Metropolitan Police was made aware of a group occupying the site of a Gordon Ramsay Restaurant, the York & Albany, in Camden.

Police also recently cleared 400 squatters out of Marco Pierre White's shuttered restaurant in Leicester Square, The Telegraph reported.

Built in 1937, Twentieth Century House was vacated in 2019 after Disney bought parent company 21st Century Fox. It avoided demolition in 2020 after an outcry from the British film and music community, according to The Guardian.

The Evening Standard reported that in recent months builders were stripping out fixtures, but that squatters had now moved in.

The squatters have posted a legal notice on the imposing facade saying they can't be legally evicted without a court order, the outlet said.

There is growing anger around costs of living in major cities around the world, with many struggling to get by. While it is unclear the motive for this latest group, high-profile empty buildings are an obvious target for those angered at rising rents and real estate prices.

The high cost of rent was a focal point for the group that recently occupied the site of Gordon Ramsay's York & Albany restaurant in Camden — another borough with extremely high wealth inequality.

Part of that group, calling itself Camden Art Collective, briefly opened the premises to the public as a café, offering free food and art workshops in a gesture aimed at highlighting the area's massive wealth disparity.

On Wednesday, the collective posted a statement saying that they had left the building after being served a legal notice, but that they "wish those left in the building the best of luck in their endeavors," suggesting that some squatters remained inside.

Representatives for Ramsay did not respond to a request for comment, but appear to have been quietly working to evict the squatters.

In the UK, that's no easy feat, as legal experts told BI.

While squatting in residential property was made a criminal offense in 2012, doing the same thing in a commercial building is a civil matter, and property owners need to enter into a convoluted and often costly court process to get them out.

Locals have mixed feelings about the squatters in Twentieth Century House, the Evening Standard reported.

One neighboring officer worker said their presence was "a headache, a real worry," and added that they've had problems with urination and drug taking outside the building.

But others expressed support for anyone taking over an empty building in a city as famously expensive as London.

from All Content from Business Insider https://ift.tt/dXOa5fk
via IFTTT