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Europe
BBC Business

Tesla crash that killed a woman under US federal investigation

A fatal crash involving a Tesla that drove into a home is being investigated by the US auto safety regulator. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a formal inquiry on Monday into the accident that occurred on 19 June in Texas, in which a Tesla sped off the road into a house. A woman who was inside the property was severely injured and died as a result, according to a report of the incident from local police. Police said the driver was not intoxicated, and he told investigators that the vehicle was operating with an automated driving assistance system at the time of the crash. "NHTSA is launching a special crash investigation into this crash," an agency spokesperson said. A representative of Tesla, which is owned by trillionaire Elon Musk, did not respond to a request for comment on the crash or the investigation. The fatal crash occurred around 20:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Friday. The driver of a Tesla Model 3 "failed to drive in a single lane, left the roadway, and struck the residence", the police report stated. In a statement given to local media the night of the crash, Sergeant Alex Turman of the Harris County Sheriff's Office said the vehicle "failed to turn right at an intersection and, at a high rate of speed, crashed directly into a house". The 76-year-old woman who was inside the home was struck in the crash and was taken to a hospital, but she died of her injuries, the officer added. In an interview with a local station of CBS, a BBC partner, the woman's daughter said she discovered her mother in the house after the crash. The woman lived with her daughter, son-in-law and their three children, all of whom were also at home at the time of the crash. The driver was also taken to hospital and was cooperating with the investigation into the crash, police said.

Tesla crash that killed a woman under US federal investigation
North America
CNBC Finance

Bob Iger reflects on 10 years of Shanghai Disneyland as it defies the Chinese pullback

Spend a day at Shanghai Disneyland and you wouldn't know Chinese consumers are struggling. Wang Jiandong and his girlfriend Yan Xu said they have been skipping meals out and scrimping on day-to-day necessities so they could afford to enjoy the park. "We save in our daily lives so we can spend more on trips," Wang explained while taking photos with Yan in front of Disney's iconic castle. "This is a romantic place." Shanghai Disneyland celebrated its 10th anniversary this week, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger flying in for the festivities. "I'm feeling filled with pride really," Iger told CNBC during an interview at the park. "I've been involved in this project from the very beginning in the late '90s." Iger said the occasion carried extra significance "knowing not only how successful it's been, but really how important it is in many respects, not just to the Walt Disney Co. but to the people of China." Shanghai Disneyland hit 100 million cumulative visitors in 2025, according to the company. It's a relatively new but important foothold in Disney's more than 100-year history. Disney's experiences division, which includes its theme parks, resorts, cruises and merchandise, reported nearly $9.5 billion in revenue during the company's most recent quarter, ended in March, a 7% increase year over year. The division is the second largest at Disney's, accounting for almost 40% of the company's overall revenue and nearly 60% of its operating income. While Disney executives have noted recent softness in international visitors to the company's U.S. parks, its outposts in other countries are faring better. According to the Themed Entertainment Association, which tracks global theme park data, the Shanghai park attracted 14.7 million visitors in 2024 — a 5% year-on-year increase — making it the fifth most-visited theme park in the world behind Disney parks in Orlando, Florida; Anaheim, California; and Tokyo as well as Universal Studios Japan. Under newly appointed CEO Josh D'Amaro, Disney is eyeing further global expansion, with a new cruise ship berthed in Singapore and a forthcoming park and resort in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The company announced a 10-year, $60 billion investment into its parks in 2023. "Because of the available property and because of the properties, the intellectual property that Disney has, the opportunities to expand are limitless," Iger told CNBC this week. "As long as the business is successful, which it has been, there is no reason why it won't continue to expand over time."

Bob Iger reflects on 10 years of Shanghai Disneyland as it defies the Chinese pullback
Europe
The Guardian

California drivers sue gas stations for allegedly using AI to inflate prices

A gas station in Encinitas, California, in April. Photograph: Mike Blake/ReutersView image in fullscreenA gas station in Encinitas, California, in April. Photograph: Mike Blake/ReutersCaliforniaCalifornia drivers sue gas stations for allegedly using AI to inflate pricesFirms including BP and 7-Eleven accused of coordinating prices to ‘wring more money from pockets of consumers’ Gas ⁠station ​operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers ⁠who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump. According to a proposed class action, the defendants ⁠violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that ​uses data from competing gas ‌stations to “coordinate high prices ‌and wring more money from the pockets of consumers”. The lawsuit in the ‌Sacramento federal court said the scheme violated assembly bill 325, a California law that took effect on 1 January and was intended to crack down on algorithmic price fixing. Drivers said gas prices have risen as much as 30 cents a gallon in areas where high percentages of stations ‌use the AI tool, which comes from a company called Kalibrate. Each penny costs California drivers an extra $134m per year, boosting ​gasoline prices to “astronomical” levels sometimes reaching $7 a gallon, the complaint said. “While families struggle to afford the commute to work, defendants have conspired to put an end to competition, joining an AI-powered trust to ensure that no matter where a ⁠driver turns, the price for gasoline is artificially high,” the complaint said. The ​defendants operate more ​than 1,700 gas stations in California, ​according to the complaint. Kalibrate is also a defendant. The ​defendants either did ‌not immediately ​respond to requests for ​comment or declined to comment. Californians pay the nation’s highest gas prices, averaging $5.58 per gallon for regular, according to AAA. The national average is $3.93. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for drivers who paid too much for gasoline.

California drivers sue gas stations for allegedly using AI to inflate prices
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Indian MSMEs are transitioning from local suppliers to global contenders: Raghuvir Srinivasan

“MSMEs are not just part of the economy — they are the bedrock of India’s progress.” With this, businessline Editor Raghuvir Srinivasan opened the MSME Growth Conclave in Bengaluru, highlighting the critical role of micro, small, and medium enterprises in shaping India’s economic future. In his welcome address, he spoke about the sheer scale and impact of the MSME sector—from its contribution to GDP and manufacturing to its role as one of the country’s largest employers. More importantly, he emphasised a turning point: MSMEs are no longer confined to being local suppliers but are rapidly evolving into global contenders powered by technology, innovation, and agility. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Indian MSMEs are transitioning from local suppliers to global contenders: Raghuvir Srinivasan
North America
Yahoo Finance

Making Six Figures but Betting Everything on U.S. Stocks? AVUV Fixes That Problem

You check your portfolio and it looks like every other portfolio in America. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and a heaping side of S&P 500 index fund that is, when you look under the hood, basically more of the same seven names. You are 38, you have 25-plus years until retirement, and you have a nagging feeling that betting the house on the same handful of trillion-dollar tech giants is not actually diversification. You are right to feel that way, and the ETF that fixes it is the Avantis U.S. Small Cap Value ETF (NYSEARCA:AVUV), a fund built to own everything your index quietly underweights. Mega-cap growth has carried the market for so long that the average investor now owns almost no exposure to the two factors academic research has identified as the most reliable long-run sources of equity premium: small size and cheap valuation. The fix isn’t to sell your index fund. It’s to add a counterweight. Something that zigs when the Mag 7 zags, with a different earnings stream, a different valuation profile, and a different beta to whatever AI capex does next. That is exactly the role AVUV is built to play. AVUV is run by Avantis Investors, a unit of American Century, and it is the most popular actively managed small-cap value ETF on the market for a reason. It holds more than 500 positions drawn from the cheapest, most profitable corner of the U.S. small-cap universe. As of the latest filing, fund net assets sat at roughly $23.5 billion, which means you get institutional scale and tight spreads without giving up the active-screening edge. What does that screening look like in practice? The top holdings are a tour of unloved economic plumbing: Five Below at 0.97% of the fund, GATX at 0.92%, Avnet at 0.79%, Archrock at 0.77%, Dana at 0.73%, Alaska Air at 0.72%, California Resources at 0.71%, and Air Lease at 0.69%, with a long tail of regional banks, retailers, energy names, and industrial cyclicals. The top ten is intentionally free of household tech names, and those ten positions add up to just 7.5% of assets. That is genuinely spread-out exposure rather than a few concentrated bets. For your portfolio, the cost is minimal. AVUV charges a published expense ratio of 0.25%, meaning roughly $9,975 of every $10,000 stays invested and working for the value factor. And the value factor has been working. AVUV is up 20.38% year to date and 38.82% over the trailing year, with shares closing at $122 on June 18, 2026. Over the trailing five years it has returned 81.73%, well ahead of the 33.07% from the plain-vanilla Russell 2000 proxy IWM over the same span. That gap is the value tilt and the profitability screen earning their keep. Small-cap value is volatile and cyclical. AVUV slipped 0.97% in the past week while large-cap indices held up, and there will be 12-to-18-month stretches where it lags the S&P badly. The fund is also concentrated in regional banks, retailers, and energy, so a credit cycle or an oil collapse will hurt. This is a long-horizon allocation, not a quick trade. If your portfolio already looks like the index, the missing piece is the slice of the market that the index underweights and that history says compounds hardest over decades. For a long-horizon investor, AVUV is worth researching as a complement to a core S&P allocation, the counterweight that makes the rest of your portfolio more than just seven stocks in a trench coat.

Making Six Figures but Betting Everything on U.S. Stocks? AVUV Fixes That Problem
North America
Yahoo Finance

If You’re 38 With $500K Saved, AVUV Fixes Your Tech-Heavy Portfolio

You check your portfolio and it looks like every other portfolio in America. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and a heaping side of S&P 500 index fund that is, when you look under the hood, basically more of the same seven names. You are 38, you have 25 plus years until retirement, and you have a nagging feeling that betting the house on the same handful of trillion dollar tech giants is not actually diversification. You are right to feel that way. The ETF that fixes it is the Avantis U.S. Small Cap Value ETF (NYSEARCA:AVUV). Mega-cap growth has carried the market for so long that the average investor now owns almost no exposure to the two factors that academic research has identified as the most reliable long-run sources of equity premium: small size and cheap valuation. Keep your index fund and add a counterweight. Something that zigs when the Mag 7 zags, something with a different earnings stream, a different valuation profile, and a different beta to whatever AI capex does next. AVUV is run by Avantis Investors, a unit of American Century, and it is the most popular actively managed small-cap value ETF on the market for a reason. It holds more than 500 positions drawn from the cheapest, most profitable corner of the U.S. small-cap universe. As of the latest filing, fund net assets sat at roughly $23.5 billion, which means you get institutional scale and tight spreads without giving up the active-screening edge. What does that screening look like in practice? The top holdings are a tour of unloved economic plumbing: Five Below at 0.97% of the fund, GATX at 0.92%, Avnet at 0.79%, Archrock at 0.77%, Dana at 0.73%, Alaska Air at 0.72%, California Resources at 0.71%, Air Lease at 0.69%, and a long tail of regional banks, retailers, energy names, and industrial cyclicals. The top ten is intentionally free of household tech names. With the top 10 positions adding up to roughly 7.5% of assets, you are getting genuinely spread-out exposure across the portfolio. The translation for your portfolio: AVUV charges a published expense ratio of 0.25%, meaning roughly $9,975 of every $10,000 stays invested and working for the value factor. And the value factor has been working. AVUV is up 20.38% year to date and 38.82% over the trailing year, with shares closing at $122 on June 18, 2026. Over the trailing five years it has returned 81.73%, well ahead of the 33.07% from the plain-vanilla Russell 2000 proxy IWM over the same span. That gap is the value tilt and the profitability screen earning their keep. Small-cap value is volatile and cyclical. AVUV slipped 0.97% in the past week while large-cap indices held up, and there will be 12 to 18 month stretches where it lags the S&P badly. The fund is also concentrated in regional banks, retailers, and energy, so a credit cycle or oil collapse will hurt. This is a long-horizon allocation. If your portfolio already looks like the index, the missing piece is the slice of the market that the index underweights and that history says compounds hardest over decades. For a long-horizon investor, AVUV is worth researching as a complement to a core S&P allocation.

If You’re 38 With $500K Saved, AVUV Fixes Your Tech-Heavy Portfolio
Europe
The Guardian

Job scams are growing and getting tougher to spot: ‘That’s the reality of this hell job market’

About 32% of gen-Zers report have been a victim of a job scam. Photograph: Tomasz Tulik/AlamyView image in fullscreenAbout 32% of gen-Zers report have been a victim of a job scam. Photograph: Tomasz Tulik/AlamyConsumedJob huntingJob scams are growing and getting tougher to spot: ‘That’s the reality of this hell job market’Swindlers now use AI to send out floods of fraudulent messages to gain the personal information of job seekers Americans are seeing more employment scams than ever as job seekers, facing a tough job market, report a bombardment of messages from swindlers try to lure them into giving sensitive information. Experts say the technology behind these scams has only gotten better over time, allowing fraudsters to easily impersonate employers and send out huge floods of direct messages and emails to job seekers. Reports of employment scams doubled in 2025 from the year before, according to a recent study from the Better Business Bureau (BBB). And gen Z applicants looking to jumpstart their careers have in particular been hit hard: about 32% of gen-Zers report have been a victim of a job scam, compared with 15% of gen-Xers. “It’s one thing to say ‘don’t open attachments’ and ‘that email is dangerous’, but if I think this email might be my shot at getting a job, it’s a different risk,” said Josephine Wolff, a cybersecurity policy professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. “Unemployed job seekers are in a very vulnerable position and susceptible to this type of manipulation.” Last month, Sally got an intriguing interview request while job-hunting online from a Minneapolis cafe. “We are delighted to inform you that your certifications closely align with several current opportunities,” the email promised. “We respectfully ask that you set up an online interview as soon as possible.” Since graduating from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in late 2022, Sally had sent out so many applications for graphic design jobs that the 22-year-old couldn’t remember where they had applied. That was exactly why the email didn’t immediately raise alarms. The sender, “Ryan L Goodson”, said he was from a real biotech company that was based in Seattle. He used sophisticated language, had a company logo in his signature and a professional-looking email domain. “I didn’t want to look silly in the interview, so I tried searching for my original application,” Sally said. Soon, they realized they had never applied to a job at the company. The mystery led Sally to Reddit, where they found the same fraudulent email copied and pasted in multiple posts. “You think you’ll spot the warning signs. But you’re not the exception, you’re prey to it too,” Sally said. “That’s the reality of this hell job market.”

Job scams are growing and getting tougher to spot: ‘That’s the reality of this hell job market’
Europe
BBC Business

Is Germany looking again at coal-powered electricity?

They have a word for it in German – kohleausstieg, which means "coal phase out". Germany is the biggest user of coal for power generation in Europe, and the fourth largest in the world after China, India and the US. But it has pledged to stop using it altogether by 2038. For lignite, the low-quality soft coal that is the most polluting, Germany has even brought the phase out forward to 2030. Currently some 20% of German power generation comes from coal, but it wishes to end this as it focuses on growing wind and solar. In fact, Germany already gets more than half of its electricity from renewables, 59% last year. As back-up to wind and solar, especially for the winter months, it wants to replace coal with more natural gas power stations. These generally release half as much carbon dioxide as coal, and gas currently accounts for 13% of German electricity generation. However, the recent jump in global gas prices following the US-Israel conflict with Iran, has encouraged a number of countries to reconsider coal as an energy source. Japan has loosened rules to allow for the increased use of coal-fired power plants, Italy is delaying the closure of its remaining stations until 2038, and India has postponed maintenance shutdowns. But what about Germany? Back in March, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: "We must supply this country with electricity. I am not prepared to jeopardise the core of our industry simply because we have adopted phase-out plans that have become unrealistic." Was this the start of a phase-out of the phase-out? Is Germany going to keep coal power after all? The problem for the German government regarding what the country burns to make electricity is a two-fold one of supply and price. Germany has an abundance of readily available, cheap lignite. It has the largest reserves in Europe and the third biggest globally. It is entirely self-sufficient in the fuel. By contrast, it has to import 95% of its natural gas supplies. So when the global cost of gas shoots up, switching back to the much cheaper lignite is financially very appealing. And Germany doesn't have to worry about supply shortages.

Is Germany looking again at coal-powered electricity?
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

MSMEs must grow from being producers of ‘me-too’ products to making ‘I-first’ products: ELGI MD

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) should not aspire to remain small forever. Once they achieve stable profitability, they must shift their focus from merely making money to building larger, purpose-driven enterprises, said Jairam Varadaraj, Managing Director of Elgi Equipments. Further, MSMEs must grow from producers of “me too” products to those who make ”I first “ products, he said, speaking at the MSME Growth Conclave, organised by businessline at Coimbatore. Varadaraj argued that being categorised as an MSME should be viewed as a starting point rather than a destination. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

MSMEs must grow from being producers of ‘me-too’ products to making ‘I-first’ products: ELGI MD