Family says Norwegian will reimburse costs after getting stranded in Alaska during excursion mishap
(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.”
(NEW YORK) — Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, was convicted because of a “false narrative” told by federal prosecutors at a trial “tainted” by errors, his attorneys argued in a new court filing Friday to a federal appeals court.
“Fair trial principles were swept away in a ‘Sentence first-verdict afterwards’ tsunami, as everyone rushed to judgment following FTX’s collapse,” defense attorneys wrote in the appeal. “Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty—before he was even charged.”
Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering last November after federal prosecutors in New York accused him of orchestrating a scheme that collapsed the crypto-exchange he founded, FTX, and stole $8 billion in customer funds.
He is serving a 25-year prison sentence, which his attorneys called “draconian.”
In Friday’s appeal, defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro attacked the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, accusing them of lacking objectivity or even-handedness.
“He was presumed guilty by the media. He was presumed guilty by the FTX debtor estate and its lawyers. He was presumed guilty by federal prosecutors eager for quick headlines. And he was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial,” the appeal said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment, but will submit a written reply brief.
The defense asked for a reversal of Bankman-Fried’s conviction and a new trial before a different judge.
Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and a blockbuster witness for the prosecution, is set to be sentenced for her role in the fraud later this month.
(NEW YORK) — After several of its brightest stars declared support for former President Donald Trump last month, Silicon Valley has now come out in force for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Though Silicon Valley remains a stronghold of support for Democrats, the Biden’s administration’s hawkish approach to tech has alienated many in the industry, and in recent months a number of high-profile entrepreneurs and investors including Elon Musk have backed Trump. But Harris, a Bay Area native with ties to the industry, could forge a stronger relationship with the Valley and has already received pledges of support from a new group called VCs for Harris — representing hundreds of prominent venture capitalists.
Leslie Feinzaig, the venture capitalist who started VCs for Harris, said she recently wrote a pledge and bought a URL to host its site without expecting much.
Within days, billionaire entrepreneur and television personality Mark Cuban and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman joined the group.
“I basically haven’t slept since,” Feinzaig said.
Feinzaig’s efforts have resulted in more than 700 pledges of support for Harris, and could signal a friendlier relationship between the vice president and the Valley than Biden has had.
“Silicon Valley had no friends in Washington during the Biden administration,” said Georgetown Law Center professor and technology regulation expert Anupam Chander. “You have the Department of Justice, which has filed those antitrust lawsuits. You have the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative, who have been retreating from efforts to ensure free flow of data across the world.”
And, of course, Chander said, you have Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who has gained an army of fans — and detractors — for leading an ambitious effort to regulate giants such as Amazon and Meta.
The Biden administration did, however, work to pass the CHIPS Act, which allocated billions to onshore the production of semiconductors used in many electronics — an achievement celebrated by the leading tech industry advocacy group as “a major victory.”
Still, leading venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the co-founders of investment fund Andreessen Horowitz, cited concerns about Biden’s policies in a podcast episode announcing their support for Trump.
“The future of our business, the future of technology, new technology and the future of America is literally at stake,” Horowitz said.
Despite continuing frustrations with the Biden administration, according to industry insiders, Democrats appear to retain the support of most in Silicon Valley.
“Many of us are frustrated with Biden administration’s sort of anti-technology, anti-business stance,” said Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Merci Grace.
Grace said voting against Trump would be “pretty easy” for her and most of her peers, 70 or 80 percent of whom she estimates will ultimately support Harris.
Feinzaig said some of the high-profile figures in the industry who have come out in support of Trump “weren’t speaking for the full industry.”
Still, Trump has made inroads in certain corners of Silicon Valley. In June, a fundraiser hosted by tech billionaire David Sacks in coordination with Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance — a former venture capitalist with ties to another prominent conservative tech mogul, Peter Thiel — raised $12 million for the former president’s campaign.
Trump has also received endorsements from a number of prominent entrepreneurs in the cryptocurrency sector, promising in his 2024 platform to “end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown.” Also, he spoke at the annual Bitcoin Conference in late July.
The former president has taken a stern stance on big tech companies, calling them “too big” and “too powerful” in a July interview with Bloomberg, but saying “I don’t want to destroy them.”
Some expect Harris, meanwhile, to assuage concerns in the Valley by taking a more dovish approach than the Biden administration, though they say her policy views on tech remain an open question.
“I would expect to return to a more technocratic stance,” said Rob Merges, a law professor at U.C. Berkeley who spent several decades working in the tech industry. “A traditional Clinton, Obama — you know, friendly to the benefits of technology, reasonable in regulation, and cautious to not go too far in any one direction.”
Chander said he thinks Harris is “someone who recognizes the importance of innovation, but also worries about some of the harms that might follow.”
But, he noted, “because Harris didn’t go through a regular primary, we haven’t seen her stake out positions on some issues.”
Since Biden announced he would not seek reelection on July 21, Harris has not mentioned the tech industry in public campaign remarks and her campaign declined to comment on whether she would keep Khan at the head of the FTC (high-profile donors including Hoffman have recently urged her to do the reverse).
But the Valley needs no introduction to the vice president.
Harris dealt with the tech industry as California’s attorney general and has headed some of the Biden administration’s efforts surrounding artificial intelligence, working with top AI companies to agree on voluntary guidelines for the responsible use of generative AI. The vice president’s brother-in-law, Tony West, also serves as chief legal officer for Uber, headquartered in San Francisco. In remarks about AI in November, she said she and Biden “reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation.”
Grace said she gets the sense that Harris is “a reasonable person who is very intelligent, and we can have a discussion with her.” She added that Trump “is just someone who you can’t trust.”
“It’s not worth the temporary alignment to make a little bit more money on top of the billions that you already have — to get in bed with someone who you can’t trust,” Grace said.
Feinzaig also shared her trust in Harris.
“I feel like we have a candidate that is listening,” Feinzaig said.
(NEW YORK) — Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock dropped more than 11% this week, suffering from sour sentiment after a weak earnings report and the return of former President Donald Trump to rival social media platform X.
The company’s woes stretch back to the middle of last month. Since then, the stock for the Truth Social parent company has plummeted by about 43%. Yet as the stock continues to slide, some of its investors remain unfazed, telling ABC News they are optimistic about the company’s financial outlook, or intend to stand by it as an expression of their support for Trump.
Todd Schlanger, an interior designer from West Palm Beach, told ABC News that he purchased shares in Trump Media because he supports Trump’s politics and believes in his businesses.
“I’m a Republican, so I supported him. When I found out about the stock, I got involved because I support the company and believe in free speech,” said Schlanger, who said he owns approximately a thousand shares of the company.
A frequent user of the social media platform, Schlanger boasted about the user interface – “It’s like a combination of X and Facebook” – and said he looked forward to the expansion of the company’s streaming services.
“I think it’s going to be as strong as Facebook or Twitter,” said Schlanger.
Other investors said they primarily saw Truth Social as a way to support the former president.
“I did it more as a statement to President Trump and to show support at the time. I wasn’t really looking to make a lot of money,” said Teri Lynn Roberson, who bought five shares of the company as the company neared its peak stock price after going public in March.
Roberson said she was unconcerned about the stock’s poor performance or the impact of Trump’s potential return to rival X, the latter of which she said could benefit Trump’s presidential campaign by expanding his audience of supporters beyond the “echo chamber” of Truth Social.
“I’m way at a loss, but I am OK with that. I am just watching it for fun,” Roberson said.
Truth Social’s stock performance holds significant financial implications for the former president, who owns a 65% stake in the company. Truth Social shares make up a large portion of Trump’s overall net worth, according to Fortune.
Truth Social did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Truth Social’s recent losses
An earnings report released last Friday showed, Truth Social had lost more than $16 million over a three-month period ending in June. The company brought in revenue of about $836,000, down 30% from $1.2 million a year earlier, the earnings report showed.
In a statement released following the earnings report, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes applauded the company’s balance sheet, including $344 million in cash and no debt.
“From the beginning, it was our intention to make Truth Social an impenetrable beachhead of free speech, and by taking extraordinary steps to minimize our reliance on Big Tech, that is exactly what we are doing,” Nunes said.
Investors, however, reacted poorly to the quarterly report when trading opened on Monday, and the stock price continued to drop when Trump then posted on rival X for the first time in roughly a year. It marked just his second post on the platform since January 2021, when the company suspended Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol “due to the risk of further incitement to violence.”
After tech billionaire Elon Musk purchased what was then known as Twitter in Oct. 2022, he lifted the ban the following month. On Monday, Musk spoke with Trump in an interview that was broadcast on the platform.
While the former president is bound by an exclusivity agreement with Trump Media & Technology Group to post personal content first to Truth Social, Trump can make “politically-related” posts on other social media sites, according to the agreement. Other than a series of political posts on Monday, Trump has refrained from using social media sites beyond Truth Social.
Michael Rogers, who owns a masonry company in Asheville, North Carolina, said he first bought shares of Truth Social in 2022, before the company went public. Since then, Rogers has acquired more than 10,000 shares, he said.
Rogers, who said he plans to vote for Trump in November, bought the shares as both an expression of political support and as a sign of confidence in the company’s financial outlook, he said. “It’s a 50-50 balance of the reasons I started investing in Truth Social,” Rogers told ABC News.
Trump’s return to X this week did not bother Rogers, since the platform allows Trump to reach a larger audience, Rogers said. The weak earnings report last Friday did concern him, however.
“The revenue just isn’t there,” Rogers said. “That’s something the company has to work on.”
Despite the stock’s recent struggles, Rogers said he retains confidence in the business.
“I’m in it for the long haul,” Rogers said.
Analyst outlook
Analysts described the performance of Truth Social as the characteristic fluctuation of a so-called “meme stock.” The term – made famous by pandemic-era examples such as GameStop and AMC – indicates a company that largely appeals to investors on the basis of ideology, rather than financial outlook.
Truth Social’s value climbed about 30% in the immediate aftermath of an assassination attempt against Trump in July, reaching a price of $40 a share. That figure marked the highest level for the stock in more than a month, but shares still stood well below a peak of about $66.
The share price now stands at about $23, amounting to a drop of nearly two-thirds from its peak.
Tyler Richey, an analyst at Sevens Report Research, said the decline of the stock price in recent weeks has coincided with the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. A surge for Harris in voter surveys has damaged perception of Trump’s election prospects, Richey told ABC News.
“The stock has ebbed and flowed with sentiment toward former president Trump,” Richey said. “It doesn’t help that Trump was pretty much exclusively using Truth Social and decided to join Elon Musk with X.”
Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida, said Truth Social’s poor financial performance leaves it vulnerable to negative news and darkens its long-term outlook.
“For a long time, I’ve been saying that the stock will be volatile but that the long-run trend will be down,” Ritter said.
“What’s lacking for the true believer in the company story is, ‘OK, where is the business strategy that will be generating revenue?'” Ritter added, noting by contrast that it makes sense for die-hard Trump supporters to back the stock.
“I don’t think it’s irrational for people to do that,” Ritter said. “On the other hand, I generally don’t go out of my way to further line the pockets of billionaires.”
Trump supporters rushing to purchase shares in Truth Social provided other investors an opportunity to cash in on the company’s tumultuous stock price. With anticipation building ahead of Trump Media & Technology Group’s merger in March with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, Mitchell Standley exercised a few call options – contracts that allow an investor to buy a stock at a predetermined price – to make a 1,500% return on his investment.
“It was basically just a pump and dump,” Standley told ABC News. “I knew that once they merged, all of his supporters were going to dump a bunch of money into it and buy it up.”
Since March, Standley has avoided the company, he said, attributing its volatile stock performance to a lack of business fundamentals.
“I made my money and am staying away from it,” Standley said.