Business

Apple ‘s (AAPL) new 10-year deal with Major League Soccer, announced Tuesday and starting in 2023 , speaks to the power of a strong balance sheet and robust cash generation during these tumultuous times and to one of the 15 things Jim Cramer took away from his week in Silicon Valley — the belief that Apple, which started slowly on streaming, will surpass all other services over time. A strong balance sheet is absolutely crucial to riding out market volatility as a positive cash position —more cash and equivalents than debt — means that if business slows for a period of time, the company does not have to worry about defaulting on loans. A very strong balance sheet, like the one Apple has — and other Club names such as Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL), Facebook-patent Meta Platforms (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) also have — allows for continued growth-oriented investments despite a turn in macroeconomic conditions. Of course, the other factor is cash flow as the uncertainty on timing of an economic downturn means that we don’t want to see a company blow through their cash horde and be left with a weak balance sheet. Fortunately, Apple’s cash flow is also very robust, often exceeding even the company’s net income – meaning there’s more cash flowing through the business than profits even after accounting for capital expenditures. While a strong balance sheet and cash flows are always important, they are even more so when the economy slows because if a company can’t generate funds for investment internally, then there are really only two other ways to go about it: raise debt or sell equity. However, given the rise in interest rates, the former is more expensive than it was just six months ago as lenders demand greater reward for the increased risk of lending right now, while the latter means more dilution as more shares have to be sold to raise the same amount of cash thanks to plunging share prices. Fortunately, Apple doesn’t have to do either. Its strong balance sheet, robust cash flows, and possibly the strongest ecosystem in the world, allow the tech giant to control its own destiny. Remember, as we have said several times already, this is not the time to make money, it’s the time to not lose it — and investing in companies that are in control of their own destiny and able to internally fund investments is how you achieve that goal. Jumping back to the MLS deal, we remind members that Apple already has an agreement with Major League Baseball , which offers “Friday Night Baseball” games for free on Apple TV+ without a subscription, for now. The soccer arrangement will be different. Apple will create a new, paid MLS streaming service , available exclusively through the Apple TV app. Some of the games will be available to Apple TV+ subscribers at no additional cost and some matches will be free. How ever, you slice it. These two deals bring America’s past time and (baseball) and the most popular sport in the world (soccer/football) onto Apple’s growing streaming platform. While we do think the company is on its way to becoming a dominant streaming platform — a notion reinforced by what Cramer heard last week from tech power players in the San Francisco area — perhaps the greatest advantage Apple has in streaming is that it really doesn’t need to be the widest spanning platform out there. We say that because unlike much of the competition, streaming isn’t the core of Apple’s business. It’s not even at the core of Apple’s Services segment. That means that rather than needing a service that can compete with the likes of Netflix , all Apple TV+ really needs to be is another piece of a broader services package that helps incentivize customers that have one or more services to upgrade to the Apple One bundle , which includes all six: Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, Apple News+, and Apple Fitness+. Every time Apple can add another incremental service or bolster an existing one, it strengthens the value proposition of the bundle. Therefore, it increases the stickiness of the ecosystem and further locking in existing customers. Note, a similar dynamic can be said for Amazon Prime where it’s not so much about any singular aspect of the business but rather the value proposition of a Prime membership overall. Like Apple, Amazon is also an Investing Club holding. So, we love the deal Apple announced Tuesday with MLS — and while it alone is not a reason to buy the stock, we believe it speaks to a company that’s in control of its own destiny and is the perfect representation of the type of haven investors can confidently stay in to ride out the storm currently underway in the financial markets. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AAPL GOOGL, META, MSFT and AMZN. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

New York City FC forward Valentín Castellanos (11) passes the ball forward against Portland Timbers midfielder Diego Chara (21) during the MLS Cup Final between the Portland Timbers and New York City FC on December 11, 2021 at Providence Park in Portland, Oregon.
Brian Murphy | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images More

A former longtime employee accused Stew Leonard’s and CEO Stew Leonard Jr. of creating a hostile work environment.
The suit cites “systemic racial, sexual, religious and ageist discriminatory practices” carried out by management.
“We understand he brought a lawsuit and we will review it with our attorneys, however we do not comment on pending litigation,” Leonard Jr. said.

Customers push shopping carts outside a Stew Leonard’s supermarket in Paramus, New Jersey, U.S., on Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Stew Leonard Jr. said that meat packing plant the company uses is operating at about 70 percent capacity, and he expects it to rebound to full capacity in about a month, CT Post reported.
Angus Mordant | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A new federal lawsuit accuses the chief executive of the New York metropolitan area-based Stew Leonard’s grocery store chain of making racist and sexist comments about workers and customers.
Former longtime employee Robert Crosby Jr. also claims in his civil complaint that he was terminated from his job in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act after his bout with Covid-19 left him disabled.

Crosby, a 58-year-old father of four, accuses Stew Leonard’s and CEO Stew Leonard Jr. of creating a hostile work environment. The suit cites “systemic racial, sexual, religious and ageist discriminatory practices” carried out by management.
Crosby is seeking at least $500,000 in damages in the suit filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The claims in the suit contrast with the farm-folksy image of the grocery chain, which once was praised by President Ronald Reagan and business guru Tom Peters. The first Stew Leonard’s opened in 1969 as a small dairy shop in Norwalk, Connecticut. The store, which featured a small petting zoo, farm-themed food displays and animatronic singing animals, experienced explosive growth in size, popularity and publicity in the following decades.
The family-owned company now has almost $400 million in annual revenue at seven locations in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
Leonard Jr. declined to comment on the allegations in Crosby’s suit.

“Robert Crosby, Jr. worked for Stew Leonard’s almost 20 years, but unfortunately we had to part ways,” Leonard Jr. said in a statement provided to CNBC on Tuesday. “We understand he brought a lawsuit and we will review it with our attorneys, however we do not comment on pending litigation.”
Crosby, a former loss-prevention manager, “verbally opposed” the alleged slurs and practices during his employment, the suit says.
The lawsuit also alleges that Leonard Jr. joked about the discovery several years ago of human remains and tombstones from an abandoned Orthodox Jewish cemetery located on and near the grounds of a Yonkers, New York store. The suit says workers were ordered to bury the tombstones so that “no one could find them” by the store’s president — Leonard Jr.’s cousin — who later told them to throw the human remains into a dumpster.
Crosby’s suit alleges that ever since he began working at the Yonkers location in 2001, he and his co-workers were “subjected to a workplace environment that was hostile and toxic.”
The lawsuit alleges Leonard Jr. repeatedly referred to women as “b—–s,” called two white Jewish employees his “resident Jews,” regularly referred to Black employees as “thugs” and the N-word, and made comments about Black employees’ body parts. Crosby’s suit also says he witnessed Leonard Jr. repeatedly say that Jews were the “worst customers to deal with.”
The suit also describes a company Christmas party in the early 2000s at which Leonard Jr. “insisted that upper management wear sexually suggestive and inappropriate attire including fake breasts, lingerie, sex toys and present a sexually suggestive and offensive skit.”
Crosby claims he complained several times about Leonard Jr.’s alleged practices to the company’s head of human resources. He says in the suit that she told him that “Stew’s just being Stew,” and that “he has no filter.”

Covid fight

According to Crosby’s suit, when the coronavirus began spreading widely in the United States in March 2020, Crosby complained about the lack of personal protective equipment at the store, the lack of social distancing and a ban on workers wearing protective masks on site. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, the suit says.
Crosby’s suit says that he contracted Covid in April 2020, after 50 co-workers tested positive the prior month. He says he developed symptoms that “were extreme and life-threatening” and included “loss of smell and taste, nausea, brain fog, Epstein Barr Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and memory loss. This required hospitalization, the suit adds.

Stew Leonard Jr.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

The suit says he developed “Long Haul Covid,” and that he was pressured to return to work after having been reluctantly granted medical leave. (Long Covid patients experience symptoms for months after they are infected.) During a subsequent six-day hospitalization in September 2020 for complications from Covid, Crosby was ordered by the vice president of the Yonkers store to “work from his hospital bed.”
Crosby says he was fired later that month after Stew Leonard’s refused to grant him a short leave from work so he could recover from Covid, according to his lawsuit.
Crosby filed the suit after he received a notice of probable cause issued by the New York State Division of Human Rights in response to a charge of discrimination he filed against Stew Leonard’s in 2021. 
The notice said the division determined that probable cause exists to believe that Stew Leonard’s and Leonard Jr. engaged in unlawful discriminatory practices. It also indicated that Crosby had alleged Leonard would “use the ‘N’ word freely multiple times.” In March, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued Crosby a notice of a right to sue Stew Leonard’s after he had filed an EEOC complaint against his former employer.

Graveyard controversy

Crosby also describes in his lawsuit the discovery of tombstones from May 2004 up to 2009 on the leased land occupied by Stew Leonard’s in Yonkers.
Crosby alleges that a company executive directed him and his coworkers to bury the tombstones “where no one can find them.” He also claims they were told they would lose their jobs if anyone found out about it.
In 2009, according to the lawsuit, Crosby and other workers discovered human bones while investigating a fire. They were told to “get coffee burlap bags and discard the bones in the dumpster,” the suit says.
“Defendant Leonard Jr. jokingly referred to the discovery of human remains and tombstones, which were determined to be the remains of an Orthodox Jewish Cemetery, as ‘The Yonkers Holocaust,'” the suit alleges.
Crosby’s suit alleges he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments after his bosses threatened to fire him if he told others about the bones.
Crosby’s allegations could shed new light on a story that broke in 2004, when the New York attorney general’s office alleged that a New Jersey developer may have failed to comply with a 1989 court order to arrange for the relocation of all of the remains from the cemetery when they developed the Yonkers site that came to house Stew Leonard’s and two other stores, Costco and Home Depot. The remains were supposed to have been reinterred in Israel, according to media reports at the time.
Two tombstones were found discarded near Stew Leonard’s in 2004 on the heels of those allegations, according to published reports.
Then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer claimed that the remains of up to 135 children may have been left behind during the disinterment project. The developer, Morris Industrial Builders, in 2005 agreed to settle the case with Spitzer by putting up a monument near the site of the former cemetery and to give any of the $100,000 settlement left after the monument was erected to a non-profit organization.
At the time, a lawyer for Morris Industrial said “there was no admission of ‘inappropriate behavior or improper conduct’ and maintained that all the bodies in the cemetery had been reburied,” according to a 2005 Associated Press article on the case.
The Stew Leonard’s chain’s image previously took a hit in 1993, when Stew Leonard Sr. pleaded guilty to federal charges in a $17.1 million tax fraud scheme that involved the siphoning off of store cash receipts into his private coffers. The elder Leonard was sentenced to more than four years in prison in the case, which also saw guilty pleas by his wife’s two brothers, both of whom were top executives at the store at the time.
Court records from the case filed by federal prosecutors show that Leonard Jr. received immunity as part of the deal by his dad and uncles to plead guilty, and that Leonard Jr. allegedly participated in a cash-skimming conspiracy that led to the tax charges.

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WARRENTON, Va. – During a morning meeting in early May, staff at the federal air traffic command center rattle off a few of the day’s obstacles: storms near the Florida coast and in Texas, a military aircraft exercise, and a report of a bird strike at Newark Liberty International Airport.
The center, about an hour’s drive from Washington, D.C., is responsible for coordinating the complex web of more than 40,000 flights a day over the U.S. Shortly after 7 a.m. ET, there were already 3,500 flights in the air. During peak travel periods, that figure can climb to more than 5,000 flights at once. 

As air travel rebounds to near pre-Covid pandemic levels even as airlines remain understaffed, the agency and carriers are trying to control the rising rate of delays and cancellations that can ruin vacations and cost airlines tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
The problems are coming during the high-demand spring and summer travel season, which also coincides with some of the most disruptive weather for airlines — thunderstorms.
LaKisha Price, the air traffic manager at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center, said staff are monitoring potential problems in the nation’s airspace “every day, every hour.”
The center is staffed 24/7.

The FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center.
Erin Black | CNBC

From the start of the year through June 13, airlines canceled 3% of the roughly 4 million commercial U.S. flights for that period, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. Another 20% were delayed, with passengers waiting an average of 48 minutes.

Over the same period in 2019 before the pandemic, 2% of flights were canceled and 17% delayed, with a similar average wait time, according to FlightAware.

LaKisha Price Air Traffic Manager at the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center
Erin Black | CNBC

Typically, the FAA manages the flow of air traffic in part by holding inbound traffic at originating airports or slowing arrivals.
Flight cancellations and delays last year and in 2022 have raised concerns among some lawmakers.

No easy fixes

With no quick fix in sight, the FAA and airlines are scrambling to find other solutions. One option has been allowing airlines to fly at lower altitudes to avoid weather challenges, even though the approach burns more fuel.
Airlines are coming up with their own solutions, too. In April, American Airlines launched a program called HEAT that analyzes traffic and potential disruptions, which lets it identify which flights to delay as early as possible to avoid a cascade of cancellations.
“We can start hours in advance, in some cases five, six hours in advance of what we believe the storm is going to be,” said David Seymour, American Airlines’ chief operating officer.
“We’ve got to be able to be very nimble and adaptive to the scenario as it plays out,” he added.
The pandemic slowed air traffic controller training, but the FAA hired more than 500 new controllers last year to bring its workforce to about 14,000. The agency wants to hire more than 4,800 more over the next five years. The FAA said it is in the middle of a hiring a campaign called “Be ATC” and said it will work with social media influencers and hold Instagram Live events about the job.
The job isn’t for everyone. Applicants can be no older than 30 and must retire when they turn 56. Pilots in the U.S. are forced to retire at 65 and airlines are currently facing a wave of retirements, some of which were sped up in the pandemic when carriers urged them to leave early to cut their costs. Lawmakers this year have been considering a bill that would raise the pilot retirement age at least two years.

Storms in Texas

Back at the command center, the cavernous room where air traffic specialists, airline and private aviation industry members, and meteorologists work features large screens showing air traffic and weather high along the main wall. It shows a bird’s-eye view of the country’s air traffic, which has been rebounding so fast that fares are outpacing 2019 levels.
“The problem is Texas right now,” John Lucia, national traffic management officer at the center, during one of the morning meetings. He was pointing to a cluster of thunderstorms that were threatening to delay dozens of flights at east Texas airports.
He noted the weather was set to hit the Dallas-Forth Worth area at around 10 a.m.
“So it gives us a couple hours to worry about it,” said Lucia, a more than three-decade FAA veteran.
Last year, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport became the world’s second busiest thanks to booming U.S. travel and a dearth of international trips. The airport is the home hub of American Airlines. Nearby is also Dallas Love Field, the home base of Southwest Airlines.
Inclement weather causes 70% of U.S. flight delays in an average year, according to the FAA. But there are other reasons for delays, too.
“We’ve seen people streaking on the runway,” said Price, the center’s air traffic manager. “We’ve had wildlife on the runways. You have to be ready for everything.”

Florida congestion

Some of the most congested airspace has been in Florida. The state has long been a top tourist destination, but became even more of a hot spot during the pandemic for travelers seeking outdoor getaways. Some airports like Tampa and Miami are seeing higher numbers of airline capacity compared with before Covid-19 hit.
At the same time, the state is prone to thunderstorms that can back up air traffic for hours. Airlines and the FAA have sparred over who’s at fault, with carriers sometimes blaming air traffic control, including ATC staffing shortfalls, for delays which cost them by the minute.
One solution from airlines has been to pare down their flying despite surging demand. JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines, Alaska Airlines and most recently, Delta Air Lines, have trimmed their schedules back as they grapple with staffing shortages and routine challenges like weather, to give themselves more backup for when things go wrong.
In May, the FAA organized a two-day meeting with airlines in Florida about some of the recent delays. Afterward, the FAA said it would ramp up staffing at the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center, which oversees in-air traffic in five states — Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and North and South Carolina — and tends to deal with challenges from bad weather, space launches and military training exercises.

Arrows pointing outwards

The FAA stopped short of capping flights serving Florida but had said it would help airlines come up with alternative routes and altitudes.
For example, the agency is also routing more traffic over the Gulf of Mexico, Price said.
Spring and summer thunderstorms are among the most difficult challenges because they can be so unpredictable.
American’s Seymour said the airline can still improve, “We’re continuing to look to find better ways to get to manage these situations.”

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The United Arab Emirates’ Media Regulatory Office announced it would ban Disney Pixar’s “Lightyear” based on what it said was “violation of the country’s media content standards.”
The ban comes despite an announcement last year that the country would no longer censor films.

Tim Allen and Tom Hanks voice Buzz Lightyear and Sheriff Woody in Pixar’s “Toy Story.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Disney Pixar’s animated movie “Lightyear” hits theaters this week and is expected to draw enthusiastic “Toy Story” fans from a number of countries around the world.  
Not in the United Arab Emirates, though. 

The UAE’s Media Regulatory Office announced Monday it would ban the movie’s release, based on what it said was “violation of the country’s media content standards,” the office wrote in a tweet. The feature film was scheduled for release in UAE theaters on Thursday.
The government body didn’t specify in its tweet which part of “Lightyear” violated its content standards, but Executive Director Rashid Khalfan Al Nuaimi told Reuters it was based on the the inclusion of homosexual characters. The movie features a same-sex relationship and brief kiss.
The decision received mixed reactions online, with some Twitter users praising the move.
“Thank you so much for saving our children,” one user, whose bio contained UAE flags, said in response to the tweet.
Others criticized the ban, with one user writing, “A country still living in the 1300s.” 

As of late Tuesday in Dubai, “Lightyear” was still advertised as premiering on Thursday on the UAE’s Vox Cinemas website. Disney did not immediately return request for comment from CNBC.

An inflatable Disney+ logo is pictured at a press event ahead of launching a streaming service in the Middle East and North Africa, at Dubai Opera in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, June 7, 2022.
Yousef Saba | Reuter

Homosexuality is criminalized in the UAE, as well as the rest of the Gulf countries and the majority of the Muslim world. According to entertainment news website Deadline Hollywood, “Lightyear” won’t be playing in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt or Indonesia — the latter being the most populous Muslim country in the world with 274 million people. 
It also won’t be playing in Malaysia, according to a tweet by the country’s major movie theater chain GSC, which posted a photo of Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear character and the words, “No beyond” — a reference to the character’s catchphrase, “to infinity and beyond.”
The UAE ban comes despite an announcement last year that the country would no longer censor movies. That change was part of a broader raft of modernizing reforms including the decriminalization of premarital sex and a shift from the Islamic weekend (Friday-Saturday) to the Saturday-Sunday weekend, in a push to be more competitive globally and attract additional foreign investment and talent. 

Woman sunbathers sit along a beach in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on July 24, 2020, while behind is seen the Burj al-Arab hotel.
KARIM SAHIB | AFP via Getty Images

For years the UAE has cast itself as a modern, tolerant haven in an otherwise highly conservative region. The oil-rich desert sheikhdom is home to a 90% expat population, and allows drinking alcohol, wearing bikinis on public beaches, and other cultural elements often forbidden in Muslim countries.
Its nightclubs resemble those in Europe, it regularly hosts concerts of famous rappers and pop stars, and it even relaxed the penalties on some of its drug laws last year. In 2016, it established a Ministry of Tolerance.
Homosexuality, however, remains taboo in the country. When the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, published an Instagram post featuring a rainbow and expressing its support for the LGBTQ+ community, it was met with backlash from users within the country.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. Embassy has celebrated LGBTQ+ rights in the UAE. Last year, it raised the Pride flag on its premises, marking the first time any diplomatic mission has flown a gay pride flag in the religiously conservative Arab Gulf. The British Embassy also raised a Pride flag last year.

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The union organizing Starbucks workers alleges that the coffee chain is threatening to take away gender-affirming health care coverage for transgender employees.
Starbucks denied the union’s claim.
More than 100 of the coffee chain’s 9,000 U.S. cafes have voted to unionize under Workers United in the last seven months.

A protester waves a sign near the Country Club Plaza Starbucks store where dozens of Starbucks employees and union supporters protested alleged anti-union tactics by the company Thursday, March 3, 2022.
Jill Toyoshiba | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

Starbucks is telling its baristas that unionizing could jeopardize the gender-affirming health care coverage for transgender employees that the company offers, according to a complaint filed with the federal labor board.
The complaint comes after more than 100 of the coffee chain’s 9,000 U.S. cafes have voted to unionize under Workers United in the last seven months. Under interim CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks has been trying to counter the union push by emphasizing the potential shortcomings of collective bargaining, such as federal labor laws that prohibit the company from unilaterally hiking wages across unionized cafes without contract negotiations.

The union’s latest complaint against Starbucks, first reported by Bloomberg, was filed Monday. A transgender employee at an Oklahoma City location told the publication that she believed her manager used a “veiled threat” in a conversation. The manager reportedly told the employee that her benefits could improve, stay the same or worsen if the store unionized and referred specifically to her use of the trans health-care benefits.
Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges told CNBC that the claim is false.
The company’s health insurance has covered gender reassignment surgery since 2012 and a wider array of gender-affirming procedures, such as hair transplants or breast reduction, since 2018. Last month, the coffee chain announced it would cover travel expenses for gender-affirming surgeries as state lawmakers target transgender rights.
As of mid-March, more than 150 anti-trans bills had been introduced in state legislatures seeking to limit access to health care, sports, bathrooms and education, according to NBC News. Oklahoma, for example, has passed three anti-trans laws this year.
Starbucks often touts its long history of supporting LGBTQ+ workers and the broader community, particularly during Pride Month in June. The company notes its decades-old policies including health care coverage for same-sex domestic partnerships and employees with terminal illnesses, which was inspired by a Starbucks worker who died of complications from AIDs.

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Ford is instructing dealers to temporarily stop selling electric Mustang Mach-E crossovers due to a potential safety defect that could cause the vehicles to become immobile.
The issue can lead to a malfunction that could cause the vehicle not to start or immediately lose propulsion power while in motion, a dealer notice states.
The problem is notable, as automakers continue to have problems launching new electric vehicles. Ford, in recent years, also has experienced problematic vehicle launches.

People visit Ford’s all-electric SUV Mustang Mach-E at the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, the United States, Nov. 22, 2019.
Xinhua via Getty Images

DETROIT – Ford Motor is instructing dealers to temporarily stop selling electric Mustang Mach-E crossovers due to a potential safety defect that could cause the vehicles to become immobile.
Ford, in a notice Monday to its dealers, said potentially affected vehicles include 2021 and 2022 Mach-Es that were built from May 27, 2020, through May 24, 2022, at the automaker’s Cuautitlan plant in Mexico.

Nearly 49,000 of the roughly 100,000 Mach-Es produced during that time frame will be part of a recall, Ford spokesman Said Deep told CNBC.
The problem involves a potential overheating of the vehicle’s high voltage battery main contactors, which is an electrically controlled switch for a power circuit. The issue can lead to a malfunction that could cause the vehicle not to start or immediately lose propulsion power while in motion, the notice states.
The recall is notable, as automakers continue to have problems launching new electric vehicles. Ford, in recent years, also has experienced problematic vehicle launches, leading to high recall and warranty costs.

Ford has issued a handful of recalls regarding the Mach-E since its launch, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website. They’ve ranged from a software error causing unintended acceleration in less than 500 vehicles earlier this year to problems with loose subframe bolts and inadequate bonding for thousands of the vehicle’s glass panel roofs.
Deep said Ford has submitted a recall petition to NHTSA, which handles such matters. The federal vehicle safety watchdog did not immediately respond regarding confirmation of the filing.

Ford expects to offer a solution for the problem in the third quarter, according to the bulletin. Mustang Mach-E owners will be notified via mail after repair instructions and parts ordering information have been provided to dealers.
Deep said the company’s remedy will include a software update to the vehicle’s “Secondary On-Board Diagnostic Control Module and Battery Energy Control Module.” It will be conducted remotely, or over-the-air. Customers also have the option of taking their vehicle to a Ford dealer.

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In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut.
Mortgage rates have taken off since the start of this year, rising from 3.29% in early January to 6.28% now, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Home sales have been dropping for several straight months, and the fall is expected to worsen.

Real estate firms Redfin and Compass are laying off workers, as mortgage rates rise sharply and home sales drop.
In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut.

Shares of both companies fell Tuesday. Redfin’s stock touched a new 52-week low.
Rising rates and overheated home prices, which are now up over 20% from a year ago according to various surveys, have crushed affordability. Home sales have been dropping for several straight months, and the fall is expected to worsen.

A Redfin Corp. ‘For Sale’ sign stands outside of a home in Seattle, Washington.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Mortgage demand has fallen to its lowest level in over two decades. Rates have taken off since the start of this year, rising from 3.29% in early January to 6.28% now, according to Mortgage News Daily. Rates shot up more than half a percentage point in just the past three days, as concerns over inflation hit the bond market.
“Due to the clear signals of slowing economic growth we’ve taken a number of measures to safeguard our business and reduce costs, including pausing expansion efforts and the difficult decision to reduce the size of our employee team by approximately 10%,” a Compass spokesperson said.
The Redfin filing had an attachment from CEO Glenn Kelman, who writes a regular blog on the company’s website. In the blog posted Tuesday, Kelman wrote, “With May demand 17% below expectations, we don’t have enough work for our agents and support staff, and fewer sales leaves us with less money for headquarters projects.”
Kelman went on to say that with mortgage rates increasing faster than at any point in history, “We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive. If falling from $97 per share to $8 doesn’t put a company through heck, I don’t know what does.”

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Elon Musk said the company will have a Starship prototype rocket “ready to fly” by July, with his space venture aiming to reach orbit with the vehicle for the first time.
The FAA made a crucial environmental decision on Monday that concluded a long-awaited assessment of the Starship program.
The company is developing its nearly 400-foot-tall, reusable Starship rocket with the goal of carrying cargo and people beyond Earth.

Starship prototypes are pictured at the SpaceX South Texas launch site in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., May 22, 2022. Picture taken May 22, 2022. 
Veronica Cardenas | Reuters

SpaceX is closing in on the next major milestone in its Starship rocket development, as the company works to complete environmental impact requirements outlined this week by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Elon Musk on Tuesday said the company will have a Starship prototype rocket “ready to fly” by July, with his space venture aiming to reach orbit with the vehicle for the first time.

SpaceX had hoped to conduct the Starship orbital flight test as early as last summer, but delays in development progress and regulatory approval steadily pushed back that timeline. The FAA made a crucial environmental decision Monday that concluded a long-awaited assessment of the program. SpaceX needs to fulfill more than 75 of the agency’s actions before applying for the launch license required for the flight test.
Musk said in a series of tweets that he spent time at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday evening “reviewing progress” on the rocket. He added that the company “will have a second Starship stack ready to fly in August” and aims to conduct flights “monthly thereafter.”
The company is developing its nearly 400-foot-tall, reusable Starship rocket with the goal of carrying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket and its Super Heavy booster are powered by SpaceX’s Raptor series of engines. SpaceX has completed multiple high-altitude flight tests with Starship prototypes, but it has yet to reach space.

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