The store that sells every home good under the sun now also sells solar panels.
The company announced on Monday that it will sell and install solar panels in the United Kingdom.
Three stores, in Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, will act as a U.K. pilot for the company’s new “solar shops,” where the panels will be sold. Customers across the pond can also order and get a cost estimate of the panels online, and Ikea hopes to have solar shops in all of its U.K. stores by the end of the summer.
The announcement coincided with research conducted by Ikea that found that 33 percent of U.K. homeowners would like to invest in home solar panels as a way to help cut their electricity bills. According to the release, the same study says that customers could save up to 50 percent on their electricity bills with the solar panels.
ASSOCIATED PRESSIkea uses solar power in its stores. In this photo, Joseph Roth checks the installation of South Florida’s largest solar panel array atop the future IKEA store in Miami.
The Guardian reports that Ikea U.K. has made the move to sell the panels even after solar installations experienced a recent decline due to the government cutting subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by a whopping 65 percent. That cut was made just days after the U.K. agreed to help the nation quickly shift to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris in late 2015.
This is Ikea U.K.’s second attempt at selling solar panels. The company had a two-year agreement with the Chinese company, Hanergy, but their partnership ended last year. Ikea UK is now working with the London-based company, SolarCentury, which will provide more efficient panels with a better aesthetic.
“At Ikea we believe that renewable energy is undoubtedly the power of the future,” Joanna Yarrow, head of sustainability at Ikea UK and Ireland said in the announcement. “We’re already using solar power across our operations, and it’s exciting to be able to help households tap into this wonderful source of clean energy.”
Saudi Arabia announced the seemingly impossible. The world’s largest oil producer and owner of an oil company reportedly worth more than $2 trillion, is going to kick its fossil fuel habit, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said yesterday.
"We have developed a case of oil addiction in Saudi Arabia," he told al-Arabiya television news channel, after officially unveiling a plan whose key parts had already been carefully released.
Forty percent of the kingdom’s GDP and a whopping 90 percent of the government’s revenue comes from oil.
But that is coming to an end, Prince Mohammed said.
“By 2020, if oil stops we can survive,” he said. “We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil."
It sounds impossible because it is. There is no way the Saudi economy can be reformed to be able to live without oil in just four years. With oil prices at historic lows and looking like they will stay there for a long time, they may wish they could live without oil in a few years.
But the only way to achieve Prince Mohammed’s admirable and ambitious goal is to do bit of entry-level balance sheet gymnastics.
In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.
The Gulf kingdom owns all of Aramco oil company. It intends to sell shares of the company to outside investors and list it on the Saudi stock exchange. But the government plans to sell only 5 percent of Aramco to outside investors and retain ownership of 95 percent of the company. It will transfer that huge stake into a sovereign wealth fund, where it will be classified as an investment.
And that’s it, though there there is more to it in the long term. But the only way to meet Prince Mohammed’s 2020 timeline is to use some very basic category shifts. As the prince said, once Aramco is a public company and the Saudi’s shares are in a sovereign wealth fund, “technically, on paper, your income will be provided by investment. The remaining issue is how you diversify your investments.”
“There is less to this than meets the eye,” Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note to clients. “It reflects a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets and doesn’t in itself reduce the government’s dependence on oil revenues. In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.”
Longer-term, the Saudi’s will keep selling Aramco shares and invest in other companies, slowly but steadily turning their kingdom from a family-owned oil company into a family-owned investment firm that owns an oil company. But that has to be a very deliberate and incremental process.
You just can’t sell trillions of dollars in a single company’s shares at once, and you can’t reform an oil-addicted economy by just moving around stock certificates.
Etsy has already offered flasks emblazoned with solar panels and canvas prints of photovoltaic equipment.
Now the artisanal goods marketplace is helping people get actual solar panels.
The site, which lets people buy and sell handcrafted home goods and other items, announced this week a pilot program to offer discounts to Etsy users in four states when they install solar panels on their homes. That could help offset the company's carbon footprint, 95 percent of which comes from shipping products.
The company is partnering with the solar energy marketplace Geostellar to measure the impact of each solar installation in terms of emissions reduction. Solar users can get discounts of up to $37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, one of the chief greenhouse gases warming the planet and causing the climate to change. Etsy expects its customers to receive a total average discount of $2,000.
Here's how it works, as explained in a joint press release from the companies:
When a new participant applies for the Etsy Solar pilot program, Geostellar will instantly and interactively tailor a solar energy installation and financing plan to meet the unique needs of each individual household. Geostellar will then provide a discount based on the potential contribution of the clean solar energy generation toward the comprehensive emissions reduction goals of the Etsy community. Etsy developed the process according to Gold Standard requirements to enable those reduction rights to be validated, verified and registered as carbon offsets.
Etsy said it hopes to expand the program over the next year or so. For now, the company is choosing its starter states strategically. Etsy is based in Brooklyn, so it wanted to make sure it started in New York. In Florida, where big utility companies in 2014 quashed state-issued solar incentives, Etsy said it felt it could help bolster the industry.
The company also chose West Virginia and Utah because of those states’ long histories with mining and other causes of pollution.
“We felt like we could have a larger climate impact by helping solar there,” Chelsea Mozen, Etsy's senior sustainability specialist for energy and carbon, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
In February, Etsy became the first U.S. company to be recertified as a benefit corporation, or B corp, by the nonprofit B Lab after going public. As part of the voluntary designation, the company must adhere to strict environmental standards.
"The bigger picture here is that we've been very outspoken about how social good and business can go hand-in-hand -- they're not at odds with each other," Mozen said. "A lot of people on both sides want to say 'If you do social good, then you don't care about profit.' We're really trying to hold them in equal balance. They don't have to be either/or."
Close to 10 million Americans suffer from chronic depression, bipolar disorder, or another serious mental illness. Depression alone is the leading cause of disability worldwide. In the United States, mental illness — including depression — takes an enormous toll on health outcomes, quality of life, and economic productivity.
Despite its importance, mental illness is often poorly understood and subject to misperceptions by the general population, government officials, and even those who suffer from mental illness. Partially as a consequence, just under one-third of individuals with serious mental illness — defined as diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorders that result in functional impairment — go untreated in the United States. In 2014, an estimated 44.7% of the 43.6 million adults with any mental illness, and 68.5% of the 9.8 million adults with serious mental illness received mental health services in the past year.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 12 states where the highest shares of the adult population suffers from serious mental illness.
Click here to see the 12 states struggling with mental illness.
Depression and mental disorders are treatable psychiatric illnesses. Therapy, as well as a huge amount of prescription drugs such as anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers are used to treat serious mental illnesses. Because of this, states with a high share of adults with serious mental illness also tend to have more drugs prescribed per capita. The number of these and other kinds of retail drugs prescribed exceeded the national average of 12.7 prescriptions per capita in all but four of these 12 states. In West Virginia and Kentucky, more than 20 drugs are prescribed per person each year.
While the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness do not necessarily have the nation’s highest poverty rates, mental illness is far more common among people living in poverty. Of adults living in poverty, 8.7% report serious psychological distress, in contrast with 1.2% of adults with incomes at least four times higher than the poverty level — around $50,000 — according to the CDC.
A number of socioeconomic factors are associated with mental illness, either as contributors or outcomes. People with mental illnesses are more likely than others to abuse alcohol or illicit drugs. Residents of states struggling the most with mental illness are not necessarily among the most likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. However, in the majority of states with the highest prevalence of serious mental illness, higher shares of adults report needing, but not receiving, treatment for drug use than the 2.2% national average.
States assign different levels of importance to mental illness. Budget allocation for mental health issues varies considerably between states. Only 12 states have increased their respective mental health authority’s budget in each of the past three years. Idaho is the only state with a disproportionately high share of mentally ill residents to have increased its mental health budget annually over this period. Meanwhile North Carolina, which is also home to one of the highest shares of mentally ill adults, is one of just three states to have reduced its mental health budget every year since 2013.
Several states with a relatively high share of adults with mental illness are implementing progressive policies to better address societal issues associated with mental illness. Indiana, for instance, implemented a policy last year requiring state police academies to provide a crisis intervention overview to all police trainees for emergency instances involving the mentally ill.
To determine the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the share of the adult population with a serious mental illness in each state based on surveys conducted between 2013 and 2014 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Serious mental illness is defined as “having, at any time during the past year, a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder that causes serious functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.” The prevalence of any mental illness, which serious mental disorders that may not have impaired life activities for example, also came from SAMHSA. The percentage of adults reporting at least one major depressive episode in the past year, the share of adults who had suicidal thoughts in the past year, and alcohol and illicit drug abuse rates also came from SAMHSA. Per capita drug prescription rates came from the Kaiser Family Foundation. State mental health legislation and spending was compiled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We also considered poverty rates, uninsured rates, and educational attainment rates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) as well as 2015 annual unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These are the 12 states struggling the most with mental illness, according to 24/7 Wall St.
AP IMAGES FOR AMERICAN EXPRESS
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 361,000 (8th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.7% (20th lowest) > Poverty rate: 17.6% (13th highest)
Of North Carolina adults, an estimated 4.7% have a diagnosable mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder — that is, serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, and eating disorders. This is the 12th highest share of all states. Mental illness is associated in particular with thoughts of suicide. In North Carolina, 4.3% of adults reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the eighth highest percentage in the nation.
Like only two other states, North Carolina has cut mental health spending in the last three years. Last year, despite the governor’s proposed 4% mental health spending increase, the legislature cut the budget by $84 million, or 14%.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Raymond Boyd via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.7% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 237,000 (13th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (17th highest) > Poverty rate: 15.5% (24th highest)
In Indiana, 7.6% of adults reported having at least one major depressive episode last year, one of the largest shares in the country. Chronic and persistent depression that interferes with day-to-day functioning is one of several serious mental illnesses that an estimated 4.7% of adults in Indiana struggles with.
In light of the relative prevalence of mental illness in the state, Indiana increased its mental health authority’s budget in 2015. The same year, Senate Bill 380 directed the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute to create a central resource for training, funding, and other technical assistance for crisis intervention teams across the state. The bill also requires state police academies to provide mental health crisis intervention overviews to all police trainees.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
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> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 97,000 (19th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.8% (3rd lowest) > Poverty rate: 12.8% (15th lowest)
Slightly more than one in every five adults in Utah are living with some form of mental illness, which includes serious mental illness as well as a range of other less severe disorders, a larger share than in all but four other states. The share of adults living with serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or chronic depression, at 4.8% is considerably higher than the 4.0% of American adults with such an illness.
Unlike some states, Utah is taking active measures to treat mental health issues. Last year, the state was applauded by NAMI for passing House Bill 209, requiring certain behavioral health specialists to complete additional suicide prevention training to renew their license to practice. Of Utah adults, an estimated 4.8% reported having thoughts of suicide in the past year, the highest percentage in the country.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Tim Graham via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 109,000 (21st lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.3% (10th lowest) > Poverty rate: 22.6% (the highest)
Psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among more financially well-off individuals. Financial distress may partially explain the relatively high prevalence of serious mental illness in Mississippi, where 22.6% of people live in poverty, the highest poverty rate in the nation. Furthermore, 4.8% of adults in Mississippi are estimated to have a serious, diagnosable mental illness, among the highest percentages nationwide.
In addition to therapy, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat serious mental illness. In Mississippi, 17.7 of these and other kinds of medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the fourth highest prescriptions per capita in the country.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.8% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 434,000 (5th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.3% (18th highest) > Poverty rate: 15.9% (19th highest) Substance use is more common among those suffering from mental distress.
Substances such as tobacco, alcohol and other drugs are frequently used as self-medication. In Ohio, 9.3% of adults abuse or are dependent on alcohol or illicit drugs, higher than the 8.8% national substance abuse rate. Adults in the state are also more likely than most American adults to suffer from short-term episodes of major depression. Of Ohio adults, 7.2% reported suffering from at least one major depressive episode within the past year, the ninth highest share of any state. Along with substance abuse and depression, adults in the state are also more likely to suffer from serious mental illness than most Americans. In Ohio, 4.8% of adults are living with a serious mental illness, one of the largest such shares in the country.
With relative prevalence of mental illness, Ohio residents are some of the most medicated in the country. Each year, roughly 17.5 prescriptions are filled for every state resident, considerably more than the 12.7 prescriptions filled for every American annually.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 59,000 (12th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.1% (23rd highest) > Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)
In Idaho, 20.3% of adults have some sort of mental disorder, including serious mental illnesses as well as less severe mental disorders, one of the largest shares in the country and considerably more than the 17.8% share of American adults suffering from a mental illness. Of the state’s mentally ill residents, roughly 59,000 suffer from a serious mental illness — schizophrenia, severe depression, and other disorder that can cause severe functional impairment.
Perhaps because mental illness is more common in Idaho than in much of the rest of the country, the state is investing more in treatment programs. While many states are reducing funding for mental health services, Idaho’s Mental Health Services department’s budget has increased in each of the last three years, one of only 12 states to do so.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 230,000 (16th highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.5% (18th lowest) > Poverty rate: 15.6% (20th highest)
Nearly one in every 20 adults in Missouri report serious mental illness, which include a range of psychiatric ailments from schizophrenia to eating disorders. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and undertreated — even for those with health insurance. Some states have taken notable steps to address the issue. Missouri’s legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 145, an act mandating health care providers to cover eating disorders.
Like most states struggling the most with serious mental illness, Missourians are more likely than adults nationwide to report at least one depressive episode or thoughts of suicide within the past year.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 4.9% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 168,000 (21st highest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.9% (5th lowest) > Poverty rate: 18.9% (5th highest)
Kentucky is home to a relatively high share of adults with a serious mental illness. Roughly 168,000 Kentucky adults have a diagnosable serious mental illness, 4.9% of the state’s adult population. By contrast, only 4.0% of American adults grapple with a serious mental illness. Since anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and mood stabilizers are frequently used to treat mental illness, the relative prevalence of mental illness in Kentucky may explain the high level of drug prescriptions in the state. Each year, there are 22 of these and other kinds of prescriptions filled per state resident in a single year, the highest drug prescription rate in the country. Despite the relative prevalence of serious mental health issues, Kentucky has cut funding for its mental health department in each of the last two years.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
DANNY JOHNSTON/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.1% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 115,000 (22nd lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 7.7% (2nd lowest) > Poverty rate: 19.2% (4th highest)
In Arkansas, 7.1% of adults reported having a major depressive episode within the past year, and 4.5% reported having thoughts of suicide, each among the highest shares of any state in the country. Some of those reporting such incidents likely partially comprise the 5.1% of adults in the state with a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Like other states with high relative prevalence of mental illness, Arkansas is home to one of the most medicated populations in the country. There are 15.8 prescriptions filled per state resident annually, considerably more than the 12.7 per capita prescription drug rate nationally.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Beth J. Harpaz/AP
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.2% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 56,000 (11th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 8.2% (8th lowest) > Poverty rate: 13.9% (22nd lowest)
Maine is one of only four states where an estimated more than one in every 20 adults suffer from serious mental illness. Accounting for less serious forms of psychiatric illness, more than one in every five adults report some form of mental illness, the seventh largest proportion in the country. Roughly 87,000 Maine adults reported at least one major depressive episode within the past year, or 8.1% of the population, the highest percentage of all states.
Residents of rural areas not only need to travel further to health facilities, but also they may be more vulnerable to social isolation — a major driver and component of a number of mental illnesses. High proportions of Mainers live in very rural areas, which may help partially explain the state’s high prevalence of serious mental illness.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
Education Images via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.3% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 27,000 (5th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 10.1% (5th highest) > Poverty rate: 12.0% (13th lowest) Approximately 27,000
Vermonters are beset with serious mental illnesses, comprising 5.3% of the state’s adult population, the second highest percentage of all states. Mental illness in the United States has been largely misunderstood, underfunded, and under-treated — even for those with health insurance. In Vermont, however, the legislature last year enacted Senate Bill 139, a law intended to improve access to and quality of mental health services. Health insurance coverage in the state, which at about 93% is nearly the highest in the nation, may in the future be more valuable to the mentally ill. The state also enacted a law in 2015 prohibiting some state residents from possessing firearms due to mental illness.
People with mental health disorders are more likely to abuse alcohol or other substances than individuals without serious mental illnesses. Of adults in Vermont, 10.1% report abusing or dependence on alcohol or illicit drugs, the fifth highest share nationwide.
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
> Pct. of adults with serious mental illness: 5.4% > Total adults with serious mental illness: 79,000 (15th lowest) > Pct. of adults abusing alcohol or illicit drugs: 9.2% (19th highest) > Poverty rate: 18.1 (10th highest)
Serious mental illness is treated with therapy, as well as with drugs such as anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and mood stabilizers. In West Virginia, 21.8 medications are prescribed per resident in a single year, the second highest per capita prescriptions in the country and significantly higher than the national level of 12.7 prescriptions per capita. The 9.2% share of West Virginia adults dependent on illicit drugs or reporting alcohol abuse within the past year, while slightly higher than the national prevalence, is not especially high. However, 2.6% of adults in the state report needing but not receiving treatment for illicit drug use, the fourth highest such percentage nationwide.
According to the CDC, psychological distress is far more common among people living in poverty than it is among financially stable individuals. The typical West Virginia household earns $41,576 annually, nearly the lowest median household income in the nation. The poverty rate of 18.1% is also among the highest in the country. Such conditions may have contributed to the high prevalence of serious mental illness in the state.
American workers are feeling a lot better about their jobs.
Propelled by a stabilizing economy, employee satisfaction is at its highest level in more than a decade, according to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, an association of HR professionals.
Eighty-eight percent of the employees polled reported being satisfied overall with their jobs in 2015. Of them, 37 percent described themselves as “very satisfied,” and 51 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied.” Compare that to results from the organization's 2005 survey, which found just 77 percent of people were pleased with their jobs.
As you can see in the chart below, satisfaction took a hit between 2009 and 2013, the years following the recession. By now, though, people are feeling more confident about the job market, and workers who were unhappy and switched jobs five or six years ago have likely settled into their new roles, contributing to the higher satisfaction level, the SHRM researchers say.
SHRM
Age apparently has little to do with how much people enjoy their work. Millennials' satisfaction ranks about as high as that of older generations.
“Stop the stereotypes," SHRM researcher Christina Lee wrote in a paper released alongside the survey. "Although Millennials may have slightly different mindsets, on the whole, they tend to place significance on several of the same aspects of job satisfaction that Generation Xers and Baby Boomers do.”
Compensation remains highly important in how employees feel about their jobs, with 63 percent of those surveyed citing it as a contributor.
Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.
Yet compensation ranked only as the second-highest factor contributing to job satisfaction, per the new survey. Topping the list was “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels,” which 67 percent of respondents cited.
“The day-to-day experience is what governs their perspective on their work,” Evren Esen, director of survey programs at the Society for Human Resource Management, told The Huffington Post. “That’s where corporate culture comes into play. You want your supervisor to ask for your ideas.”
Workplaces that promote openness, community and equality are increasingly becoming the norm. While these are aspects valued by all employees, millennials in particular have helped to push that shift forward by being direct about what they expect from their employers.
“They see themselves as equal with who they work with in terms of expressing ideas,” Esen said of millennials. “In that way, by sharing their beliefs with the higher-ups, they are heard more than other generations.”
The expectation that employees are treated equally and fairly, in addition to things like having trustful leaders and transparent management, will only grow as millennials take over the workforce.
Take parental leave: Having a family and young children is hardly a new development, but millennial workers have been more vocal than their older counterparts about having decent company support when they have a newborn. Paid time off is gaining traction quickly, and more and more companies are now offering paid time off to new moms and dads.
“It’s just what they think is normal,” Esen added. “Millennials say, ‘It’s not that way? Why isn’t it that way?’”
The two deaths came in quick succession, shocking the close-knit community of health care workers at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center.
First, in August 2013, an administrative assistant was fatally shot by her estranged husband while she was helping her 3-year-old son get into a car. Five months later, a nurse who worked with oncology patients was stabbed to death by her son after a history of domestic altercations.
"She was very optimistic and positive," said Michele McKee, director of nursing services. "The staff is still struggling with the loss. There was denial. Tears. Anger. And then, guilt. What did we miss? What could we have done?"
While hospital staff had been trained to identify patients who were experiencing domestic violence, they didn't pay the same attention to warning signs in their own peers, said Leslie Hott, St. Joseph's human resources manager.
"Our value statement says, 'loving service, compassionate care,'" Hott said. "We typically think about that for those we care for, but not each other."
That is now changing.
St. Joseph is undergoing an ambitious effort to address domestic violence among its workforce, rolling out an intensive training program to help staff members identify -- and hopefully prevent -- domestic violence, as well as a new workplace policy to support employees who are suffering.
The hospital partnered with Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit that has helped organizations across the country address how domestic violence hurts its workforce. In 2014, Futures began a pilot site project called Low Wage, High Risk to develop best practices for workplaces where employees may be vulnerable to physical and sexual violence. The nonprofit is currently collaborating with tomato crop workers in Florida and restaurant employees in New York, as well as health care workers at St. Joseph in Towson.
The hospital didn’t have a formal workplace domestic violence policy in place when its staffers were killed. Most organizations across the country don’t, even though domestic violence affects 1 in 4 women in the U.S.
There was denial. Tears. Anger. And then, guilt. What did we miss? What could we have done?Michele McKee, director of nursing services
In addition to creating serious safety issues in the workplace, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that domestic violence costs the U.S. at least $8 billion a year in lost productivity and health care costs.
The federal government is trying to set a good example. President Barack Obama issued a memorandum in 2012 that requires all federal agencies to develop policies to support employees whose working lives are affected by domestic violence.
It is often thought to be something that occurs in private, but the pervasive effects of domestic violence can spill over into victims’ work lives. When that happens, experts say, many organizations are ill-equipped to properly support their employees -- in the worst cases, employees may even be penalized or fired.
Maya Raghu, a former lawyer with Futures Without Violence who was involved with the launch of this program, said only a handful of jurisdictions prohibit employment discrimination against survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and about 15 to 20 states provide survivors with unpaid leave.
“Having a source of income is critical to helping survivors and their families separate from the dangerous situation,” she said. “Especially if you are in a job on the lower end of the income spectrum, you may not be able to accumulate savings that you can rely on if you lose your job.”
Being a victim of violence can affect employees in overt and subtle ways. Workers may experience violence on the job, including stalking, threatening calls or physical assaults. Homicide is the second leading cause of injury death for women at work, according to the CDC, and intimate partners commit a significant percentage of those murders.
But even if the actual violence doesn’t take place at work, being in an abusive relationship can still disrupt a victim’s ability to do her job. Abusers may try to sabotage their victims’ financial independence and purposely do things to get them fired, like cut up their work clothes or steal their car keys so they miss their shifts, Raghu explained.
Victims may need to take days off to appear in court, apply for a protection order or seek medical attention. But missing work can put victims of violence in peril of losing their job -- at the exact time they desperately need a regular paycheck.
Hott said the hospital's new policy spells out the support services available to victims, so they know they won’t be penalized for seeking help, and outlines what managers should do if a staff member discloses that they are experiencing domestic violence.
"If it’s brought to our attention, we can respond appropriately," she said. "We want employees to know, we are here for you, we want it safe for you here."
Courtesy of University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical CenterSt. Joseph Medical Center is working to institute a new workplace policy to help employees who are domestic violence survivors.
St. Joseph now works with victims to change their work schedules or location, and can assign them a new phone number or parking spot if requested, Hott said. Victims can also ask for an escort between buildings and to their car, and photos of prohibited people can be distributed to security staff.
Every employee will eventually go through a training about domestic violence and learn what resources are available in the community, Hott said. Educational posters featuring employees will be plastered across the facility, and bathrooms will include pamphlets about warning signs of domestic violence and phone numbers for help.
Ideally, she said, the hospital want to make it easier for employees to come forward and not feel like they have to handle it alone.
"In health care, we want to fix, we want to repair and get you out the door and back into your life. But intimate partner violence isn’t cut and dry," she said. "That’s OK. The goal is to make it not a secret anymore."
Hott said she hopes the hospital’s policy and training program will be used as a model for other health care organizations across the country. It’s an especially important sector to target, she said, as women make up nearly 80 percent of the health care workforce.
A young crepe myrtle tree stands at the entrance of the parking lot at St. Joseph.
Each morning when employees arrive for work, they pass the flowering tree, which was planted in memory of the two employees who were fatal victims of domestic violence.
"I pull into the garage that way every morning and I look at it," McKee said. "Now that it’s spring time, we look forward to it blooming."
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Melissa Jeltsen covers domestic violence and other issues related to women’s health, safety and security. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.
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Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it falsified fuel economy test data to make emissions levels look more favorable, and its shares slumped more than 15 percent, wiping $1.2 billion from its market value on Wednesday.
Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Japan's sixth-largest automaker by market value, bowed in apology at a news conference in Tokyo for what is the biggest scandal at Mitsubishi Motors since a defect cover-up over a decade ago.
Toru Hanai / ReutersThe scandal prompted Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Mitsubishi Motors, to bow in apology at a news conference in Tokyo.
Shares in the company closed down more than 15 percent at 733 yen, the stock's biggest one-day drop in almost 12 years.
In 2000, Mitsubishi Motors revealed that it covered up safety records and customer complaints. Four years later it admitted to broader problems going back decades. It was Japan's worst automotive recall scandal at the time.
The company said on Wednesday the test manipulation involved 625,000 vehicles produced since mid-2013. These include its eK mini-wagon as well as 468,000 similar cars it made for Nissan Motor.
It said it would stop making and selling those cars, and has set up an independent panel to investigate the issue.
Mitsubishi Motors sold just over 1 million cars last year.
Mitsubishi Motors is the first Japanese automaker to report misconduct involving fuel economy tests since Volkswagen was discovered last year to have cheated diesel emissions tests in the United States and elsewhere.
South Korean car makers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp in 2014 agreed to pay $350 million in penalties to the U.S. government for overstating their vehicles' fuel economy ratings. They also resolved claims from car owners.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Discount retailer Target Corp has started raising employee wages to a minimum of $10 an hour, its second hike in a year, pressured by a competitive job market and labor groups calling for higher wages at retail chains, sources said. Target management has informed store managers, who in turn have started informing employees about the wage hike and most employees who earn less than $10 per hour should see their base pay go up in May, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
The $1-per-hour raise marks the second time Target has followed Wal-Mart Stores Inc in raising base wages. It also comes as a union-led push for a $15 minimum wage, the so-called “Fight for Fifteen” movement, is gaining traction in cities across the country and even has become a topic in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders calling for a $15 “living wage.”
Target's decision reflects growing competition for workers in an increasingly strong labor market. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has fallen to its lowest point in 42-1/2-years, and the jobless rate is only 5.0 percent.
Target last raised its minimum pay rate in April 2015 to $9 an hour, up from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour at the time. The move last April matched a similar announcement by Wal-Mart. The world's largest retailer in February 2015 said it will lift its base pay to $10 an hour in 2016, a step it has implemented in recent weeks.
Target's plan will also raise pay for employees who already make over $10 an hour. Such workers will be entitled to an annual merit raise and a pay-grade hike, which is related to experience and position of the employee, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Target declined to confirm it is offering the pay increase. "We pay market competitive rates and regularly benchmark the marketplace to ensure that our compensation and benefits packages will help us to both recruit and retain great talent, Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said.
Snyder said the company does not disclose details of its compensation programs and declined to comment on how many of the retailer's roughly 341,000 employees at its nearly 1,800 stores would receive the raise.
The move to $10 an hour could put pressure on Target's earnings, especially at a time whenTarget is investing billions to upgrade its supply chain and technology infrastructure in order to tackle chronic stock shortages. Target also is pushing for higher online sales, which could potentially explain why it has lagged its larger rival in setting the lead on wage increases, analysts said.
"This move will make it difficult for Target to meet its aggressive profit projections," said Burt Flickinger, managing director of retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group.
At its 2016 Analyst Day in March, Target said it expects annual gross margin rates around 30 percent.
Even before the wage hike, Barclays Capital Inc last month had downgraded the stock from 'overweight' to 'underweight.' At the time, Barclays analysts called the retailer's gross margin projections "optimistic" due to the threat of rising labor costs and other concerns.
Of the 26 analysts who cover the stock, 11 rate it a "buy," and 13 rate it a "hold," according to data from Thomson Reuters StarMine.
LABOR PROBLEMS
Target, which generally is considered to be a better employer due to its competitive wages and compensation-related benefits than many retail rivals, has in recent months seen a spate of labor-related issues.
Last September, Target lost a bid to prevent the formation of a micro-union by pharmacy workers in a New York store, which would have marked the first time Target employed unionized workers in one of its stores. Target later sold its pharmacy business to CVS Health Corp.
Then earlier this month, a Target group leader filed a lawsuit accusing the company of failing to pay overtime to workers with low-level management responsibilities at its warehouses in New York state.
Current and former employees contacted by Reuters this month said the retailer cut hours in an apparent effort to offset the impact of rising costs after it raised pay to $9 an hour last March.
Target's Snyder said the retailer has not changed how it approaches scheduling and hours in its stores.
A current part-time employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said she averaged about 25-26 hours every week before March 2015, but has progressively seen her hours cut. She now averages at about 18-19 hours per week.
(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne in Chicago; Editing by David Greising and Nick Zieminski)
The nation's tax bill comes due on Monday, when Americans rushing to file their federal income tax returns may find themselves wondering: What am I paying for?
It can be a difficult question to answer, considering Washington's dysfunction and the bureaucratic nightmares often faced by everyday Americans wishing to accomplish mundane financial goals, such as making payments on their federal student loans.
Americans' list of grievances with government is long, from the veterans care scandal to crumbling roads and bridges. As a result, the public no longer trusts the federal government. Just 19 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they trust Washington to do what's right a majority of the time.
That's probably why about three in five Americans believe they're paying too much in taxes -- the most in 15 years, according to polling firm Gallup.
Federal spending of all those taxpayer dollars represents the nation's priorities. "Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what you value," Vice President Joe Biden said in 2012.
Figures from the White House show what those values are.
About $1 of every $4 spent by the federal government in the 2014 fiscal year that was funded by income tax payments goes to health care, making it the nation's costliest expense. Most of that money is spent on health care for low-income and elderly Americans.
An additional one-fourth of federal expenditures go to military spending and related activities, White House data show.
That money, which represents about half of taxpayer-funded federal spending, dwarfs spending on education, programs designed to aid low-income Americans, law enforcement and foreign aid.
In fact, less than 2 percent of federal spending goes to education, White House data show.
The so-called taxpayer receipt mostly excludes federal programs not funded by traditional income taxes, such as unemployment insurance and Social Security.
So on Monday (or Tuesday if you live in Maine or Massachusetts), if you're waiting in line at your local post office to mail your tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service, take a moment to consider whether you're getting enough bang for your buck.
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Soaring demand for the caffeinated brew could hasten destructive climate change by encouraging producers to chop down some of the last remaining tropical forests as they struggle to increase yields on existing farmland, according to a report released Thursday by the nonprofit Conservation International.
Coffee grows in tropical countries near the equator, such as Indonesia, Brazil and Uganda, where thick jungles rich with biodiversity provide fresh water and store tons of carbon. Farmers expand their fields by felling trees in these forests and burning the dense underbrush -- releasing that carbon into the atmosphere, where it traps other gases and warms the planet. As a result, deforestation is a twofold environmental catastrophe: Left intact, forests absorb many of the pollutants that cause global warming. Destroyed, they unleash even more emissions and speed up the pace of climate change.
Worse, it's a self-perpetuating cycle. As climate change worsens, the amount of existing farmland suitable for growing coffee shrinks.
The underlying market force in all this is the skyrocketing demand for coffee. Coffee growers may have to triple their production by 2050 to meet current demand forecasts, the report predicted. Coffee demand is expected to spike 25 percent in the next five years alone, according to a report last year by the industry group International Coffee Organization.
Consider the two maps below. The dark blue, red and yellow segments represent forested areas where certain types of coffee could be grown in Brazil in 2010.
Conservation InternationalDark green represents forests not suitable for growing coffee. Different colors represent areas where certain types of coffee, such as Arabica or Robusta, can be grown.
Now fast forward to the middle of the century. By 2050, much of the farmland where Arabica beans are produced, represented in light blue, is expected to recede. Farmland for Robusta, represented in light pink, nearly disappears.
Conservation InternationalQuite a change in just 40 years.
"Ideally, plant breeders will develop new varieties that are adapted to the harsher conditions of the future, while, simultaneously, improving productivity. That is a tall order, but not impossible," Tim Killeen, a lead author of the report, said in a statement. "If it doesn’t happen, then coffee production will shift to landscapes with conditions similar to today’s coffee growing areas.”
Tropical forests currently cover 60 percent of the land around the world that can be used for coffee production. By 2050, as much as 20 percent of the land suitable for growing coffee would fall within the boundaries of protected areas. That means farmers will either have to produce more with less land, or start clearing new lands on which to grow. Conservation International named the Andes, Central America and Southeast Asia as the regions of most concern.
"Unless we act now, the trend of coffee production towards full sustainability may well be reversed," Peter Seligmann, founder and CEO of Conservation International, said in a statement. "The good news is that we know from our experience working with Starbucks and others that we can put the right practices in place to grow coffee in a way that protects forests and farmers -- but we need to keep pushing these techniques on a global scale."
Corporate America’s accountants are having a tough week.
A government report revealed on Wednesday that a significant percentage of large, profitable U.S. corporations pay no federal taxes at all. A study released Thursday gives fresh insight into some of the practices that make those light tax burdens possible.
The 50 largest U.S. corporations currently stash about $1.4 trillion in offshore tax havens, according to the analysis by anti-poverty group Oxfam America.
Between 2008 and 2014, these titans of big business -- a group that includes Apple, Coca-Cola and Disney -- together received approximately $27 in federal loans or similar aid for every $1 they paid in federal taxes, Oxfam America calculated.
All together, the 50 biggest companies’ overseas tax avoidance techniques allowed them to pay an effective corporate income tax rate of 26.5 percent during those years, the nonprofit estimates. That is well below the official top rate of 35 percent.
Released just days before the deadline for Americans to file their tax returns, "Broken at the Top" seeks to expose how corporate tax dodging limits global governments' ability to address poverty.
“The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands,” Oxfam America president Raymond Offenheiser said in a statement accompanying the study.
Oxfam America relied primarily on data from the companies’ annual financial filings to the Securities Exchange Commission.
Other organizations have come up with slightly different numbers using similar research methods. A March study from the liberal Citizens for Tax Justice found that the 500 largest corporations are holding $2.4 trillion overseas, allowing them to avoid paying $695 billion in taxes.
The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.Raymond Offenheiser, Oxfam America
There are a number of ways that American companies can legally offshore their profits to countries with lower tax rates. Technology and pharmaceutical companies, for example, often create subsidiaries in tax havens like Bermuda, to which they transfer the intellectual property and patents that earn them a large share of their total profits. Companies whose workforces and sales are primarily in the U.S. and other high-tax nations end up claiming that a disproportionate share of their profits were earned overseas.
Another tactic that has grown more popular in recent years, but which has also come under increased scrutiny, is corporate inversion. American companies that “invert” acquire foreign firms in order to reincorporate in lower-tax countries.
Oxfam America’s report could add to the recent uptick in public awareness of corporate tax avoidance and the pressure on policymakers to address it. The release of the Panama Papers, a leaked cache of documents from a Panamanian law firm, made waves earlier this month by exposing the elaborate tax-dodging schemes of the super-rich.
President Barack Obama cited the Panama Papers while touting a new Treasury Department rule aimed at curbing corporate inversions.
The main purpose of tax reform should be to fund the government, and anything else is just a waste of time.Bob McIntyre, Citizens for Tax Justice
Defenders of corporate tax strategies blame the official U.S. corporate tax rates, which are among the highest in the world. The United States, they note, is also one of the few countries that taxes foreign earnings at domestic rates. A “territorial” system in which profits are taxed at the rates of the countries where they are earned is more common.
But thanks to a tax "deferral" loophole, U.S. companies only pay domestic taxes on foreign earnings if they "repatriate" the earnings by bringing them back to the U.S. That gives companies a particular incentive to hoard money elsewhere -- sometimes indefinitely -- in order to defer taxation.
Obama has proposed a framework for corporate tax reform that would embrace lower rates and fewer loopholes with the goal of at least maintaining current revenue levels from corporate taxes -- and increasing corporate investment at home.
“Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, you want to get that tax rate down,” said Martin Sullivan, chief economist at the tax news and analysis website Tax Analysts.
“If the Obama administration, which I think has been the most aggressive of any administration in recent history in trying to shut down this problem,” does not think it can be solved through enforcement alone, no president will, Sullivan argued.
Many progressive fair taxation advocates, however, contend that the government can and should rely solely on closing corporate tax loopholes to bring companies into line and replenish federal coffers.
Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, said one simple way to do that would be to end the foreign tax deferral loophole that allows companies to avoid domestic taxes until they repatriate the earnings. That way they would have to pay domestic taxes on foreign profits even if they are holding it elsewhere.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has made the change part of his campaign platform.
To stop inversions, McIntyre suggested, the government could force companies to pay a so-called exit tax before leaving the U.S., taxing the profits they had earned overseas up to that point. Hillary Clinton, Sanders’ rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, backs that idea.
McIntyre rejects the notion of lowering corporate taxes to compete with lower tax nations.
“The main purpose of tax reform should be to fund the government, and anything else is just a waste of time,” he concluded.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five out of eight of the biggest U.S. banks do not have credible plans for winding down operations during a crisis without the help of public money, federal regulators said on Wednesday, saying the institutions could face stricter oversight if they do not fix their plans.
The "living wills" that the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation jointly agreed were not credible came from Bank of America <BAC.N>, Bank of New York Mellon <BK.N>, J.P. Morgan Chase <JPM.N>, State Street <STT.N>, Wells Fargo <WFC.N>.
The requirement for a living will was part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation passed in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when the U.S. government spent billions of dollars on bailouts to keep big banks from failing and wrecking the U.S. economy.
"The FDIC and Federal Reserve are committed to carrying out the statutory mandate that systemically important financial institutions demonstrate a clear path to an orderly failure under bankruptcy at no cost to taxpayers," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement. "Today’s action is a significant step toward achieving that goal."
None of the eight systemically important banks, which the U.S. government considers "too big to fail," fared well in the evaluations. However, a bank has to fix deficiencies only if the two regulators jointly determine its plan does not have the potential to work.
The FDIC alone determined that the plan submitted by Goldman Sachs <GS.N> was not credible, while the Federal Reserve Board on its own found Morgan Stanley's plan not credible. Citigroup's <C.N> living will did pass, but the regulators noted it had "shortcomings."
"Each plan has shortcomings or deficiencies," said FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig in a statement. "No firm yet shows itself capable of being resolved in an orderly fashion through bankruptcy. Thus, the goal to end too big to fail and protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts remains just that: only a goal."
Banks whose living wills are deficient can be subject to more stringent regulation such as requirements to have more capital or restrictions on growth. If they do not fix the identified problems within two years, they can be forced to divest assets.
The regulators continue to assess plans for four foreign banks labeled "systemically important," Barclays PLC <BARC.L>, Credit Suisse Group <CSGN.S>, Deutsche Bank AG <DBKGN.DE>, and UBS.
(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
After a frenzied week watching orders for its Model 3 soar, Tesla declared Thursday that electric cars have gone mainstream.
The electric car manufacturer has received more than 325,000 pre-orders for its first affordably priced sedan. At an average cost of $42,000 apiece after various options are priced in, that comes to nearly $14 billion in sales.
Tesla claimed that eye-popping total makes this "the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever."
"Most importantly," the company added, "we are all taking a huge step towards a better future by accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation."
"We want to thank everyone who has shown their faith in Tesla and the mission of electric vehicles. We would write more, but we need to get back to increasing our Model 3 production plans!"
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had offered a similar thought on Twitter last Friday, just after the Model 3 was released, when orders stood at around 200,000.
Definitely going to need to rethink production planning...
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2016
For perspective on just how much of a production increase that may be, Autoblog notes that Tesla delivered a total of just 50,000 vehicles in 2015.
“The pent-up demand is something that surprised me," DBL Partners Managing Director Nancy Pfund, whose venture capital firm invested in Tesla a decade ago, told The Huffington Post on Monday. "I knew it was big, but I had no idea how much of a market we were tapping into with the Model 3.”
Walmart is famous for its ruthless commitment to efficiency. Often that makes people think of the low wages it pays most of its workers (and the subsequent low prices), but cutting costs is not just about labor. For Walmart, it's also a reason to go green.
Walmart last week joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s CE100 platform, a group of companies committed to reducing waste in their production process. The foundation's aim is to create a "circular economy," where all energy is renewed and products are created in such a way that every part is reusable somehow.
Walmart has already started to make its internal procedures more circular. For example, it has a system for the big refrigerators it uses in its stores. If one breaks and can't be used, the whole machine doesn't get thrown away. Walmart has a team that inspects the equipment for any parts that are salvageable. Those parts get sent to a central warehouse and catalogued. Then, when another refrigerator part breaks in a different store somewhere else in the country, recycled parts from the warehouse can be used to fix it. The company ends up replacing far fewer refrigerators than it would if it didn't salvage parts.
“Waste represents inefficiency,” according to Fred Bedore, a senior director on Walmart’s sustainability team. “We want to root out the inefficiencies. We want to be operating [Walmart] at the lowest possible cost.”
For Walmart, that means committing to eliminate waste in the company’s energy use, operations and the products it sources. While Walmart might not be the first company that comes to mind when you think of sustainability, it’s actually a strategy that fits rather naturally with its business model.
That means both finding ways to make its own business more circular -- things like the refrigerator repair system, and incorporating more renewable energy into its business -- and working with suppliers and vendors to make their businesses more circular as well.
"We want to make sure that we are using resources effectively, and not creating more waste than is necessary," Bedore told the Huffington Post.
And, of course, less waste means even lower prices.
Elon Musk reveled this weekend in the tidal wave of preorders Tesla Motors received for the company's first affordable car, the Model 3, which debuted March 31.
By Saturday night, the electric automaker pulled in an eye-popping 276,000 orders for the $35,000 vehicle, each with a $1,000 deposit, the billionaire chief executive said on Twitter. That's more than double what the company expected.
276k Model 3 orders by end of Sat
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2016
Even two of electric carmaker's keenest observers -- one an early investor, the other a high-ranking analyst fixated on the future of transportation -- were wowed by the numbers.
"We were all surprised to sell a quarter of a million cars in two days," DBL Partners Managing Director Nancy Pfund, whose venture firm invested in Tesla a decade ago, told The Huffington Post at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York on Monday. "The pent-up demand is something that surprised me. I knew it was big, but I had no idea how much of a market we were tapping into with the Model 3."
When she first invested in the electric automaker 10 years ago, the company's only offering was the super-fast, super-expensive Roadster, and electric cars in general seemed dead-on-arrival.
"People were telling us Tesla is for rich people," Pfund said. "I mean, we didn't sit around a conference table 10 years ago and say, 'Let's make a car for the wealthy.' It's like the early cellphone or iPhone, these things are expensive at first."
The reaction to the Model 3 could ripple throughout the auto industry.
"That legitimately surprised us," Colin McKerracher, the lead advanced transportation analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost in an interview. "I don't think you want to ignore that. I don't think you want to say that's just a flash in the pan."
Handout . / ReutersThe Tesla Model 3.
Rather, McKerracher said traditional automakers are now scrambling to develop competitors to Tesla's roster of sleek, well-designed electric vehicles.
"I wouldn't underestimate Tesla's ability to pull other automakers along," he said.
One big difference is that the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet's Bolt and Volt -- the Model 3's chief rivals -- simply haven't had the same hype as a Tesla.
"If you build a badass product, people will buy it on its own merits," Salim Morsy, senior analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told HuffPost.
But people need to know about it, he added.
"For the Bolt, Volt and Leaf, the marketing was abysmal," Morsy said.
Before Mark Bertolini became the chief executive of the country's biggest health insurer, before he was celebrated by business publications for being an "unconventional boss" who is "mindful of morality," before he overhauled his company to prioritize the wellness of his workers, he was a father watching his teenage son die.
It was 2001, and Bertolini's son Eric, who was then 16, was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. Bertolini, now the chief executive of Aetna, quit his job at insurance rival Cigna and moved into his son's hospital room in Boston to help manage his care.
Eric made a full recovery two years later, but was struck by complications and needed a kidney transplant.
Once again, Bertolini stepped in, donating one of his kidneys to his son.
Those experiences, coupled with a severe skiing accident he suffered in 2004, completely changed the way that Bertolini saw health and, by extension, health care.
"What I found very quickly in both his circumstance and mine was getting our lives back, becoming engaged and productive members of society, was something that the health care system cared very little about," Bertolini says in the sixth episode of "Pioneers," a new video series by The Huffington Post that profiles leaders in various industries who have redefined success by making it their mission to live more meaningful and less stressful lives.
Facing long-term disability and chronic pain after colliding with a tree, Bertolini turned to yoga and meditation. A recent study by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that participants who practiced mindfulness meditation experienced greater pain relief than those who received a placebo. Regular meditation and healthy amounts of sleep essentially work to drain out toxins -- such as molecules associated with the degeneration of brain cells -- that build up during waking hours.
"I still have my pain, but as we say in the meditative arena, in the mindfulness arena: 'I have pain, I'm aware of my pain, I am not my pain,'" Bertolini says. "I had to learn how to be more 'Zen' in the way I approached my daily life, and meditation was a way to learn how to do that."
That approach bled over into his work life, too. Under Bertolini's leadership, Aetna helped spearhead the movement in corporate culture to focus more on employee health -- as both a means of improving people's lives and a way of reducing health care costs. And perhaps most importantly, he addressed one of the biggest sources of stress for his workers: money.
Last year, Bertolini raised the minimum hourly base pay for all U.S. workers at Aetna to $16 after reading Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a best-selling 700-page book on income inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty.
"If people are too busy looking for food, if they're too busy stressing about whether or not they have enough money to pay for their health care, how can they possibly sleep?" Bertolini says.
Still, for wealthy executives, money shouldn't be everything in business, he says.
"We view stock price and compensation as ways of measuring the success of an organization, and I think, because of that, we have a very short-term view of how capitalism works," he says. "At Aetna, we actually say: 'You know what, we're here for the long run. Here are the fundamentals we're investing in, like we did with our employees.'"
To watch previous episodes of Pioneers, head here.
• Plaintiffs argue the federal agency overstepped its authority in approving the genetically modified fish. • Produced by AquaBounty Technologies, the salmon are engineered to grow twice as fast as wild species. • Critics worry engineered salmon could prove disastrous for wild salmon populations.
Nearly a dozen fishing and environmental groups have filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to block its recent approval of genetically modified salmon.
The plaintiffs, represented by the Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice, argue that by green-lighting the first-ever genetically altered animal slated for human consumption, the FDA violated the law and ignored potential risks to wild salmon populations, the environment and fishing communities.
"That's one of the major risks here, is the escape of these fish into the wild," George Kimbrell, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety, told The Huffington Post. "It could be a final blow to our already imperiled salmon stocks."
Produced by Massachusetts-based company AquaBounty Technologies, the AquAdvantage Salmon is an Atlantic salmon engineered with genes from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a deep water ocean eelpout to grow twice as fast as its conventional counterpart.
Handout / ReutersAn AquAdvantage Salmon is pictured in this undated photo provided by AquaBounty Technologies.
The 64-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges whether the FDA has authority to regulate genetically modified animals as "animal drugs" under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It also argues the agency failed to protect the environment and consult wildlife agencies in its review process, as required by federal law, CFS said in a release.
"I think it's important to note that FDA has gone ahead with this approval over the objections of over 2 million Americans in the comment period," Kimbrell told HuffPost.
In its approval announcement in November, the FDA said it determined "food from AquAdvantage Salmon is as safe to eat and as nutritious as food from other non-GE Atlantic salmon and that there are no biologically relevant differences in the nutritional profile of AquAdvantage Salmon compared to that of other farm-raised Atlantic salmon."
FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnamn told HuffPost in an email that as a matter of policy, the federal agency does not comment on pending litigation.
SAUL LOEB via Getty ImagesFresh Atlantic salmon steaks and fillets at Eastern Market in Washington, D.C. in 2013.
The lawsuit is the latest development in an ongoing and heated debate over genetically modified organisms, their safety and whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled. While proponents say the technology allows agricultural farmers to be more efficient, opponents argue they result in heavy pesticide use and transgenic contamination.
In the case of its GE salmon, AquaBounty says the fish grows to market size using 25 percent less feed than any Atlantic salmon on the market today.
But if the engineered fish were to be released into the wild -- a risk AquaBounty says is eliminated by raising them on land and away from the ocean -- critics worry they might outcompete endangered wild salmon for food and introduce new diseases.
“Once they escape, you can’t put these transgenic fish back in the bag," Dune Lankard, a salmon fisherman and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska representative, said in a release. "They’re manufactured to outgrow wild salmon, and if they cross-breed, it could have irreversible impacts on the natural world. This kind of dangerous tinkering could easily morph into a disaster for wild salmon that will be impossible to undo."
Plaintiffs in the case include Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Golden Gate Salmon Association, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and others.
HAWTHORNE, Calif. -- Electric car manufacturer Tesla unveiled its latest electric car Thursday night -- the hotly anticipated, lower-cost Model 3 sedan.
The much-hyped public presentation of the mid-sized sedan at Tesla's design studio was a historic moment for both the electric car industry and for Elon Musk’s Tesla.
The Model 3, Tesla's fourth production car, is the first one that's aimed at the masses, with a starting price of $35,000. For Tesla, considered the Apple of the automotive industry, the Model 3 has the potential to be its iPhone -- a sexy, mass-market, consumer-priced machine that changes the game.
ASSOCIATED PRESSThis undated photo provided by Tesla Motors shows a silver Model 3 car. The promise of an affordable electric car from Tesla Motors had hundreds of people lining up to reserve one. At a starting price of $35,000 — before federal and state government incentives — the Model 3 is less than half the cost of Tesla's previous models.
If the car becomes as popular and successful as Musk hopes, Tesla stands to become a major consumer brand that helps shepherd the all-electric car era into the mainstream. Musk said at Thursday night's event that 115,000 Model 3s had been ordered in the previous 24 hours.
#TeslaModel3 ! pic.twitter.com/kXnLwO2Rnc
— Matt Ferner (@matthewferner) April 1, 2016
But it may be a bumpy road. The Koch brothers are planning a multimillion-dollar assault on electric vehicles, Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales model is prohibited in several states, automotive technology and trends are evolving rapidly and there is a possibility that tax incentives -- a key to electric car sales -- will drop by the time the first Model 3s ship in late 2017. The Model 3 isn't the first affordable all-electric vehicle on the market, and the competition is likely to intensify.
Musk said the Model 3 can go from 0 to 60 mph in less than six seconds and will have a range of at least 215 miles on a charge. The car will seat five adults comfortably and will have front and rear trunks, he said.
"Can you fit a seven-foot surfboard in a Model 3? Yes," said Musk.
A quick spin in a Model 3 with a Tesla driver showed the car to be blazingly fast with sporty handling. When the driver pressed the accelerator, the three passengers -- all journalists -- gasped and giggled.
The back seat was indeed comfortable for two, and had ample room for a third person.
Less than two hours after Musk took the wraps off the car, the number of orders topped 133,000.
133K reservations and counting #TeslaModel3 pic.twitter.com/bmfFedDsIi
