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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
Brazil’s haunting graveyard of ships risks environmental disaster, warns activist group
Pilar Olivares – December 29, 2022
Abandoned ships on the shores of Guanabara Bay in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro state
GUANABARA BAY (Reuters) – On a stormy evening in mid-November, a huge, abandoned cargo ship broke free of its moorings and slowly floated into the massive concrete bridge that carries cars across Brazil’s Guanabara Bay to Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil’s navy said the 200-meter-long (660-ft.) Sao Luiz, a rust-spattered bulk carrier built in 1994, had been anchored in the bay for more than six years awaiting legal proceedings before it crashed into Latin America’s longest over-water bridge. The navy said it was investigating.
“The Sao Luiz is still in the Port of Rio today, with 50 tonnes of fuel oil in it,” Sergio Ricardo, co-founder of socio-environmental group Movimento Baia Viva (Living Bay Movement) told Reuters, also pointing to high levels of corrosion.
“The ship is unsafe and can cause an environmental disaster,” he said.
Worldwide, financial and legal problems are common reasons for owners abandoning ships.
The Sao Luiz is one of dozens of ships left to rust on the iconic but heavily polluted bay, once home to vast mangroves and thriving marine life.
The mangroves are now much reduced and pollution exacerbated by the graveyard of ships is threatening local sea-horses, green turtles and Guiana dolphins, a symbol of Rio de Janeiro.
A survey by the Rio de Janeiro State University found this year that just 34 Guiana dolphins remained in the bay, down from around 800 in the 1990s.
Besides the ships’ effect on marine life and passing vessels, which must navigate an obstacle course of half-floating hulks, pollution in the bay imposes a financial cost of some tens of billions of reais a year with its pollution, Ricardo estimated.
Fernando Pinto Lima, a 62-year-old former fisherman in the bay, told Reuters he used to be able to quickly catch 50 to 100 kilograms of fish. “Now to catch fifty kilograms, it’ll take you a week or a month,” he said.
Following the Sao Luiz crash, local media reported that authorities were studying how to remove the ghost ships. But the derelict vessels continue to molder on and under its muddy waters.
($1 = 5.2186 reais)
(Reporting by Pilar Olivares; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Bradley Perrett)
Home Depot’s 93-year-old cofounder who said ‘nobody works’ anymore because of ‘socialism’ has donated $64 million to elect Trump and the Republican party over the years
Kelsey Vlamis,Madison Hall – December 29, 2022
Bernie Marcus, the billionaire cofounder of Home Depot, said Thursday “nobody works” anymore.
Marcus said he believed if he founded Home Depot today it wouldn’t be as successful.
Marcus donated millions to Trump in 2016 and 2020, and more to other Republicans over the years.
A billionaire cofounder of Home Depot who said “nobody works” has donated nearly $64 million to political causes over the years, including the campaigns of former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sen. John McCain, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
“‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work — I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid,'” he said, adding that he thinks if he founded Home Depot today it may not have been as successful.
Home Depot today is worth $321 billion and has around 2,300 stores in North America. As for the current US unemployment rate, it’s at 3.7%, the lowest in decades, despite the hiring challenges some businesses are still experiencing.
Marcus, who cofounded Home Depot in 1978, has become a mega-donor to the GOP over the years, supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns in both 2016 and 2020. His public support for Trump sparked calls to boycott Home Depot, prompting the company to distance from him.
In a statement provided to Insider, a spokesperson for Home Depot said: “Our co-founder Bernie Marcus left The Home Depot more than 20 years ago, and his views do not represent the company.”
But going back to at least 1978, Marcus has donated a total of $63,801,322 to political campaigns and PACs, FEC data obtained by Insider showed.
Many of the donations went to directly supporting Republican candidates, including the presidential campaigns of Trump, McCain, Sen. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Sen. Mitt Romney, among others.
Some of Marcus’s largest individual donations have gone to conservative super PACS that directly supported Trump.
In 2020, he made two separate donations of $5 million each to the Preserve America PAC, a single-candidate PAC that supports Trump.
In 2016, Marcus made two donations, one for $3 million and one for $2 million, to Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC established to support Trump’s first campaign. He also gave another $2 million to Making America Number 1, a pro-Trump PAC.
Between 2015 and 2022, Marcus donated more than $15 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC dedicated to helping Republicans gain a majority in the Senate, and more than $5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund.
Marcus has also donated extensively to House and Senate races, contributing to a long list of Republican lawmakers that includes Sens. Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and Tim Scott, as well as Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney.
Marcus in 2022 also donated to Herschel Walker, the failed Senate candidate from Georgia, and Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has been accused of impeding his own party’s agenda.
Marcus and his wife, Billi, have also pledged to give away most of their estimated $8.9 billion fortune. In 2010, they signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment to donate most of their wealth to charitable causes.
She almost fainted on her daily walk. She was in heart failure and needed life support
Meghan Holohan – December 29, 2022
When Jamie Waddell tested positive for COVID-19 for the first time in August, she was much sicker than she expected. After 10 days, she felt better and returned to school and work. But a few weeks later, she noticed she struggled to walk down the street without feeling faint. Soon, she couldn’t talk without getting winded. By Labor Day, she was so sick that she visited the emergency room, where she learned she had sepsis, pneumonia and heart failure.
“Based on the fact that I kept feeling worse and worse, I’m guessing my heart function had probably been declining over that whole week, and by the time I got to the ER, I was septic,” Waddell, 36, a nurse from Springfield, Illinois, tells TODAY.com. “They did an echocardiogram. My heart function was really low. I was in heart failure.”
Feeling faint while walking
In early August, Waddell and her husband were preparing to go on vacation and tested positive for COVID-19. She was vaccinated and boosted and felt surprised by how sick she felt.
“Body aches, fatigue, fever, your respiratory stuff, sinus congestion — I was sick for about 10 days before I started to feel better,” she says. “I did start to feel better. I was back to work. I was actually going to school and started.”
After returning to work and school, on Aug. 28, she took a walk, something she usually did for three to five miles a day. But when she was about a half mile from her house, she began to struggle.
“I felt awful, like very faint. I was walking down the street going, ‘Oh God, don’t pass out,’” she recalls. “That’s unusual for me. I am pretty active.”
At first, she worried she pushed herself too hard after recently having COVID-19.
“Maybe I just took too long of a walk. It was fairly warm that day,” she says. “I didn’t think anything of it and went to work the next day.”
Two days later, she was coughing and achy and asked her doctor for a chest X-ray, which came back normal. She called off work two days and went to her local urgent care clinic. She did not test positive for COVID-19 or flu.
“My vital signs at that visit were a little off. My heart rate was a little high. I had a fever,” she recalls. “I came home and basically went to sleep.”
But her symptoms intensified. She experienced body aches, cough, “overwhelmingly bad” fatigue and vomited.
“At that point, I knew something was wrong. You’re not getting better, you’re just feeling bad,” she says. “You can barely move.”
That’s when Waddell went to the emergency room.
“My blood pressure and oxygen levels were really low,” she says. Pretty much immediately, they could tell something was wrong.”
“My lactic acid was high, which is a sign of sepsis, and they did a CT scan, and I had pneumonia pretty bad,” she says. “That is about the last thing I remember. I woke up 10 days later in Chicago.”
Doctors suspected that COVID-19 caused Waddell to develop myocarditis, when the heart muscle becomes inflamed.
Myocarditis and COVID-19
For decades, cardiologists have been trying to understand why some young people experience myocarditis after a viral infection. COVID-19 has also been known to cause the condition, even in seemingly healthy people, Dr. Bow “Ben” Chung, an advanced heart failure specialist at University Chicago Medicine who treated Waddell, tells TODAY.com.
He explains that prior to the pandemic a number of viruses — such adenovirus, coxsackievirus and parvovirus — that usually result in a mild infection would sometimes go on to cause “a very significant heart failure reaction.” But it’s “still very unclear” why heart failure occurs in some patients and not others.
By the time Waddell reached her local hospital, doctors needed to act fast to support her. They implanted an Impella, a temporary device to help her heart pump blood. Patients in heart failure normally need help with the left side of the heart, where Waddell’s device was placed. But her doctors noticed the right side of her heart also struggling, so they implanted another Impella made especially for that side.
“The right side of the heart is very often forgotten. It’s actually the more difficult side to deal with, too,” Dr. Christopher Lawrence, a cardiovascular surgeon at SIU Medicine, part of Southern Illinois University, tells TODAY.com. “When we put the right side Impella in, … literally within minutes she just started dumping urine, which is a good sign that her organs are actually getting good blood flow, and that was just a cool thing.”
But the doctors in Springfield still worried about how sick Waddell was. They thought she’d need a new heart, so she was transferred to Chung’s care at the University of Chicago, one of a handful of transplant centers in the country.
“The amount of life support that she needed when she arrived at the University of Chicago was pretty much the most amount of life support that somebody can do,” Dr. Abdul Hafiz, structural heart disease specialist at SIU Medicine, tells TODAY.com. “Her heart and lungs were basically not working at the time.”
Chung adds: “Anybody who’s on that level of life support, you’d be thinking about a heart transplant for them because there’s a million machines and wires and tubes sticking out of the patient. You think the only way they make it out of the hospital is just by replacing (the heart).”
But after having the two temporary Impella devices implanted, Waddell slowly began improving to the point where it seemed like she would not need a transplant.
“We were amazed,” Chung says. “It was miraculous. … Jamie was listed for a heart transplant. … If a heart transplant offer had come for her, we might have potentially even accepted the offer.”
Recovery
After waking up in a hospital room in Chicago, Waddell slowly gained strength and started thinking clearly. Then, she learned what she had been through.
“It was definitely surprising to learn that my heart was doing so badly. Again, just nothing I ever would have expected given my lifestyle,” she says. “It’s shocking to go from a person who is very active and no health history whatsoever to needing a new heart.”
In some ways, her recovery was quicker than she expected.
“I was pumping my own blood and breathing my own oxygen, and I was discharged three days later,” Waddell says. “I was in really bad shape and then all of a sudden, I wasn’t.”
Waddell lost a lot of muscle during her time in the hospital — almost three weeks in total. She could walk, but it felt difficult, and she started physical therapy. Now, Waddell sees a cardiologist and needs some medications. She hopes her story encourages people to seek help when something seems off and to rest when they’re sick.
“I work too much. So that’s definitely something that after you’re sick, that … makes you realize if you’re not feeling good, you should take the time to rest,” Waddell says. “Appreciate your body for what it can do.”
These lies about climate change just wouldn’t die in 2022
Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY – December 29, 2022
There was a time – a recent time – when concern about the environment was relatively bipartisan, not a cultural flashpoint.
A Republican, President Richard Nixon, established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. In the 1980s and 1990s, bipartisan majorities voted to strengthen the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, led by a Republican – Rhode Island’s Sen. John Chafee.
Those days are gone, and today a wide range of misleading statements and outright lies about the reality of human-caused climate change circulate widely.
The sheer volume of misinformation can distort perceptions of how many people don’t believe the science that shows the Earth’s climate is changing because of human activity, said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and professor at Texas Tech University.
“I call them ‘zombie arguments’ because you can explain that they’re not true but they still go stumbling around because they’re not about facts but excuses,” she said.
In truth, a small number of people actually believe these lies, she said. Surveys by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in Connecticut have found 8% to 9% of Americans are totally dismissive of climate change, believing it is either not happening, not human-caused or not a threat. Many of these people also endorse conspiracy theories about global warming.
“They’re just 8% of the population. A loud 8%, and very present online, but only 8%. So I would rather answer from the perspective of everybody else,” said Hayhoe, who is also an evangelical Christian whose most recent book is “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.”
Here are some of the most common climate myths and lies experts say have been circulating this year:
Wrong: Summer heat waves show renewables can’t work
Power grids in Texas, California and the Pacific Northwest all faced extreme heat events this summer. Each power system was pushed to the brink by the draw on electricity for air conditioning. And yet none broke.
Nonetheless, a false narrative circulated saying that solar and wind energy had made those power grids – and especially California’s – fragile and unable to cope with high demands.
In fact, the opposite is the case. While renewable energy does present challenges, especially during heat waves, this year proved that careful planning and green innovations can successfully meet those challenges.
In California, battery storage and conservation allowed the state to avoid power outages during a 10-day September heatwave. In the Northwest, battery storage and voluntary programs that rewarded customers for reducing demand kept the system running.
In Texas in July, a heat wave caused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to take emergency measures, including urging residents to restrict their use and paying power operators as much as $5,000 per megawatt hour to keep generators running. ERCOT said two factors affected its ability to meet soaring demand: low wind power generation and outages at coal- and natural gas-fed power plants.
Blaming renewable energy as the cause of power crunches is unfair, said David Doniger, senior strategic director in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program.
“Their answer is always ‘Stick with fossil fuel because renewables and efficiency can’t fill the need.’ This is the lie; those are the problem and not the solutions,” he said.
“Some of the biggest lies these days are focused on slowing the transition from fossil energy to cleaner alternatives by saying problems or shortcomings for renewables make it impossible.”
Energy experts say the percentage of U.S. power that comes from renewables can go much higher than today’s relatively low numbers without causing severe stress on electrical systems. In April, records were set when 28% of U.S. electricity came from renewable resources.
They do acknowledge that decarbonizing the final 10% of the electric grid will be tricky but say that’s not a reason to avoid decarbonizing the first 90%.
Wrong: Using ESG criteria is ‘woke’ capitalism
Making investment decisions with environmental, social and governance factors in mind has been around for decades.
But recently it has been decried as “woke capitalism,” and a concerted effort has been waged to stop companies from taking all three, known as ESG, into consideration when they make investments. That’s especially true when it comes to taking environmental risk management.
In the past year, 18 states have either proposed or adopted rules limiting the ability of the state government and public retirement plans to do business with entities found to “discriminate” against certain industries based on environmental, social and governance criteria, according to JD Supra, a legal news source. For example, Arizona’s State Board of Investment said in August that ESG considerations could not be considered in the investment management of its assets.
“It’s a sinister lie that’s deeply counterproductive, not just to the climate but also to people’s pocketbooks and pensions,” said Alicia Seiger, who teaches sustainability and energy finance at Stanford University’s law and graduate schools of business in California.
Telling companies they can’t consider all available information to make solid long-term investments “is insanity,” she said. “That should be determined by the investor, not the political system.”
Wrong: Believing in climate change is only for the far left
Experts have noted an effort by some to lump in climate change with other liberal and progressive causes, such as racial justice. The implication is that those who believe global warming is an issue to be dealt with must also support a host of other objectives that are considered “far left.”
“Conspiracy theorists connect climate change to other lightning-rod issues to generate emotional, irrational responses that drive online engagement,” said David Di Martino, co-founder of triplecheck, a nonprofit that works to combat the spread of misinformation, including climate misinformation.
Wrong: There’s no hope for fixing climate change, so why try?
An increasingly frequent message centers around “doomerism,” the lie that it’s totally impossible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to near-zero without devastating the economy and significantly reducing our standard of living, so there’s no point in even trying.
This is wrong because the technology to decarbonize much of the electrical grid already exists. Meanwhile, wind and solar, along with battery storage, are increasingly cheaper than coal and natural gas. Decarbonizing more hard-to-reach areas, such as steel and cement production and aviation fuel, will take longer but are in the works.
An Oxford University study released in September found a fast transition to decarbonized energy systems is cheaper than a slow one or not transitioning at all. Achieving zero-carbon energy systems is “possible and profitable” and will save the world at least $12 trillion compared with continuing current levels of fossil fuel use, it found.
A long-term lie has been that climate change isn’t real, but as shifting climate patterns have made that argument harder to make, it has moved to one that says there are either no good alternatives to fossil fuels or the alternatives themselves cause problems and are too expensive.
“In other words, we are stuck with fossil fuels and there are no good alternatives, so burn baby burn,” said Jason Smerdon, a professor of climate physics at Columbia University in New York.
These arguments are mostly in aid of fossil fuel producers who want to keep making money as long as they can.
“Climate disinformation has always been about delaying any action on global warming,” Smerdon said. “They simply perpetuate the false assumption that we have no choice but the same old reliance on fossil fuels.”
If fact, the business community is jumping in with both feet because they see solid opportunities, said Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, a carbon management firm and former professor at Columbia University.
“We have the technology we need and we have a lot of the market-aligning policies we need,” he said.
It’s no longer a question of “Is this even possible?” but instead “How quickly can we do it?”
“It’s a fundamentally different mindset,” Friedmann said. “That’s why I’m bullish on our ability to round these corners and get the job done.”
Democrat Kris Mayes is the winner of Arizona’s attorney general race, a state judge announced Thursday.
Mayes defeated Republican Abraham Hamadeh by 280 votes after a mandatory recount was triggered due to how close they were separated after the initial tally in November, when Mayes led by roughly 500 votes out of 2.5 million cast.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason unveiled the results of the recount in a hearing on Thursday.
Mayes’ lead from November was nearly halved in the recount. The results showed she had 1,254,809 votes to Hamadeh’s 1,254,529 votes.
Mayes’ victory is another win for Democrats this midterm cycle against candidates who endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election denialism. In Arizona, a traditionally red state, Democrats defeated GOP election deniers in races for Senate, governor, secretary of state and now attorney general.
“I will say once again that I’m thankful to everyone who took their time to vote, and democracy is truly a team sport,” she said after the results were announced. “I’m thankful for my campaign, transition and legal teams. I’m excited to get to work as your next Attorney General and vow to be your Lawyer for the People. Onward…”
Hamadeh, who was backed by Trump, denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
In late November, he sued Mayes and a range of state officials alleging there were procedural and tabulation errors that, if corrected, would make him victorious.
The lawsuit was thrown out last week by Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee Jantzen, who said Hamadeh failed to prove the errors he claimed happened. Hamadeh’s attorney also acknowledged he hadn’t gained enough votes during the litigation to change the outcome of the contest.
After the lawsuit was tossed, Hamadeh said he would wait for the results of the recount before deciding “next steps,” but continued to maintain the election was mishandled.
Following the announcement of the recount results, Hamadeh again claimed discrepancies and questioned the outcome of the race. He wrote on Twitter, “We MUST get to the bottom of this election. Transparent elections are fundamental to a democracy.”
Mayes celebrated the case’s dismissal last week and said she believed the results of the mandatory recount would still show her ahead of Hamadeh.
“The will of Arizona voters will not be undermined,” she said at the time.
Mayes, a former member of the Arizona Corporation Commission and a former Republican, campaigned heavily on reproductive rights and voting rights. She’s vowed not to prosecute abortion ban violations and to pursue threats to election workers.
Judge Thomason on Thursday also announced the recount results of two other tight races for state superintendent and for a state legislative seat. Republican Tom Horne won the race for superintendent of public instruction and Republican Liz Harris won the state legislative seat for House District 13.
Trump’s tax returns released after long fight with Congress
Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin – December 29, 2022
Democrats in Congress released thousands of pages of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns Friday, providing the most detailed picture to date of his finances over a six-year period, including his time in the White House, when he fought to keep the information private in a break with decades of precedent.
The documents include individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, along with Trump’s business entities from 2015-2020. They show how Trump used the tax code to lower his tax obligation and reveal details about foreign accounts, charitable contributions and the performance of some of his highest-profile business ventures, which had largely remained shielded from public scrutiny.
The disclosure marks the culmination of a yearslong legal fight that has played out everywhere from the presidential campaign to Congress and the Supreme Court as Trump persistently rejected efforts to share details about his financial history — counter to the practice of transparency followed by all his predecessors in the post-Watergate era. The records release comes just days before Republicans retake control of the House and weeks after Trump began another campaign for the White House.
The records show how Trump limited his tax liability by offsetting his income against corporate losses as well as millions of dollars in businesses expenses, asset depreciation and other deductions.
While Trump paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year he began his campaign for president, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017, according to a report released last week by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. He paid nearly $1 million in 2018, but only $133,445 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, the year he unsuccessfully sought reelection.
The records also detail Trump’s foreign holdings.
Trump, according to the filings, reported having bank accounts in China, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 2015 through 2017, even as he was commander in chief. Starting in 2018, however, he only reported an account in the U.K. The returns also show that Trump claimed foreign tax credits for taxes he paid on various business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. In 2018, according to Joint Committee on Taxation figures, Trump paid more in foreign taxes than he did net federal income.
The documents show that Trump’s charitable donations fluctuated during his presidency but, in his final years, represented only a sliver of his income. In 2020, the year the coronavirus ravaged the economy, Trump reported no charitable donations at all. In 2019 and 2018 he reported writing checks for about $500,000 in donations. In earlier years the numbers were higher — $1.8 million in 2017 and $1.1 million in 2016.
It’s unclear whether the reported sums included Trump’s $400,000 annual presidential salary, which he had said he would forgo and claimed he donated to various federal departments.
The release marks the latest setback for Trump, who has been mired in investigations, including federal and state inquiries into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Department of Justice also has been investigating reams of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club and possible efforts to obstruct the investigation.
In a statement Friday, Trump lashed out at Democrats and the Supreme Court for the release.
“It’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”
He said the returns demonstrated “how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions” to build his businesses.
Presiding over a routine pro forma session of the House on Friday, Rep. Don Beyer, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, said great care had been taken to ensure the returns were treated with sensitivity, with personal and other identifying information redacted.
“We’ve been trying to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t ‘weaponizing’ the IRS returns,” said Beyer, D-Va. He also is a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which held a party line vote last week to make the returns public.
The returns detail how Trump used tax law to minimize his liability, including carrying forward massive losses from previous years, as allowed by tax law. Trump said during his 2016 campaign that paying little or no income tax in some years “makes me smart.”
His tax returns show he did that by structuring his company as a massive sole proprietorship, with nearly every dollar, pound, euro and yuan passing through his golf courses, hotels and other assets affecting — and in many cases helping — his own bottom line.
For instance, in 2020, more than 150 of Trump’s business entities listed negative qualified business income, which the IRS defines as “the net amount of qualified items of income, gain, deduction and loss from any qualified trade or business.” In total for that tax year, combined with nearly $9 million in carryforward loss from previous years, Trump’s qualified losses amounted to more than $58 million for the final year of his term in office.
Another of Trump’s money losers: the ice rink his company operated until last year in New York City’s Central Park. Trump reported a total of $2.6 million in losses from Wollman Rink over the six years made public. The rink, an early Trump Organization jewel run through a contract with New York City’s government, reported a loss of $1.3 million in 2015 despite taking in $9.3 million in revenue, according to the tax returns. The rink turned a $298,000 profit in 2016, but was back to melting cash in each of the next four years.
Aspects of Trump’s finances had been shrouded in mystery since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s.
Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did provide limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms and financial statements he provides to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on rankings of the world’s billionaires.
Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization fraudulently inflated asset values on the statements. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.
In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that contradicted the image Trump had tried to sell of himself as a self-made businessman. It showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.
The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the Ways and Means chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns.
Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released.
Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman and Farnoush Amiri in Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
Think those bags are recyclable? California says think again
Don Thompson – December 29, 2022
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Since California adopted the nation’s first ban on single-use plastic shopping bags tin 2014, most grocery stores have turned to thicker, reusable plastic bags that are supposed to be recyclable.
But Attorney General Rob Bonta is now investigating whether the bags are truly recyclable as required by law.
“We’ve all been to the store and forgotten to bring our reusable bags,” Bonta said recently. “At least the plastic bags we buy at the register for 10 cents have those ‘chasing arrows’ that say they are 100% recyclable, right? Perhaps wrong.”
He asked six bag manufacturers to back up their claims that the bags can be recycled and threatened legal action that could include banning the bags temporarily or issuing multimillion-dollar fines.
His office declined to say last week how many of the companies responded, citing an ongoing investigation. The American Chemistry Council, a plastics industry group, said that manufacturers disagree with Bonta’s characterization.
Other states, including New York, New Jersey and Oregon, have followed California in banning single-use plastic bags. Beyond California, only a handful of states require that stores take back plastic bags for recycling, with Maine first adopting such a law in 1991, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Policy experts and advocates estimate that just 6% of plastics are recycled in the United States, with the remaining burned, trashed or littered. More plastic bags ended up in California landfills in 2021 compared with 2018, according to data from the state’s recycling department.
Californians Against Waste Executive Director Mark Murray in part blames pandemic policies.
Consumers are supposed to be able to return their plastic bags to grocery stores and other retailers. But many removed their bag recycling bins during the early days of the pandemic, fearing contamination.
For the system to work, retailers must collect the bags and sell them back to manufacturers for use in making new bags that must include 40% recycled content and be reusable at least 125 times. Murray suspects that most are reused once.
“That’s not meeting the standard and it may be time to phase these bags out,” he said.
The California Retailers Association declined comment because it said each retailer has its own policy, and the California Grocers Association did not respond to a request for comment.
As of now, makers of the bags get to self-certify to the state that their bags can be recycled. But Bonta said that requires a comprehensive system to collect, process and sell the used bags, none of which exist. Putting the bags in most curbside recycling bins interferes with recycling other products by clogging equipment and increasing the risk of worker injury, he said.
Plastic bags and similar products are “a top form of contamination in curbside recycling bins,” California’s Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling wrote in a 2021 report.
Bonta asked six manufacturers — Novolex, Revolution, Inteplast, Advance Polybag, Metro Polybag and Papier-Mettler — to prove their bags can be recycled in California. His office hasn’t said if they all responded, citing an “active and ongoing investigation.”
Revolution Chief Executive Sean Whiteley said the company has been recycling more than 300 million pounds of plastic material annually for decades and is “confident in our own sustainability and compliance record.”
He noted lawmakers publicly introduced the single-use bag ban legislation in 2014 at one of the company’s Southern California subsidiaries.
“At our core, we are an environmental recycling company that also makes sustainable plastic solutions,” he said in a statement.
Novolex said it is “committed to complying with all state laws and regulations.” The company responded to Bonta’s request but declined to share its full response with The Associated Press, a spokesman said.
Novolex’s bags have been certified as eligible for recycling by an independent laboratory and, therefore, must be marked that way, the company said in a statement.
The other four companies did not respond to multiple emailed requests.
Manufacturers are “aggressively working so that all plastic packaging that is manufactured is remade into new plastics,” said Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the American Chemistry Council.
It’s not Bonta’s first plastics-related clash with industry. Earlier this year he subpoenaed ExxonMobil as part of what he called a first-of-its-kind broader investigation into the petroleum industry and the proliferation of plastic waste.
Thompson recently retired from The Associated Press.
Russia fires dozens of missiles across several Ukrainian cities
Niamh Cavanagh, Reporter – December 29, 2022
LONDON — Ukraine faced a barrage of missiles on Thursday morning in one of the biggest bombardments the country has faced since Russia invaded earlier this year.
According to Oleksii Gromov, a Ukrainian general, Russia launched more than 69 missiles “aimed at critical and energy infrastructure.” Of the dozens launched, 54 were shot down by Ukraine’s air defenses, he said.
Three people in the capital, Kyiv, were hospitalized following the explosions, including a 14-year-old girl. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40% of the city was left without power due to the strikes. “Charge your phones and other devices,” he wrote on Telegram via translation. “Stock up on water.” He added that engineers were working on restoring power back to the capital.
In the south, missiles were shot down in the regions of Mykolaiv and Odesa. Meanwhile, several explosions were reported in the western city of Lviv. No casualties were immediately reported.
Ukraine’s foreign minister hit out at Russia for launching missiles during the holidays, describing it as “senseless barbarism.” Earlier Thursday, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that more than 120 missiles had been launched.
Neighboring Belarus’s Defense Ministry said it had downed a Ukrainian missile on Thursday morning. The S-300 Soviet-era air defense missile was shot down near the village of Harbacha, just 9 miles from the border with Ukraine. Oleg Konovalov, a military official, played down the strike, stating that it was “absolutely nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, these things happen.”
Similarly in November, an S-300 that accidentally landed in NATO member Poland, leaving two people dead, was likely fired by Ukrainian air defense. The missile sparked fear that there had been an escalation in tensions.
Russia has upped its airstrikes on Ukraine since October when the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects the peninsula of Crimea to mainland Russia, was targeted. The bridge was partially damaged after a truck exploded. Russia blamed Ukrainian intelligence for the attacks and has made several arrests since the explosion.
What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? It’s losing ice faster than forecast and now irreversibly committed to at least 10 inches of sea level rise
Alun Hubbard, Arctic Five Chair, University of Tromsø – December 28, 2022
I’m standing at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, mesmerized by a mind-blowing scene of natural destruction. A milewide section of glacier front has fractured and is collapsing into the ocean, calving an immense iceberg.
Seracs, giant columns of ice the height of three-story houses, are being tossed around like dice. And the previously submerged portion of this immense block of glacier ice just breached the ocean – a frothing maelstrom flinging ice cubes of several tons high into the air. The resulting tsunami inundates all in its path as it radiates from the glacier’s calving front.
Despite the spectacle, I’m keenly aware that this spells yet more unwelcome news for the world’s low-lying coastlines.
As a field glaciologist, I’ve worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. In that time, I have witnessed some gobsmacking changes. The past few years in particular have been unnerving for the sheer rate and magnitude of change underway. My revered textbooks taught me that ice sheets respond over millennial time scales, but that’s not what we’re seeing today.
A study published Aug. 29, 2022, demonstrates – for the first time – that Greenland’s ice sheet is now so out of balance with prevailing Arctic climate that it no longer can sustain its current size. It is irreversibly committed to retreat by at least 59,000 square kilometers (22,780 square miles), an area considerably larger than Denmark, Greenland’s protectorate state.
Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today, we find that Greenland’s ice loss under current temperatures will raise global sea level by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). That’s more than current models forecast, and it’s a highly conservative estimate. If every year were like 2012, when Greenland experienced a heat wave, that irreversible commitment to sea level rise would triple. That’s an ominous portent given that these are climate conditions we have already seen, not a hypothetical future scenario.
Our study takes a completely new approach – it is based on observations and glaciological theory rather than sophisticated numerical models. The current generation of coupled climate and ice sheet models used to forecast future sea level rise fail to capture the emerging processes that we see amplifying Greenland’s ice loss.
How Greenland got to this point
The Greenland ice sheet is a massive, frozen reservoir that resembles an inverted pudding bowl. The ice is in constant flux, flowing from the interior – where it is over 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick, cold and snowy – to its edges, where the ice melts or calves bergs.
In all, the ice sheet locks up enough fresh water to raise global sea level by 24 feet (7.4 meters).
We are currently enjoying an interglacial period – the Holocene. For the past 6,000 years Greenland, like the rest of the planet, has benefited from a mild and stable climate with an ice sheet in equilibrium – until recently. Since 1990, as the atmosphere and ocean have warmed under rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Greenland’s mass balance has gone into the red. Ice losses due to enhanced melt, rain, ice flow and calving now far exceed the net gain from snow accumulation.
What does the future hold?
The critical questions are, how fast is Greenland losing its ice, and what does it mean for future sea level rise?
This net loss is split between surface melt and dynamic processes that accelerate outlet glacier flow and are greatly exacerbated by atmospheric and oceanic warming, respectively. Though complex in its manifestation, the concept is simple: Ice sheets don’t like warm weather or baths, and the heat is on.
According to our findings, Greenland will lose at least 3.3% of its ice, over 100 trillion metric tons. This loss is already committed – ice that must melt and calve icebergs to reestablish Greenland’s balance with prevailing climate.
We’re observing many emerging processes that the models don’t account for that increase the ice sheet’s vulnerability. For example:
Part of the problem is that the models used for forecasting are mathematical abstractions that include only processes that are fully understood, quantifiable and deemed important.
Models reduce reality to a set of equations that are solved repeatedly on banks of very fast computers. Anyone into cutting-edge engineering – including me – knows the intrinsic value of models for experimentation and testing of ideas. But they are no substitute for reality and observation. It is apparent that current model forecasts of global sea level rise underestimate its actual threat over the 21st century. Developers are making constant improvements, but it’s tricky, and there’s a dawning realization that the complex models used for long-term sea level forecasting are not fit for purpose.
There are also “unknown unknowns” – those processes and feedbacks that we don’t yet realize and that models can never anticipate. They can be understood only by direct observations and literally drilling into the ice.
That’s why, rather than using models, we base our study on proven glaciological theory constrained by two decades of actual measurements from weather stations, satellites and ice geophysics.
It’s not too late
It’s an understatement that the societal stakes are high, and the risk is tragically real going forward. The consequences of catastrophic coastal flooding as sea level rises are still unimaginable to the majority of the billion or so people who live in low-lying coastal zones of the planet.
Personally, I remain hopeful that we can get on track. I don’t believe we’ve passed any doom-laden tipping point that irreversibly floods the planet’s coastlines. Of what I understand of the ice sheet and the insight our new study brings, it’s not too late to act.
But fossil fuels and emissions must be curtailed now, because time is short and the water rises – faster than forecast.
Southwest Airlines grew to become the US’s largest domestic carrier by offering free checked baggage, easy-to-change tickets — and still sticks to unassigned seats
Taylor Rains – December 28, 2022
Southwest Airlines, the US’s largest domestic carrier, experienced an operations meltdown in this holiday season.
Despite its problems, Southwest celebrates its customer- and employee-focused mission.
The airline found success using unconventional marketing strategies focused on humor, booze, arm wrestling, and go-go boots.
Southwest Airlines is the US’s largest domestic carrier, serving over 100 destinations across the country. The carrier has been in operation since 1971 and just celebrated its 51st anniversary in June.
With Southwest’s immense size, it has a lot of systems at play to keep it running efficiently and on time. But, sometimes a nasty winter storm can derail even the best carrier’s operations.
But, Southwest suffered from more than just the weather in the holiday season of 2022.
Captain Mike Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told Insider the storm was the catalyst of the meltdown, but “outdated” scheduling software created the snowball.
Southwest confirmed to Insider that its systems were unable to handle the “magnitude” of disruptions, which amounted to over 7,000 from Christmas to December 28 alone.
The company acknowledged its software needs an update, with a spokesperson saying, “we are focused on making investments in technology upgrades to work toward that solution.”
Despite its operations issues in the holiday season of 2022, Southwest prides itself on being a customer- and employee-focused airline, bringing “LUV” to its operation, and keeping safety, hospitality, and customer service at the forefront of its mission. (LUV is its stock symbol.)
According to financial information company BrightScope, Southwest has one of the highest-rated employee 401k plans. Meanwhile, J.D. Power reported in May that customers ranked Southwest as having the best economy product in North America.
Haley Woods, founder of Girls LOVE Travel — a Facebook group with over one million members — told Insider that when her flight was canceled over the holiday week, she encountered the most “professional” and “upbeat” Southwest employees.
“While this disruption might derail others from using SWA in the future — their customer kindness has reminded me that I will absolutely be looking past this and onward for future adventures,” she said.
While it’s could still lose some trust from customers, Southwest is likely to eventually bounce back. See how the airline has grown over the years to be the powerhouse it is today.
Southwest started as a small carrier based in Texas and only operated intra-state routes between three cities, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. The airline, which was originally called Air Southwest, was dreamt up by Rollin King and Herb Kelleher on a cocktail napkin in 1966.
King mapped the network he envisioned, making a triangle between the three key cities. He explained to Kelleher that operating solely in Texas would make the company exempt from the Civil Aeronautics Board’s federal regulations, which controlled fares, routes, and schedules.
From 1938 to 1978, the airline industry was federally regulated under the CAB as means to ensure major carriers like United and Pan Am were profitable. Fares were sky-high and only business travelers and deep-pocket leisure customers could afford the luxury of flight. The downside was that a lot of the time, planes flew half-empty.
Because Air Southwest was certified under the state’s aviation regulator, the Texas Aeronautics Commission, it was not bound to federal rules — a clever loophole King unapologetically copied from California carrier Pacific Southwest Airlines.
The loophole allowed Air Southwest to fly freely in Texas and undercut competitors’ fares, offering more customers the option to fly instead of drive in the large state. The business model was game-changing and a threat to legacy airlines.
In 1967, three airlines operating under federal rules, Braniff, Trans-Texas Airways, and Continental Airlines, took legal action against Air Southwest, saying it does not have the right to fly in Texas.
The lawsuit took three years to resolve, and in 1970, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Air Southwest could fly in the state. The three airlines then took the case to the US Supreme Court, which declined to review it.
Air Southwest’s right to fly in Texas was finalized in December of 1970. The carrier officially changed its name to Southwest Airlines in 1971 and commenced operations on June 18 of the same year.
The carrier launched with two routes from Dallas Love Field to Houston and San Antonio using three new Boeing 737-200 aircraft. Flights between Houston and San Antonio commenced in November 1971.
Part of Southwest’s immense success was due to Kelleher’s focus on unconventional marketing and unique corporate culture.
Kelleher used Pacific Southwest Airways’ idea of “Long Legs And Short Nights” for hostesses, as they were called at the time, keeping with the theme of hiring attractive women to work Southwest flights.
The airline’s first flight attendants were described as long-legged dancers and were handpicked by a committee that included the same individual who picked the hostess on Hugh Hefner’s Playboy jet.
Kelleher dressed the flight attendants in a bright orange top, orange hot pants, a white belt around the hips, and white side-laced go-go boots. He also pushed for a laid-back, casual inflight experience and only hired female hostesses who were fun, engaging, and had a sense of humor.
Kelleher continued the playboy theme by creating a “love” culture at Southwest. The carrier was called the “love airline,” automatic ticket dispensers were “love machines,” inflight snacks were “love bites,” and drinks were “love potions.”
The airline also crafted its own special inflight cocktails, which were free for passengers. A few were appropriately named Kentucky Matchmaker, the Pucker Potion, and the Lucky Lindsay.
He even went on to create ads centered around humor and attractive women. In the context of the 1970s, using attractive female flight attendants to gain customers was an industry norm.
In 1972, Southwest made a game-changing, innovative marketing move. The company introduced the “two-tier” fare system, which established two separate price points aimed at different types of travelers.
The fares were the regularly priced “Executive Class Service” at $26 one-way and the “Pleasure Class” at $13 one-way or $25 roundtrip. “Pleasure Class” fares were available after 6:59 p.m. on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday.
The two-tier structure was a wild success, with Southwest increasing its average passenger load from 17 before the move to 75 after.
In 1973, the company launched a $13 one-way “half-fare” sale on all flights to San Antonio. Southwest’s rival, Braniff, responded with its own “get acquainted sale” with $13 fares between Dallas and Houston. This was the start of the $13 Fare War.
Southwest knew $13 fares on its only profitable route would run it straight into bankruptcy, so King quickly came up with a marketing campaign that would put Southwest on top. “Nobody’s going to shoot Southwest out of the sky for a lousy $13,” read the bold ad.
Southwest matched Braniff’s fare between Dallas and Houston, which was met with praise and respect from customers. As part of the campaign, the airline also offered a free fifth of liquor for passengers who paid the full $26 fare.
Business travelers loved the promotion, and lucky for Southwest, three-fourths of its customers opted to pay full price and pocket the free booze. The airline soon became a fan favorite among many Texas business communities, and Braniff was fuming.
By the end of 1973, Southwest finally turned its first profit and would continue to profit for 47 years until the coronavirus pandemic ended the streak. Meanwhile, Braniff lost the battle and the war, ceasing operations in 1982.
Southwest’s early challenges did not end with Braniff. In 1964, the Civil Aeronautics Board demanded the city of Dallas build an airport to serve the entire Dallas/Fort Worth area. In 1968, every air carrier operating out of Love Field agreed to move to DFW when it opened in 1974.
However, Southwest was not a part of that agreement and filed suit that it would not move from Love Field when the new airport opened. The airline claimed there was no legal reason to end commercial traffic at Love Field and that the company made no written agreement to move its operations.
The city and the DFW Airport Board sued Southwest, saying the CAB rule applied to the airline even if it was made before Southwest was officially founded. However, Southwest argued that its intra-state flights fell outside the jurisdiction of the CAB, so it did not have to leave Love Field.
A federal district court agreed with Southwest and ruled that it could operate out of the airport as long as it remained open. When DFW opened in 1974, every airline except Southwest left Love Field.
Southwest continued to grow through the 70s, acquiring 10 aircraft and carrying its five-millionth customer by the end of 1977.
By 1976, Southwest Airlines had been profitable for three years and proven that government regulation was not necessary for airlines to be successful. Deregulation was a top priority for Jimmy Carter’s administration, and it passed the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, effectively abolishing the Civil Aeronautics Board.
Finally, Southwest Airlines was free to operate interstate flights and the airline began to thrive. Meanwhile, major carriers like Eastern Airlines, Trans World Airlines, and Pan Am spread themselves too thin as they tried to rapidly expand.
Unlike major carriers, Southwest maintained a simple strategy for success after deregulation, like only operating one aircraft type, cleaning the aircraft before landing to allow for a quicker turn, and focusing on humor in marketing.
And its strategy worked. Southwest was prospering while other airlines like Pan Am and TWA collapsed. However, it was not long before the Wright Amendment put another wrench in the company’s plans.
After deregulation, Southwest wanted to commence interstate flights from Love Field to New Orleans in 1979, but officials at DFW airport feared the increased traffic would hurt the airport financially. So, US Congressman Jim Wright drafted, sponsored, and helped pass a bill restricting passenger traffic at Love Field.
The law, known as the Wright Amendment, was signed in early 1980 and amended the International Air Transportation Act of 1979. It restricted flying out of Love Field to cities in Texas and the surrounding states of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico. The law was meant to keep Southwest from expanding operations out of Dallas.
It only applied to carriers that operated aircraft with more than 56 seats, which Southwest did. So, the airline had to rely on short-haul flights in the five-state area to bolster Love Field operations.
However, in 2004, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly launched efforts to repeal the Wright Amendment, using the slogans “Set Love Free” and “Wright is Wrong” in the campaign.
In 2006, an agreement was made between Southwest, American Airlines, Dallas, and Forth Worth to phase out the law. They agreed that in eight years, the amendment would be gone, but until then, carriers could fly to any US destination out of Love Field as long as at least one stop was made in any of the nine states under the Wright Amendment.
On October 13, 2014, at exactly 12:01 a.m., a countdown clock at Southwest’s Headquarters in Dallas hit zero, officially ending the Wright Amendment. A few minutes after, the airline’s first scheduled flight outside of the nine Wright states took off from Love Field to Denver.
The deal also capped the number of gates at Love Field to 20, and the airport still only has 20 to this day.
While the Wright Amendment restricted expansion out of Love Field, Southwest was still able to bolster its network out of other Texas cities in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Throughout the 1980s, the airline expanded north into cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City, and west to Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and California. The airline moved east in the late 1980s with flights to Nashville and into the Midwest with flights to Chicago Midway and Detroit.
The airline also updated its livery in the 1980s. Southwest wanted to stand out in the skies and make its brand easily recognizable, so it wrapped its fuselage in desert gold and other warm colors. It received its first 737-300 jet in 1984, dubbed Spirit of Kitty Hawk.
Southwest’s flight attendant uniform was also updated by the 80s. Instead of hot pants and go-go boots, the airline allowed employees to wear real pants and skirts.
In the 1990s, the network expanded further east to cities like Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Providence, Islip, and Raleigh-Durham. The airline also began its Pacific Northwest expansion with the acquisition of Morris Air in 1994.
In 1991, the “Friends Fly Free” campaign was launched to battle the recession. The promotion allowed anyone 18 or older to bring a friend of any age free on their flight. It was so popular that Southwest offered the promotion for the next five years.
In 1992, Southwest’s most infamous marketing stunt occurred between Herb Kelleher and Kurt Herwald, chairman of Stevens Aviation.
Southwest had been using the slogan “Just Plane Smart” in its ads, but Stevens Aviation sent a letter to Kelleher noting its similarity to its “Plane Smart” slogan.
Instead of entering a legal battle over the phrase, a Steven Aviation executive suggested an arm-wrestling competition between Herwald and Kelleher. The victor would have full rights to the slogan.
Kelleher marketed the event, dubbed the “Malice in Dallas,” which received worldwide press coverage. “Smokin” Herb Kelleher and “Curtsy” Kurt Herwald put on a full show at the arena, which even earned a congratulatory note from President George Bush.
At the turn of the century, Southwest revealed the livery that most people know today. The Canyon Blue color scheme debuted in January 2001.
While many airlines opted to introduce fees for things like checked bags and flight changes to recuperate funds, Southwest refused. Instead, the airline launched its “bags fly free” campaign which allows customers two complimentary checked bags. Southwest has not gone back on the offer to this day.
Throughout the 2000s, Southwest continued to focus on humor in its marketing. Its Wanna Get Away commercials proved successful, which promoted $49 one-way fares.
By 2010, Southwest added “Transfarency” to its brand. The airline would not have any hidden fees and would remain customer-focused with an emphasis on Hospitality and Heart. The recognizable tri-color heart was added to its airplanes and workplace.
In 2011, Southwest acquired AirTran Airways, which opened slots up out of Atlanta and gave it more network expansion opportunities in Mexico and the Caribbean. The two were fully integrated by 2014.
Also in 2014, the company’s livery got another new look, with a harder focus on the heart, a new logo, and a sleek new color scheme.
In July 2014, the airline officially became international with its first flight to Oranjestad, Aruba. In the same month, Southwest also started service to Nassau, Bahamas, and Jamaica.
The company’s flight attendant uniform got an update in 2017, marking the first time in 20 years the airline changed the look. Womenswear included two dresses, one black with blue and red stripes and the other gray with red and black stripes. Menswear included a black blazer, a gray shirt and pants, and a red tie.
In October 2017, Southwest became the launch customer for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet, with its first revenue flight occurring on October 1. However, the aircraft was grounded in 2019 after two fatal accidents involved the MAX. The airline did not fly the plane again until March 2021.
In 2019, Southwest reached its goal of operating flights to Hawaii with its inaugural service from Oakland to Honolulu.
In 2020, Southwest ended its 47-year profit streak when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Since last March, the airline has remained focused on the health and safety of its customers and employees.
Since the pandemic, Southwest has become profitable again and, like other carriers, is trying to keep up with the surge in air travel.
Despite its operations meltdown over the holiday of 2022, the carrier has vowed to get its operation back on track, compensate passengers for their time and added expenses, and continue to bring low fares to customers.
Southwest Airlines pilots union official describes how problems snowballed
The Biden administration is getting involved after a major meltdown causing delays and cancellations of thousands of Southwest Airlines flights across the U.S. Captain Michael Santoro, vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, joins CBS News to discuss the problems what what it will take to fix things.