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• About 650,000 kids in the US likely have asthma because of gas stoves, a study found.
• Stoves release carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide that increase the risk of respiratory damage.
• Climate advocates are pointing to the study to help make the case for phasing out fossil fuels.

Most parents know that secondhand smoke can lead to asthma in kids. It’s probably a surprise that cooking on a gas stove carries similar risks.

That’s according to a study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, which attributed 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the US to air pollutants from gas stoves.

Burning gas releases pollutants like carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and formaldehyde, which increase the risk of respiratory damage.

“This is preventable,” Brady Seals, a manager at the think tank RMI’s Carbon-Free Buildings program and coauthor of the study, told Insider. “We hope this study can raise awareness and give policymakers the data they need to do something about this issue.”

The results are based on an analysis of previous research that estimated children living in homes with gas stoves were 34% more at risk of developing asthma. That risk factor, combined with data from 2019 showing that more than one-third of US households primarily cooked with gas, indicated that about 650,000 kids likely had asthma because of gas stoves, the study found.

Seals, whose employer advocates for electrifying buildings, said there were decades’ worth of studies on the correlation between gas stoves and childhood asthma but it’s been siloed or shelved away. Now, some climate advocates are putting the pieces together to bolster the case for phasing out fossil fuels in buildings, which account for about 13% of US greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“This adage of, ‘If it’s bad for the climate, it’s probably bad for your health,’ led us to start researching this topic about three years ago,” Seals said.

RMI and Rewiring America, another electrification group that helped author the study, advocate for building codes that ban gas hookups in new construction. Dozens of cities, primarily in California, have had that policy since 2019.

The momentum was met with an opposition campaign by the gas industry and their allies in state legislatures. At least 20 mostly red states have enacted laws that prohibit local governments from restricting fossil fuels in buildings. 

The American Gas Association, a trade group representing the natural gas industry, in a statement criticized the methodology underlying the study on childhood asthma, in part because researchers used estimated health risks and didn’t conduct their own measurements on appliance usage, emissions, or exposures.

The gas industry also often points out that proper ventilation significantly reduces the concentration of pollutants from gas stoves. 

While that’s true, Seals said many states and cities didn’t require gas stoves to be vented to the outdoors — a distinction from appliances like furnaces and water heaters. Exhaust hoods and fans aren’t guaranteed to clean the air, and people might not always use them. 

Seals added that federal agencies should step up oversight. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t regulate indoor air quality, but it could issue nonbinding guidance that helps influence state and local officials who update building codes. The Consumer Product Safety Commission could also regulate pollutants from gas stoves or require warning labels, Seals said.

The commission’s head, Richard Trumka Jr., in December indicated the agency was headed in that direction and said an outright ban on new gas stoves was “a real possibility,” The Hill reported. The same month, Democrats in Congress asked the agency to take steps to protect people from the hazards.

Compassionate Eye Foundation/Martin Barraud/OJO Images Ltd / Getty Images

• Salesforce, Compass, and Amazon recently laid off thousands of what they called “low performers.”
• In the past, recruiters might have been skeptical of candidates who’d been laid off in this manner.
• But in the pandemic era, recruiters have more sensitivity, compassion, and empathy.

Losing a job is never a boost to one’s self-esteem. But it stings even more if your employer was using layoffs to cut low performers.

To wit, Salesforce announced this week that it’s slashing 10% of its staff after managers were asked to rank employees and — not coincidentally — identify their bottom 10%. Compass, a real-estate brokerage, meanwhile, is preparing for its third round of cuts in eight months and targeting its “lowest-performing” employees.

Late last year, Amazon pressured managers to identify low-performing workers and has since embarked on its largest-ever round of corporate layoffs, which are set to claim roughly 18,000 jobs.

The publicity around cuts of so-called subpar staff begs the question: How are these ex-employees viewed now that they’re unceremoniously back on the job market? Are they seen as problematic or lazy? Are they marked with a “scarlet F” for essentially being fired for low performance?

Workers on the chopping block might heave a sigh of relief: Recruiters, by and large, say that while hiring managers in the past might have been skeptical of candidates who’d been laid off in this manner, they now have more sensitivity and understanding. Thank the pandemic for that.

“If you’d asked me this question four years ago, I would say that most recruiters probably would look at the candidates in a negative light,” Dan Roth, a veteran recruiter and consultant who works in Big Tech, said. “But the pandemic, as awful as it’s been, has created more empathy. Everyone knew someone who was affected, and so recruiters now take a more compassionate view.”

What’s more, a tight job market means that hiring managers can’t afford to be so choosy. Job growth remains strong: The US added 223,000 jobs last month, more than forecast. Meanwhile, data shows there were about 10.5 million jobs available in November, outnumbering the 6 million unemployed Americans looking for work. 

Recruiters take an empathetic approach

Data suggests that hiring for tech workers remains robust despite a softening economy. Job postings for tech-focused roles were up 25% from January to October last year, compared with the same period in 2021, a report from Dice, a tech-careers site, found. And a study from the workforce-data provider Revelio Labs estimated nearly three-fourths of the tech workers laid off last year found new jobs within three months; more than half found a job that paid more than what they previously earned.

But as we enter the new year, and recession fears mount, the continued strength of tech hiring is an open question. And the conventional wisdom that it’s easier to get a new job when you already have one rings true for a reason.

Still, recruiters say that candidates laid off by virtue of supposedly poor performance are not disqualified from consideration — far from it.

“I don’t care if you’ve been on maternity leave or you had a career break or you were laid off,” Roth said. “If we’re judging people based on those things, we’re not doing our jobs as recruiters.”

A manager’s selection of a low performer could be idiosyncratic. The person might be perfectly competent but disliked by their boss. Or maybe the employee is an overperformer and the manager senses a threat.

Recruiters are also mindful of the broader economic landscape, Teegan Bartos, a career coach in the Chicago area, said.

“Many of the people being impacted by these layoffs were having some of their best years, but the possible recession is forcing companies to do cuts,” Bartos said in an email interview.

Some recruiters say they take an empathetic approach based on personal experience. After all, many have been through mass firings and know that high-quality employees get laid off all the time.

“I myself have been laid off, and I can tell you, I have a strong work ethic and it was not a performance issue,” Heather Colvin, a corporate and agency recruiter for the tech industry, said.

Instead, Colvin looks at what the candidate can do and has done.

“A position is open because a problem exists,” she said. “When I am talking to a candidate, I want to know: Have you solved a problem like that in previous roles? What have you done, and how does that align with what’s going on at this company? That’s all I am listening for.”

Getty Images / Bill Pugliano

• Warren Buffett avoids making predictions as he believes the future is too uncertain.
• Yet he has given his best guesses about cryptocurrency, table tennis, and the timing of his death.
• Here are 12 of the investor’s predictions, and how they’ve turned out.

Warren Buffett knows better than to make predictions.

“We have no idea — and never have had — whether the market is going to go up, down, or sideways in the near- or intermediate-term future,” the famed investor wrote in his 1986 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

Yet the so-called Oracle of Omaha couldn’t resist making a few guesses about the future over the years. We’ve gathered 12 of his most intriguing predictions and assessed their accuracy below.

1. CryptocurrenciesA collection of Bitcoin (virtual currency) tokens are displayed in this picture illustration

Thomson Reuters

Prediction:

“In terms of cryptocurrencies generally, I can say almost with certainty that they will come to a bad ending,” Buffett told CNBC in January 2018. “Now, when it happens or how or anything else, I don’t know.”

He added: “If I could buy a five-year put on every one of the cryptocurrencies, I’d be glad to do it, but I would never short a dime’s worth.”

Outcome:

If Buffett had placed a five-year bet against bitcoin at the time of his interview, it wouldn’t be too far from paying off. Bitcoin soared from around $14,000 in January 2018 to north of $60,000 in November 2021, but has plunged since then to around $17,000.

2. Flat-earthers

Flat Earth

Prediction:

“Ships will sail around the world, but the Flat Earth Society will flourish,” Buffett said in a speech at Columbia’s business school in May 1984.

Outcome:

Buffett may have been making a point about stubborn denialism in financial markets, but his prediction about so-called flat-earthers was correct — they’ve enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.

3. Berkshire HathawayA Berkshire Hathaway shareholder poses with a likeness of Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett at the shareholder’s shopping day in Omaha, Nebraska May 1, 2015.

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Prediction:

“It is fitting that the visit of Halley’s Comet coincided with this percentage gain: neither will be seen again in my lifetime,” Buffett told Berkshire shareholders in 1985 after the conglomerate grew its net worth by 48.2%.

He also predicted that the 23.2% compounded annual growth in the company’s per-share book value that year was “another percentage that will not be repeated.”

Outcome:

It took nearly 15 years for Buffett to prove himself wrong on the first count. Berkshire’s net worth jumped by 48.3% in 1998, though that was largely because the company issued shares for acquisitions.

“Normally, a gain of 48.3% would call for handsprings — but not this year,” he told investors.

Buffett’s second prediction was way off the mark. Berkshire’s per-share book value rose by 23.3% in 1986. It has also grown by at least 23.2% in more than 10 other years since 1985.

4. Sears

Getty/Scott Olson

Prediction:

Buffett told students at the University of Kansas in May 2005 that Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert would struggle to revitalize the department-store chain. He warned that rivals such as Walmart and Costco could undercut Sears, which had just been acquired by Kmart.

“Eddie is a very smart guy, but putting Kmart and Sears together is a tough hand,” Buffett said. “Turning around a retailer that has been slipping for a long time would be very difficult.”

Outcome:

Buffett was right on the money. Sears filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2019, and while Lampert swooped in to buy the retailer and saved it from liquidation, it continues to struggle.

5. ABC, Geico, and The Washington Post

GEICO / Facebook

Prediction:

“We expect to keep permanently our three primary holdings, Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., Geico Corporation, and The Washington Post,” Buffett told Berkshire shareholders in his 1986 letter.

“Even if these securities were to appear significantly overpriced, we would not anticipate selling them, just as we would not sell See’s or Buffalo Evening News if someone were to offer us a price far above what we believe those businesses are worth,” he added.

Outcome:

Despite his best intentions, Buffett can’t resist a great deal. Berkshire sold its stake in Capital Cities/ABC to The Walt Disney Company in 1996 in a cash-and-stock deal worth $2.5 billion.

He also flogged his company’s 28% stake in The Post to Graham Holdings in a transaction worth more than $1.1 billion in 2014. The Graham family sold The Post to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a $250 million deal in 2013.

While Berkshire still owns Geico and See’s Candies, it sold The Buffalo News and its other newspapers for $140 million to publisher Lee Enterprises in 2020.

6. Freddie Mac

Prediction:

“In 1988 we made major purchases of Federal Home Loan Mortgage Pfd. (‘Freddie Mac’),” Buffett told Berkshire shareholders in his letter that year.

“We expect to hold these securities for a long time. In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”

Outcome:

Luckily for Buffett, he changed his mind. Berkshire sold nearly all its Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae shares in 2000, slashing its holding to 0.3% from 8.6% in 1999. Buffett told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2010 that he had become “concerned” about the companies’ management.

“They were trying to and proclaiming that they could increase earnings per share in some low double-digit range or something of the sort,” he said. “And any time a large financial institution starts promising regular earnings increases, you’re going to have trouble, you know?”

7. Coca-Cola and Gillette

Rick Wilking/Reuters

Prediction:

“No sensible observer — not even these companies’ most vigorous competitors, assuming they are assessing the matter honestly — questions that Coke and Gillette will dominate their fields worldwide for an investment lifetime,” Buffett wrote in his 1996 letter to Berkshire shareholders.

“Indeed, their dominance will probably strengthen. Both companies have significantly expanded their already huge shares of market during the past 10 years, and all signs point to their repeating that performance in the next decade.”

Outcome:

Buffett’s claims have proved sound so far: Both Coke and Gillette remain the biggest players in their markets, though the latter is under mounting pressure.

Coca-Cola’s share of the US soft-drinks market grew from an estimated 41% in 1991 to 46% in 2021, according to The New York Times and Statista.

In contrast, Gillette’s market share fell from about 70% in 2010 to 53% in 2018, reflecting fierce competition from startups including the Unilever-owned Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, according to a Euromonitor report cited by CNBC.

8. Death

Rick Wilking/Reuters

Prediction:

Buffett wrote in his 2006 letter to shareholders that he had an “expected lifespan of about 12 years (though, naturally, I’m aiming for more).”

Outcome:

If Buffett had to pick one forecast to undershoot, he would probably choose this one. More than 15 years after writing the letter, he’s now 92 years old and appears to be in good health.

9. Table tennis

YouTube

Prediction:

Buffett touted Ariel Hsing, a top-rated junior table-tennis player, as a “good bet to win at the Olympics some day” in his 2009 letter to shareholders.

Outcome:

Buffett’s endorsement was more a marketing campaign for Hsing’s presence at Berkshire Hathaway’s next annual meeting than an actual prediction.

Hsing competed in the 2012 London Olympics, losing 4-2 in the round of 32 to the eventual gold medalist, Li Xiaoxia of China. In an interview with Insider in 2021, she shared seven life lessons she’s learned from Buffett.

10. Housing

Prediction:

“Housing will come back — you can be sure of that,” Buffett told shareholders in his 2011 letter after the US housing bubble burst, fueling the financial crisis.

He added: “We will again build one million or more residential units annually. I believe pundits will be surprised at how far unemployment drops once that happens.”

Outcome:

Buffett was right about a recovery in housing and employment during the economic rebound that followed the financial crisis.

Housing starts in the US were tracking at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.4 million units in November, according to the Commerce Department.

Unemployment has also fallen from 8.9% in 2011 to 3.7% in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

11. Index funds

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Prediction:

“Over a ten-year period commencing on January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the S&P 500 will outperform a portfolio of funds of hedge funds, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs, and expenses,” Buffett predicted.

He posted the above prediction on Long Bets, a website for making long-term wagers and nominating charities to receive the winnings. Ted Seides — a manager of Protégé Partners, an asset manager that invests in multiple hedge funds — agreed to bet that a portfolio of five funds, invested in more than 200 hedge funds, would beat the S&P 500 index.

Outcome:

Buffett has argued for years that index funds offer better returns to investors than professional stock-pickers, as they provide exposure to a broad range of stocks and charge lower fees.

He won the bet. The S&P 500 returned an average of 8.5% from 2008 to 2017, while the average return of the five funds it was up against was less than 3%.

Buffett donated his $2.2 million payout to Girls Incorporated of Omaha.

12. S&P 500

REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Prediction:

Buffett is notoriously skeptical that the good times will continue. In Berkshire’s 1999 letter to shareholders, Buffett and Charlie Munger, his business partner, deemed it a “virtual certainty” that the S&P 500 would “do far less well in the next decade or two than it has done since 1982.”

Outcome:

Buffett was right that the S&P’s stellar average total return of just over 19% from 1982 to 1999 wouldn’t last. The index returned an average of 1.2% over the next decade, and 11.5% from 2010 to 2020, according to SlickCharts.

Stephane Mahe/Reuters

• Alibaba founder Jack Ma appeared to resurface at a restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand on Friday.
• The picture of Ma was posted hours before Ant Group said Ma was giving up control of the company.
• Ant Group abandoned a blockbuster float in 2020 soon after Ma criticized Chinese regulations.

Jack Ma, the elusive billionaire founder of Alibaba, appeared to resurface in Thailand hours before Ant Group said he would give up control of the company.

A picture of Ma was posted on Instagram by Jay Fai restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand on Friday, which he appeared to have just visited. “Incredibly humble, we are honored to welcome you and your family to Jay Fai’s,” the restaurant wrote in its caption.

A post shared by JAY FAI (เจ๊ไฝ)⭐️ (@jayfaibangkok)

The post was published hours before it was revealed that Ma was preparing to give up control of the company he founded, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

In a statement published Saturday, Ant, which owns the world’s largest mobile payment platform Alipay, said it was streamlining voting rights to prevent any one shareholder from having a controlling vote. 

The move would “further enhance the stability of our corporate structure and sustainability of our long-term development,” according to the statement. 

Ma disappeared from public view in October 2020 after giving a speech criticizing China’s financial regulation system.

Plans to list Ant Group on the stock market were abandoned the following month when Beijing intervened. Once China’s richest man, Ma’s net worth has fallen by more than $25 billion since he disappeared from public view, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

While Ma doesn’t have an executive role or sit on Ant’s board, he maintained influence through a separate entity he controlled. The changes announced on Saturday are the latest in a sweeping overhaul at the behest of Chinese authorities.

Ma has maintained a very low profile since his run-in with authorities. The Financial Times suggested in November that he had been living in Tokyo for six months, staying out of public view and mainly socializing in private members’ clubs. 

Some think the move could revive hopes of floating Any, per Reuters, but Chinese regulations that require a pause on listings following a change in control may delay such a move by at least a year.

Poor people faced a significantly higher chance in 2022 of being audited by President Joe Biden’s IRS than both rich and middle-class earners, according to a Syracuse University study.

In fact, no group faced as much scrutiny from the IRS as those who made below $25,000, the university’s data-gathering center found. Among families that benefited from the earned income tax credit, a rebate on income and payroll taxes made available to the nation’s poorest families, 1.27 percent were audited. The IRS in 2022 audited just 0.19 percent of the vast majority of taxpayers, meaning the poorest families were at least 550 percent more likely to have the IRS knock on their door than the average filer.

These families were also more likely to receive a regular audit by the IRS than families that reported over $1 million in income, of which just over 1 percent faced regular audits. In total, the IRS audited a total 626,204 taxpayers out of more than 164 million in the 2022 fiscal year. The bulk of those audits were of filers in the lowest income group.

The new data raise questions about the IRS’s auditing strategy as it stands to benefit from $80 billion in new funding that the Biden administration plans to use for new hires. Republicans have alleged that despite White House promises to the contrary, middle-class and poor Americans will face more audits due to the 87,000 new IRS employees the agency plans to hire.

The agency does not publicly disclose its auditing data. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data gathering and distribution organization, went to court to obtain the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. How the IRS decides exactly whom it will audit is largely a mystery.

“Answering this question remains a key challenge that Danny Werfel faces if confirmed as the new IRS commissioner,” the authors of the report write, referring to Biden’s nominee to lead the revenue service. “One of his first orders of business should be lifting this secrecy curtain. He needs to put in its place a full and detailed transparency program to keep the public informed on how these new funds are being applied in the selection of taxpayers for stepped up audits.”

“Republicans have attacked funding for the IRS for years in an effort to protect wealthy tax cheats, who are responsible for $163 billion in tax evasion per year,” a White House spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. “President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which is only beginning to rebuild enforcement for wealthy Americans, will finally force wealthy tax cheats to pay their fair share while making it easier for working Americans to get their tax refunds.”

The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.

Then-IRS commissioner Charles Rettig testified before Congress last August that the IRS would not increase audits of households earning less than $400,000 if it received the additional funding sought by Biden. Democrats have long claimed that part of the reason the IRS audits poor households so frequently is because it lacks resources to go after wealthy tax cheats, who can afford lawyers and accountants.

“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Rettig said at the time.

A Congressional Budget Office report last year concluded that the IRS will collect billions of dollars from auditing low- and middle-income Americans, thanks to the new staff funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. The report found that audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will account for $20 billion in additional revenue.

The IRS has faced accusations, including from its own internal watchdog, that its auditing practices discriminate against low-income earners. The National Taxpayer Service stated in its 2021 annual report that the IRS is focused on sending as many audits as possible rather than customer service.

“Lower-income taxpayers … are not assigned a single point of contact and have a hard time reaching the IRS,” the watchdog’s report said. “The IRS often closes its audits without any contact from the taxpayer. This creates additional downstream consequences for these taxpayers and the IRS.”

The post Poor People Five Times More Likely Than Average Earner To Be Audited by Biden IRS appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

At least five African migrants died and another 10 were missing after a boat sank off Tunisia, as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, a judicial official said on Saturday.

The coastguard rescued 20 migrants who had been on the overcrowded boat, which sank off Louata in Sfax region on Friday, the official told Reuters.

The coastline of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing poverty in Africa and the Middle East for a chance at a better life in Europe.

In recent months, hundreds of people have drowned off the Tunisian coast, with an increase in the frequency of attempted crossings from Tunisia and Libya towards Italy.

In light of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis in Tunisia, more than 18,000 Tunisians travelled by boats to Europe in 2022, according to rights group Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.