Copa América: celebrations in Buenos Aires (video)

 

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Porsche announces joint venture

 

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Volkswagen's luxury sports car unit Porsche AG is setting up a joint venture with Customcells to produce high-performance batteries that will significantly reduce charging times.

The partnership with Customcells, a company in southern Germany specializing in lithium-ion cells, will aim to produce car batteries with higher energy density than prototypes used in Porsche's current electric cars.

European carmakers are pushing to reduce their dependence on Asia for batteries as they roll out all-electric models to meet stricter emissions targets in the European Union.

In addition to cutting charging time, improving energy density will reduce the amount of raw material needed in batteries to achieve the same range. It will also cut battery production costs, making electric cars more affordable.

Porsche will invest a high double-digit million euro sum in the joint venture in which it will hold 80%.

The production facility will have a capacity of 100 kilowatt hours, which will translate into about enough batteries for 1,000 cars a year.

Porsche's parent company Volkswagen will build half a dozen battery cell plants across Europe and expand infrastructure for charging electric vehicles globally.

 

Adapted from MSN Money

Thanks for making this flight ‘a living hell’

 

An American Airlines flight attendant was captured on viral TikTok video berating passengers who verbally abused the crew after the flight was diverted in bad weather.

In the viral clip, a 22-year-old man on the Monday flight from LA to Charlotte, North Carolina, calls a female flight attendant “a fat gorilla” and also shouted obscenities at her after she told him to wear a face mask.

“There was absolutely no excuse for it,” said musician Brent Underwood, 39, of the band 87&Pine, who recorded the video.“It doesn’t matter what you look like. Everybody deserves respect. And everybody deserves to be punished equally for being a rude person like that. Why would you call a person a fat gorilla?”.

Bad weather forced the flight to divert to the Raleigh Durham airport, where it sat for three hours and was refueled. It had circled the Charlotte airport for a half-hour earlier.

When a male flight attendant announces the flight would return to Raleigh if passengers don’t behave, a woman sarcastically complains that the crew members were just upset because they hadn’t eaten, the video shows.

“Give them a Snickers!” a passenger yells.

While sitting in Raleigh, only water and cookies were available onboard.

“Just like you, we have not eaten also,” the male flight attendant is heard telling the passengers. “We’ve catered to you the entire flight. We do it because we love this job. But the fact that we get insulted and mistreated by passengers over things we cannot control is disgusting. But shame on the passengers that have made this flight a living hell for the flight attendants.”

His comments were met by applause in the cabin.

“Flight attendants on @officialamericanairways are done with your b.s.!” Underwood wrote on TikTok with the hashtags #AmericanAirlines, #facemask and #dumbcustomers.

“The flight crew did absolutely nothing wrong. They were more professional than I would have been.”

American Airlines said in a statement: “We take the health and safety of our customers seriously, and our crew members work hard to uphold the federal mask mandate that remains in effect on aircraft and in airports.

“We value the trust our customers place in our team to care for them throughout their journey, and we expect those who choose to fly with us to treat each other — and our team members — with respect,” it added.

None of the passengers were removed or arrested, according to the report.

Article and video from The New York Post 

Piling up cargo is making US inflation worse

 

 

Shipping containers are stacked high at the Port of Los Angeles

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

How about filling in the blanks with the English for the given words?

John Nephew thought he had a winner with a new tabletop game called Dice Miner. ………………….. (sin embargo) Importing the games from China turned out to be its own roll of the dice.

Nephew, founder of Atlas Games in Duluth, Minn., ordered a 40-foot cargo container full of games from Shanghai in December, anticipating delivery in about six weeks. ………………….. (en cambio), the games took nearly six months to arrive — an increasingly common example of the supply chain bottlenecks pushing inflation to its highest level in more than a dozen years.

When the cargo with his games finally arrived on the West Coast, the container was immediately emptied so it could be sent back to China for another load.

The games then continued on to Minnesota by truck, …………………..  (en vez de) rail, which would have been more economical. The final shipping cost was about $12,000, at least 50% more than the game maker had budgeted.

Businesses around the country are wrestling with similar challenges in getting their goods. Soaring demand from Americans for everything from iPads to cars is leading to a surge in freight crossing the Pacific, hitting business owners such as Nephew.

………………….. (Aunque) things aren't quite so busy on the East Coast, the cost of bringing a refrigerated container from Italy to New Jersey has soared to $10,000, more than twice the going rate before the pandemic.

"They say there are not enough containers in Europe" says Philip Marfuggi, CEO of the Ambriola Co. and a board member of the Cheese Importers Association of America. “It not only takes up to twice as long for shipments to arrive, but deliveries have become less predictable. Like the other day, I had eight containers show up. They should have been like two a week. And then all of a sudden, they all showed up at once."

All of this unpredictability creates costs and headaches for businesses that had grown accustomed to reliable, just-in-time delivery.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said ………………….. (dado que) these "bottleneck effects" have been larger than he and his colleagues anticipated, the central bank raised its forecast for inflation this year to 3.4%.    ………………….. (De todos modos)  Powell expressed confidence that the cargo constraints won't last indefinitely.

"Prices have moved up really quickly ………………….. (debido a)  the shortages and bottlenecks and the like — they should stop going up, and at some point they in some cases should actually go down," Powell told reporters last week.

The Biden administration has created a task force to address the most urgent shortages – such as computer chips – ………………….. (al mismo tiempo) also looking for ways to build more resilient delivery networks for the future.

………………….. (Como) pandemic fears are receding and people are beginning to spend more of their money on travel and entertainment, demand for goods is expected to decline.      ………………….. (A pesar de eso),  it could take months to untangle the traffic jam.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the country's busiest cargo port thinks it will be early next year before cargo volumes shrink back to more normal levels.

That's bad news for business owners such as Nephew, who is already bracing for even higher shipping costs.

“…………………………..(Aunque) I had to pay 50% more to ship my Dice Miner games, that shipping price is going to look like a bargain within the next couple of weeks", Nephew says.

 

The Port of Los Angeles logged its busiest month in history in May.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Adapted from NPR