NASA's science chief Zurbuchen to step down by year's end

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's science chief who oversaw some of the U.S. space agency's ambitious endeavors including the successful deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope and Perseverance Mars rover, is set to step down at the end of the year.

The Swiss-American astrophysicist has served as head of NASA's science mission directorate since 2016, shepherding the agency's roughly 100 such missions. He announced his planned departure in a memo sent to NASA employees on Tuesday.

"This is a difficult decision for me, but I believe it is time for a new beginning - for the directorate and for me," Zurbuchen wrote.

His planned departure comes as NASA focuses heavily on sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars under its multibillion-dollar Artemis program begun in 2019.

Zurbuchen led the science directorate as it sent NASA's Perseverance rover to the Martian surface, where it has collected rock samples to study whether that planet once may have had conditions conducive to life. The rover's mission also included the flight of a helicopter on another planet for the first time.

NASA launched the Webb telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever built, last December, and in July it began to provide spectacular images of the cosmos.

Zurbuchen's unit played an early role in Artemis with its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an effort to deploy privately built lunar landers to study the moon's surface before people land there in the next few years.

He also played a crucial role in starting NASA's first-known effort to examine unidentified aerial phenomena - better known as UFOs - assembling a team of civilian scientists to assist a Pentagon program in tracking and detecting mysterious objects in the sky.

"From the diversity of the team he assembled, to delivering countless successful space science missions that have changed our view of the universe, to investing in new and better ways of accomplishing space science goals and growing the overall community, Thomas has been a force for positive change across NASA," said Bobby Braun, the head of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab's space exploration sector.

Senator Ted Cruz confronted on plane by heckler who asked him to name one Uvalde victim, video shows

Alia Shoaib

Sat, September 17, 2022 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, listens during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday, March 21, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

• A heckler on a plane asked Texas Senator Ted Cruz to name one victim of the Uvalde school shooting.

• Cruz instead talked about his failed school safety bill.

• Since the Uvalde school shooting in Texas in May, Cruz has resisted calls to support gun control measures.

Senator Ted Cruz was confronted by a heckler who asked him to name one victim of the mass school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

A video posted on Twitter by the heckler shows the man confronting the Texas senator on a plane.

The man starts by sarcastically thanking the Republican for "everything you've done since Uvalde." "All those podcast episodes must have raised a lot of money," he said.

 

Cruz responds by talking about his proposed school safety bill, blocked on the Senate floor on Wednesday. Cruz had asked for unanimous consent, which means that any opposition stopped the bill from passing.

Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, had derided Cruz and his legislation as "theater" and not an "actual attempt to pass legislation."

In the video, the heckler then asks Cruz whether he knows any of the names of the Uvalde victims.

"I do. And ask why Chris Murphy objected and stopped the biggest school safety bill that's ever passed yesterday," Cruz responded.

The heckler ignores Cruz's comment and asks him to name any Uvalde victim agains.

"But you don't kno. You don't care about the facts. You're a partisan, that's okay," Cruz says before turning away.

The poster shared the video on Twitter along with a message of support for Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke for governor of Texas.

Since the Uvalde school shooting took place in May, Cruz has resisted calls to support gun control measures.

The parents of Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, a 10-year-old killed in the Uvalde shooting, said they asked Cruz in a private meeting on Wednesday to support a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons.

"Instead, he said he supports increasing law enforcement presence on school campuses," Kimberly Mata-Rubio, the bereaved mother, wrote on Twitter.

Haiti unrest worsens misery as residences face water shortage
 

Sat, September 17, 2022

PORT AU PRINCE (Reuters) - Thousands in Haiti faced water shortages after days of protest virtually halted distribution, eyewitnesses said on Saturday, as an approaching storm caused more worry in the reeling country.

Many residents of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince have been forced to shelter at home this week as gunfire broke out and burning tires blocked streets during protests of fuel price hikes and crime.

That slowed or halted companies that typically deliver water in the city where daily highs have been hitting 34 degrees centigrade (93 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many took advantage of an expected half day truce to rush to distribution centers to stockpile a few days supply of water and cooking gas, which has also run short in many places.

Fears about the approach of tropical storm Fiona also fueled the rush to get water. Forecasters said the storm's heaviest rains were more likely to hit the Dominican Republic on the east of Hispaniola island.

Jean-Denis Sévère, a resident of Fort National, said many had to travel miles to fill buckets and bottles, then lug them back home.

"I live in Fort National, since there are blockades in the country, we came here to buy water. If it was not for these places, we would die from thirst," he said.

The country's latest unrest came as inflation surged to its highest in a decade and gang violence has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced, with much of Haiti's territory beyond government reach.

Richardson Adrien, a Port-au-Prince resident, told Reuters the lack of potable water was just the latest headache. Residents in recent months have also struggled to find fuel, leaving some unable to work.

Finding clear water "is a problem. We look for it everywhere and we can't find it. We put Clorox in the water to be able to drink it, you can't find water," he said.

The Haitian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Steven Aristil; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Gregorio)

5 / 5

Cleanup day comes to Philippine capital's polluted bay

Filipino environmentalists hold cleanup drive on international coastal cleanup day

Sat, September 17, 2022
By Peter Blaza and Jay Ereño

MANILA (Reuters) - Hundreds of volunteers joined a mass cleanup drive along the coast of the polluted Manila Bay in the Philippine capital to mark International Coastal Cleanup Day on Saturday.

Volunteers and government workers, including hundreds of coast guard personnel, collected sachets, rubber slippers and other non-biodegradable waste that have been washed in the Manila Bay, a 60 km (37 mile) semi-enclosed estuary facing the South China Sea.

"This initiative will help make our coastal area in Manila Bay better so that our tourists and visitors will see the beauty of the bay," college student Kendrick Lopez, 18, told Reuters during the cleanup drive.

Waters along the Manila Bay, famous for its idyllic sunsets, are heavily polluted by oil, grease and trash from nearby residential areas and ports.

The Philippines is rich in marine resources, with nearly 36,300 km (22,555 miles) of coastline in the archipelago of more than 7,600 islands.

But it is the world's top polluter when it comes to releasing plastic waste into the ocean, accounting for roughly a third the total, according to an April 2022 report by the University of Oxford's Our World in Data, a scientific online publication.

"We need to do these (cleanup drives) for our environment and to discourage people from throwing trash on the seaside," Janet Panganiban, a 36-year-old volunteer, told Reuters.

Critics say laws regulating solid waste are inadequate and poorly enforced, leaving governments and communities struggling to address the pollution crisis.

The International Coastal Cleanup Day is held every third Saturday of September to raise awareness of the growing garbage problems affecting coastlines around the world.

(Reporting by Jay Ereno and Peter Blaza; Writing by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Cleanup day comes to Philippine capital's polluted bay




 

Majority of Latino Voters Out of GOP's Reach, New Poll Shows

Jennifer Medina, Jazmine Ulloa and Ruth Igielnik

The New York Times

Sun, September 18, 2022 

Amelia Alonso Tarancon, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago, 

at her home near Fort Lauderdale, Sept. 16, 2022. 

(Saul Martinez/The New York Times)

It has been nearly two years since Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters. But Republican dreams of a major realignment of Latino voters drawn to GOP stances on crime and social issues have failed to materialize, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll — one of the largest nonpartisan surveys of Latino voters since the 2020 election — found that Democrats had maintained a grip on the majority of Latino voters, driven in part by women and the belief that Democrats remained the party of the working class. Overall, Hispanic voters are more likely to agree with Democrats on many issues — immigration, gun policy, climate. They are also more likely to see Republicans as the party of the elite and as holding extreme views. And a majority of Hispanic voters, 56%, plan to vote for Democrats this fall, compared with 32% for Republicans.

But the survey also shows worrying signs for the future of the Democratic message. Despite that comfortable lead, the poll finds Democrats faring far worse than they did in the years before the 2020 election. Younger male Hispanic voters, especially those in the South, appear to be drifting away from the party, a shift that is propelled by deep economic concerns. Weaknesses in the South and among rural voters could stand in the way of crucial wins in Texas and Florida in this year’s midterms.

Anthony Saiz, 24, who reviews content for a social media platform in Tucson, Arizona, said he had to take on a second job baking pizzas at a beer garden to make ends meet. Saiz voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and considers himself a Democrat because he grew up in a Democratic household. But under Biden, he said, the cost of living seemed to have doubled for him even as he moved into a smaller apartment.

“The choices he has been making for the country have been putting me in a bad spot,” he said of the president.

How Latinos will vote is a crucial question in the November elections and for the future of American politics. Hispanic voters are playing a pivotal role in the battle over control of Congress, making up a significant slice of voters — as high as 20% — in two of the states likeliest to determine control of the Senate, Arizona and Nevada. Latinos also make up more than 20% of registered voters in more than a dozen highly competitive House races in California, Colorado, Florida and Texas, among other states.

Democrats have long assumed that the growing Latino electorate would doom Republicans, and the prospect of an increasingly diverse electorate has fueled anxieties among conservatives. The 2020 election results — in which Trump gained an estimated 8 percentage points among Hispanic voters compared with 2016 — began changing both parties’ outlooks. The Times/Siena poll shows that historic allegiances and beliefs on core issues remain entrenched, although some shifts are striking.

Although majorities of Hispanic voters side with Democrats on social and cultural issues, sizable shares hold beliefs aligned with Republicans: More than one-third of Hispanic voters say they agree more with the GOP on crime and policing, and 4 in 10 Hispanic voters have concerns that the Democratic Party has gone too far on race and gender. Hispanic voters view economic issues as the most important factor determining their vote this year and are evenly split on which party they agree with more on the economy.

Hispanic voters in America have never been a unified voting bloc and have frequently puzzled political strategists who try to understand their behavior. The 32 million Latinos eligible to vote are recent immigrants and fourth-generation citizens, city dwellers and rural ranchers, Catholics and atheists.

Both parties have been full of bluster and soaring expectations for Latino voters, raising and spending millions of dollars to attract their support, but there has been little concrete nonpartisan data to back up their speculation. The survey offers insights into a portion of the electorate that many strategists have called the new swing vote and whose views are often complicated by contradictions among subgroups.

Dani Bernal, 35, a digital marketer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles, said she switched back and forth between candidates from both parties, in large part based on their economic policies. Her mother, she said, had arrived in Florida from Bolivia with only a bag of clothes and $500 to her name, and had been able to thrive there because taxes were low and the cost of living had been affordable. Economic issues loom large in her decisions, Bernal said.

“I am registered as a Republican, but I am exactly like Florida: I swing back-and-forth,” she said.

Republicans are performing best with Hispanic voters who live in the South, a region that includes Florida and Texas, where Republicans have notched significant wins with Latino voters in recent elections. In the South, 46% of Latino voters say they plan to vote for Democrats, while 45% say they plan to vote for Republicans. By contrast, Democrats lead 62% to 24% among Hispanic voters in other parts of the country.

A generation gap could also lead to more Republican gains. Democrats, the poll found, were benefiting from particularly high support among older Latino voters. But 46% of voters younger than 30 favor Republicans’ handling of the economy, compared with 43% who favor Democrats.

Republicans also have strength among Latino men, who favor Democrats in the midterm election but who say, by a 5-point margin, that they would vote for Trump if he were to run again in 2024. Young men in particular appear to be shifting toward Republicans. They are a key vulnerability for Democrats, who maintain just a 4-point edge in the midterms among men younger than 45.

The Times/Siena poll provides a glimpse of Latino voters who have traditionally supported Democrats in the past but plan to vote for Republicans this fall: They are disproportionately voters without college degrees who are focused on the economy, and they are more likely to be young, male and born in the United States but living in heavily Hispanic areas.

Immigration remains a key issue for Hispanic voters, and both parties have a particular appeal. While Democrats have pushed for overhauling the legal immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for many immigrants living in the country illegally, Republicans have focused on cracking down on illegal immigration and using border politics to galvanize their base.

Democrats maintain a significant advantage on the issue of legal immigration, with 55% of Hispanic voters saying they agree with the party, compared with 29% who say they agree with Republicans. But the GOP has made inroads as it has stepped up anti-immigration rhetoric and policy: 37% of Latino voters favor Republicans’ views on illegal immigration. And roughly one-third support a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Amelia Alonso Tarancon, 69, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago and now lives outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wants Congress to offer legal status to workers living in the country illegally who have been in the country for decades. But she agrees with Republicans on their hard-line views against illegal immigration. The issue motivated her to vote for Trump, although she is a registered Democrat.

“I know this country is a country of immigrants, but they should immigrate in a legal way,” she said. But Alonso Tarancon said she no longer supported the former president after he refused to hand over the presidency, fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and “took all those documents” to Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida.

“I don’t consider myself a Democrat or Republican — I am on standby right now until the next election,” she said.

In their effort to attract new voters, Republicans have frequently criticized Democrats as being too “woke.” The accusation resonates with many Hispanic voters, with 40% saying that the party has gone too far in pushing a “woke” ideology on race and gender. But there is a clear split: 37% take the opposite view and say the party has not gone far enough. And nearly 1 in 5 Hispanic voters surveyed said they didn’t know whether Democrats were too woke — a term that cannot be easily translated into Spanish.

On many social and cultural issues, Hispanic voters remain aligned with the Democratic Party.

The majority, 58%, have a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, while 45% say the same about the Blue Lives Matter movement, which defends law enforcement personnel. A majority believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; even among Republican Hispanics, 4 in 10 oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Support for Black Lives Matter and abortion rights is propelled largely by young people. Asked whom they agreed with more on gun policy, 49% said Democrats, while 34% said Republicans.

Republicans attempting to court Latino voters have repeatedly painted Democrats as elitist and out of touch, but the poll suggests that the strategy is having limited success.

Nearly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters continue to see the Democrats as the party of the working class. Although white Republicans uniformly see themselves as the working-class party, even some Hispanic Republicans believe that mantle belongs to Democrats. And there was no evidence in the poll that Republicans were performing any better among non-college-educated Latinos or among Hispanics who lived in rural areas, two key demographic groups they have focused on for outreach. One in 4 Hispanic voters in rural areas remain undecided about whom they will vote for in November.

Democrats have been roundly criticized for their embrace of the term Latinx, which is meant to be more inclusive than the gendered words Latino and Latina. Previous surveys have shown only a small minority of Hispanic voters prefer the term. But the poll suggests that Latinx is hardly the most polarizing issue; just 18% said they found the term offensive.

—

POLL METHODOLOGY: The Times/Siena survey of 1,399 registered voters nationwide, including an oversample of 522 Hispanic voters, was conducted by telephone using live operators from Sept. 6-14. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for the full sample and 5.9 percentage points among Hispanic voters. Cross-tabs and methodology are available for all registered voters and for Hispanic voters are available at nytimes.com.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Saudi Arabia arrests man over pilgrimage for Queen Elizabeth

Tue, September 13, 2022 at 5:27 AM·1 min read

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi police arrested a Yemeni man this week after he advertised on social media his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he paid tribute to the memory of Queen Elizabeth II.

The pilgrim, who was not identified by name, had posted footage earlier this week that showed him holding a banner honoring the late queen from inside the courtyard of Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

The clip quickly spread online, sparking outrage among devout Muslims and leading to the man's arrest on Monday for “violating the regulations and instructions” of the holy site. Security forces referred him to the public prosecutor to face charges.

The Grand Mosque, among the holiest sites in Islam, is off-limits to non-Muslims. Saudi Arabia also bans signs and political slogans from the sacred courtyard for fear of offending Islamic sensibilities. Queen Elizabeth, who died last week, was head of the Church of England.


“Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, may Allah grant her peace in heaven and accept her among the righteous,” the banner read in English and Arabic.

The mosque's white-and-gray marble complex is visible behind the Yemeni man. Umrah is the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca, which can performed at any time of the year.

Phony document riddled with spelling and syntax errors mysteriously appeared on Mar-a-Lago court docket

Published: Sept. 17, 2022 

Associated Press

An aerial view of the Mar-a-Lago club on Aug. 31

. AP/STEVE HELBER

WASHINGTON (AP) — When a government document mysteriously appeared earlier this week in the highest profile case in the federal court system, it had the hallmarks of another explosive storyline in the Justice Department’s investigation into classified records stored at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.

The document purported to be from the U.S. Treasury Department, claimed that the agency had seized sensitive documents related to last month’s search at Mar-a-Lago and included a warrant ordering CNN to preserve “leaked tax records.”


The document remained late Thursday on the court docket, but it is a clear fabrication. A review of dozens of court records and interviews by the Associated Press suggest the document originated with a serial forger behind bars at a federal prison complex in North Carolina.

The incident also suggests that the court clerk was easily tricked into believing it was real, landing the document on the public docket in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant case. It also highlights the vulnerability of the U.S. court system and raises questions about the court’s vetting of documents that purport to be official records.

The document first appeared on the court’s docket late Monday afternoon and was marked as a “MOTION to Intervene by U.S. Department of the Treasury.”

The document, sprinkled with spelling and syntax errors, read, “The U.S. Department of Treasury through the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service have arrested Seized Federal Securities containing sensitive documents which are subject to the Defendant Sealed Search Warrant by the F.B.I. arrest.”

It cited a federal statute for collecting financial records in federal investigations. The document also included the two supposed warrants, one that claimed to be sent to CNN in Atlanta and another to a towing company in Michigan.

Those supposed warrants, though, are identical to paperwork filed in another case in federal court in Georgia brought by an inmate at the prison medical center in Butner, N.C. The case was thrown out, as were the array of other frivolous lawsuits the man has filed from his prison cell.

The man has been in custody for several years since he was found not competent to stand trial after an arrest for planting a fake explosive outside the Guardian Building, a skyscraper in Detroit. Since his incarceration, he has filed a range of lawsuits and has impersonated the Treasury Department, claimed to be a federal trustee and claimed to be a lawyer for the Justice Department, a review of court records shows.

In the Georgia case, the man alleged that Trump and others had “acquired ‘millions of un- redacted classified tax returns and other sensitive financial data, bank records and accounts of banking and tax transactions of several million’ Americans and federal government agencies,” court documents say.

The judge in that case called his suit “fanatic” and “delusional,” saying there was no way to “discern any cognizable claim” from the incoherent filings.

The man has repeatedly impersonated federal officials in court records and has placed tax liens on judges using his false paperwork, two people familiar with the matter told the AP. Because of his history as a forger, his mail is supposed to be subjected to additional scrutiny from the Bureau of Prisons.

It’s unclear how the documents — the fake motion and the phony warrants — ended up at the court clerk’s office at the courthouse in West Palm Beach, Fla.

A photocopy of an envelope, included in the filing, shows it was sent to the court with a printed return address of the Treasury Department’s headquarters in Washington. But a postmark shows a Michigan ZIP code, and a tracking number on the envelope shows it was mailed Sept. 9 from Clinton Township, Mich., the inmate’s hometown.

The AP is not identifying the inmate by name because he has a documented history of mental illness and has not been charged with a crime related to the filing.
“There is simply nothing indicating that he has any authorization to act on behalf of the United States,” the judge in the Georgia case wrote.

But despite the clear warning signs — including a stamp noting the Georgia case number on the phony warrants — the filing still made its way onto the docket.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the Treasury Department would not comment. They declined to answer on the record when asked if the document was false and why the government had not addressed it.

Representatives in the court clerk’s office and the magistrate judge overseeing the search warrant case did not respond to requests for comment.

CAPITALI$M 101

Peloton went from a pandemic-era success story worth $50 billion to laying off more than 4,000 workers. Here's how the company's meteoric rise turned into an equally swift fall.


Avery Hartmans
Tue, September 13, 2022

John Smith/VIEWpress

Peloton has laid off thousands of workers this year and its former CEO, cofounder John Foley, has cut ties with the company.

It's a stunning turnaround for a company that became a Wall Street darling during the pandemic.

But increased competition and the return to gyms has hurt Peloton's business in recent months.

In the height of the pandemic, Peloton was on top of the world. Its stock pushed $171 per share and its market cap hovered around $50 billion.

Now, just this year the company has laid off more than 4,000 staff members, replaced its CEO, and reportedly is considering a potential sale to the likes of Amazon, Apple, or Nike. Peloton's stock has been trading well below the IPO price of $29 per share, at one point dropping as low as $8.22.

It's a stunning reversal for a company once at the top of the connected-fitness food chain, and it's the result of a culmination of factors, including the fading popularity of at-home fitness and a mishandled logistics operation.

Here's how Peloton got its start and became a fitness world darling, and how it crashed and burned.

Peloton was founded in 2012 by a group of ex-IAC employees

Peloton's five cofounders.Peloton

John Foley, Hisao Kushi, Tom Cortese, and Graham Stanton — four of Peloton's five cofounders — met working at media and internet company IAC. The fifth cofounder, Yony Feng, met the group through his roommate who worked at IAC.

Foley has said that the vision for the company was his, but that his four cofounders "took it, ran with it, and built it while I was gone" raising money, he told Fortune last year.

Prior to founding Peloton, Foley was president at Barnes & Noble, overseeing its e-commerce business.

The early version of its bike was 'janky,' and it struggled to find investors

Jen Van Santvoord rides her Peloton exercise bike at her home on April 7, 2020.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Foley is a self-professed "boutique fitness addict," as well as an avid cyclist. But the early versions of the Peloton bike didn't look like something you'd find in a high-end fitness studio, the company's first instructor, Jenn Sherman, told Fortune last year.

"They had this little tiny corner of the office that was sectioned off by black velvet curtains. There was a camera on a tripod sticking through a circle people literally cut out of the curtain. There was a janky, broken bike in there — the instructor bike was like this rusted piece of crap. It was ridiculous," she said.

Still, Sherman signed on. Meanwhile, Foley was on the road for the first three years, pitching what he told Insider in 2018 was as many as 400 investors.

"I got 400 'nos,'" he said at the time. "The worst part is that we're not talking about 400 individual pitches. A lot of people would want me to come back four or five times and have me meet more partners and pitch again. I would say that I've been turned down maybe five or six thousand times."

Still, the company scraped together funding from more than 200 angel investors and put its first bike on Kickstarter in 2013 for an "early bird" price of $1,500.
Peloton quickly developed a cult following

Instructor Hannah Corbin teaching a live class at Peloton's Manhattan studio.Peloton

Peloton began shipping bikes in 2014, with Foley and the other cofounders showing off how they worked at pop-up stores inside shopping centers.

But it didn't take long for the company to develop a cult following, thanks in large part to its roster of high-wattage instructors. When the company opened its own studio in New York City, owners of the company's $2,000 bike would make a pilgrimage to Manhattan in order to take a live class with their favorite instructor.

Eventually, big-name investors came calling. "I would say that it took about five years for the really smart money to start getting involved," Foley told Insider in 2018. "When Mary Meeker is calling you to say, 'Hey, I want to invest' — that's pretty cool."

That year, Peloton raised $550 million in venture capital funding at a valuation of $4.1 billion, according to Pitchbook.

Peloton expanded its offerings as spinning faded in popularity

Peloton unveiled the Tread at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show.Avery Hartmans/Business Insider

Peloton introduced its second product, a $4,000 treadmill called the Peloton Tread, in 2018, and added new types of classes, like high-intensity interval training and yoga, to keep users engaged or get new customers to sign onto a digital subscription, no equipment required.

By 2019, the company had sold 577,000 bikes and treadmills.

In August of that year, Peloton filed for an initial public offering, revealing it had over 500,000 paying subscribers, but also spiraling losses from major investments in marketing and licensing music for its classes.

Peloton went public on September 26, 2019 in what was at the time the third-worst trading debut for a major IPO since the financial crisis.

Peloton's stock plummeted following its 2019 holiday ad

A still from the "Peloton wife" ad.Peloton

Ahead of the holidays in 2019, Peloton made what was seen as a major public misstep with its infamous "Peloton wife" ad.

The ad, featuring a woman whose husband gifts her a Peloton bike for Christmas, was viewed as being sexist and playing into outdated standards of beauty. Public outrage over the ad sent Peloton's stock plunging 9%, wiping out $942 million in market value in a single day.

But Peloton stood by the commercial, issuing a statement saying it was "disappointed" by how people had "misinterpreted" the ad.

The pandemic became a major boon for Peloton's business

Cari Gundee rides her Peloton exercise bike at her home on April 06, 2020 in San Anselmo, California.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Then, in early 2020, the pandemic hit. Suddenly stuck inside, people turned to at-home fitness and found connection in Peloton's streamed workout classes. The company's share price took off.

By May 2020, Peloton reported a 66% increase in sales and a 94% increase in subscribers. In September of that year, Peloton said that it had had its first profitable quarter, with sales spiking 172% since the same quarter the year prior and revenue rising to $607 million.

But the unexpected uptick in demand showed the cracks in Peloton's logistics operation. Delivery times for new equipment became longer and longer, and Peloton's typically diehard fans began expressing their frustration online.

Then, some customers began experiencing issues with their bikes where pedals snapped off mid-ride. The company took weeks or months to make repairs, further frustrating users. After 120 reports of bikes breaking and 16 reports of customers getting injured, the company issued a recall affecting 30,000 bikes.

Still, 2020 was all around a stellar year for Peloton that included debuting new, higher-end versions of the bike and treadmill and inking a multi-year deal with Beyoncé. A year after the "Peloton wife" ad, the company's market value had hit $34 billion.

In early 2021, Peloton reported its first-ever billion-dollar quarter, driven by holiday sales and sustained demand for at-home fitness as the pandemic raged on. Foley pledged to manufacture "tens of millions" of treadmills and bikes to keep up with surging sales and spend $100 million to speed up deliveries hampered by port congestion.

Peloton had to issue a treadmill recall following a child's death

A user runs on the Peloton Tread.Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

But in March, tragedy struck when a child was fatally injured in an accident with a Peloton treadmill. Shares dipped 4% following the news and regulators urged a recall.

Foley initially pushed back, calling the warnings "inaccurate and misleading," but by May, the company announced a recall of the higher-end Tread+.

In an effort to make the treadmill safer, Peloton also made a change that resulted in it becoming unusable unless users paid $39 per month. Following customer outrage, the company said it would work on a fix.

As the pandemic began to recede, so did Peloton's popularity

Peloton's New York City studio.John Smith/VIEWpress

As the nation continued to move toward reopening — and returning to the gym and fitness studios — Peloton's business took a punch. The company's stock dropped 34% following its fiscal first-quarter earnings in November, which included a dismal outlook for the months ahead.

"It is clear that we underestimated the reopening impact on our company and the overall industry," Foley said in a call with shareholders.

Peloton was also being chased by rivals like Echelon and iFit Health, which offer similar, cheaper products. Peloton filed a lawsuit against them in November, accusing them of patent infringement.

In the meantime, Peloton had been taking reputational hits. A hiring freeze set in, and Black employees voiced concerns over their pay compared to the industry standard. A character in the "Sex and the City" reboot died after using his bike, and then the same thing happened to a "Billions"character soon after. And in December, Foley threw a lavish holiday party as the company's stock tanked.

By January, the company was discussing layoffs, reportedly pausing production of new equipment, and halting plans to open a new $400 million factory. Employees told Insider the company's warehouses were filled with excess bikes.
Peloton began laying off employees, replaced Foley, and was eyeing a potential acquisition

An instructor during a Peloton class.Scott Heins/Getty Images

In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon may be eyeing Peloton as a potential acquisition — soon after, the Financial Times reported that Nike was considering the same. Wall Street analysts posited that Apple would be another natural fit as the new owner of Peloton.

The possibility of a sale sent Peloton's stock jumping 25%.

Days later, Foley announced that he would step down as Peloton's CEO and that the company was slashing 2,800 jobs, about 20% of its workforce. The company said that the fired employees would receive a free year's subscription to the platform, along with a "meaningful cash severance allotment" and other benefits. Its roster of instructors will not be impacted by the layoffs.

During a conference call following the company's second-quarter earnings, Foley said was taking responsibility for what happened at Peloton.

"We've made missteps along the way. To meet market demand, we scaled our operations too rapidly. And we overinvested in certain areas of our business," he said.

"We own this. I own this. And we're holding ourselves accountable," he added.

Experts told Insider's Emma Cosgrove that the company fell prey to the "bullwhip effect," spending big on logistics while expecting that demand would remain high — when demand cooled, Peloton was left with costly supply chain operations that now require a major overhaul.

Barry McCarthy, the former chief financial officer of Spotify and Netflix, replaced Foley as CEO. In a leaked memo to employees, McCarthy called the layoffs "a bitter pill" but said that the company needs to accept "the world as it is, not as we want it to be if we're going to be successful."

"Now that the reset button has been pushed, the challenge ahead of us is this…… do we squander the opportunity in front of us or do we engineer the great comeback story of the post-Covid era?" he wrote. "I'm here for the comeback story."

Now Foley has severed his remaining ties to the company

Peloton co-founder John Foley

Mark Lennihan/AP

July brought news of 570 additional job cuts, and in August, the company announced yet another round of layoffs, slashing roughly 800 customer-service and distribution team members – and raising prices on some equipment.

In September, Peloton announced that Foley had stepped down as executive chairman and that cofounder and Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi also was leaving the company.

In a statement, Foley said: "Now it is time for me to start a new professional chapter. I have passion for building companies and creating great teams, and I am excited to do that again in a new space. I am leaving the company in good hands." Lead independent director Karen Boone takes over as chair.

Peloton Co-Founder John Foley is out in leadership shakeup

Brian Sozzi and Dani Romero

Mon, September 12, 2022 

Peloton Co-Founder John Foley is stepping away from the company he founded.

The embattled founder will leave the company's board of directors, Peloton stated Monday. The decision comes months after Peloton hired former Spotify exec Barry McCarthy as CEO.

"The company has accepted the resignations of John Foley as Executive Chair and Hisao Kushi as Chief Legal Officer, effective September 12, 2022 and October 3, 2022, respectively," a press release stated.

Kushi, also a co-founder, will be replaced by Tammy Albarrán, who most recently served as Uber's chief deputy general counsel and deputy corporate secretary.

A source told Yahoo Finance that Foley — who along with his wife and other insiders controls close to 60% of Peloton's voting shares — may sell his stake in the company after a cooling-off period.

John Foley, co-founder and CEO of Peloton Interactive, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 7, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

"As I reflect on the journey Peloton has been on since we founded it, I am so proud of what we have built together," Foley stated. "From day one, the incredible talent we've had on our team and the dedication, hard work, and creativity of every Peloton employee are what got us to where we are today. We founded the company because we wanted to make fitness and wellness convenient, fun, and effective. Because of the work of thousands of people, we've done that."

Peloton was founded in 2012 after Foley, a cycle enthusiast, raised over $300,000 in capital to get his exercise startup off the ground. He co-founded the athletic equipment company alongside Graham Stanton, Kushi, Yony Feng, and Tom Cortese. The company IPO'd in September 2019.

Peloton stock, once a pandemic success story, is near all-time lows. Last year, the company temporarily halted production of its at-home fitness products as it looked to cut costs amid a "significant reduction" in consumer demand. Peloton told employees last month it was cutting 800 jobs, closing retail stores, and raising prices.

Peloton confirmed in July that it would be outsourcing production of its bikes and treadmills to a third party, and last month the company announced another major strategy shift as it began to sell select equipment and apparel through Amazon.

This is breaking news and the post may be updated.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

Peloton Founders Leaving Fitness Company in Latest Shake-Up

Ian King
Mon, September 12, 2022 at 3:09 PM·

(Bloomberg) -- Peloton Interactive Inc. Executive Chairman and co-founder John Foley is stepping down from the fitness company as part of a leadership shake-up, extending the turbulence at a business trying to pull out of a deep slump.

Foley, who helped start Peloton in 2012 and served as chief executive officer for 10 years, is resigning effective Monday, the company said in a statement. Foley took the executive chairman role in February when he handed the reins to CEO Barry McCarthy, a veteran of Spotify Technology SA and Netflix Inc.


Chief Legal Officer Hisao Kushi, another co-founder, is also headed for the exits. He’ll be replaced in that role by Tammy Albarran, who Peloton recruited from Uber Technologies Inc. The chairman role, meanwhile, will be filled by Karen Boone, a former Restoration Hardware executive who currently serves as lead independent director.

Peloton investors initially applauded the changes, sending the shares up as much as 5.3% to $11.64 in extended trading on Monday. But the rally soon evaporated, with the stock declining more than 2%.

The reshuffling extends a year of upheaval at New York-based Peloton, which thrived in the early days of the pandemic but is now suffering from declining sales and mounting losses. Its shares are down about 90% over the past year, and the company has struggled to work through a glut of inventory.

As part of a turnaround plan, McCarthy has cut thousands of jobs and offloaded operations to third-party providers. But Peloton’s quarterly report in August signaled that his comeback effort has a long way to go.

McCarthy’s goal is to make Peloton cash-flow positive in the second half of the coming fiscal year. “We continue to make steady progress, but we still have work to do,” he said last month, while acknowledging that the company’s financial performance may cause some to doubt the “viability of the business.”

With Peloton’s longtime CEO now out of the picture, McCarthy may have a freer hand to make changes. The executive has said the company should prioritize its digital offering over hardware and is exploring allowing subscribers to beam content from their smartphones to non-Peloton fitness equipment.

Separately, Chief Commercial Officer Kevin Cornils is also leaving Peloton and won’t be replaced. Some of Cornils’s responsibilities will be assumed by Dion Sanders as he takes the role of chief emerging business officer, according to an internal memo from McCarthy reviewed by Bloomberg. Chief Content Officer Jen Cotter will assume control of apparel and accessories, showing that the company remains committed to that market.

Albarran will take over Peloton’s legal operations on Oct. 3. She helped oversee a corporate makeover at Uber, which set out to change its image in 2017 after its hard-charging style led to scandals and a strained relationship with drivers.

Peloton looks to draw on the experience of Albarran and Boone to “help move the company forward into our next chapter of growth,” McCarthy said.

Foley said he plans to build a business “in a new space” after leaving the company. The executive helped turn Peloton into an iconic fitness brand with a loyal following, but was criticized for not forecasting a sharp downturn in demand for its exercise bikes.

Some Peloton investors also had hoped that Foley -- and then McCarthy -- would consider selling the company. But no suitor emerged, and McCarthy has said that he didn’t take the CEO job to oversee a sale.

COPS OUTTA CONTROL

Family of Colorado man shot by police wants accountability

This image provided by Sally Glass shows her son Christian Glass, right, sitting with his father, Simon Glass, in Colorado on March 11, 2021. Family members are asking for accountability in the death of Christian Glass, a 22-year-old Colorado man who was shot by police earlier this year after calling 911 for roadside assistance. Christian Glass's parents believed officers escalated a situation that could have been handled differently, and hope the district attorney will bring criminal charges. (Sally Glass via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

JESSE BEDAYN Tue, September 13, 2022 at 4:09 AM·5 min read

DENVER (AP) — Police who shot a 22-year-old Colorado man after he called 911 for roadside assistance escalated the situation, needlessly leading to his death, the man's relatives said in a tearful news conference Tuesday in which they called for accountability.

After Christian Glass' June 11 death in the small mountain town of Silver Plume west of Denver, the Clear Creek County Sheriff's office issued a news release saying that Glass was shot after he became “argumentative and uncooperative” and tried to stab an officer when police broke a car window to grab him.

“Christian was experiencing a crisis, and he called 911 for help,” said the parents' attorney, Siddhartha Rathod, “and yet these officers busted out Christian’s window, shot him six times with bean bag rounds, Tased him multiple times from two Tasers, and then shot him five times.”

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation handles police shootings, including the Glass case, but the family wants prosecutors to file criminal charges, Rathod said.

Heidi McCollum, district attorney for the Fifth Judicial District that includes Clear Creek County, released a statement Tuesday saying her office is investigating the case along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Her office plans to eventually issue a report on the shooting or present the case to a grand jury, which would decide if indictments should be issued, McCollum said.

The videos shared with The Associated Press show Glass refusing to come out of his car while also telling police he’s “terrified" and making heart shapes with his hands to officers. At one point, he also can be seen praying with folded hands and saying, “Dear Lord, please, don't let them break the window.”

When the officers did break the window, Glass seemed to panic and grabbed a knife.

Police then shot Glass with bean bag rounds and shocked him with a stun gun before the young man twisted in his seat and thrust a knife toward an officer, the footage showed. Then one officer fired his gun, hitting Glass. The recordings then show Glass stabbing himself before he died.

The family said the videos were only edited to blur the body. The AP has requested that police provide any videos related to the case.

Rathod said Glass had no history of mental illness. When asked about Glass's abnormal behavior, he said “unfortunately we are not ever going to know.”

Rathod released an autopsy report that found that Glass died of gunshot wounds. It said he had THC, a .01% blood alcohol concentration, and amphetamine in his system, the last of which Rathod said is likely from an ADHD prescription for Glass.

The shooting comes amid a national outcry for police reforms focused on crisis intervention, de-escalation and alternative policing programs. In Denver and New York, behavioral health specialists are sent to 911 callers facing crises that police may not be trained to address or could even exacerbate.

Police haven't said if any behavioral health specialists were called for Glass.

Use-of-force and de-escalation experts who reviewed the footage for The Associated Press said this case is an example of when a behavioral health specialist or crisis response team — programs becoming increasingly popular across the country — may have helped de-escalate the situation and avert Glass’ death.

“There are some real red flags that suggest potential problems,” said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and leading use-of-force expert who reviewed portions of the footage. Stoughton testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd.

While police officers may be justified in using force once a situation has intensified, “it’s everything that we do before that in terms of de-escalation that can make those situations go a completely different direction," said Tamara Lynn, the executive council president for the National De-Escalation Training Center, who reviewed the footage.

In particular, both Lynn and Stoughton questioned why officers didn't take Glass up on his offer, recorded by body camera footage, to disarm himself by throwing his knives out of his car window.

While a thrown knife can pose a threat, “officers have plenty of opportunity to maneuver themselves and put themselves in a position that’s not risky,” said Stoughton. “I am kind of astonished that they did not take advantage of what looked like a very clear opportunity to have him separate himself from the weapons.”

Similarly, Stoughton wondered why they needed to break the car window. He said police don't have all day to spend on one call, but questioned if they needed to.

“It’s not clear to me that it should have gone that far,” he said.

Between tears on Tuesday, Christian’s mother, Sally Glass, displayed a pendant of Jesus recovered from her son’s car that is engraved with the words, “Pray for us.”

“We have to pray for us in America to make this a less violent country,” Sally Glass said. “I think a lot of people now would agree that there is a systemic problem with policing: It’s too aggressive. They escalate at every opportunity, and it looks like they are spoiling for a fight. ... They should be protecting us, not attacking us.”

Glass said her son was “petrified” and “paralyzed” by fear the night he was killed.

“I have a hole in my heart, and it will be there until the day I die,” Glass said.

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Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert contributed to this report.

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Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Bedayn on Twitter.

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This story has been updated to correct the age of Christian Glass and the date of his death.