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American Airlines flight attendants on Thursday voted on a new five-year labor deal, giving cabin crews more than 20% immediate raises.
The approval ends one of the industry’s most contentious labor negotiations.
Airline and other workers have pressed companies for higher pay and better benefits.

Julie Hedrick, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, right, announces a strike authorization outside Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport near Dallas on Aug. 30, 2023.
Shelby Tauber | Bloomberg | Getty Images

American Airlines flight attendants approved a five-year labor deal, ending one of the industry’s most contentious contract negotiations and giving cabin crews raises of up to 20.5% at the start of October.
Eighty-seven percent of the American Airlines flight attendants who voted approved the contract, the union said Thursday, shortly after polls closed.

“This contract marks a significant milestone for our Flight Attendants, providing immediate wage increases of up to 20.5%, along with significant retroactive pay to address time spent negotiating,” said Julie Hedrick, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents the carrier’s roughly 28,000 cabin crew members.
Flight attendants are the biggest unionized work group at the Fort Worth-based airline.
The contract deal is a relief for American Airlines’ leaders, which had faced a strike threat from flight attendants if the two sides could not get to a deal. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Labor Secretary Julie Su had attended negotiations in June, overseen by the National Mediation Board. More than 160 lawmakers have also pushed the NMB to get to deals across the airline industry.

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“Reaching an agreement for our flight attendants has been a top priority, and today, we celebrate achieving this important milestone,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said in a statement.
Flight attendants, similar to other airline workers, have pushed for higher pay and other work-rule improvements after the Covid-19 pandemic derailed negotiations and the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years.

United Airlines and its flight attendants’ union are still negotiating for a new contract, while Alaska Airlines cabin crew members recently rejected a tentative labor deal.
Other industries have also won higher pay in new contracts, some of them after strikes, such as in the auto industry and in Hollywood.
Some 33,000 Boeing workers are voting on Thursday on a new contract with 25% raises, which some workers have said they will reject. Boeing faces a potential strike if the deal is rejected.

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Stellantis’ U.S. dealer network has joined the United Auto Workers union in criticizing CEO Carlos Tavares for recent sales declines, factory production cuts and other decisions.
The head of Stellantis’ U.S. dealer council condemned Tavares for prioritizing the company’s profits at the cost of sales, market share and the reputations of its American brands.
The UAW is holding a rally Thursday afternoon near Stellantis’ Warren Truck Plant in suburban Detroit to “condemn the gross mismanagement” at the company.

Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, poses during a presentation at the New York International Auto Show in Manhattan, New York, on April 5, 2023.
David Dee Delgado | Reuters

DETROIT – Stellantis’ U.S. dealer network has joined the United Auto Workers union in criticizing CEO Carlos Tavares for the company’s recent sales declines, factory production cuts and other decisions they deem detrimental to the automaker’s business.
In an open letter to Tavares this week, the head of Stellantis’ U.S. dealer council, Kevin Farrish, condemned the chief executive for prioritizing the company’s profits at the cost of sales, market share and the reputations of its Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram brands. The council represents the company’s 2,600 U.S. dealers.

“The market share of your brands has been slashed nearly in half, Stellantis stock price is tumbling, plants are closing, layoffs are rampant, and key executives fleeing the company. Investor lawsuits, supplier lawsuits, strikes–the fallout is mounting. Your own distribution network, your dealer body, has been left in an anemic and diminished state,” Farrish wrote in the Tuesday letter, which Bloomberg first reported Wednesday night.
Farrish, a dealer in Virginia, said the dealer council has raised concerns about the company’s operations for two years, and accused Tavares of “reckless short-term decision making” that boosted profits and padded his compensation but have led to the “rapid degradation” of its brands, he wrote.

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Stocks of Stellantis, GM and Ford

Stellantis, in a statement Wednesday night, said it takes “absolute exception to the letter,” citing a 21% increase in August sales over July and an “action plan developed with the dealer body.”
“At Stellantis, we don’t believe that public personal attacks, such as the one in the open letter from the NDC president against our CEO, are the most effective way to solve problems,” the company said. “We have started a path that will prove successful. We will continue to work with our dealers to avoid any public disputes that will delay our ability to deliver results.”
Stellantis reported a record profit in 2023, but so far this year, the automaker reported a first-half net profit of 5.6 billion euros ($6.07 billion), down 48% from the same period of 2023.

Shares of Stellantis are off roughly 36% this year to around $15. The stock hit a new 52-week low Thursday of $14.76 per share.
Tavares has been on a profit-driven, cost-cutting mission since the company was formed through a merger between Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Groupe in January 2021. It’s part of his “Dare Forward 2030” plan to increase profits and double revenue to 300 billion euros ($325 billion) by 2030.
The cost-saving measures have included reshaping the company’s supply chain and operations as well as headcount reductions and cutting vehicle production at plants.

United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain speaks to the attendees during a campaign rally for U.S. Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in Romulus, Michigan, U.S., August 7, 2024. 
Rebecca Cook | Reuters

Several Stellantis executives described the earlier cuts to CNBC as difficult but effective. Others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to potential repercussions, said they were grueling to the point of excessiveness.
UAW President Shawn Fain also has publicly criticized Tavares, including in a speech last month at the Democratic National Convention. He has accused Tavares of price gouging consumers and failing to uphold parts of the union’s labor contract with the automaker.
The UAW, which represents roughly 38,000 Stellantis employees, is holding a rally Thursday afternoon at a union hall near Stellantis’ Warren Truck Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit to “condemn the gross mismanagement” at the company, according to an email.
U.S. sales for Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, have declined every year since a recent peak of 2.2 million in 2018. The company sold more than 1.5 million vehicles last year, a roughly 1% decline from 2022, when it reported a significant drop of 13% compared with the previous year.
Stellantis’ performance compares to the overall U.S. new light-duty vehicle sales market, which increased 13% last year, according to federal data. More

Airbus Ventures, one of the most prolific investors in space startups, has raised a $155 million fund.
“This fund is designed to unlock new possibilities, and space is one of them,” Thomas d’Halluin, managing partner of Airbus Ventures, told CNBC.
Airbus Ventures currently has $465 million under management, with Fund-Y marking its fourth fund to date. 

Thomas d’Halluin, managing partner of Airbus Ventures, at Hangar One of NASA Ames Research Center’s Moffett Field in California.
Airbus Ventures

Airbus Ventures, one of the most prolific investors in space startups, has raised a $155 million fund that it plans to deploy across the burgeoning space sector, as well as the broader “deep tech” ecosystem.
“This fund is designed to unlock new possibilities, and space is one of them,” Thomas d’Halluin, managing partner of Airbus Ventures, told CNBC.

The move comes as investment in the space industry, especially from venture capital, has been rebounding after two lean years.
Airbus Ventures’ new “Fund-Y” is targeting long-term opportunities in early-stage deep tech startups, which d’Halluin defines as “going back to the laws of physics and not being afraid of what’s difficult.” Historically, deep tech is a classification for companies working on technologies that face steep scientific or engineering obstacles.

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Founded in 2016, Airbus Ventures takes a different tack from traditional corporate venture capital arms. The firm maintains a gap from its eponymous corporation, the European aerospace company, and more than half of Fund-Y comes from outside capital such as institutional investors, private equity and family offices. 
Airbus Ventures currently has $465 million under management, with Fund-Y marking its fourth fund to date. 
About a third of Airbus Ventures’ capital deployed so far has been in the space sector, the firm said, backing 14 pure-play companies in the sector, with notable investments including propulsion startup Impulse, lunar cargo company ispace and tracking service LeoLabs.

“This is about patience. Often, and too often, people want immediate reward. Space is not a place of immediate reward,” d’Halluin said.

The booster of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lands on the company’s barge after launching the Spaceflight SSO-A mission.

He emphasized the importance of funding founders with the “extremely rare” trait of great execution, highlighting Airbus Ventures’ backing of Impulse. The startup was founded by Tom Mueller, best known for developing SpaceX’s family of rocket engines.
“Impulse was successful on its first mission because of the 17 years of experience of Tom at SpaceX,” d’Halluin said.
“That element of human capital we see often neglected in deep tech diligence — this notion of who’s capturing the execution and the knowledge and the skill set in a particular company — is what we’re pointing towards,” he added.
While Airbus Ventures has traditionally deployed the majority of its funds in the U.S., d’Halluin said it intends for Fund-Y to be global. In particular, he sees “very strong momentum” for space startups in Europe and Japan.

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Gilead’s twice-yearly shot reduced HIV infections by 96% in a second large study, the company said.
The data sets the stage for likely FDA approval of lenacapavir for HIV prevention.
Shares rose 3% in premarket trading.

A pharmacist holds a vial of lenacapavir, the new HIV prevention injectable drug.
Nardus Engelbrecht | AP

Gilead’s twice-yearly shot reduced HIV infections by 96% in a second large study, the company said Thursday.
The positive phase-three trial data on lenacapavir sets the stage for likely approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for HIV prevention.

“Now that we have a comprehensive dataset across multiple study populations, Gilead will work urgently with regulatory, government, public health and community partners to ensure that, if approved, we can deliver twice-yearly lenacapavir for PrEP worldwide, for all those who want or need PrEP,” said Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day in a statement.
PrEP or, pre-exposure prophylaxis, is medication taken to prevent getting HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gilead shares climbed more than 1% on Thursday.
The company said 99.9% of participants who received lenacapavir did not acquire HIV, with two cases among 2,180 people. The trial included cisgender men, transgender men, transgender women and gender non-binary people who have sex with partners assigned male at birth.
There were nine cases of HIV in a group of more than 1,000 people assigned to receive Truvada, Gilead’s older daily pill used for prevention and treatment. The company said lenacapavir was 89% more effective than Truvada in the study. 

Lenacapavir and Truvada were also “generally well-tolerated” by patients with no new safety concerns, according to Gilead. The drugmaker plans to present detailed data at an upcoming medical conference. 
Gilead in June also said lenacapavir was 100% effective at preventing HIV in another late-stage trial with cisgender women. None of the approximately 2,000 women in the study who received the shot had contracted HIV by the time of an interim analysis conducted in September 2023. 
In a research note Thursday, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said overall the data on lenacapavir is “solid and consistent across both studies” and populations.
The trial results should lead to an FDA approval and launch in the market by 2025, Yee said. 
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SINCE ITS founding in 1968 Intel has been synonymous with shrinkage. In its first four decades this was high praise. Every two years or so the American chip pioneer came out with new transistors half the size of earlier ones, a regularity that came to be known as Moore’s law, after one of the company’s founders. Twice as many chips thus fit onto roughly the same silicon wafer—and could be sold profitably for roughly the same price. That allowed Intel to corner the market for memory chips and then, when “memories” became commoditised in the 1980s, for the microprocessors which powered the subsequent PC revolution. More

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Among the products of Dog by Dr Lisa, an Australian pet-care brand, you will find a cleanser for sensitive skin, a soothing balm and a cologne. All are free of genetically modified ingredients—and vegan, which dogs are not, at least by choice. Still, canines craving meat need not eat like animals: Butternut Box, a maker of fresh pet food taste-tested by humans, can offer your furry friend a low-fat chicken dish with peas, lentils and “a whiff of sage”. It is the most popular meal it offers. More