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Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) are taking strike action at ports along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, as they push for wage increases that exceed those offered by the United States Maritime Alliance, the port operators group. The effects are expected to ripple through the U.S., costing the economy $4.5bn-$7.5bn for every week it continues, according to Oxford Economics. Neil Saunders, managing director of consultancy GlobalData, said the strike action will push up costs for retailers and, consequently, consumers, and that it could lead to product shortages at a busy time of the year "when there is not much slack in the system." He added: "Many retailers have made plans to mitigate strike action, including rerouting products to West Coast ports and using air freight. However, retailers can’t do this for every product and utilizing these options still costs them more money, so it is only a partial solution at best." The White House said in a statement Monday that administration officials had met with both sides and had been “working around-the-clock” over the weekend to avert a strike. There are no plans at present to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, a near-80-year-old law that could be used to force the dockworkers back to work.

 

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General Motors' self-driving subsidiary Cruise has been fined $1.5m by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for failing to report critical details about a pedestrian crash involving its robotaxi. The consent order, announced on Monday, mandates Cruise to submit a “corrective action plan” and safety reports every 90 days for the next two years. NHTSA's deputy administrator, Sophie Shulman, emphasized the importance of safety and transparency in automated driving systems, saying: “It is vitally important for companies developing automated driving systems to prioritize safety and transparency from the start.” The crash occurred nearly a year ago when a pedestrian was struck by a human-driven vehicle and subsequently hit by a Cruise robotaxi, which dragged her 20 feet. The initial reports submitted by Cruise omitted this crucial information.

 

Techcrunch

The FBI has agreed to pay over $22m to settle a class action lawsuit involving 34 female recruits who alleged harassment and discrimination at the bureau's  training academy in Virginia. The lawsuit claimed that women faced a hostile environment, with instructors making inappropriate comments and subjecting them to harsher scrutiny than their male counterparts. “These problems are pervasive within the FBI and the attitudes that created them were learned at the academy,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women. “This case will make important major changes in these attitudes.” The settlement, pending judicial approval, could be one of the largest in the bureau's history. “Through passive tolerance,” the lawsuit said, “the FBI has intentionally allowed the Good Old Boy Network to flourish unrestrained at the FBI Academy.”

 

The Hill

CNN

Meta has been fined €91m (about $101m) by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for storing millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords in plaintext. The DPC found that Meta had violated four different articles under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and faulted the company for not promptly notifying it of the data breach, for data breaches concerning the storage of user passwords in plaintext, and for not using proper technical measures to ensure the confidentiality of users' passwords. "It is widely accepted that user passwords should not be stored in plaintext, considering the risks of abuse that arise from persons accessing such data," observed Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner at the DPC, adding "It must be borne in mind that the passwords, the subject of consideration in this case, are particularly sensitive, as they would enable access to users' social media accounts." Meta, in a statement, said it had taken "immediate action" to fix the error, and that it "proactively flagged this issue" to the regulator.

 

The Hacker News

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has imposed disciplinary sanctions on five accounting firms for breaching its rules. Accell Audit & Compliance, Crowe MacKay, Grant Thornton, and EY failed to communicate essential information to audit committees, with penalties ranging from $30,000 to $45,000. Halpern & Associates, meanwhile, was sanctioned for not reporting a disciplinary proceeding initiated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against its partner, Barbara Halpern, receiving a $20,000 penalty. PCAOB Chair Erica Williams said the regulator "will continue to hold firms accountable for providing audit committees... with important information to help keep investors protected."

 

Forbes

The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that Amazon's partnership with startup Anthropic, which includes a $4bn investment, will not undergo further investigation as it does not raise competition concerns. The CMA also approved a similar collaboration between Microsoft and Inflection AI, while Alphabet's partnership with Anthropic remains under scrutiny.

 

Reuters

Americans’ reliance on government support is soaring, driven by programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, according to the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan think tank. By 2022, 53% of U.S. counties drew at least a quarter of their income from government aid. For its analysis of government spending, EIG used a government definition of income that includes spending on programs that Americans pay into, such as Medicare and Social Security. The analysis also includes unemployment insurance, food stamps, the earned income tax credit, veterans benefits, Pell grants, Covid-era payments and other income support. States help pay for some of these programs, such as Medicaid, but the federal government covers roughly 70% of the total cost. Reasons for the growth include America's aging population, rising healthcare costs, and economic decline due to factory losses.

 

Wall Street Journal

A further four health workers in Missouri who had contact with a hospitalized bird flu patient developed mild respiratory symptoms but the virus was not confirmed in any of them, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report brings to six the number of healthcare workers who cared for the patient and subsequently developed respiratory symptoms. The patient, who was hospitalized in August, had no known contact with infected animals. Scientists are watching closely for indications that the virus has started to spread more easily in people. Missouri health department spokeswoman Lisa Cox said there is currently no evidence of person-to-person transmission. "These cases underscore the need to take this outbreak more seriously than it has been taken," said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

 

Reuters

A survey of 500 leaders by AvidXchange, a provider of accounts payable and payment solutions for middle-market businesses and their suppliers, has identified seven dominant concerns for finance executives heading into 2025. Sixty-five percent of respondents said their department is currently using artificial intelligence (AI), although 71% of those posed said they are concerned about accurately measuring the ROI of their AI tools. More than three-quarters of the surveyed finance leaders said their departments have either fallen victim to or been the target of attempted attacks, such as check fraud, phishing, or deepfakes. Other matters of note include the upgrade of enterprise resource planning or accounting systems, and automating workflows to increase efficiency and productivity, improve compliance and accuracy, and enhance data analysis and reporting.

 

CFO

EY has reported that U.S. initial public offerings have raised $27.3bn during the first nine months of this year, 40% more than the same period in 2023, but well below levels early this decade. The payoff for companies that turned to the IPO market during the period exceeded returns on benchmark stock indexes, yielding average gains of 23.9% compared with increases ranging from 10.4% to 18.1% in the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones. Investor anxieties have eased since August, when the CBOE Volatility Index hit the highest level in four years amid turbulence in technology stocks, “the increasingly contentious presidential race” and weak data on the economy. “A regular cadence of interest rate cuts, alongside sustained economic strength and favorable inflation readings, would reduce the cost of capital and spark IPO activity,” commented Mark Schwartz, EY Americas IPO and SPAC advisory leader.

 

CFO Dive

Ralph de la Torre is to step down as chief executive of Steward Health Care, the company has announced. This comes after he was held in criminal contempt by the U.S. Senate for refusing to testify about cost-cutting decisions at the group's hospitals before it filed for bankruptcy. A spokesperson for Mr de la Torre confirmed that he has "amicably separated from Steward on mutually agreeable terms." Steward, the largest privately owned hospital network in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in May with debts of $9bn

 

Reuters

Former president Donald Trump has stirred controversy by suggesting that police should be allowed "one really violent day" to tackle retail crime. During a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee for the White House said that police are "not allowed to do their job" due to political pressures and he  proposed a drastic measure of allowing them to respond with "one rough hour" of forceful action. A Trump campaign official later clarified that he was "clearly just floating [the idea] in jest". Critics, including the Lincoln Project, likened his comments to the premise of "The Purge," a horror film series. Despite Trump's claims of rampant crime, FBI data shows a 3% decrease in violent crime from 2022 to 2023.

 

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