Snap won’t promote Trump snapshots
Snap said Wednesday that it has stopped promoting the Snapchat account of President Donald Trump after determining that his public comments off the site could incite violence, in another hardened stance by a social media company against the president.
Snap, which makes the Snapchat app that is popular among young users, said Trump’s account would remain intact but would not be promoted on its Discover home page for news and stories. Trump’s account was previously regularly featured on Discover, along with the accounts of other high-profile users like Kim Kardashian, actor Kevin Hart and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Snap’s move is part of a toughening position by social media companies against Trump’s posts, which are often aggressive and contain threats and inaccuracies. Over the past week, Twitter has labeled several of the president’s tweets for misinformation on voting and glorifying violence. Bu Facebook has not touched Trump’s posts, arguing that they are newsworthy and should remain up in the name of free speech.
Snap said it decided to stop highlighting Trump’s account based on tweets he posted Saturday in which he threatened to send “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” into the protests that have erupted across the nation after the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed in police custody in Minneapolis.
Delta retires “Mad Dog” jets
Delta Air Lines’ MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft were noisy, aging and nearing the end of their usefulness before the coronavirus outbreak.
But the pandemic sped up the retirement of the “Mad Dog” jets, which took their final flights Tuesday to an airplane boneyard. MD-88s and MD-90s flew nearly half of Delta’s flights in Atlanta as recently as 2014.
The last of the MD-88s touched down as Flight 88 at Hartsfield-Jackson International at about 10 a.m. EDT Tuesday from Washington Dulles, greeted with a water cannon salute and applause from pilots and aviation geeks who gazed through the windows of Concourse A. The retiring jets took off for Blytheville, Arkansas, where parts may be salvaged before the aircraft are demolished.
Walmart removes guns from displays
Walmart says it has removed ammunition and firearms from displays at some of its stores in the wake of the killing of George Floyd that has set off sometimes violent demonstrations against police brutality and injustice against African Americans.
“As a responsible seller of hunting and sporting firearms, we have temporarily removed firearms and ammunition from the sales floor in some stores out of an abundance of caution,” Walmart said in a statement.
The nation’s largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, said the firearms are available for purchase, but are being stored in a secure room. Walmart, which operates 4,700 stores in the U.S., including 11 in Hamilton County, didn’t disclose the number of stores affected by the change.
The company doesn’t sell any firearms in many of the major urban markets experiencing issues due to looting.
Walmart Inc., along with other big chains like Target, CVS, and Apple, had temporarily closed or limited hours at some locations for safety reasons or because they were looted or damaged.
Last year, Walmart stopped selling handgun and short-barrel rifle ammunition, while requesting that customers not openly carry firearms in its stores, even where state laws allow it. The company also ended the sale of handguns in Alaska, the only state where the discounter sold handguns.
Services sector declines in May
The U.S. services sector shrank for a second month in May as the coronavirus pandemic triggered shutdowns and layoffs around the country.
Activity did rise from levels last month that had not been seen since the recession.
The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its service sector index stood at 45.4 last month, up slightly from an April reading of 41.8.
Any reading below 50 signals that the service sector, where the majority of Americans work, is in contraction. The April decline broke a string of more than 10 years of expansion in the services sector.
The continued contraction in service industries followed a similar pattern in the industrial sector. The ISM reported earlier this week that manufacturing activity remained in contraction territory in May, with a reading of 43.1, up slightly after registering 41.5 in April.