Tag: News

• I've been on 110 cruises. I don't like onboard flexible dining, when you can eat whenever you want.
• Traditional dining is a great way to make new friends and have reliability at sea.
• Flexible dining is nice for some, but it's not foolproof. I hope it doesn't become the only option.

I took my first cruise in 1977 and have since been on more than 110 ships. I'm in my 90s, and I still love traveling this way.

It's great that more young people are getting on board with cruises, which are surging in popularity. But some newer trends puzzle me.

Above all, I can't get behind flexible dining, which also goes by names like "my time dining," "freestyle dining," and "anytime dining." They're all just a way of saying passengers can eat whenever they want and sit in a new spot with different servers every night.

It's a move away from traditional dining on cruises, where travelers select in advance the daily dinner time they'll have for the duration of their cruise. They're assigned the same table and waitstaff for the whole trip.

Flexible dining sounds ideal for anyone who prefers to set their own pace. But I think that it's better in theory than in practice and that it kills some of the magic of old-school cruises.

Eating dinner on a ship whenever you want isn't foolproof

Norweigan Cruise Line is credited with creating this category of onboard eating, which it calls freestyle dining.

With it, passengers show up to one of its restaurants during operating hours and wait for their party to be led to a table. But though people can eat whenever that doesn't mean they do.

Passengers have routines that carry over onto a ship, and restaurants can get crowded between 6 and 7:30 p.m.

Years ago, my wife and I experienced it firsthand while dining on the Norwegian Wind. After two nights of standing in long lines to try for a 6 p.m. dinner, we started showing up later to try to dodge crowds. I wished we could've just had our desired mealtime locked in, but NCL doesn't do traditional dining.

A few weeks ago, I tried flexible dining again on a different cruise line while sailing with my free-spirited son, who I thought might appreciate the lack of a schedule.

On the first night, at 7 p.m., we found several lines leading into the main dining room. We were asked if we had a reservation. Puzzled, we explained that we didn't need one because we were doing flexible dining.

We were directed to a different line for people without reservations. On the way, we passed the noticeably shorter line for passengers with assigned dining times.

We waited about 20 minutes to be seated. After our meal, we made dinner reservations for the rest of the trip.

Flexible dining can make it difficult to build new connections

While partaking in freestyle dining on the Norwegian Wind, my late wife and I asked to be seated with other people every night so we could see some fresh faces. But that never ended up happening: In our eight days, we ate only with each other.

Though I loved having dinner with my wife, we did so every night at home. At sea, we wanted to expand our world.

I missed sharing tables with strangers, the standard with traditional dining (unless you have a large group). We'd share meaningful conversations with strangers who had become friends.

Flexible dining takes away the chance to build connections like this. You can request to sit with strangers as we did, but it doesn't always happen — and it's unlikely you'd connect with the same people twice.

Without repeat seats and mealtimes, it's also hard to build any real relationship or personal connection with the dining-room staff.

In the older days of traditional dining, servers who'd been paired with our table for the whole trip would tell us stories of living abroad and remember our order preferences and names.

When it was time to tip at the end of the cruise, we parted willingly with the suggested gratuities, often more.

I hope the traditions of more formality in the dining rooms aren't lost for future cruisers

A lot of people love flexible dining for the freedom it can provide on a cruise — but I think that's best saved for breakfast and lunch.

When it comes to dinner, I enjoy the old-school traditions that have made cruises so popular.

Fortunately, major lines like Royal Caribbean, Carnival, and Princess Cruises that offer some version of flexible dinners still have options for traditional ones.

If given the option on your next cruise, consider keeping your dinners old school with a set time and table. You might just make a new friend, avoid a long wait, and enjoy the reliability of it all.

• Denver Airport is riddled with creepy conspiracy theories that have gone viral on social media.
• The airport's diverse artwork and underground tunnels fuel myths of secret societies and aliens.
• I visited the airport to check out the bizarre claims, but the theories were easily debunkable.

I was doom-scrolling TikTok a few months ago when a video of someone walking around empty terminals at Denver International Airport popped up. The video, posted at the end of May, had about 25 million views and 3.7 million likes as of this month.

Any other US airport probably wouldn't garner the same attention, but Denver Airport is riddled with conspiracy theories and ghost stories that date back decades.

The most famous myth is that a giant horse statue sitting outside the terminal killed its creator in the early 2000s. There's also the theory that the airport hides aliens and lizard people in secret underground tunnels, while some believe demon gargoyles haunt the halls.

I've always known about Denver's urban legends but never really believed in them, mostly because the stories are pretty outlandish and easily debunkable.

The runways being a Swastika, for example, is a nasty conspiracy, considering the shape simply compensates for wind and optimizes traffic, as planes can land and take off in several different directions.

But a trip down the TikTok and Reddit rabbit holes tells me there are plenty of people who think the airport is hiding something sinister — so I decided to fly out and see for myself.

The airport's marketing and communications team — which has leaned into the lore in its alien-themed gate events and talking gargoyle — gave me full access, including an up-close encounter with the "haunted" horse, a look at those empty hallways from TikTok, and a ride around its "secret" bunkers.

Secret societies aren't infiltrating Denver airport

Much of Denver airport's lore started in March 1994, when a capstone was placed ahead of the airport's 1995 opening to house a time capsule dedicated to the people of Colorado.

The capstone features the Freemasons' Square and Compass symbol and mentions a group called the "New World Airport Commission."

This snowballed into the idea that secret societies like the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the New World Order were operating from within the newly built airport with the goal of world domination.

Other artwork around the airport supposedly supports the theory. One mural, for example, has a man in a gas mask with a sword, who people say represents the New World Order's plan for genocide and destruction.

Another, no longer there after remodeling, was a floor inscription of a mining cart with the atomic symbols "Au" and "Ag" for gold and silver, respectively. Theorists said they stood for "Australian antigen" and exposed how the Illuminati planned to take out humanity.

While some of the airport's diverse collection of artwork is big and bold, Stacey Stegman, the airport's SVP of communications, marketing, and customer service, who has worked there for almost 13 years, told Business Insider that people are reading too much into it.

After seeing the "cryptic" works in person, I can confirm it really is just art. Stegman said the "commission" inscribed on the capstone didn't exist and was temporarily created for the airport's grand opening. Further, the masonry symbols are a nod to the stonemasons who, by trade, crafted the airport's capstone.

Meanwhile, I see the mural as a representation of how war decimates society, not a warning about how secret societies plan to kill children. Yes, people think that.

And the mining cart? It symbolized Colorado's history of mining both gold and silver, nothing more.

The giant horse is not a cursed killer

Although the towering 32-foot-tall cast-fiberglass horse standing outside Denver Airport is officially recognized as "Mustang," theorists nicknamed it "Blucifer" for its blue color and devilish-looking red eyes.

Mythmakers suggest the rearing horse is cursed after killing its creator, Luis Jiménez, in 2006. Jiménez was a famed artist who did, in fact, die building the statue — but not in the way conspiracists think.

Stegman said Jiménez was killed in his New Mexico studio after a piece of the sculpture fell on his leg and severed a vital artery and noted the glowing eyes didn't come about because of it.

"The artist's father was a neon sign maker, so the red eyes were a tribute to his father," she said. "It's really a beautiful story, not something demonic."

Jiménez's family and friends completed the statue and unveiled it in 2008, and I was lucky to see Mustang up close. It's truly a beautiful and fierce sculpture, but I had to be escorted by airport officials — police don't like random people parking nearby to see it, so stick to a drive-by.

The gargoyles aren't demonic creatures cursing passengers

To embrace its conspiracy theories, Denver Airport once hosted an animatronic talking gargoyle, voiced live by a comedian, to entertain travelers.

The temporary gimmick complemented two grinning gargoyles situated on the walls of baggage claim.

Theorists say the gargoyles — named "Notre Denver" after Notre Dame in Paris — are demons haunting the halls. However, Stegman said people are missing the point: gargoyles are there to protect a place from evil spirits, not harm it.

Stegman said that although the airport leaned into the fun with the animatronic gargoyle, some people on social media were unhappy.

"Some people thought we were intentionally doing something evil, which concerned me," she said. "We didn't do it to antagonize anyone; we did it to embrace the airport's personality, but I underestimated how strongly people believe in all of it."

The tunnels aren't secret and have nothing to do with the supernatural

My Denver airport tour was sparked by the viral TikTok. It turned out to be just Frontier Airlines' ground-loading gates, where people walk out to the plane via the tarmac, not jetbridges. Stegman said they simply weren't operating at the time of the video.

But it's not the only "hidden" place in Denver Airport where theorists believe something nefarious is going on.

When the airport was constructed, few aerial photos of the project existed, and the ones that did exist showed a labyrinth of underground tunnels being built.

Stegman said this caused people to think they were secret chambers to host things like the Illuminati's headquarters, a lair for lizard people, laboratories for alien experiments, and bunkers for the rich.

The fact that construction was years behind schedule and millions over budget further fueled the conspiracy theories because people assumed it was due to some sinister plot, she said.

"People have picked out this theme of death and destruction and think Denver Airport is the place where the world's elite will come for protection when the government or an apocalypse wipes out society," Stegman said.

The truth is the airport property is more than twice the size of Manhattan (yes, it's that big) and requires miles and miles of underground infrastructure to protect its baggage system from Denver's snowy winters.

The terminal train also runs through its own underground corridor.

I took a golf cart ride all around the tunnels, which you need special access to, and it's set up like a proper road system with stop and yield signs and lanes. There are random doors, but they're for things like storage or emergency exits — there were no little green people casually walking around.

"We served almost 78 million passengers last year, do people think we can hide secret bunkers and alien testing from them, as well as the 40,000 people who work here?" she said. "That's pretty brilliant if we could."

• A British Airways A380 diverted due to a strong smell of laundry detergent.
• The flight from Washington, DC, to London Heathrow made an emergency landing in Boston.
• The scent was later found to have come from five pallets of laundry beads in the cargo hold.

A British Airways Airbus A380 had to turn around after an "overpowering scent" of laundry detergent filled the plane, making people feel sick and dizzy, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said.

Data from Flightradar24 shows the superjumbo jet was flying from Washington, DC, to London Heathrow on July 7 when it U-turned over Newfoundland before landing at Boston.

According to the TSB's summary of the incident, which Business Insider has seen, the cabin and flight crew reported "dizziness, nausea, and headaches." It added that the pilots then conducted a fumes checklist and declared the urgency signal PAN-PAN.

The Canadian TSB said the plane landed without further incident while the fire service stood by.

"Upon inspection, it was discovered that the smell came from five pallets of fresh-scented laundry beads in the cargo hold," it added.

The aircraft, with the registration G-XLEC, flew back to London two days later, per Flightradar24.

British Airways did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

It is unknown how many people were on the plane, but British Airways A380s carry a maximum of 469 passengers.

Since the A380 is so large, only some airports have the facilities for it, which likely played a role in the decision to land in Boston. British Airways uses the double-decker jet on its Boston to London route, so it wouldn't disrupt service as much as landing at a remote airport.

In May, an Air France Boeing 787 was diverted to the remote Canadian territory of Nunavut after a burning smell was detected. The airline had to cancel another flight to reroute a 777 to retrieve the passengers.

• Former president Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally on Saturday. 
• The next day, Tenacious D's Kyle Gass wished "don't miss Trump next time" on a birthday cake at a show.
• Elon Musk is among those to criticize Gass for his comments. 

Elon Musk is the latest person to call out Tenacious D band member Kyle Gass after he joked about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on the weekend.

Here's a timeline of the controversy.

July 13: Trump is shot during a campaign rally.

On Saturday, a gunman, later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, tried to assassinate Trump as he gave a speech at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Crooks wounded Trump's ear before the Secret Service shielded him. Crooks killed a rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, and critically injured two others. The Secret Service fired back at Crooks, killing him.

The attack was met with criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

Addressing on Saturday the nation after the shooting, President Joe Biden said "There's no place in America for this kind of violence."

July 14: Kyle Gass says, "Don't miss Trump next time."

On Sunday, Tenacious D's bandmate Jack Black paused their Sydney show so the crowd could sing happy birthday to Gass, who turned 64.

A person in a robot costume presented Gass with a cake, and Black told his bandmate to make a wish.

Gass said, "Don't miss Trump next time," before blowing out the candles.

It is unclear from videos of the concert whether Black was in on the joke, but the actor moves on with the birthday celebration without responding to Gass.

Black is the more successful one of the pair, having spent decades cultivating his goofy image in films including "Kung Fu Panda" and "Rock School." He may fear that being associated with this controversy could dampen his star power.

July 15: Elon Musk and others criticize Tenacious D on social media.

While some fans laughed at Gass' comment, others said it was too soon to joke about the attack and accused Tenacious D of inciting violence against Trump.

One critic, who works for the conservative organization State Freedom Caucus Network, linked Gass' comment to Black endorsing Biden for president at a fundraiser in Los Angeles in June.

Musk responded to this comment with "contemptible."

Contemptible

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Black has repeatedly criticized Trump, including calling him a "piece of shit" when receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.

July 15: Australian politician calls for Tenacious D to be deported.

Later that day, Australian senator Ralph Babet of the right-wing populist United Australia Party shared a press release calling for Tenacious D to be deported. Their show on Sunday was the first of the Australia and New Zealand leg of their "Spicy Meatball" tour.

"To advocate and or wish for the assassination of a President is egregious, disgusting, filthy, evil, and not acceptable in any way, shape or form," Babet said. "This was not a joke, he was deadly serious when he wished for the death of the President."

There is no place in Australia for those who wish for the assassination of others. pic.twitter.com/wuvgQxeeDS

— Senator Babet (@senatorbabet) July 16, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Babet called on Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and immigration minister Andrew Giles to denounce the band and revoke their visas. Tenacious D has four more concerts scheduled in Australia.

"Anything less than a deportation is an endorsement of the shooting and the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump, the 45th and soon-to-be 47th President of the United States," Babbet added.

July 16: Tenacious D's next concert is postponed hours before it was scheduled to begin.

Frontier Touring, Tenacious D's promoters, announced on Tuesday that the band's next Australian show was postponed.

"Ticket holders are asked to hold onto their tickets until further information is available," Frontier Touring wrote on Facebook.

News.com.au reported that Frontier Touring made the announcement at 3:30 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time. The show was supposed to begin at 7 p.m. AEST.

There was no indication that the postponement was linked to the Trump controversy.

A representative for Frontier Touring, Trump, and Tenacious D did not immediately respond to a comment request from Business Insider.

• Eric Zhu raised $1 million for Aviato from his high school bathroom aged 15 for his startup Aviato.
• Aviato is a data analysis platform for private markets and has raised $2.3 million to date.
• Zhu leveraged social media popularity and booked cold meetings with potential investors. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Eric Zhu, now 17 years old. He cofounded the startup Aviato and raised $1 million while still at high school aged 15. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his identity and the funds raised.

I started raising money from my high school bathroom for a startup I cofounded at the age of 14 called Aviato, a data analysis platform for private markets, and launched an investment fund.

My journey as an entrepreneur started during the pandemic after I joined a community on Discord called "Gen Z Mafia."

I was lucky to meet some really smart people at the right time and thought "How can I be like them?" I started networking and worked with a few startups in 2021 to help build landing pages for their websites.

I then joined Stanford's Online High School community and met some impressive people. At the age of 14, I cofounded a nonprofit that taught kids to code for free, and I also learned to code myself in the process.

In 2021, I started raising money from my high school bathroom in Carmel, Indiana for a startup I cofounded called Aviato, and I also launched an investment fund called Bachmanity Capital.

Aviato is like a Bloomberg terminal for private markets, and we provide insights such as the name of a top engineer at an organization, and how many shares an employee has.

Bathroom meetings

When it came to raising money, I didn't know many people in San Francisco. But I realized that the investors I saw on X had usernames that correlated to their Calendly links, a platform that helps schedule meetings. So I wrote a scraper tool that would pull their usernames and find their Calendly link, and I'd use that to book meetings with many different people.

I would attend those cold Zoom meetings from my high school bathroom and pitch to investors. I even bought a green screen and ring light for serious meetings. A lot of people were like "fuck you," but some ended up working out.

I got my first check of $50,000 from Tom Preston-Werner, a cofounder of GitHub. When I got that check, I was like, "holy shit, they're actually giving me money."

I would buy hall passes from other students to get out of class. At one point, I was spending about five hours a day in the bathroom taking meetings. But I ended up getting banned from going to the bathroom without an escort.

Trial and error

But it was worth it, as I raised $1 million in 2022. We've raised a total of $2.3 million and we're about to launch Aviato. Now, we're a team of nine people.

I learned to navigate meetings with potential investors through trial and error. The first few calls were absolutely horrible, but they improved over time. I figured a lot of it out along the way.

My age could be seen as both a negative and a positive factor. Some of the negative feedback was that I was still in school and not working on the startup full-time, so I'd often get asked why they should bet on me.

On the flip side, my willingness to take a risk and hold meetings in my high school bathroom showed that I'm willing to go out of my way to build a company, so I think that was a big factor in winning over some investors.

Going viral

I took a photo of myself taking a meeting in the bathroom and posted it on X, which ended up blowing up and going viral. I learned there are three things that go viral: controversial, funny, and out-of-context.

So we built our startup story around that and shared it through meme accounts, which can be a powerful form way to reach a wide audience. Going viral also helped me to meet new people.

I haven't graduated from high school yet and I started taking online classes instead a few months ago after I got suspended for taking meetings in the bathroom.

I then moved to San Francisco to work on building the company full-time. My parents are pretty chill about it, but for the first two months, they thought it was a little surprising for me to take a risk like this.

I've learned a ton and experienced some highs and lows. It's opened up my world, but it hasn't come without difficulty.

There are a lot of times when it's like, "I don't know what to do," but I've figured it out along the way. Surrounding myself with experienced people like my cofounders and investors has been really helpful.

Got a tech career story to share? Contact this reporter at jmann@businessinsider.com

• I'm proud of my name, but hate the way Americans pronounce it.
• The mispronunciation is subtle, so people usually don't get it right, even when I correct them.
• My name has taught me to advocate for myself from a young age. 

My mom told me that when her sister heard my name for the first time, she thought she'd never be able to get it right. But her husband promptly came up with a helpful metaphor — "Amita is a little bit more than a yard."

My mother is British, and my father is Indian, and their name criteria for my sisters and I included a pleasant meaning and Indian roots to match our last name.

Amita is a Sanskrit name that means "immeasurable" or "boundless." My British family pronounces it "ah-mee-tah," and my Indian family pronounces it "ah-mee-tha." I'm comfortable with either of those pronunciations, but many Americans pronounce it as "uh-mee-duh," which I really dislike.

I wish more people could use my uncle's meter expression to help them, but Americans pronounce their T's differently. Saying my name with the "duh" sound may not sound wrong to some, but I feel that it makes my name sound clunky and old-school.

There are names in many languages that sound similar to or are spelled the same as my name, which often trips people up. One is "Anita," which peaked in its U.S. popularity during the 50's and 60's. I've often wondered if people assume my name is a quirkier version of that, rather than a different name entirely, and therefore pronounce it similarly.

As a kid, my name made me feel defeated

One year in middle school, I was up for a soloist award at a choir competition. It was very low stakes, but the awards ceremony took place in a large arena, and I was so excited about the prospect of having my name called there.

When they announced the award, it went to an "Anita Chattergee," who I assumed was me, but the butchering of my name put a damper on my big moment.

People don't usually botch my name completely, so I often felt it was easier to let people say it incorrectly.

In elementary school, I remember noticing that my teachers and classmates said my name differently than my family. One day after school, I went home and sulked because I didn't understand why everyone kept calling me "uh-mee-duh," and my mom encouraged me to correct people.

But I'd been letting it slide for so long that the whole school was saying it wrong, so as a kid, it felt like a lost cause.

Now that I'm older, I make a stronger effort to correct others from the jump

At one job, my manager constantly called me "Amina," no matter how many times I corrected her. Eventually, all my coworkers started calling me the wrong name, too, so I had to do some damage control. I got through to most of them, but my manager never got it right, so I had to just start responding to "Amina."

When I complained to my parents about this, my dad scolded me for conceding and reminded me that he'd never let anyone say his name incorrectly. But in this case, correcting her was pointless.

Anyone with a unique name knows to be prepared for clarifying questions when making introductions. When I meet people, I introduce myself as "ah-mee-tah," and when they usually respond with "uh-mee-duh?" I've started saying, "no, ah-mee-tah, with a 'T.'"

Sometimes, people don't hear the difference, or even if they do, their accents just take over. But I'm at least making an effort.

It can be frustrating, but I'm grateful for my name. It's helped me learn to advocate for myself and be aware of whether I'm saying other's names correctly. I deeply love the sound, uniqueness, and meaning of my name, and I know my parents put a lot of time and energy into choosing it.

It's taught me that the people in my life who take the time to pronounce it right — and correct others — are the ones who matter most.

• Sen. JD Vance joked about the UK being the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons.
• UK Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner dismissed the comments, stating that the US is a "key ally."
• Vance of Ohio was announced as Trump's vice presidential running mate on Monday.

Just days before Sen. JD Vance was chosen as Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee, the Ohio native took a dig at one of the US's closest allies.

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, last week, the Republican joked that the UK is now the first Islamist country that has a nuclear weapon.

"I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about, you know, one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though, of course, the Biden administration doesn't care about it," he said.

"And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it's Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it's actually the UK since Labour just took over."

It came after the left-leaning Labour Party won the UK general election earlier this month, ending 14 years of Conservative Party rule.

But that wasn't the only dig he took at the UK at the conference, which was also attended by former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

Vance said: "The Brits, UK leaders should look out for citizens of the UK or subjects or whatever you guys call yourselves," referring to the fact that the country is still a constitutional monarchy.

Despite these comments, Vance is known to have an amicable relationship with David Lammy, the UK's current foreign secretary. Lammy has referred to Vance as "my friend Senator Vance" and has praised his book, Hillbilly Elegy.

When the pair were on a panel together earlier this year at a security conference in Germany, Vance referred to Lammy as "my English friend," according to The Guardian.

The UK's Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner reacted to Vance's "fruity" comments on ITV's Good Morning Britain, saying: "I think political leaders across the world all have different opinions but we govern in the interests of our countries."

"And the US is a key ally of ours and if the American people decide who their president and vice president is, we will work with them, of course, we will."

Andrew Bowie, the Conservative shadow veterans minister in the UK, told Times Radio he "absolutely" disagreed that Labour was creating an "Islamist country."

"I do not agree with that view, quite frankly. I think it's actually quite offensive, frankly, to my colleagues in the Labour party," he said.

On Monday, Trump picked 39-year-old Vance to be the GOP nominee for vice president of the US. It came just days after Trump was shot by a gunman in an assassination attempt.

Vance was previously critical of Trump and has compared him to Hitler. He has since backed Trump's views on everything from free trade to immigration.

• Russia has pulled its last Black Sea Fleet warship from Crimea, a Ukrainian navy spokesperson said.
• Dmitry Pletenchuk said Monday that the Russian patrol ship was "leaving our Crimea right now."
• It would mark the end of the Russian fleet's presence on the peninsula since 2014.

Russia has pulled its last Black Sea Fleet warship out from Crimea, according to a Ukrainian official.

Dmitry Pletenchuk, a spokesperson for the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, made the statement in a Facebook post on Monday.

"The last patrol ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is leaving our Crimea right now. Remember this day," he said, per a translation by the state-affiliated Ukrainian news outlet Militarnyi.

The Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made a similar comment in a Telegram post on Tuesday, saying there were no longer any Russian naval ships in the Black Sea.

Pletenchuk did not name the ship, but in March he told Ukrainian TV that Russia had only one "loser" missile ship left in the waters.

Pletenchuk and the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

If true, it could mark the end of Russia's Black Sea Fleet presence around Crimea.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and has used its Sevastopol Naval Base as the primary headquarters for the Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine has repeatedly struck back in the region since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, destroying or damaging around half of the Russian fleet's warships, including one submarine, according to publicly available information.

Earlier this year, Ukraine's military claimed to have destroyed a third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

It has used aerial drones, sea drones, and anti-ship missiles against the fleet and the Kerch Bridge, to often devastating effect.

In March, the UK's Ministry of Defence declared the Black Sea Fleet "functionally inactive."

Ukraine's campaign pushed Russian warships to withdraw to bases in the port cities of Feodosia, on the far side of Crimea, and Novorossiysk, in Russia.

But even there, Russia's navy has come under attack, with Ukrainian drones targeting the Novorossiysk port in May.

Russia's navy has started using the more protected Sea of Azov to fire missiles at Ukraine, because it considers it "safer" than the Black Sea, Pletenchuk told the Kyiv Independent last month.

According to Basil Germond, an expert in international security at Lancaster University in the UK, Ukraine's recent successes are not "anecdotal."

"Ukraine is slowly but steadily getting the upper hand in the Black Sea," he told BI, adding that Russia's Black Sea Fleet "has lost control of the Black Sea."

This, Germond said, is a "significant" problem for Russia: warships are some of the most expensive military assets in a country's arsenal and can take more than a decade to procure and make operational.

And due to the Montreux Convention — an 87-year-old agreement that limits what Russia and NATO can send into the Black Sea — Russia is not able to reinforce its fleet there with ships from the Baltic or Northern fleets, Germond said, forcing Russia to look at how to better protect its naval assets in the waters.

"It is definitely a key objective now since Russia cannot afford to lose more, which explains the frequent 're-deployment' further away from Crimea," he said.

Politically, Germond said that these setbacks are a "blow" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Russia looks weak in Crimea, and that is highly problematic for Putin's regime given the central role that Crimea plays in Putin's imperialist narrative," he said, adding: "The symbolic value of these successes shall not be underestimated."

• Luxury sales in Japan are growing, despite a downturn across Asia.  
• Japan's currency downturn has attracted tourists to the country to take advantage of lower prices.
• Many of these tourists are coming from China, buying their luxury items in Japan instead of back home. 

Burberry reported its Q1 fiscal 2025 earnings results on Monday, and things aren't looking good for the British luxury retailer.

The Asia Pacific area took a strong hit of 23%, with sales in Mainland China dropping by 21%.

The one country to escape the dip was Japan, where sales grew 6%.

But it isn't wealthy Japanese locals that are bucking the trend; it's tourists from China and the rest of Asia.

"The country's luxury industry has benefited from strong tourism from China and other near-shore customers in Asia," Burberry wrote in an earnings release.

Japan is managing to avoid a luxury downturn

Burberry is not the only luxury brand seeing its sales boom in Japan.

Richemont, the conglomerate behind brands like Cartier, and the Swatch Group — the world's biggest watchmaker — both reported strong growth in Japan compared to the rest of Asia in earnings results this week.

LVMH experienced a similar phenomenon in its first-quarter earnings this year. The luxury conglomerate, known for brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior, reported double-digit sales growth in Japan, noting in an earnings release that there had been a "strong growth in spending by Chinese customers in Europe and Japan."

Competing luxury conglomerate Kering, which owns brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, and Saint Laurent, also reported a similar sales trend. In Kering's Q1 2024 results, revenue from Japan grew 16% during the quarter, while Asia Pacific, which excludes Japan but includes China, was down 19%.

Japan's weak currency is attracting tourists from the rest of Asia

The yen has been steadily declining in value for more than three years. That means tourist dollars go further than they have for years, and luxury goods likely cost visitors less in Japan than back home.

This has led foreign tourists to flock to Japan to take advantage of the low prices and snap up cheaper products from premium brands. In March, the country broke its pre-pandemic tourist record with 3.1 million visitors.

"Right now, the devaluation of the yen is driving a lot of tourism to Japan," Amrita Banta, managing director of luxury insights firm Agility Research & Strategy, told Business Insider.

"Koreans, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Singaporeans are all traveling and shopping in Japan," she added, "they are enjoying bargains and shopping in Tokyo, where they know they can buy luxury goods much cheaper.

Many luxury tourists are coming from China

China has been a stronghold for luxury brands. But recently, Chinese consumers have been reluctant to spend their cash domestically.

Weak consumer spending has dragged down China's economic growth. Retail sales of consumer goods expanded just 2% in June from a year ago, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. In June, domestic sales of cars, cosmetics, and household electronics all slumped despite an increase in household disposable income.

China's economy is facing a bunch of challenges, including a real-estate crisis, stock-market volatility, geopolitical headwinds, and demographic challenges.

The economic uncertainty means domestic consumers are less willing to spend on discretionary goods. Instead, they're opting to buy gold or spend their money on experiences.

Attracted by the cheaper prices of luxury goods, China's luxury consumers are spending their cash in Japan instead.

"Prices of luxury items in China are in many cases significantly more expensive than outside China," Daniel Langer, a professor of luxury at Pepperdine University and CEO of the luxury strategy firm Équité, told BI.

So once lockdown travel restrictions were lifted, "Chinese social media like Xiaohongshu was full of stories about the price differences between items from Hermès, Dior, and others," he added.

Traveling to other destinations to buy luxury goods at lower prices is not new. Langer said that twenty to thirty years ago, Japanese luxury clients would travel to Paris and Rome and take advantage of the then-lower prices of luxury items.

Now, the particularly weak yen has reversed that trend.

On top of that, Japan has an incredible and growing wealth, Langer added. "There is a strong internal demand for luxury, further fueled by an influx of travelers."

• Computer giant Dell carries out an annual employee engagement survey known as "Tell Dell."
• After its strict RTO mandate, workers used the survey as an opportunity to show Dell how they really felt. 
• The survey's results, which BI has seen, showed a big drop in a key metric called the employee net promoter score.

When executives decide on a new direction for a company, there's often little that workers can do about it besides leave. But that doesn't mean they are happy about it.

At computing giant Dell, after a year shaped by layoffs, a strict return-to-office (RTO) mandate, and a new employee monitoring system, workers have taken an opportunity to share their true feelings with the company.

The company runs an annual employee engagement survey called "Tell Dell."

According to internal results seen by Business Insider, this year's employee net promoter score (eNPS), a key measure of the likelihood that employees would recommend Dell as a great place to work, dropped by double digits compared to the previous year.

The score, which is calculated as the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors, dropped from 62 to 48. It is based on responses from around 98,000 employees.

"No matter what, I've never seen a score move that fast in the wrong direction," said one staffer who spoke to BI on condition of anonymity.

"Frankly, most people I work with were expecting a steeper decline," said another Dell employee.

In some departments, the decline was even sharper. In the global marketing team, the rating dropped by 68%, while in some smaller teams, the eNPS was close to or at zero, sources at the company told BI.

"I think the marketing teams feel particularly threatened due to the accelerated adoption of GenAI to streamline marketing processes and reduce cost," one worker told BI.

Others cited the RTO initiative, layoffs, and the way changes at the company have been handled as reasons for the decline.

Listening to employees

According to BI's sources, "Tell Dell" has been conducted annually for at least eight years. Employees completed the survey in May, and results were shared with leaders in late June.

Two Dell HR leaders have previously described the survey as "a key listening tool we use to drive action across the organization."

"In the past, leadership has treated Tell Dell very seriously. The results are covered in detail with every team member along with action plans to address employee concerns," one Dell employee explained.

However, this year, leadership seemed to gloss over the eNPS, multiple workers told BI.

"It's as if every leader was given the OK to ignore it," said one Dell employee.

In an internal email addressing the results, Jenn Saavedra, Dell's Chief HR Officer, noted that the eNPS was dropping across the industry and that Dell was "pleased to exceed the industry benchmark."

"You have 'told Dell,' and we are listening," Saavedra wrote, moving on to highlight positive metrics in leadership, confidence in the company, and connection and culture.

The eNPS is "just one question in a robust survey that gives us a current snapshot of employee sentiment," Dell told BI when asked about the results.

"In the Tell Dell Survey, our team members shared that they believe their leaders treat them with respect, uphold the company's Culture Code values and offer flexibility to balance work/life."

"Our team members also expressed their confidence in the future vision, strategy and leadership of Dell."

However, five workers that BI spoke to about the results said the eNPS was the true measure of worker satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

"C-suite brushes over the real issues to push a positive image of the company,' said one employee.

"I don't think leadership cares about our feedback. They just keep rowing in whatever direction they want," said another.

The focus on employee wellbeing "seems to have been replaced by reducing costs and increasing profitability," a third employee said, adding that they believe Dell's culture has been "significantly compromised" by recent policies.

In February, Dell became one of the many large corporations mandating workers return to the office. The Texas-headquartered company introduced a new hybrid work policy requiring workers to classify themselves as either hybrid or remote.

Those who chose remote are now ineligible for promotion and can't change roles — almost 50% of workers in the US chose that option.

Many say they didn't have a choice, as Dell has built geographically divided teams. They would have had to move state or commute for hours to get to one of the 17 approved offices.

For hybrid workers, in-office culture has also changed.

Dell introduced a new monitoring system for hybrid employees, tracking and rating their attendance with color-coded flags.

Workers have told BI that the shift in culture has felt particularly harsh given Dell's longstanding reputation as an inclusive and encouraging employer. 

Workers reject RTO

Dell is just one of many tech giants, Wall Street banks, and large retailers that have been leading efforts to reverse the work-from-home culture that emerged following the pandemic. But employees have been pushing back.

After Deutsche Bank mandated staff come in for three days a week, the company faced a wave of backlash from staff complaining about the lack of office space and bottlenecks at the company.

And at the German software giant SAP thousands of staff signed an internal letter saying that they felt "betrayed" by the company's "radical" RTO policy.

Though some see in-office work as better for productivity, a recent Deloitte survey found that good work-life balance was the top consideration for both Gen Z and millennials when choosing an employer.

At Dell, some now feel their only solution is to leave the company.

"None of us expect any changes to address the eNPS drop or that they will listen to what comments we provided," said one worker.

Five of BI's sources have found new jobs since the policy was first announced, and others said they and many of their colleagues are actively looking.

Are you a worker at Dell or another company pushing staff back to the office? Contact this reporter at pthompson@businessinsider.com