Barclays says it is relocating some 500 financial services jobs in Delaware to a new business campus in New Jersey.
Officials with the U.K.-based bank said Wednesday that job transitions from Wilmington to the Whippany, New Jersey, campus will begin this fall and will be completed by year’s end.
The company said the move is consistent with its focus on developing large-scale regional hubs that enable operations and technology teams to work more efficiently. Wilmington employees who do not relocate will be offered severance pay and job search assistance.
Democratic Gov. John Carney described the loss of Delaware jobs as “disappointing.”
The company said Wilmington will continue to be the strategic headquarters for its U.S. consumer banking division
Keurig Dr Pepper has laid out a series of sustainability goals — including using 100% recyclable or compostable packaging and sending no waste to landfills by 2025, according to a press release. K-cups, the company said, will be 100% recyclable by 2020.
Additionally, the beverage company pledged to use 30% post-consumer recycled packaging across its products and source 100% renewable energy by 2025.
The company has also committed to developing carbon emissions targets in coordination with the Science-Based Target initiative (SBTi), meaning it will set goals “in line with the level of decarbonization required to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial temperatures.”
Dive Insight:
While the company has an immense portfolio of beverage brands, Keurig Dr Pepper has a lot of ground to make up when it comes to public perception and sustainability due largely to one in particular.
Keurig K-cups, and single-use coffee pods more generally, are widely recognized as unsustainable by consumers, and Keurig’s attempt in 2016 to make them more recyclable by adjusting the type of plastic used fell somewhat flat, as competitors found biodegradable alternatives. Despite that reputation, single-pod sales have increased for the company for the last several quarters, and executives may see an upside in re-converting consumers that have abandoned K-cups.
These diverse sustainability initiatives are an aggressive start to changing that narrative.
Heavy hitters in sustainability, such as the SBTi and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, are strong endorsements for the seriousness of these commitments.
Keurig Dr Pepper has signed the foundation’s New Plastic Economy Global Commitment, a pledge to eliminate unnecessary plastic; ensure all remaining plastics are reusable, recyclable or compostable; and keep existing plastic in use and out of the environment.
Beyond plastic in packaging, this list of new efforts addresses waste, water and carbon emissions — each of which will likely require some shifts in the supply chains of Keurig Dr Pepper’s brands. The company will soon release its first-ever sustainability report, according to its website.
It remains to be seen how drastic the company’s work will need to be to meet the SBTi standards for carbon reduction. Keurig Dr Pepper has submitted a letter expressing its intention to lower carbon emissions to SBTi’s standards.
The company signed on in May 2019 and now has 24 months to develop, submit for approval and publicize firm targets for carbon emission reduction. So far, 46 food and beverage processing companies have committed to setting science-based targets, and 22 — including PepsiCo and Nestlé — have approved targets in place.
Dan Buettner has studied five places around the world where residents are famed for their longevity: Okinawa in Japan, Nicoya in Costa Rica, Icaria in Greece, and Loma Linda in California and Sardinia in Italy.
People living in these so-called “blue zones” have certain factors in common – social support networks, daily exercise habits and a plant-based diet, for starters. But they share another unexpected commonality. In each community, people are gardening well into old age – their 80s, 90s and beyond.
Could nurturing your green thumb help you live to 100?
Mood elevator
It is well-known that an outdoor lifestyle with moderate physical activity is linked to longer life, and gardening is an easy way to accomplish both. “If you garden, you’re getting some low-intensity physical activity most days, and you tend to work routinely,” says Buettner.
He says there is evidence that gardeners live longer and are less stressed. A variety of studies confirm this, pointing to both the physical and mental health benefits of gardening.
Okinawa in Japan has one of the highest concentrations of centenarians (Getty Images)
In recent Dutch study, researchers asked participants to complete a stressful task, then split them into two groups. One group read indoors and the other gardened outdoors for 30 minutes. The group that read reported that their mood “further deteriorated”, while the gardeners not only had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol afterwards, they also felt “fully restored” to a good mood.
Australian researchers following men and women in their 60s found that those who regularly gardened had a 36% lower risk of dementia than their non-gardening counterparts.
Australian researchers following men and women in their 60s found that those who regularly gardened had a 36% lower risk of dementia than their non-gardening counterparts
And preliminary studies among elderly people suffering from cognitive issues (such as dementia and Alzheimer’s) report benefits from garden settings and horticulture therapy. Sunlight and fresh air, for example, help agitated elders feel calmer, while the colours and textures of various plants and vegetables can improve visual and tactile ability.
There is no panacea for growing old but, the science suggests, gardening does appear to improve our quality of life as we age.
Rutgers study shows how switching sexes could threaten populations
Striped maple tree leaves and flowers. Photo: Jennifer Blake-Mahmud
Newswise- Although pollen has covered cars for weeks and allergy sufferers have been sneezing, we think of sex as being the realm of animals. But plant sex can be quite interesting, especially in species that can have male or female flowers.
More than 90 percent of flowering plant species combine both sexes in one plant. In the less than 10 percent of species where female and male flowers exist on separate plants, they typically remain female or male throughout their lifetime. But it isn’t always this simple.
In a study in the journal Annals of Botany, Rutgers University–New Brunswick researchers found that striped maple trees can change sex from year to year. A tree may be male one year and female the next, and while male trees grow more, female trees are more likely to die. The study found that 54 percent of striped maple trees changed sexes over a four-year period, with some switching at least twice. Male trees usually outnumber female trees by more than three to one. Since the study started in 2014, 75 percent of trees that died were female. Since only female trees can make seeds, changes in the relative numbers of males and females might lead to reduced populations.
“We found that, contrary to previous scientific knowledge, unhealthy trees have a higher likelihood of being female, and the size of the tree doesn’t seem to influence what sex a tree is,” said lead author Jennifer Blake-Mahmud, a botanist who earned her doctorate at Rutgers and is now at Princeton University.
Kris Singh, center, the founder, president and CEO of Holtec International. The company was granted the second-largest tax break in state history, but officials placed a hold on the break following our reporting. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Nancy Solomon, WNYC, and Jeff Pillets, ProPublica
This article was produced in partnership with WNYC, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. It was co-published with The Star-Ledger.
New Jersey state officials have placed a hold on a $260 million tax break for Holtec International, a nuclear company that built its new headquarters on the Camden waterfront, while investigators examine details of its application, according to two state officials with knowledge of the investigation.
Officials took the action after a report last month from WNYC and ProPublica about an inaccuracy in a sworn certification submitted by Holtec CEO Kris Singh as part of the company’s application. In 2014, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority granted Holtec the second-largest tax break in state history to help the company bring new jobs to the city.
The company collected its first installment, a $26 million tax credit, after moving into its new headquarters in 2017. It would have been eligible for a $26 million credit every year thereafter for nine years. The status of the 2018 credit is not clear. The decision to freeze the credits is the first corrective action by the EDA that has become public since Gov. Phil Murphy started criticizing the program in January.
Holtec is one of a number of companies aligned with South Jersey Democratic boss George E. Norcross III, who serves on its board of directors. Companies linked to Norcross and the law firm of his brother Philip received at least $1.1 billion worth of tax breaks, according to a review by WNYC-ProPublica.
Holtec did not respond to a request for comment. After WNYC and ProPublica contacted Holtec about the incorrect information on the application, a lawyer representing Holtec wrote to the EDA, calling the misstatement an “inadvertent mistake” that the company would like to correct. The letter was sent by Kevin Sheehan, an attorney at the law firm Parker McCay, where Philip Norcross is managing partner.
In the sworn statement required for the tax break application, Singh said the company had never been barred from doing business with a state or federal agency, but in 2010, the Tennessee Valley Authority suspended the company for two months and fined it $2 million after a federal investigation found the company had paid a TVA employee $54,212. The employee pleaded guilty to a federal charge of failing to report the payment on a financial disclosure form. Holtec restored its relationship with the TVA and continues to hold contracts with the agency.
Sheehan handled the applications for many of the companies that received tax breaks to move to Camden. Emails obtained under a public records request show that Sheehan and Philip Norcross were involved in rewriting the tax break laws in 2013 that gave special advantages to companies that moved to the city.
George Norcross’ insurance company received a tax break to move from the suburbs of Camden into the city. Norcross also sits on the board of Cooper Health System, a nonprofit hospital that received a $39.9 million tax break in 2014.
The New Jersey tax break program is under investigation by the state attorney general and a task force appointed by Murphy. Norcross has hired a phalanx of high-powered attorneys who have filed a lawsuit challenging the task force’s authority.
Migrant children play soccer at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla., on April 19. The Trump administration is canceling educational and recreational programs at such shelters, saying the government has run out of funding for them amid a crush of migrants crossing the border. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
Maria Sacchetti reports for the Washington Post June 5 at 11:14 AM
The Trump administration is canceling English classes, recreational programs, and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters nationwide, saying the immigration influx at the southern border has created critical budget pressures.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun discontinuing the funding stream for activities — including soccer — that have been deemed “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,” said U.S. Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber.
Federal officials have warned Congress that they are facing “a dramatic spike” in unaccompanied minors at the southern border and have asked Congress for $2.9 billion in emergency funding to expand shelters and care. The program could run out of money in late June, and the agency is legally obligated to direct funding to essential services, Weber said.
The move — revealed in an email an HHS official sent to licensed shelters last week, a message that has been obtained by The Washington Post — could run afoul of a federal court settlement and state licensing requirements that mandate education and recreation for minors in federal custody. Carlos Holguin, a lawyer who represents minors in a long-running lawsuit that spurred a 1997 federal court settlement that sets basic standards of care for children in custody, immediately slammed the cuts as illegal.
“We’ll see them in court if they go through with it,” Holguin said. “What’s next? Drinking water? Food? . . . Where are they going to stop?”
