"The Talk of the Town"
(NEW YORK) — The stock price of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike plummeted in early trading on Friday amid a global IT outage that has affected clients worldwide.
Shares fell nearly 15% on Friday morning, dropping the price to its lowest level since May.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a post on X.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(NEW YORK) — Mate Rimac has a tall order: trying to convince drivers that electric supercars are superior to combustion vehicles.
Rimac, the 36-year-old engineering savant from Croatia who started his namesake company 15 years ago, recently pulled the sheet of his latest creation: the Nevera R, an aerodynamically perfected supercar designed to hug every tight corner and give maximum driving pleasure. The performance numbers are nearly impossible to comprehend: 2,107 horsepower and a 0-60 mph time of 1.74 seconds.
This insanely powerful supercar is breaking industry records. There are, however, snags in Rimac’s master plan. He has acknowledged that turning enthusiasts to electric proselytes could take months, if not years.
Rimac spoke to ABC News earlier this month about the challenges of selling his seven-figure sports cars, taking over French marque Bugatti as CEO and why government officials are making a mistake by pushing electric-vehicle mandates. He’s also a big supporter of autonomous driving.
The interview below has been edited.
ABC News: You introduced the Nevera R electric hypercar to the world at Monterey Car Week. The horsepower that car produces — 2,107! — is mind-blowing. How did you accomplish this?
Mate: I started the company 15 years ago when I was like 20 years old in order to push the limits and show what technology can bring to the table … that the future of automotive is not going to be boring. And the whole goal, my whole focus of the company and of me the last few years, has been to achieve that. It’s not just the car. It’s building the capabilities, the company around it, to actually do it in Croatia, a country that has never built cars before.
The last 15 years of this journey has been leading up to developing this technology, the team, the resources, the factory, the equipment and actually a whole industry.
ABC News: Is horsepower the one metric that matters most to your customers?
Mate: No, absolutely not. It’s the whole package. So performance is being commoditized right now. More and more cars come to the market at a relatively affordable cost that offer quite good performance, incredible performance actually when you compare it to a few years ago when it was only reserved for extreme hypercars. It’s all about emotions and that’s always a challenge with electric cars: How do you convey emotion without the sound of a combustion engine? But everyone who tries a Nevera is like, “Yes, we can see that this car was developed by people who love cars, like proper car guys.” Despite being electric, the Nevera offers a lot of emotion. That’s the most important thing.
ABC News: And how exactly are you delivering that emotion?
Mate: Well, there’s different things. The Nevera has four electric motors that can do crazy drift modes and on a flip of a switch it’s like a track monster. Everything changes — the suspension, the power distribution, it goes from rear-wheel drive to all-wheel drive, it can adjust it exactly as you want. Like it gives a totally different experience.
Emotion for me is the ability to go sideways, to control the car, stuff like that. And we can do all of that with this car.
ABC News: Why are you limiting production of the Nevera R to 40 units? When does production begin?
Mate: The Nevera was 150 units, and the Nevera R is 40 additional. We want to keep exclusivity. The Bugatti Tourbillon is limited to 250 and we could have sold a lot more, but for us it’s important to have exclusivity and it’s also important for the value of the cars later.
We start production early next year and the cost of a Nevera R is 2.3 million euros.
ABC News: Here we are, talking about the electric Nevera R, an engineering triumph, but you made a comment this past spring that high-end buyers don’t want electric supercars. Is that still true? Are you having trouble selling the Nevera to enthusiasts?
Mate: I think electric cars, in any category, need to bring something special. Just making an car electric is not going to cut it. People are thinking, “Let’s just make an electric car and it will sell … or the regulation will force people to go electric.” And I am not totally against that — I am totally against forcing this on people who don’t want an electric car. I am all for bringing something unique, something cool, something different that’s better and maybe more affordable — maybe not in this market segment but in general.
An electric car should be better in every aspect, including price, compared to its competition and then people will buy it.
ABC News: There’s another trend in the industry where automakers are taking electric sports cars but giving them gearboxes and fake engine sounds. Is this something you’ve thought about?
Mate: No, we don’t do this. We have decided from the beginning we only do authentic things. There are no fake sounds, there are no artificial gear shift changes. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 Ns have that, it’s a gimmick. But we don’t think that’s appropriate for this category of cars.
ABC News: When do you think electric sports and supercars cars will be widely accepted?
Mate: Oh, I think that will be a while. People in this segment still prefer combustion cars. But I think we are the player when it comes to electric performance in this segment.
ABC News: So will the next Rimac sports car or Nevera successor have an internal combustion engine?
Mate: It could be anything. From the beginning, I never said that we are exclusively electric. We were whatever is most exciting. The Nevera R has four electric motors — that is not something you can achieve with a combustion engine. But when it comes to power source, it can be anything. It could be a combustion engine with an interesting fuel, it could be fuel cell that does not run on hydrogen. We are really looking at lots of stuff. The next car doesn’t necessarily have to be purely electric — whatever is most exciting and most technically interesting. I have been doing electric cars now for 15 years … I am very excited to look at other stuff as well.
ABC News: Where are you seeing the most demand for your cars?
Mate: The U.S. is the biggest customer base, closely after that is Europe. So like 40% [of sales] are in the U.S., 30% is Europe and then the rest of the world.
ABC News: What are the challenges of running two high performance and ultra luxe brands like Bugatti and Rimac? They compete for the same customers and that’s a very limited pool.
Mate: These customers have multiple cars, it’s not just like they buy just one car. They want to be a part of something. It’s about the people behind it, it’s about the events, meeting each other. [Customers] are becoming part of a story. They’re also becoming a part of history. We are creating history together.
Many of the customers decided to join Rimac because they’re also part of Bugatti or vice versa and they deal with the same people, they go to Croatia, they have the Croatia experience, so it actually works well. With Bugatti you have to be careful, it’s an old brand with a lot of heritage. You have to be very respectful to the brand. You cannot do something that’s crazy. A lot of our Nevera customers are also Bugatti customers.
ABC News: What is the biggest obstacle for all automakers and the industry right now?
Mate: There are three big topics. One is electrification. A lot of people invested a lot into electrification and maybe it was a bit too fast. The other area is China. The third one is autonomous driving and finding new ways of moving around where ownership isn’t really necessary anymore. The lower-end brands are really in the trenches, they have issues. It’s for sure an interesting time and in the next year we’ll see lots of changes in the industry.
ABC News: There are concerns about a recession in the U.S. Has the company been impacted at all?
Mate: This talk has been going on for years, basically since COVID started. We have never been more successful. We sold out of the Tourbillon — all 250 cars. We just presented it two months ago. It’s completely sold out. We are basically sold out until the end of this decade with Bugatti for a car that’s $4.6 million. The market is still strong in this segment.
ABC News: You’re also developing a driverless robotaxi that could be in service as soon as 2026. These types of vehicles have received a lot of bad press lately and have been involved in serious safety accidents. Why robotaxis? You design cars for real-life drivers.
Mate: Yeah, but do you really like to drive in every situation? Like how many times would you rather spend your time doing something else — watching a movie, or typing on your phone or typing some emails but you can’t because you’re driving or even worse you’re doing it while you’re driving. Not every drive is necessarily exciting and let’s be honest — how many people really care about it? I am not saying car ownership should go away or people shouldn’t drive cars anymore. God forbid.
We just think it makes sense. When an autonomous car in this stage has an accident, even if it’s a minor one, of course it will be blown out of proportion. But eventually autonomous cars will be a lot safer, a lot safer than human drivers and they will save millions of lives.
ABC News: So you have taken over Bugatti, you’re building electric hypercars and you also want to build robotaxis.
What is next on your list to accomplish?
Mate: [laughs]. Oh Jesus Christ, nothing. I made a vow to myself to finish all these things and then I don’t know. I might take a long vacation.
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(NEW YORK) — A cruise vacation through Alaska turned into a travel nightmare for one Oklahoma family who got stranded without their belongings after a mishap with a local excursion caused them to miss their ship’s boarding window.
The Gault family, including six young kids and a 78-year-old grandmother, are now safely back home from Ketchikan. They had disembarked from the Norwegian Encore on Friday, July 12 to see a lumberjack show that they booked through the cruise line.
“When you talk about cruise nightmares this is the definition of it,” Joshua Gault told Good Morning America of the incident.
He said when they tried to get back to the ship, the local tour operator had told them to wait for the next bus. But that bus never arrived. The family said they called the local port agent who rushed them to the ship, only to see it already pulling away from the dock with their belongings, including some of their passports.
“I was in shock, like utterly shocked,” he said, recalling thinking at the time, “Are they really doing this right now?”
The Gaults said they quickly reached out to Norwegian. His wife, Cailyn Gault, told GMA that “the people that I was speaking with were so empathetic, they were apologetic — they’re like, what do you need?”
The family said they had to cover the cost of their own food and hotel and find their own way back to Oklahoma — a journey that included sleeping on airport floors.
“It was completely overwhelming,” Cailyn Gault said.
The family said they estimate the unplanned change cost them more than $21,000 just to get home, which included nearly $9,000 in customs fees for missing a stop in Canada. They said Norwegian is working with them to make it right.
“I think we are on a right path as far as both agreeing that something bad really happened here,” Joshua Gault said.
A spokesperson for Norwegian Cruise Line told ABC News in an emailed statement that the company “will be reimbursing the family for all of the out-of-pocket expenses they incurred over these two days, as a result of missing the ship in Ketchikan, including meals, accommodations, etc. Reimbursements will be processed once receipts for these expenses are provided to us.”
NCL said it has “initiated the process to refund the family for the fee imposed by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, as a result of the guests not visiting a foreign port prior to returning to the U.S., as required when an itinerary originates from the U.S. in accordance with the Passenger Vessel Services Act.”
Additionally, the cruise line representative told ABC News that “these guests will be receiving a pro-rated refund for the two cruise days they missed.”
“As a gesture of goodwill, the company will also be providing each of the nine guests with a Future Cruse Credit in the form of a 20% discount of their cruise fare that can be used towards their next voyage,” the spokesperson said.
Experts say if you leave your cruise ship for an excursion, always bring a government-issued photo ID and the name and number of the port agent, who is the best person to help travelers who may run into trouble.
“The port agent is the cruise line’s representative in that port,” Stewart Chiron, founder of The Cruise Guy, said. “In this case, contacting the port agent was the best move because they would be able to contact the ship.”
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(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump recently said the president should have a role in setting interest rates that determine costs for everything from mortgages to credit card loans.
The proposal would mark a major shift from the longstanding norm of political independence at the Federal Reserve, which currently retains control over interest rate policy. The nation’s central bank is in the midst of a yearslong fight to dial back inflation.
“I feel the president should have at least [a] say in there,” Trump said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week. “I feel that strongly. I think that in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
The policy idea elicited opposition from both liberal and conservative economists who spoke to ABC News.
They warned that any president, including Trump, would likely seek low interest rates in an effort to improve the nation’s short-term economic growth. That approach would risk runaway inflation that could wreak significant economic damage long after a given president has left office, they added.
“It’s an absolutely bad idea,” George Selgin, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the libertarian Cato Institute, told ABC News.
“Presidents are known to be very shortsighted when it comes to monetary policy,” Selgin added. “They’re happy to try and take advantage of a temporary boost that easy money can give to economic activity and downplay or overlook the longer-run consequences, which can include inflation getting out of control.”
Paul Wachtel, a professor of economics at New York University who studies monetary policy, echoed that rebuke.
“I can’t think of anything that economists across the spectrum agree upon more than the importance of central bank independence,” Wachtel told ABC News.
In response to a request for comment from the Trump campaign, a representative of the Republican National Committee (RNC) faulted the Biden administration for a rise in inflation in recent years that prompted the Fed to raise interest rates.
“The president’s policies already affect interest rates — the failed Harris-Biden economic agenda has led to the fastest increase in mortgage rates since 1981,” RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly told ABC News. “As the deciding vote on the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ that actually spiked prices and made housing unaffordable for families across the country, Kamala Harris co-owns the disastrous impact of Bidenomics, and no one can afford another four years.”
The proposal from Trump arrives at a time when the Fed has held interest rates at their highest level in more than two decades. The central bank has helped bring inflation down significantly from its peak, but elevated interest rates risk tipping the U.S. into a recession.
Scrutiny over the Fed’s role in a potential economic downturn reached a fever pitch earlier this month when a weaker-than-expected jobs report showed that the economy may be slowing faster than previously known.
“It’s one of those occasions when people can second-guess the Fed and wonder whether Trump would’ve made a better decision, but one can’t just base a decision on who should govern monetary policy on a single event,” said Selgin.
Critics of an expanded role for the president point to a bout of high inflation in the 1970s and 1980s. Before the inflation took hold, President Richard Nixon had urged Fed Chair Arthur Burns to cut rates in the run-up to the 1972 presidential election.
Nixon’s advocacy is widely viewed as a contributing factor for lower-than-necessary interest rates that enabled inflation to get out of control, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told ABC News.
“Allowing the president, any president, to help set monetary policy would eventually wreck the U.S. economy,” Zandi said.
To be sure, the Fed does retain direct ties to the federal government. The Fed chair is appointed to a four-year term by the president and must receive confirmation from the Senate. Further, the general guidelines for interest rate policy are rooted in legislation approved by Congress.
Selgin, of the Cato Institute, acknowledged that the Fed doesn’t retain full political independence.
“The Fed’s independence is far from absolute,” Selgin said. “Precisely because it’s so limited, it’s important to keep as much of that independence as exists.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said on Friday that she disagreed with the proposal voiced by Trump.
“The Fed is an independent entity and as president I would never interfere in the decisions that the Fed makes,” Harris told reporters in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. In theory, low interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment; high interest rates slow economic performance and ease inflation.
The chances of an interest rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in September are all but certain, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment. Market observers are split roughly down the middle about whether the Fed will impose its typical cut of a quarter of a percentage point or opt for a larger half-point cut.
An interest rate cut in September would arrive during the final months of the presidential campaign.
Last month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said coming rate decisions would depend solely on economic conditions.
“Congress has, we believe, ordered us to conduct our business in a nonpolitical way at all times, not just some of the time,” Powell said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last month.
“We never use our tools to support or oppose a political party, a politician, or any political outcome. The bottom line is, if we do our very best to do our part and we stick to our part, that will benefit all Americans,” Powell added.
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