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A JetBlue pilot was pulled from a plane in Buffalo, New York, after allegedly exceeding four times the legal limit for pilots in a breathalyzer test, according to Helen Tedras, public relations director of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority.

The 52-year-old pilot hit 0.17 in a breathalyzer test, police said – well above the legal limit for pilots, which is 0.04.

According to the NFTA, an official from the Transport Security Administration noticed that the pilot was drunk and the authorities took him out of the cockpit just before takeoff.

NFTA airport police detained the man, who is from Orlando, Florida, and notified federal authorities, according to Tederous. He has been released from JetBlue security and could face federal charges, she said.

The pilot denied drinking in the morning on the flight, according to a police report, but said he had drunk 7-8 drinks the night before.

Tederus said the passengers on board were aware of what was happening.

“It was right there, everything was unfolding in front of them,” she said. “It must have been very worrying.”

The flight to Ft. Lauderdale was entertained for more than four hours.

In a statement, JetBlue said that the safety of customers and crew members “is our first priority”.

“We adhere to all DOT rules and requirements regarding alcohol at all times and have a very strict internal zero tolerance policy,” the statement said. “We are aware of the incident that took place this morning in Buffalo and are cooperating fully with law enforcement. We also conduct our own internal investigation. The participating crew member has been removed from his duties. “

Experts say these incidents are rare.

“It’s so rare, but when it happens, it’s the end of your career,” said aviation analyst at ABC News and former commercial pilot John Nance. “This could not be more serious – the idea of ​​having someone even slightly injured in the trade cockpit was all these lives behind you. And all these lives on the ground below you.

Google announced on Wednesday that employees at its offices in the Bay Area and several other locations in the United States will officially return to the office on April 4. From that date, the company will begin its previously announced hybrid work approach, which expects most employees to be in the office approximately three days a week.

In December, Google postponed the planned return to the office on January 10 until sometime in 2022, and now we know when that return will be. The company will use the month of March to help move to the new hybrid model, according to Google spokeswoman Laura Lee Erickson.

Depending on their job, some employees may need to be on site more than three days a week. Workers who want more time before returning to the office may request an extension. And some employees will be out full-time – nearly 14,000 Google employees worldwide have moved to a new location or moved to a completely remote job after the company launched a new location tool in June, Erickson said.

Anyone who visits a Google site will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or have approved accommodation. Unvaccinated staff with approved accommodation will need to be tested regularly and wear a mask. However, U.S.-based remote employees who do not visit Google’s office are not required to be vaccinated.

Snowflake’s profit on Wednesday showed less than the expected loss for the quarter for January, while revenue exceeded forecasts. But the company’s revenue forecast for fiscal 2023 simply rose from expectations, leading to a fall in SNOW shares.

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snowflake (SNOW) released the profit for the fourth quarter after the market closed. In long-term stock market trading today, the software maker’s shares fell 27% to nearly 193.55.

While SNOW shares are offering stellar revenue growth, they are trading at a high rate, despite the recent adjustment in software stocks.

Snowflake said fourth-quarter revenue jumped 101 percent to $ 384 million a year earlier, slowing from a 110 percent increase in the October quarter. Analysts estimated Snowflake’s revenue at $ 373 million.

Snowflake reduces its losses

Shares of Snowflake reported a loss of 43 cents per share, using generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP, compared to a loss of 70 cents per share a year earlier. Analysts expected the company to report a loss of 50 cents per share.

Snowflake shares do not reflect adjusted earnings in their earnings publications. Analysts estimated a profit of 3 cents on an adjusted basis.

Snowflake also announced the acquisition of Streamlit. The conditions were not disclosed.

Shares of Snowflake withdrew 22% in 2022, heading for the earnings report.

SNOW Stocks: Great customer growth continues

In addition, Snowflake said it now has 184 customers with “retained 12-month revenue from products in excess of $ 1 million,” compared to 148 such customers as of Oct. 31.

For the full fiscal year 2023, which ends in January, Snowflake forecasts product revenues of $ 1.89 billion in the middle of its forecast, exceeding analysts’ estimates of $ 1.87 billion.

In September 2020, Snowflake made the largest initial public offering ever made by a software company. Snowflake’s IPO raised $ 3.4 billion.

The software vendor has a relative strength rating of 38 of the top 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup.

If you are new to IBD, consider looking at its stock trading system and the basics of CAN SLIM. Recognizing chart patterns on issues such as SNOW shares is one of the keys to investment guidance.

Follow Reinhard Krause on Twitter @reinhardtk_tech for 5G wireless updates, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.

Top Growth Shares to Buy and Watch: See IBD Stock List Updates

How to use the 10-week moving average for buying and selling

Ford announced today that it will split its electric and fossil fuel business into two separate divisions. The announcement attracted investors to the shares, but left many unanswered questions about the future of the 118-year-old company.

The reorganization limits weeks of speculation that the carmaker could split into two separate companies. Ford said its future is in electric vehicles, but so far most of its profits come from cars and fossil fuel trucks.

“We’re entering everything, creating separate but complementary businesses that give us start-up speed and unbridled innovation in the Ford Model e, along with Ford Blue’s industrial know-how, volume and iconic brands like Bronco that startups can only dream of “Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.

The new electrical division, to be called the Ford Model e, will report directly to Farley. Meanwhile, Fossil Fuels, Ford Blue, will report to Kumar Galhotra, who is currently president of Ford’s group for America and International Markets.

The two drive modes are not necessarily in conflict, but have different requirements for engineering, development and marketing. Investors and analysts tend to believe that EV-only companies can move faster to capture more of the growing EV market than those burdened with legacy technologies.

Investors and analysts are pushing Ford to separate its EV business from its legacy vehicles, but the Ford family is unlikely to completely divest one business or another. And yet, as capital markets have flooded electric electric car companies with money, Ford is clearly asking for some of that money. Tesla, for example, has a market capitalization of more than four times Ford, GM and Stellantis combined, although it sells far fewer vehicles.

It remains to be seen whether this move is the best of both worlds. The structure can just as easily turn Ford into a carmaker’s futon – somehow good in electric cars, somehow good in internal combustion, but not in either.

In a sense, the move makes sense. Specialized platforms for electric vehicles are different enough from fossil fuel equivalents to benefit individual engineering teams. Without having to have internal combustion engines, the process of designing and developing a special EV can move faster and allow more innovation. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel country may operate more as a legacy business with a focus on cost reduction to squeeze the most profit from products that rely on old technologies that aren’t improving nearly as fast.

In fact, “Ford Blue will be an engine of money and profitability for the whole company,” said Galhotra. In a way, this is the way Ford works today. Although his Mustang Mach-E is reported to be profitable, sales of the electric crossover almost certainly don’t waste as much money today as the gas-powered F-150. Maintaining the two divisions in the same company will allow the fossil fuel country to subsidize the development of new platforms and models for electric vehicles, while providing funds for the construction of new factories.

Still, the two divisions are expected to prepare separate profit and loss statements by 2023, Bank of America said in a note to investors today. If the EV country manages to generate profits on its own, investors may increase the pressure on Ford to separate every business, especially if these statements reveal a declining dependence on fossil fuel margins.

This move could also create internal struggles between the two divisions as they compete for resources. Based on Galhotra’s comments and Farley’s position as CEO, the Ford Model is clearly the company’s future, and the Ford Blue is a dairy cow that is designed for milking. Even in the laudatory language of press releases, Ford Blue doesn’t sound like it has a very bright or innovative future. One can only depict the reception that the message will receive from the inside. Jobs at Ford Blue, especially design and engineering positions, may be seen as less prestigious and the department may suffer from a brain drain.

And while investors seem to be in the news, Ford’s stock isn’t picking up as a pure electric car company. So while Ford’s access to capital markets may be a little easier, the carmaker won’t jump to Tesla-sized sets anytime soon.

“They see the share price of electricity-only companies relative to the share price of traditional producers and they want to participate,” a former Ford insider told Ars. “They’ll find out the rest later.”

“For now, I would say that we will proceed carefully in line with this plan,” Mr Powell told the House Financial Services Commission on Wednesday. “We will avoid adding uncertainty to what is already an extremely challenging and uncertain moment.

Although it was too early to say how the war and heavy sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow would affect the US economy, he said there was a general urgency to continue tightening policy.

The S&P 500 rose 1.9 percent on Wednesday, a day after the index fell 1.6 percent. Yields on benchmark 10-year treasury bonds are particularly volatile. They rose to 1.862%, from 1.708% on Tuesday and 1.836% on Monday.

Mr Powell has effectively put an end to the debate among markets and other Fed officials over whether they will raise interest rates from zero this month by more than half a percentage point. At the same time, he laid the groundwork for the possibility of a half-point increase this summer, rejecting the idea that more traditional quarter-point increases represent a speed limit for the Fed.

Consumer prices rose 6.1 percent in January from a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred rate. With the exception of variable food and energy categories, so-called core inflation rose by 5.2%, close to a 40-year high. “This is strong, high inflation and it is very important that we overcome it, and that is exactly what we will do,” Mr Powell told lawmakers.

Mr Powell said his colleagues expected inflation to peak and fall soon. “To the extent that inflation is higher or more sustained than that, then we would be prepared to act more aggressively,” raising interest rates by half a percentage point in one or more meetings later this year. The Fed has not raised interest rates by half a point since 2000.

Mr Powell also said he expected the Fed to make “good progress” in preparing plans to shrink its $ 9 trillion asset portfolio, but that he would not finalize those plans at his March 15-16 meeting.

The global economy is recovering from a series of “supply shocks” in which shortages of goods or services raise prices. The textbooks call on central banks not to react to one-off price increases resulting from temporary factors such as natural disasters, but instead to focus on broader core inflationary pressures.

However, officials are beginning to worry about an overheated labor market with rising wages well above their pre-pandemic levels and the risk of consumers and businesses expecting higher prices to rise in the future, which encourages consistently higher inflation.

Fed officials last spring and summer attributed much of the rise in inflation to bottlenecks in the supply chain, which would not necessarily require a political response if these breakages were expected to resolve themselves in a few months. On Wednesday, Mr Powell suggested that high inflation was the result of a clash between both strong demand and supply constraints. The focus on demand is important, as raising the Fed’s interest rates could lead to a balance between supply and demand by slowing rents and broader economic activity.

Mr Powell said labor shortages were raising wages, and the Fed was watching closely for signs that the war in Ukraine would lead to even higher prices. The Fed will not have to raise interest rates so much, he said, if bottlenecks are eased and more workers return to the job market.

“Honestly, we have the tools and we will use them to control inflation, but as long as we get help from supply, it will make this job much easier,” he said.

His remarks underscore the challenge facing the central bank as it prepares to raise interest rates for the first time since 2018. During geopolitical turmoil, the Fed generally avoids taking steps that increase uncertainty. But as inflation exceeds its 2% target and the Ukrainian crisis threatens to push prices even higher, the Fed may feel more pressure to raise interest rates.

While Russia’s direct trade links with the US economy are not significant, Mr Powell pointed to the risk of unintended and downstream effects from rising prices for oil, natural gas and other goods for which Russia is a major exporter, including neon, palladium, wheat and manure. “Events like war will raise the price of oil and gas, and that will certainly affect prices,” he said.

Lawmakers have pressured Mr Powell over the Fed’s previous view that inflationary pressures would ease faster than last year. “I always thought there was a chance we could make a mistake and that if we made a mistake, we could turn around, and we made a turn and turned around pretty quickly,” he said last December. “But then the economy was really moving very, very fast.”

However, he said the labor market was strong enough for the economy to keep up. He said he hoped the economy could slow down enough to slow rising prices and wages without leading to a recession or period of high inflation, as seen in the 1970s – the so-called soft landing.

“We haven’t faced this challenge in a long time, but we all know the story and we all know what we have to do,” Mr Powell said. “I think it is more likely than not to achieve what we call a soft landing.

Later, when he was pressed whether the Fed’s response might have to be so strong that such a soft landing would be impossible, he said: “There are no guarantees in life. But that is our intention and what we propose to do. “

Write to Nick Timiraos at [email protected]

A JetBlue pilot was removed from the cockpit minutes before taking off from an airport in upstate New York on Wednesday and was found to have a blood alcohol level more than four times the legal flight limit, according to reports.

James Clifton, 52, took a breathalyzer after cops pulled him off a plane to Fort Lauderdale from Buffalo Niagara International Airport, a spokesman for the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority told The Buffalo News.

The Orlando resident, Florida, was allegedly visibly drunk when he went through security before boarding the plane, prompting agents from the Transportation Security Administration to notify cops, the report said.

His blood alcohol content is 0.17 percent, which is twice the 0.08 percent limit for driving a car and four times the 0.04 percent BAC limit set for pilots under Federal Aviation Administration regulations, according to WIVB-TV.

The flight, originally scheduled to leave Buffalo at 6:15 a.m., was delayed by four hours and 10 minutes, according to flight tracking site FlightAware.com. He arrived in Florida at 1:10 p.m. Wednesday, according to the site.

An NFTA spokesman did not answer a phone call from The Post on Friday. A JetBlue spokesman said the pilot had been suspended.

“The safety of JetBlue customers and crew is our first priority,” the spokesman told The Post. “We stick to everyone [Department of Transportation] rules and requirements for alcohol at all times and have a very strict internal zero tolerance policy.

“We are aware of the incident that took place this morning in Buffalo and are cooperating fully with law enforcement,” the spokesman added. “We are also conducting our own internal investigation.”

WASHINGTON, March 2 – Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who is balancing high inflation in the United States against the complex new risks of a European ground war, said on Wednesday that the central bank would “carefully” raise interest rates at an upcoming meeting. in March, but will be ready to move more aggressively if inflation does not cool down as quickly as expected.

Powell called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “change of game” that could have unpredictable consequences.

“Events are yet to come and we do not know what the real effect will be on the US economy,” Powell told the House Financial Services Committee during a monetary policy hearing overshadowed by the conflict in Europe.

But he said the Fed was now largely going as planned to raise its interest rate on federal overnight funds and reduce its balance sheet to curb inflation, which is currently the highest at 80 -the years of the last century.

Powell said he would support a quarter-point increase in interest rates at the Fed’s meeting on March 15-16, effectively putting an end to the debate on starting a post-pandemic round of raising interest rates by more than the usual half-point increase.

But the Fed chief said he was prepared to use larger or more frequent interest rate movements if necessary if inflation did not slow down and he may have to raise interest rates to restrictive levels above 2 over time. 5% – slowing economic growth, instead of just stimulating it less stably.

This is a fine difference, but a marker of Powell’s focus on inflation as a key battle for the Fed right now, a major concern that could undermine central bank confidence if it deteriorates, undermines household spending and distorts investment and decision-making. the costs of business and families.

The labor market, Powell noted in prepared testimonials, was “extremely tight,” and Fed officials said their goal of maximum employment had been effectively met. The pandemic’s impact on the economy appears to be waning and “demand is strong,” Powell said.

However, inflation has now tripled from the Fed’s 2% target and has become a major political concern for the Biden administration and members of Congress who came to Wednesday’s hearing, armed with anecdotes about voters paying more for basic goods or business delivery.

What Powell described as a clash between strong consumer demand and pandemic constraints on global product supply, “was not as transient as we had hoped … Other major economists and central banks around the world made the same mistake. That doesn’t excuse him, but we thought these things would be resolved long ago. “

RAMKRAN FROM CONFLICT IN UKRAINE

But even with the immediate focus on inflation, Powell’s testimony was shaped by the conflict in Ukraine and what it could mean for the United States and world economies in the coming weeks or even years.

Powell said that the Fed’s staff had begun to analyze various scenarios, but that too much remained unknown about an event whose full consequences could “be with us for a very long time.”

“The short-term consequences for the US economy of the invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing war, sanctions and the events that lie ahead remain very uncertain,” Powell said. “Implementing an appropriate monetary policy in this environment requires recognizing that the economy is developing in unexpected ways. We will have to be agile in responding to input and changing perspectives. “

“We will continue to be careful as we learn more about the effects of the war in Ukraine on the economy,” Powell said. “We expect inflation to peak and begin to decline this year. As inflation rises or is steadily higher … we would be prepared to act more aggressively by raising interest rates on federal funds by more than 25 basis points per meeting or meetings. “

The Fed has cut interest rates to the current near-zero level in 2020 to blunt the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. There is now widespread agreement that the current level of borrowing costs is out of phase with an economy that has recovered faster than expected from the health crisis.

Lawmakers have asked Powell about the effects of rising oil prices following Russia’s actions, the threat of cyberattacks and wider risks to the financial system, and even the impact on the fertilizer market.

“Everything we can do … we do it to protect ourselves from cyberattacks,” Powell said. “The bigger financial institutions are doing it. It’s hard to say what is possible, but we are on high alert and will continue to be.”

As for the financial markets, Powell said that so far they are “functioning well. There is a lot of liquidity there” and the existing Fed programs are helping.

Powell will appear before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. The head of the Fed must testify before these committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate twice a year as part of the central bank’s semi-annual monetary policy reviews.

Major US stock indexes traded sharply higher, expanding profits during Powell’s testimony, and bond yields rose. The US dollar has changed slightly against a basket of currencies of major trading partners. Interest rate futures traders began pricing with six rate hikes this year from five on Tuesday.

Powell, “prefers to keep the Fed’s options open … there was little rebuttal to expectations of current market interest rates, which fell after the Russian invasion,” said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics.

Report by Howard Schneider and Lindsey Dunsmoor; Edited by Paul Simao and Andrea Ritchie

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