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Boeing has laid off hundreds of additional employees in Washington state and California as part of planned cuts that will eventually reduce the company’s workforce by about 17,000.
Nearly 400 Boeing employees were laid off in Washington state and more than 500 in California, news outlets reported Monday.
The aerospace giant announced previously it would reduce its workforce by 10% in the coming months as it tries to recover from financial and regulatory troubles and a strike by its machinists that lasted almost two months.
CEO Kelly Ortberg has said the strike did not cause the layoffs, which he said was the result of overstaffing.
In November, the company started notifying workers who would be laid off. Notices filed with state employment agencies showed the first round of cuts impacted about 3,500 people around the country, The Seattle Times reported.
Those cuts touched people in roles from engineers to recruiters to analysts and impacted Boeing’s commercial, defense and global services divisions.
Boeing has said most laid-off employees remain on the payroll for about two months and will receive severance pay, career transition services, and subsidized health insurance benefits for up to three months.
“As announced in early October, we are adjusting our workforce levels to align with our financial reality and a more focused set of priorities,” Boeing spokespeople have said about the layoffs.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been in financial trouble since two crashes of its 737 Max jetliner killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019. The company’s fortunes and reputation took an additional hit when a panel blew off the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane in January.
Amazon’s (AMZN-0.40%) popular $25 flight deal is back.
The deal has returned via a partnership with discounted travel platform StudentUniverse. The limited-time offer, exclusive to Prime Young Adults members between the ages of 18-24, runs until Dec. 13.
“The holidays are a time to gather with loved ones and make memories,” said Carmen Nestares, Amazon’s vice president of U.S. prime and marketing tech. “We’re thrilled to make flying more affordable for young adults who want to spend this special time with family and friends.”
The promotion includes 5,000 tickets, with 1,000 tickets released daily starting at 1 p.m. ET. The tickets are valid for domestic U.S. flights between Dec. 9, 2024, and Jan. 14, 2025, Amazon noted.
While the $25 deal covers the cost of the airfare, additional costs like baggage fees, travel insurance, car rentals, and accommodations are not included. The deal applies only to basic economy and main cabin seats and excludes premium, business, and first-class options.
Traveling during the holiday season can be challenging, especially with rising prices. This is particularly tough for young adults trying to stick to a budget. A recent survey revealed that 66% of Gen Z expects to go into debt during the holidays, with one-third of that spending being on travel, the company added.
For eligible customers who aren’t Prime members, Amazon is currently offering a six-month free trial of the Prime Young Adults membership through Grubhub. After the trial, the membership costs $7.49 per month or $69 per year.
Amazon’s latest offering comes on the heels of its massive wins during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which the company says marked “its biggest holiday shopping event ever,” with record sales and the highest number of items sold.
A Nevada commissioner denied Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to change his irrevocable trust and leave his conservative media empire under the sole control of his son, Lachlan, according to a report Monday.
The New York Times reported that Commissioner Edmund J. Gorman, Jr. issued a scathing ruling Saturday against Murdoch, who thought giving Lachlan full reign of his companies would guarantee their continued right-wing slant.
Commissioner Gorman called the attempt to change the trust a “carefully crafted charade” meant to “permanently cement Lachlan Murdoch’s executive roles” that was being done “regardless of the impacts such control would have over the companies or the beneficiaries” of his trust.
Murdoch’s lawyer told the Times he intends to appeal the decision, which still has to be ratified or rejected by a district judge.
The family’s current trust gives Murdoch’s four eldest children — Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — equal voting rights over the family’s media conglomerates after his death. The companies include Fox (FOXA-1.45%), the parent company of Fox News and the broadcast network Fox, and News Corp (NWSA+0.07%), the owner of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and several newspapers and television stations in Australia and Britain.
Last year, it was revealed that Murdoch and three of his heirs — James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — were engaged in a secret legal battle over the future of his companies after Murdoch filed to change the terms of an irrevocable family trust. Although the trust was supposed to be inviolable, it included a provision that allowed amendments if they were done in good faith to benefit all of its members.
Murdoch, 93, argued that a “lack of consensus” among his heirs “would impact the strategic direction at both companies including a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content.” This, he said, gave him grounds to give Lachlan full control.
Both James and Elisabeth are less conservative than their father and Lachlan, which apparently sparked Murdoch’s concern for the future of his empire. In court, the aging business tycoon said keeping the right-wing politics of his outlets was essential to their financial success. James, Elisabeth, and Prudence were reportedly surprised by their father’s move to transfer control only to Lachlan.
Murdoch retired from Fox and News Corp last year. Lachlan is now the current chairman of News Corp and the executive chairman and CEO of Fox.
OpenAI is releasing its text-to-video artificial intelligence generator, Sora, which it said is “critical to our AGI [artificial general intelligence] road map.”
“Video is important to OpenAI for a lot of reasons,” OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said during its “12 Days of OpenAI livestream, including “to our culture” and “to how we hope humans will use AI.”
Altman said OpenAI doesn’t “want the world to just be text,” and that the startup wants its AI models “to be able to understand video and generate video.”
Sora, which OpenAI previewed in February, is being launched in the U.S. and other countries on Monday, and ChatGPT Plus and Pro users can access the model without paying extra.
The startup also announced it is launching Sora Turbo, “a new, high-end, accelerated version” of the original Sora model that can generate videos from text, animate images, and includes video-to-video features such as remixing video into new styles.
In November, OpenAI stopped the rollout of the AI video generator after artists who were given early access to test the tool leaked it to the public. In an open letter, the artists said that instead of being “early testers, red teamers, and creative partners,” they instead felt that they were “being lured into ‘art washing’ to tell the world that Sora is a useful tool for artists.”
“Artists are not your unpaid R&D [research and development],” the letter said. “We are not your: free bug testers, PR puppets, training data, or validation tokens.”
Last week, OpenAI announced that its o1 model was out of preview and available through ChatGPT Plus, during the first day of its “12 Days of OpenAI” event. o1, which has been in preview since September, now has a faster response time and “more powerful reasoning” capabilities that make it better for coding, math, and writing tasks, the startup said.