1.HONDA:Honda Motor Co’s U.S. unit said on Monday it is targeting initial annual sales of 70,000 for its planned electric Prologue sport utility vehicle when it goes to market in 2024.
Honda plans to add additional electric vehicle models as it aims to have sold a total of 500,000 electric vehicles in the United States by 2030, and to achieve 100% zero emission vehicles sales in North America by 2040.
It comes as President Joe Biden signed an executive order last month setting a target to make half of all new passenger vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles.
The Honda Prologue is being co-developed with General Motors Co and is based on the Detroit automaker’s Ultium platform, a modular platform and battery system. Honda and GM are also co-developing an electric Acura-brand SUV.
GM will assemble the Prologue and the Acura SUV — both of which will go on sale in 2024 — but Honda has not disclosed which plant will build the vehicles or the name or volume targets for the Acura.
Following the GM-built models, Honda will introduce a series of electrified vehicles through 2030 based on the Honda developed e-Architecture, a new EV platform led by Honda, and will assemble electric vehicles at Honda plants in North America.
2.MASTERCARD:-A senior U.S. trade official privately criticised India’s July decision to ban Mastercard Inc from issuing new cards, calling it a “draconian” move that caused “panic”, according to U.S. government emails seen by Reuters.
The documents show frustration within the U.S. government after India’s central bank banned new card issuance by American Express and Diners Club International in April, then took similar action against Mastercard -2021-07-14 in July.
The Reserve Bank of India accuses the companies of breaking local data-storage rules. The bans do not affect existing customers.
The ban on Mastercard – a top payment network in India alongside Visa – triggered a flurry of emails between U.S. officials in Washington and India as they discussed next steps with Mastercard, including approaching the RBI, the government emails show.
“We’ve started hearing from stakeholders about some pretty draconian measures that the RBI has taken over the past couple days,” Brendan A. Lynch, the deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for South and Central Asia, wrote on July 16, two days after the Mastercard announcement.
3.LUFTHANSA– Lufthansa said on Sunday it would launch a capital increase that was expected to raise 2.14 billion euros ($2.51 billion) to pay back part of a state bailout Germany’s top airline received during the coronavirus crisis.
The subscription period for the widely-expected rights issue, involving the issue of about 597.7 million new shares, would run from Sept. 22 to Oct. 5, Lufthansa said.
The airline will use the net proceeds to repay a chunk of the 9 billion euro government bailout it received last year to stay afloat throughout the COVID pandemic, which resulted in the Economic Stabilisation Fund (ESF) taking a stake in the group.
“We have always made it clear that we will only retain the stabilisation package for as long as it is necessary,” Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said.
“We are therefore proud that we can now deliver on our promise and repay the measures faster than originally expected. We can now fully focus on the further transformation of the Lufthansa Group,” he said.
Lufthansa said that based on its operating performance in July and August it expected to post positive adjusted earnings before interest and tax in the third quarter.
Insiders told Reuters this year that Lufthansa was planning a capital increase of roughly 3 billion euros but Spohr has said lower pension liability had reduced the need for fresh capital in the past months.
A number of funds under the management of Blackrock have entered into a sub-underwriting agreement for a total of 300 million euros as part of the capital increase and have committed to fully exercise their subscription rights, Lufthansa said.
If it participates in the rights issue the ESF has committed to selling its current 15.94% stake in Lufthansa six months after the completion of the share sale at the earliest, while it will be sold no later than two years later, Lufthansa said.
4.SPACE X:-The quartet of newly minted citizen astronauts comprising the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission safely splashed down in the Atlantic off Florida’s coast on Saturday, completing a three-day flight of the first all-civilian crew ever sent into Earth orbit.
The successful launch and return of the mission, the latest in a recent string of rocket-powered expeditions bankrolled by their billionaire passengers, marked another milestone in the fledgling industry of commercial astro-tourism, 60 years after the dawn of human spaceflight.
“Welcome to the second space age,” Todd “Leif” Ericson, mission director for the Inspiration4 venture, told reporters on a conference call after the crew returned.
SpaceX, the private rocketry company founded by Tesla Inc electric automaker CEO Elon Musk, supplied the spacecraft, launched it, controlled its flight and handled the splashdown recovery operation.
The three-day mission ended as the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, parachuted into calm seas around 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT), shortly before sunset, following an automated reentry descent, as shown during a live SpaceX webcast on its YouTube channel.
Within an hour the four smiling crew members were seen emerging one by one from the capsule’s side hatch after the vehicle, visibly scorched on its exterior, was hoisted from the ocean to the deck of a SpaceX recovery vessel.
5.FACEBOOK : Facebook Inc on Saturday slammed a Wall Street Journal series of articles about the social media company’s platform as containing “deliberate mischaracterizations” and said the articles “conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.”
The Wall Street Journal, citing a review of internal company documents that included research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management, said that although Facebook researchers have identified “the platform’s ill effects,” the company failed to fix them.
The Wall Street Journal articles say that Facebook exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules, played down the negative effects on young users of its Instagram app, made changes to its algorithm that made the platform “angrier,” and had a weak response to alarms raised by employees over how the platform is used in developing countries by human traffickers.
