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Good morning,
Some traditions persist. Nearly 8 in 10 women who marry men still adopt their husbands’ last names, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Changing one’s name is rooted in the not-so-distant history when women had far fewer rights, and some states still required a woman to use her husband’s name to vote or obtain a passport as recently as the 1970s.
Those who keep their names often do so because they feel it is linked to their identity. It may soon become more common: Only one-third of single women said they planned to take their spouse’s last name when they marry, Pew found.
BREAKING NEWS
NFL star Joe Burrow has reportedly agreed to a record $275 million contract extension with the Cincinnati Bengals, making him the highest-paid player in the league’s history. The reported deal, which follows months of negotiations, will see Burrow earn around $55 million a year, on average, and follows a series of record contracts signed by quarterbacks during the summer.
Hurricane Lee strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane late Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said, and while it is expected to “pass well to the north” of major landmasses in the Western Atlantic, including the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, it is projected to cause “dangerous beach conditions” in the region. The NHC also warned of “dangerous surf and rip currents” affecting most of the U.S. East Coast starting Monday.
BUSINESS + FINANCE
The president of UAW, the union that represents 150,000 workers at General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis, warned Thursday that a strike looks increasingly likely as the union struggles to make a deal with the automakers over hours worked, benefits and a requested 46% wage hike. The workers’ contract expires on September 14, at which point leadership can call for a strike. Just 10 days of an auto workers strike could cost the U.S. economy $5 billion, according to consulting firm Anderson Economic Group.
Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive, pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal charges related to the fraud case against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-bankrupt company that was once one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He’s the fourth executive to plead guilty to criminal conduct since the company’s collapse last fall.
Apple and Nvidia, two of the tech stocks driving a majority of stock indexes’ gains this year, suffered rare down stretches, losing over $250 billion in market capitalization this week. Shares of Nvidia, the S&P 500’s best-performer in 2023, dropped about 3% Thursday, while Apple shares slipped 3.4%, fueled by concerns about each of their explosive sales.
TECH + INNOVATION
AI research lab Imbue has raised $200 million to build AI “agents” that can simulate human decision-making to complete complex tasks. The startup, one of very few woman-led AI unicorns, has a $1 billion valuation and access to 10,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, but its founders say it could be years away from revealing a product.
MONEY + POLITICS
Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress Thursday, which is likely to send the Trump ally to prison after he declined to testify to the House Jan. 6 Committee. Navarro, who is expected to appeal the ruling against him, faces a sentence of between 30 days and one year in prison for each charge, as well as a maximum fine of $100,000.
Canada is investigating whether China, Russia and other countries interfered in the country’s recent elections, after a similar probe initiated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this year was cut short amid criticism by the Conservative Party. Trudeau has previously denied the possibility that Canada’s elections had been interfered with, suggesting earlier this year that “Canada has some of the best and most robust elections in the world.”
SPORTS + ENTERTAINMENT
The NFL season kicked off Thursday night as the Detroit Lions upset reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. Here’s how to watch the games this fall, which will air across four television networks and two streaming services.
Women soccer players in Spain are striking after failing to come to an agreement with the league on better pay as Spanish soccer continues to deal with the aftermath of its chief nonconsensually kissing a female player after the country’s World Cup win. The biggest point of contention is pay: The minimum salary for men in the first division of La Liga is $197,000, the Associated Press reported, and for women it’s $17,400.
SCIENCE + HEALTHCARE
The Energy Department announced a $20 million fund Thursday to help companies and researchers find low-cost, sustainable ways to extract underground hydrogen and stimulate that natural process that creates the energy-rich element. It’s part of a push to expand U.S. production of carbon-free energy to help fight climate change, and geologic hydrogen is particularly attractive because it would be the lowest-cost form of the fuel.
Power system manufacturer FuelCell Energy and carmaker Toyota have deployed the world’s first “tri-gen” system that turns methane-rich waste gas into electricity, clean hydrogen and water, and the companies said Thursday the facility is fully complete. Toyota’s contract to use it runs for 20 years and should eliminate more than 9,000 tons of CO2 annually, the companies said, amid a broad push for greater use of hydrogen from sources that don’t generate carbon dioxide.
DAILY COVER STORY
Inside Apple’s Impossible War On Child Exploitation
TOPLINE Critics say Apple has failed to develop a sustained, successful response to child exploitation materials on its services and fallen far behind competitors in helping police catch the criminals who proliferate it.
A Forbes review of some 100 federal cases in which investigators searched Apple technologies, believing they were used in furtherance of child exploitation, found that the company’s systems have been used to store and transmit thousands of items of CSAM, or child sexual abuse material, between 2014 and 2023.
But unlike peers like Google and Meta, which proactively scan their services for such material and provide millions of leads every year to the nonprofit National Center For Missing And Exploited Children (NCMEC) and law enforcement, Apple reports just hundreds despite having hundreds of millions of iCloud users.
Apple spent years working on a tool that would scour its servers for CSAM while maintaining customer privacy, dubbed NeuralHash. It was applauded by the child safety community but attacked by an even louder chorus of voices as a grave threat to privacy. At the end of 2022, Apple scrapped it, and key members of the team behind the project left the company.
Apple has long maintained that privacy is a fundamental human right. The company famously refused to build for the FBI a backdoor into iOS that would circumvent several important security features and allow law enforcement to access personal data stored on iPhones.
In a letter provided to Forbes, first reported by Wired, Erik Neuenschwander, Apple’s director of user privacy and child safety, warned mass-scanning of Apple users would “[open] the door for bulk surveillance.”
“How can users be assured that a tool for one type of surveillance has not been reconfigured to surveil for other content such as political activity or religious persecution?” he wrote. “Tools of mass surveillance have widespread negative implications for freedom of speech and, by extension, democracy as a whole.”
Child safety advocates say that unwavering commitment to privacy comes at a cost: Apple is essentially blind to harmful, illegal material stored on its services.
WHY IT MATTERS “The tug-o-war at play—whether Apple can scan its tech for CSAM while also protecting users’ privacy, and whether it should—isn’t new,” says Forbes Senior Writer Alexandra Levine. “But leaders on privacy and encryption are now concluding that if Apple, having deployed enormous resources and engineering power over more than a decade, can’t figure out how to do it, it simply can’t be done. And looking ahead, children’s online safety issues are only expected to intensify with the fast-growing AI boom.”
MORE TikTok Moderators Are Being Trained Using Graphic Images Of Child Sexual Abuse
FACTS AND COMMENTS
Gender-affirming care continues to be politicized, but a study published Thursday indicated hormone therapy could result in less depression, lower suicide risk and decreased gender dysphoria for transgender adults:
61%: The share of participants who had a “clinically significant” reduction in depression after receiving testosterone treatment
22: The number of states that have restricted or banned access to gender-affirming care
82%: The estimated share of transgender people who have considered suicide, according to a 2020 study
STRATEGY AND SUCCESS
The post-Labor Day hiring increase, dubbed the “September Surge” on platforms like TikTok, is when some say companies ramp up hiring ahead of the holidays, though experts debate if it’s real. Whether you believe it or not, if you’re on the job hunt, take time to network and nurture those relationships, perfect your unique value proposition, refine your soft skills like critical thinking and ask those you know for help.
VIDEO
QUIZ
Which Republican presidential candidate said convicted felons should have the right to carry guns in an interview with former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released Thursday?
A. Doug Burgum
B. Ron DeSantis
C. Vivek Ramaswamy
D. Asa Hutchinson
Check your answer.
ACROSS THE NEWSROOM
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