Safety regulators call for investigation into Shein, Temu
Shein and Temu icons are seen displayed on a phone screen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on August 27, 2024. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Federal safety regulators are calling for an investigation into popular Chinese e-commerce websites Shein and Temu over concerns shoppers can easily purchase baby and toddler products that do not meet U.S. safety regulations.
In a joint letter Monday, Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioners Peter A. Feldman and Douglas Dziak cited “recent media reports that deadly baby and toddler products are easy to find on these platforms.”
The letter did not single out specific products, but one report from business technology publication The Information, cited in the CPSC letter, found that padded crib bumpers, which were banned by Congress in 2022, are still available on the retailer websites.
Temu said in a statement to ABC News that it requires all sellers “to comply with applicable laws and regulations, including those related to product safety.”
“Our interests are aligned with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in ensuring consumer protection and product safety, and we will cooperate fully with any investigation,” a Temu spokesperson said.
A Shein spokesperson also told ABC News that the company prioritizes customer safety.
“At SHEIN, customer safety is our top priority and we are investing millions of dollars to strengthen our compliance programs,” Shein said in a statement. “In the last year SHEIN has spent over $10 million building a strong global compliance function and developing partnerships with internationally renowned testing agencies such as Intertek, SGS, BV, and TUV, to further enhance our safety practices. Earlier this year it was also announced that an additional $50 million dollars will be dedicated to fortifying our Global Compliance Center and initiatives to ensure strict adherence to our rigorous product safety standards and full compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”
The spokesperson added, “Our global team, including more than 1,000 U.S. employees, remains steadfast in its commitment to quality and safety for our customers, and we resolutely support the Commission’s mandate.”
Both Temu and Shein have exploded in popularity in the U.S., in part because their sites offer cheap prices on a variety of products from clothes to home goods.
The CPSC commissioners said e-commerce platforms can offer great deals to consumers, but it’s critical they comply with U.S. safety standards to avoid any risk of injury.
(NEW YORK) — An outage caused by a software update distributed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered a wave of flight cancellations at several major U.S. airlines – but the disruption was most severe and prolonged at Delta Airlines.
In all, the carrier canceled more than 2,500 flights over a period that stretched from last Friday, when the outage began, into the middle of this week.
The U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into Delta this week over its uniquely severe flight disruptions.
“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Tuesday in a post on X.
In a statement on Tuesday, Delta said it is fully cooperating with the investigation. “Across our operation, Delta teams are working tirelessly to care for and make it right for customers impacted by delays and cancellations as we work to restore the reliable, on-time service they have come to expect from Delta,” the company said.
The company also issued an apology on Wednesday for the outage-related problems.
“Please accept our sincere apologies for the disruption to your recent travel plans caused by a vendor technology outage affecting airlines and companies worldwide,” the airline said in a statement.
“It’s a surprise that a multi-billion-dollar corporation like Delta would allow this to happen,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News.
“I’m hopeful that the worst is behind us now. While we can breathe a sigh of relief, I think a lot of people are understandably nervous about flying Delta,” Harteveldt added.
Delta did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
Airline and cybersecurity experts spoke to ABC News about what made the CrowdStrike outage so disruptive, and why it took days for Delta to resume normal service.
What made the CrowdStrike outage so disruptive for Delta
The CrowdStrike outage was so impactful because of the severity of the IT failure and the scale of its reach within the internal operating systems at Delta, experts told ABC News.
“For a company such as Delta, they rely on countless partner services for everything from scheduling pilots and planes to providing meal service and snacks to allowing customers to select their seats,” David Bader, a professor of cybersecurity and the director of the Institute of Data Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told ABC News.
“The CrowdStrike bug disrupted many of those critical services that keep the airline running at full capacity,” Bader added.
Mark Lanterman, the chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm Computer Forensic Services, said the outage resulted from a faulty software update initiated by CrowdStrike. The resulting computer bug interrupted core services because of the degree to which CrowdStrike pervades the Delta operating systems, he added.
“The CrowdStrike update is deep inside the operating system. When that was installed, there was bad code inside of this update. And when Windows came across the bad code, it panicked and it crashed,” Lanterman said.
The outage, which affected CrowdStrike clients that use Windows operating systems, disrupted a critical system that ensures each flight has a full crew, Delta said in a statement on Monday.
“Upward of half of Delta’s IT systems worldwide are Windows based,” Delta said.
Why did it take days for Delta to resume normal service?
The reason for the prolonged recovery from the outage was because the CrowdStrike update disruption required a manual fix at each individual computer system, experts told ABC News. While each fix can be completed in no more than 10 minutes, the vast number of Delta’s digital terminals required significant manpower to address, expert said.
“This isn’t a fix that could be done automatically; IT resources can’t just sit at a computer and push out an update and everything is fixed,” Lanterman said. “It took so long because Delta has a lot of computers and likely they have limited IT resources to go from computer to computer.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the airline acknowledged the challenge posed by the manual fix requirement.
“The CrowdStrike error required Delta’s IT teams to manually repair and reboot each of the affected systems, with additional time then needed for applications to synchronize and start communicating with each other,” Delta said.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien speaks on the first day of the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Vice President Kamala Harris has received endorsements from most of the nation’s top labor unions, with a key exception: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who leads the union of 1.3 million members, drew attention last month when he spoke at the Republican National Convention, praising former President Donald Trump as “one tough SOB.”
The speech followed a visit by Trump to Teamsters headquarters in January, but little has been known about what Trump told some union members, the executive board and O’Brien at the meeting months before the RNC.
Details about Trump’s visit, first reported by ABC News, reveal an effort to woo meeting attendees with labor-friendly views and a promise of political access if the Teamsters went on to endorse him, according to an account published last month by the Teamsters in the union’s quarterly magazine.
“Before departing the union’s headquarters, the former President directly told those in attendance that the Teamsters would have a seat at the table if a potential endorsement was made for a second administration,” the Teamsters magazine said.
Speaking with Teamsters members at its national office in Washington, D.C., Trump described union contracts as an effective means of winning wage gains amid high inflation, the union said. Trump also said he agreed with attendees who voiced support for antitrust policy and who described the strong potential for growth in the U.S. labor movement, according to the union’s account.
Trump appeared to voice views friendlier to unions than he has shared in some other appearances on the campaign trail. Some positions he offered up with the Teamsters stood in contrast with stances his administration took while he was in office.
“The former President often pointed to persistent inflation as a detriment to any marginal gains achieved by workers to increase their wages but acknowledged that union workers like Teamsters were much more likely to get ahead thanks to strong collective bargaining agreements,” the magazine said.
The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Trump campaign.
In response to a previous request for comment, Teamsters Assistant Director of Communications Kara Deniz told ABC News the Teamsters has traditionally endorsed a candidate for president after the party conventions.
“We are on our timeline and continuing to engage our members in this process,” Deniz added.
To be sure, the magazine sent by the Teamsters to its members included accounts of roundtables held with President Joe Biden, as well as third-party candidates Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. Last month, the Teamsters invited Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion at the union’s headquarters, the union said in a post on X. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the invitation.
The Teamsters is currently carrying out a vote among its members on who the union should endorse, the union said in a post on X last week.
During the roundtable discussion in January, which the union said lasted more than an hour, Trump declined to offer a firm view on potential legislation enshrining “right to work” nationwide, the union said. Rather, Trump said, such legislation should be left up to the states to decide for themselves, according to the union.
Currently, 26 states have enacted right-to-work laws, which allow workers to opt out of membership in a union at their workplace. The laws are widely opposed by unions in part because studies have shown that states with right-to-work laws have lower unionization rates.
In declining to support a nationwide right-to-work law, Trump bucked the position of more than half of the Republican members of Congress, who’ve signed onto such a measure introduced last year.
As president, however, Trump voiced support for right-to-work laws.
“The president believes in right to work,” then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a White House press conference in February 2017.
More generally, the favorable attitude toward union contracts that Trump expressed in the meeting contrasts with efforts taken by the Trump administration that made it more difficult for workers to form a union.
Trump appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that sets labor rules, for instance, expanded the length of time between when a union files for representation and when an election takes place. That additional time affords greater opportunity for anti-union employers to dissuade workers.
At the meeting, Trump also told Teamsters members that he felt public sector workers should have the same rights as union members at private companies, according to the account published by the Teamsters last month.
However, the Trump administration filed a brief in support of plaintiffs in a 2018 Supreme Court case that struck a major blow to public sector unions.
In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Trump-appointee Neil Gorsuch cast a decisive fifth vote that made it illegal for public sector unions to charge so-called “fair share fees” to workers who opt out of belonging to a union at their workplace.
Labor unions widely condemned the decision, saying it would deny unions crucial funds that allow them to advocate for all workers at a given employer.
The remarks made by Trump at the meeting with the Teamsters sounded a more positive tone toward unions than he has expressed in some other settings during the campaign.
In an interview on Monday with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, Trump praised Musk for what he described as a willingness to fire employees who go out on strike. Federal labor law prohibits the termination of workers for engaging in a collective labor action, such as a strike.
“They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone.’ You are the greatest,” Trump told Musk in an interview broadcast on X.
O’Brien sharply criticized the comments on Tuesday.
“Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said.
The United Auto Workers filed federal charges against Trump and Musk on Tuesday over the remarks, alleging that the comments amounted to threats that workers would be fired for going on strike. Musk did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
At multiple fundraisers this year, Trump urged CEOs to make large donations because unions are giving significant funds to Democrats, the The Washington Post reported last month.
Art Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo, New York, said the comments made at the Teamsters meeting appear to be in keeping with efforts Trump has made to woo other constituencies.
“He likes to speak to whoever the audience is and say good things about them,” Wheaton told ABC News. “With this audience, he did not want to appear anti-union.”
“He seems to pander to his audience, which is not unusual for a politician,” Wheaton added.
(NEW YORK) — Stocks plummeted on Monday as markets worldwide reckoned with a disappointing jobs report last week that fueled concern of a possible recession.
When markets opened on Monday morning, the S&P 500 fell about 4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped more than 6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell roughly 1,000 points, or nearly 3%.
By the end of the trading day, markets had recovered some of the losses but each of the major stock indexes remained down more than 2%. The S&P 500 fell 3%, suffering its largest loss in a single trading session since 2022.
The market downturn triggered calls for a large interest rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting in September. Some investors voiced an even more urgent request for a rare emergency rate cut as soon as this week.
Japan’s main Nikkei 225 stock index dropped more than 12%, its worst day of trading since 1987.
In early U.S. trading, chipmaker Nvidia plunged more than 14%. Apple fell more than 8%.
“Investors are feeling massive pain globally,” Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at investment firm Wedbush, said in a note to clients. U.S. markets, he added, are “trading heavy in the red across the board.”
Employers hired 114,000 workers in July, falling well short of economist expectations of 185,000 jobs added, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on Friday showed. The unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%, the highest level since October 2021.
The unemployment rate has soared this year from 3.7% to 4.3%. That trend has triggered a recession indicator known as the “Sahm Rule,” which says that a rise of 0.5 percentage points in the unemployment rate within a 12-month period typically precedes a recession.
On Sunday, Goldman Sachs economists raised the probability of a U.S. recession in the next year from 15% to 25%.
