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Amazon.com Inc. told employees to delete the social media app TikTok from mobile devices they use to access company email, citing "security risks," according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg.

The online retailer sent the email Thursday morning, adding that employees could still access TikTok from their work laptops.

"Due to security risks, the TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email," the company said. "If you have TikTok on your device, you must remove it by 10-Jul to retain mobile access to Amazon email."

TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said his administration is considering banning the app in the U.S. as one possible way to retaliate against China over its handling of the coronavirus. The U.S. is also concerned Bytedance may be censoring politically sensitive content, and has raised questions about how it stores personal data.

Trump's comments came after Secretary of State Michael Pompeo told Americans not to download the app unless they want to see their private information fall into "the hands of the Chinese Communist Party." Bytedance is already facing a U.S. national security review for its acquisition of Musical.ly, a startup that it later merged with TikTok. TikTok has repeatedly denied allegations that it poses a threat to U.S. national security.

Earlier this week, TikTok also drew renewed scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department over its data practices, according to children's privacy advocates who say they were interviewed by the agencies. Several privacy groups alleged in May that the app was collecting information about children under 13 without parental permission, in violation of both U.S. privacy law and an earlier FTC settlement.

The New York Times reported the news earlier. Amazon couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

"User security is of the utmost importance to TikTok – we are fully committed to respecting the privacy of our users," a TikTok spokesperson said in an email. "While Amazon did not communicate to us before sending their email, and we still do not understand their concerns, we welcome a dialogue so we can address any issues they may have and enable their team to continue participating in our community. We're proud that tens of millions of Americans turn to TikTok for entertainment, inspiration, and connection, including many of the Amazon employees and contractors who have been on the frontlines of this pandemic."

—With assistance from Shelly Banjo.

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(NEW YORK) — Goya Foods is facing a swift backlash after its CEO praised President Donald Trump at White House event.

Goya was founded in Manhattan in 1936 by Don Prudencio Unanue and his wife Carolina, immigrants from Spain. The company calls itself the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States.

Robert Unanue, a grandson and now Goya CEO, spoke at a Rose Garden event announcing a "Hispanic Prosperity Initiative" on Thursday.

"We all truly blessed, at the same time, to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder," Unanue said standing at a podium beside Trump.

Almost immediately, #BoycottGoya, #GoyaFoods and #Goyaway began trending on social media platforms like Twitter, with scorn coming seemingly from all directions, including some big political names.

Many were angered by the support, citing Trump's history of derogatory comments and harsh policies toward Hispanics, most notably, the administration's policy of separating immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Former presidential candidate Julian Castro was among those to take to Twitter, saying Unanue praised someone who villainizes Goya's customer base.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said she would learn to make from scratch some of the Latin cuisine that Goya makes.

Goya did not immediately comment.

According to the Pew Research Center, 13.3% of eligible voters in the U.S. this year are Latino, a record high.

Trump has been working hard recently to court Latino voters, who could swing the vote in states such as Arizona. On Wednesday, he welcomed President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White House with lofty language, calling Mexico a cherished partner. Trump's tone was in stark contrast from when he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign by referring to Mexicans as "rapists" and railed against migrants entering the United States illegally.

Goya recently donated thousands of pounds of food to families in the Bronx and Harlem who have been affected by COVID-19. The company also made a big donation to a public school in Queens.

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Pfizer is increasingly confident that its efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine will be successful. In a July 7 interview with TIME, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said he believes that Food and Drug Administration approval could come as soon as October. On the basis of promising results in an early-stage trial released on July 1, Pfizer has dramatically increased the projections for the number of doses it will produce this year, to 100 million. Bourla also disclosed that the company has begun commercial talks with governments around the world about how many doses they will receive.

Bourla is so convinced his global pharmaceutical giant is on the right track that he has decided Pfizer will start producing the vaccine before receiving approval from the FDA. It's a move as risky as it is unorthodox. Pfizer's vaccine, being developed with its German biotech partner BioNTech, uses a novel genetics-based approach called messenger RNA; Bourla acknowledges that no messenger-RNA vaccine has ever been approved to prevent infectious disease to date.

Pfizer is set to launch a large-scale clinical trial later in July, which will involve 30,000 people at 150 locations by the end of the test period. Bourla, 58, who was born in Greece and trained to be a veterinarian before working his way up the ranks at Pfizer, plans to price the vaccine to make a profit, but believes governments should distribute the first doses to the most vulnerable, at no cost.

What did the data that Pfizer and BioNTech released on July 1 show?

That the vaccine in humans created the very robust immune responses in all individuals that received the vaccine. And those responses were also able to kill the virus. What we learned is that this vaccine can neutralize the virus.

So it was a big moment?

For me, it was the moment when I saw the data, plus many other data that we haven't published yet, [that] made me say that until now I was thinking if we have a vaccine. Now I'm discussing when we're going to have a vaccine.

Let's talk timing. You said your reaction was not if but when. So when?

Well, let me be accurate and factual here. One, we will only know if the vaccine works when we have the final study. We have a lot of indications that make me feel that really it should make it … We should be able in the September time frame to have enough data to say if the vaccine works or not. And to submit that to the FDA. So for a potential approval in October, if we are lucky. It's feasible.

And when will it be ready to be distributed?

The most interesting and important thing is that if the vaccine is successful, which means that if we are convinced about it, effective and safe, and the FDA is convinced about it, effective and safe, we will have already manufactured doses that will be readily available.

So have you ever done that before, started manufacturing pre–FDA approval to get it ready to ship?

No, never.

Are you currently manufacturing the possible vaccine itself or just the bottles and the containers it will go in?

Pretty soon we will start manufacturing actual vaccine. We may not bottle it yet because we are waiting, but there are a lot of stages.

You've invested more than $1 billion in this. What if the FDA rejects the vaccine?

We will just have to write it off and call it a day. We will throw it away. It's only money we're going to lose.

— with reporting by Alice Park

(For an expanded version of this interview with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, delivered to your inbox on Sunday morning, July 12—and for weekly emails of conversations with the world's top CEOs and business decision makers—click here to subscribe to the Leadership Brief)

When Christine Baker, a financially strapped stay-at-home mom to two little girls, made up her mind to lose 30 lb., she took a cue from a friend who'd gotten fit with Beachbody. The company's online workouts and diet products cost Baker about $160, but they worked.

"Literally within 30 days, I looked and felt like a different person," says Baker, of Roseville, Calif., who was so impressed with her 2015 transformation that she decided to become a Beachbody fitness coach herself. She started paying around $135 per month to set up her own online portal and to purchase Beachbody products, and she got to work looking for customers. Yet as she spent more hours trying to sell people on Beachbody and fewer hours working out herself, Baker says the pounds piled back on but the money did not roll in.

"You're working your ass off. You're having to check in every day in your group, you're having to keep everybody motivated, because if they don't lose weight and see results, they're not going to keep buying from you," says Baker, 48. "It was like I was just throwing money away." By the time she gave up on Beachbody, Baker says, she'd lost several thousand dollars and countless hours that she wishes had been spent with her daughters.

Multilevel marketing companies (MLMs) like Beachbody, which rely primarily on distributors like Baker instead of salaried staff to sell goods and services, have long been eyed with suspicion by regulators, and for good reason. The Consumer Awareness Institute, whose research has been posted on the website of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), found that 99% of people who participate in them lose money. "Statistically, it is more likely you will win the lottery than you will make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling for an MLM," says Robert FitzPatrick, the co-author of False Profits, a book about MLMs, and the president of PyramidSchemeAlert.org.

But as the COVID-19 pandemic sends the economy into its worst tailspin since the Great Depression, some MLM distributors are wooing new investors with promises of big money and the opportunity to work from home–seemingly ideal for people who are unemployed. Facebook posts promising jobs are easy to spot, though the caveats that these opportunities do not offer guaranteed paychecks are rarely mentioned. "Worried about the Coronavirus?" reads a Facebook post by a Young Living essential-oils distributor touting its Thieves product line. "Thieves kills germs!" A similar post by a seller for Color Street, an MLM that sells nail-polish strips, urged members to "invest some of that stimulus check in yourself and start making money instantly."

Some sellers imply that their non-FDA-approved supplements and essential oils can protect people from the virus. "With the flu and coronavirus spreading throughout the U.S., things are selling out," wrote a seller for doTERRA, an essential-oils MLM. "If you are running low on these immune boosting protection items, now is a good time to replenish." TIME reviewed dozens of similar claims made on social media.

The FTC has sent letters to 16 MLMs warning them against making claims about the coronavirus-related health benefits of their products, the potential earnings for investors, or both.

But the FTC is fighting an uphill battle as the $35.2 billion industry rapidly evolves, courtesy of the Internet. Unlike MLMs of yesteryear that relied on door-to-door sales, today's MLM distributors can reach millions of potential recruits around the world on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks. Included in a distributor's marketing tool belt are private messages, which regulatory agencies like the FTC can't monitor. "[Social media] can be like a laboratory for deception," says Kati Daffan, the FTC's assistant director for marketing practices. "You've got all these members competing with each other to deceive more people. And they can do it however they want if there's no one watching from above."

And with so many people out of work, there's an eager audience. The Direct Selling Association (DSA), the trade group representing MLMs, says that 51% of the 51 companies that participated in a survey in early June said COVID-19 has had a "positive" impact on their 2020 revenue; 59% reported the same in a later survey. DSA president Joseph Mariano says some sellers have inflated the potential rewards of investing in their companies. "You inevitably have a few overzealous people saying things that perhaps they shouldn't," he says. "When you have a vulnerable population of people who have lost their jobs or are concerned about losing their jobs, the fact of the matter is … direct selling is generally a modest supplemental income opportunity. It's not something that is going to make you rich." Mariano says the DSA has worked with the Better Business Bureau to monitor claims about products' benefits and sellers' potential earnings. The DSA-funded Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council has referred four cases to the FTC this year for investigation of possible falsehoods.

But recessions tend to be good for MLMs, and this recession shows no sign of abating as new COVID-19 outbreaks slow reopenings. During the 2007–09 Great Recession, the number of MLM sellers began rising and went from 15.1 million in 2008 to 18.2 million in 2014, according to a DSA report.

Celebrity support helped. Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, lifestyle guru Rachel Hollis, former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton (after they'd left office), and private citizen Donald J. Trump have, over the years, appeared at MLM events or endorsed companies. Many influencers and athletes still back them, as distributors sign on to sell everything from leggings to home cooking products.

At most MLMs, investors, who are also known as distributors or sellers, make money by selling a company's products and recruiting others to do the same. They then earn commissions or bonuses based on their recruits' sales. But after investors have recruited as many friends and relatives as they can find, communities become saturated, making it difficult for new sellers to find customers. Countless distributors end up wallowing in merchandise they can't sell and sinking into debt as they're pushed to spend more money attending training seminars and bonding conferences, critics say. "They tell you if you don't go to a training, if you miss a single training, you will never be successful," says Illyssa Demarino, 31, a Phoenix bartender who tried three MLMs and spent thousands of dollars without making any money. "It's so easy to get wrapped up in the cultlike mindset."

MLMs fashion themselves as alternatives to the gig economy, which has been hit hard by COVID-19; apps like Uber are suffering as people avoid shared transport, while others, like Instacart and Doordash, are flooded with new workers, driving down gig pay. The MLM world implies a glamorous and safer alternative, and its prime target is women, who have been hit especially hard in this recession. Their service-sector jobs were the first to go when restaurants, bars, hotels and casinos closed, and when babysitting and housekeeping jobs ended.

Even before the pandemic, MLMs adopted the language of pop feminism with hashtags like #bossbabe and #momtrepreneur. Some sellers post doctored before-and-after photos for fitness and beauty products online in hopes of selling not just a payday but unattainable beauty.

"I was the perfect target," says Jamie Ludwig, who in 2014 was convinced by a friend that she could make good money working from home in Kansas City, Mo., while selling weight-loss shakes and other supplements for an MLM called AdvoCare. "A new mom with baby fat I wanted to lose, desperate to be at home with my kids." New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees endorsed the company, which in Ludwig's eyes gave it an air of legitimacy.

She and her husband Josh bought a $79 starter kit, and she scaled back her hours as a hairdresser to devote time to AdvoCare. All they had to do, their recruiter told them, was find enough buyers for the $900 in supplements that arrived on their doorstep each month. "I spent the entire time on the phone trying to sell, giving my kids no attention, working 50 or 60 hours a week, more than I did before," says Ludwig, 39. She and her husband, who is 41, found only a handful of buyers. They gave up AdvoCare 18 months later, but not before spending about $300 (plus transportation, food and housing) to attend a three-day "success school" sponsored by AdvoCare to learn sales techniques. When their car broke down on the trip, the couple was forced to face their financial straits. For years, Ludwig could not bring herself to look at the boxes of unsold shakes in her pantry.

AdvoCare is one of a handful of MLMs that the FTC has declared a pyramid scheme. According to the agency, 72% of AdvoCare's distributors made no money in 2016, and 18% made $250 or less that year. After its investigation, the FTC in October 2019 required AdvoCare to pay a $150 million settlement and to stop using the MLM business model. (AdvoCare said in a statement that it "strongly disagree[s] with the FTC allegations" but has changed the way it does business.) One month later, the FTC alleged that Neora, an MLM selling supplements and skin creams, was a pyramid scheme. (Neora asserted that it was "not a pyramid scheme under the law" in its own lawsuit against the FTC, where it accuses the agency of reinterpreting laws to unfairly label it.)

In the past 41 years, the FTC has filed cases against 30 MLMs alleging they were pyramid schemes, according to Truth in Advertising, an independent watchdog group. In 28 of those cases, courts either agreed with the FTC or companies paid settlements or changed their business plans to resolve the cases. But the number of MLMs makes it difficult for the FTC to make sure each one is operating lawfully, especially since the number is always in flux. The Direct Selling Association estimates that 1,100 MLMs are in operation in any given year but cannot be sure. "Many companies may even come and go before they could even be 'counted,'" the DSA says on its own website.

MLMs are not illegal, but many are at best financially risky. The chances of financial success are so grim that the DSA president, Mariano, has called participating in MLMs an "activity" rather than a job.

The numbers that MLMs report often paint a dark picture for sellers. At Young Living, 89% of U.S.-based distributors earned an average of $4 in 2018, according to an income-disclosure statement. At the skin-care MLM Rodan + Fields, 67.1% of sellers had an annual median income of $227 in 2019. More than half the distributors at Color Street fell into the company's lowest tier of earners in 2018, with average monthly profits below $12.

As the industry grows, so does awareness. Data obtained by TIME through Freedom of Information Act requests shows that consumer complaints to the FTC about MLMs have risen in recent years. From 2014 to 2018, complaints against Amway, a company co-founded by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' father-in-law, went from 15 to 36; in those complaints, consumers reported losing a total of more than $380,000. Complaints against SeneGence, a makeup and skin-care MLM, jumped from two in 2016 to 14 the following year before falling to six in 2018; consumers reported total losses of nearly $25,000. Complaints against Monat, whose hair products stand accused of making people's hair fall out, jumped from two to 30 from 2015 to 2018, with consumers alleging losses totaling $7,572. (Monat says its products are "dermatologist-tested" and that its research indicates they are safe.)

But the resources and time required to determine if a company is operating a pyramid scheme make it impossible for the FTC to investigate every MLM with questionable practices, experts say. "It's like a policeman trying to stop cars that are speeding on a highway," says Peter Vander Nat, a retired FTC economist who spent more than two decades representing the government in cases against MLMs. "For every one that it stops for speeding, five roll on by."

States have taken up some of the burden, with Washington, California, Illinois and others representing plaintiffs in suits against various MLMs. But legal action has become increasingly challenging as more companies insert clauses in contracts that force sellers into arbitration rather than litigation in open court. Even if the MLMs are forced to settle for millions in arbitration, their wrongdoing doesn't become as public as a court settlement.

According to the DSA, 74% of MLM sellers are women, and 20% of sellers are of Hispanic origin, a demographic that critics say highlights the industry's systemic targeting of economically vulnerable communities. José Vargas, a 39-year-old from Connecticut, is one Latino man who suffered. After the mid-2000s real estate crisis forced him out of his career in the mortgage industry, he was struggling to support his family as a cable technician. He was also about 25 lb. overweight.

Enter Herbalife Nutrition, which since its founding in 1980 has sold dietary supplements. Vargas started buying Herbalife's shakes in 2012 and was so happy about his weight loss that he became a full-time Herbalife distributor in hopes of making a better income and helping others get in shape. But as he shed the pounds, his wallet got lighter too. He says he paid about $2,500 for the privilege of calling himself a supervisor, which he was told would help him earn more money faster. He paid roughly $700 a month to rent space for a storefront, which was recommended as a way to build up a clientele. He says he attended mandatory local training sessions and "highly encouraged" national events in faraway cities. By the time Vargas gave up Herbalife in 2014, he says, he had lost close to $10,000.

Approximately 30% of Herbalife's distributors are Latino, according to the company. Herbalife in particular has faced criticism for targeting low-income Latino sellers in Mexico and California. The company has a 10-year, $44 million sponsorship of the Los Angeles Galaxy professional soccer team, which boasts a massive Latino fan base.

"You have a lot of Latinos that come here, looking to achieve the American Dream and become successful," says Vargas, who is back to working as a mortgage consultant. "I think it's a big smack in the face."

A 2016 FTC complaint accused Herbalife of deceiving consumers and portrayed issues in tune with Vargas' experiences. Among other things, it said Herbalife banned storefront operators from displaying prices for anything other than Herbalife membership fees.

Herbalife evaded official classification as a pyramid scheme, but only barely. Then FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez said the company was "not determined not to have been a pyramid." Herbalife said it believed "many of the allegations made by the FTC are factually incorrect," but it agreed to pay $200 million to consumers who the FTC said had been incentivized to recruit people to buy Herbalife products–whether or not there was a market for them.

Vargas recalls getting about $600 in the settlement but says worse than his financial loss is that he persuaded others to join Herbalife. Herbalife still operates in the U.S., but its biggest regional market is overseas in the Asia-Pacific region, where FTC rules don't apply. (Herbalife says it has made significant changes since the FTC settlement to better protect distributors, such as compensating distributors based on how much they sell to customers rather than how much they personally buy, and requiring distributors to be with Herbalife for a year before opening a storefront, but some changes are not yet in effect in non-U.S. markets. In 2016, Herbalife said the settlement with the FTC showed that its "business model is sound." Company officials declined to comment on the record for this article.)

Its website also invokes COVID-19 as a reason to trust its products, which it says have earned Herbalife the designation as an "essential" business.

On April 29, Vargas' former Herbalife recruiter messaged him on social media after being out of touch for several years to ask how his family was faring through the pandemic. Vargas, suspecting the conversation would turn into a recruitment pitch, stopped responding after exchanging pleasantries. This time, he won't be swayed. "What they promise," he says of MLM distributors, "is very undeliverable."

Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler, who is 56 and estimated by Forbes to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, says that achieving his level of success by selling Beachbody's shakes and recruiting others to do so isn't easy. "This is not something you jump into and instantly make a lot of money," he tells TIME. Daikeler says he sounds a warning to those who want to quit their jobs and be full-time Beachbody coaches. "I will literally say, 'Are you sure? And do you have money saved? Because this is starting your own business, and starting your own business is very hard. Most new businesses that start, fail.'"

It is months before COVID-19 had become a household term, and thousands of Beachbody distributors have gathered in Indianapolis to be inspired, to be motivated and to learn how they can turn the hours they've devoted to Beachbody into a profit–or at least earn back what they've spent on the company's products and on attending this three-day conference.

A fit man with close-cropped gray hair, Daikeler uses the gathering to announce an array of products to sell: an exercise program designed by a celebrity coach, a plant-based chocolate almond crunch bar, a pumpkin-spice protein beverage. "We have 300,000 coaches," he says to wild cheers. "And we need to find the next 300,000." The words I can be my own boss had just flashed on the screen behind the stage he's now standing on.

Rachel Hollis will take the stage at some point, but Daikeler is the person thousands of people in that audience want to be.

One of the people in the crowd is LindsayAnn Hammarlund of Atlanta, a mother of three who left her teaching job two years after joining Beachbody, when her sales surpassed her teaching salary. "We were paying so much in day care, and I cried literally every single day I took them to day care and I went to school," says Hammarlund, 35. She's recently gone back to the classroom now that her kids are older. But that MLM income, she says, has enabled her to pay down debt and take "many trips" with her Beachbody team. Dozens of other coaches who attended the Indianapolis convention told TIME they signed up because they liked the products, enjoyed the camaraderie and wanted to get in shape–not because they wanted to make money.

But on its website, Beachbody emphasizes that being a coach "means earning an income while you help yourself and others live healthier." Except that wasn't the reality for more than half of its coaches last year: 57% of them earned $0 in commission and bonuses in 2019, according to the company's income-disclosure statement. Andy Brown, 38, a former Beachbody coach, thought he'd made between $4,000 and $5,000 in 2015, until he did his taxes. "I was starting to estimate how much money I spent on everything compared to the amount of money that I actually made, and that was sort of a wash," says Brown. "And then on top of the tax hit I took, that's when I was like, I'm in the red. This isn't helping me at all. In fact, I'm probably worse off than when I started."

Christine Baker, who left Beachbody in 2017, says she was paying about $100 per month to remain an active coach, but her highest commission check was $300. (Beachbody says it is possible to remain active by purchasing or selling as little as $67 worth of product per month and paying a $15.95 monthly fee.) Like Brown, Baker says the truth hit her around tax time. She recalls her accountant telling her, "You know, the only reason why you're doing half good on your taxes this year is because you lost so much money."

The same year Baker left Beachbody, a judge in Santa Monica, Calif., ruled the company must pay $3.6 million in penalties and restitution after the city accused it of charging customers' credit cards for renewal fees without consent, and of exaggerating its products' health benefits. Now, Beachbody must clearly define renewal terms, obtain consent from customers for subscription renewals and support its health claims with "competent and reliable" scientific studies.

That hasn't deterred customers. Since COVID-19 closed gyms, Beachbody's business has been booming. Daikeler tells TIME that April, May and June were the top streaming months for Beachbody on Demand workout videos since the program launched in July 2015: the number of subscribers has blossomed more than 33% since mid-March, and customers are averaging 600,000 fitness classes on the platform per day.

And a lot of these customers are attempting to turn their newfound workout regimens into income streams. Of the approximately 405,000 Beachbody coaches who are eligible to recruit participants and make money off them, more than 141,000 signed up on or after March 1.

With Reporting by CURRIE ENGEL/NEW YORK

United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees – nearly half its U.S. staff – they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry.

The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers.

United officials said Wednesday that they still hope to limit the number of layoffs by offering early retirement benefits, and that 36,000 is a worst-case scenario. The notices going to employees this month are meant to comply with a 60-day warning ahead of mass job cuts.

The furloughs could include up to 15,000 flight attendants, 11,000 customer service and gate agents, 5,500 maintenance workers and 2,250 pilots.

"The United Airlines projected furlough numbers are a gut punch, but they are also the most honest assessment we've seen on the state of the industry," said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. "This crisis dwarfs all others in aviation history, and there's no end in sight."

If United carries through on the notices, furloughs would take effect on or shortly after Oct. 1. United can't lay off workers before then as a condition of the $5 billion it got as its share of $25 billion in federal aid to help airlines cover payroll costs.

The flight attendants' union and other airline labor groups are lobbying Congress for another $25 billion to protect jobs through next March. But a senior United executive expressed doubt that Congress would approve the spending in an election year.

United has already cut capital spending by $2.5 billion and convinced thousands of employees to take unpaid leave. It has hoarded cash after raising billions in new borrowing – including mortgaging its MileagePlus frequent-flyer program.

But with ticket sales sagging again, the Chicago-based airline is still losing about $40 million a day, executives said.

Layoffs are "the last option left to protect the long-term interests of the company," said the senior United official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

Executives said the notices covered 45% of the airline's U.S. staff, most of whom are represented by unions. They would have reinstatement rights if United's fortunes improve. Another 1,300 management and support staff will be laid off Oct. 1, the company said. Including international employees, United has a work force of about 95,000.

Air travel in the U.S. plunged about 95% from March 1 until mid-April, then began a slow recovery. The number of U.S. air travelers around the July 4 weekend was the highest since mid-March, but was still down about 70% from a year ago.

In recent weeks, the number of new reported cases of COVID-19 has roughly doubled to about 50,000 a day. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago have announced that people arriving from states with high infection rates will have to quarantine, throwing up a new roadblock to travel.

United's traffic at its hub in Newark, New Jersey, has slumped more deeply than the rest of its network since those quarantine rules were announced.

Executives of other airlines have predicted their companies will be much smaller, with fewer employees, in October.

Delta Air Lines recently told employees that it will send layoff notices to more than 2,500 of its 14,000 pilots. Germany's Lufthansa has warned that it might cut 22,000 jobs, and Air France last week announced plans to eliminate 7,500 jobs.

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(SILVER SPRING, Md.) — Uber finally got its food delivery company, acquiring Postmates in a $2.65 billion all-stock deal, the ride-hailing giant confirmed Monday.

Uber and its Uber Eats food-delivery division will gain ground against DoorDash, which controls about 37% of the U.S. food delivery market. That's compared with Uber Eats' 20% share before the Postmates deal. Grubhub holds around 30% of the U.S. food delivery market, according to Second Measure, a data analysis company.

Last month, Uber lost out in a bid for Grubhub, which would have made it the dominant U.S. food-delivery service. But Amsterdam-based Just Eat Takeaway.com ended up nabbing Chicago's Grubhub in a $7.3 billion deal. Uber was reportedly seeking to team Grubhub with its Uber Eats business.

The food delivery sector is undergoing a major consolidation this year and more is expected. The number of people using food delivery services is on the rise because of the coronavirus pandemic, but customers tend to jump around from service to service depending on where they can find the best deal.

Uber has leaned on its food delivery business with COVID-19 cutting into all ride-share businesses. Rides for Uber slid 3% in the first quarter compared with the previous years. Bookings through its food delivery business, on the other hand, surged 54% in the same period.

By acquiring Postmates, Uber not only gets the bigger share of the food delivery market it has long desired, but also shores itself up against further pandemic-related losses in its ride-sharing division.

"In our opinion, Uber finds itself with its back against the wall on the consolidation theme as the Grubhub deal fell apart on anti-trust concerns, and now must quickly look to acquire market share and added scale which makes the Postmates deal a smart strategic fit," analysts with Wedbush Securities wrote Monday.

Postmates, a closely held private company, claims 600,000 food and restaurant merchants to choose from, which it claims is the largest selection in the U.S. The company says it has the ability to serve 80% of households across all 50 states.

The boards of both companies have approved the transaction and the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.

Uber and Postmates are both based in San Francisco.

Shares of Uber Technologies Inc. surged more than 9% before the opening bell Monday.

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(MONTGOMERY, Ala.) — The heiress to the Golden Flake potato chip empire is for now back in control of her fortune after a ruling Thursday by the Alabama Supreme Court.

The court voided a 2019 probate order granting an emergency conservator that came after two employees claimed that 88-year-old Joann Bashinsky has dementia and is mentally unfit to handle her vast estate.

Justices said Bashinsky's basic due-process rights were egregiously violated when the probate court made the emergency decision without giving her time to obtain counsel after her lawyers were disqualified. The permanent petition remains pending before the court.

Joann Bashinsky is the widow of Sloan Y. Bashinsky, Sr. who owned the majority stock in Golden Enterprises, Inc., and who was the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Golden Flake Foods. Her personal estate is estimated to be worth $80 million, and her entire estate was valued at $218 million.

Pennsylvania-based Utz Quality Foods bought Golden Enterprises for $141 million in 2016.

Joann Bashinsky has been locked in a legal battle with two former employees who claim she has dementia and is no longer able to manage her estate. The petition to appoint a conservator came after Bashinsky loaned her only grandson $23 million for his business ventures.

The employees said the grandson has undue influence over his grandmother. Bashinsky's lawyers have disputed that she has dementia and that she wants to help her only grandson and heir.

Justices said the situation did not merit an emergency action by the probate court.

Justices said the petitioners and the probate judge "may all firmly believe that Ms. Bashinsky's generosity to her grandson is financially unwise, and they may be correct in that judgment."

"But such a concern is not an occasion for invoking the emergency procedures afforded a court as a result of which Ms. Bashinsky was admittedly deprived of proper notice of the hearing and, more egregiously, not given the opportunity at that hearing to present her own explanations for her behavior."

(WASHINGTON) — The title sponsor of the Washington Redskins' stadium wants the NFL team to change its name.

"We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name," FedEx said in a statement Thursday.

The company paid the team $205 million in 1999 for the naming rights to FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.

In addition to the stadium name and sponsorship agreement, FedEx CEO Frederik Smith is a minority owner. Majority owner Daniel Snyder has shown no indications he'll change the name since buying the team in 1999.

Amid the national debate over race, pressure has been mounting on the organization to abandon the name called a "dictionary-defined racial slur" by experts and advocates.

Investors this week wrote to FedEx, PepsiCo and other sponsors asking them to request a change. FedEx is believed to be the first to take action.

Asked about Snyder changing the name, a spokesman said recently the team had no comment. The team last week removed the name of racist founder George Preston Marshall from its Ring of Fame at FedEx Field, and a monument to him was removed from the site of the old RFK Stadium.

Washington, D.C., mayor Muriel Bowser also said the name was an "obstacle" to the team returning to the District. The team's lease at FedEx Field expires in 2027, and it is still talking to Washington, Virginia and Maryland about building a new stadium.

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A government report says Boeing did not give regulators documents about changes it made in a key system blamed in two deadly crashes of its 737 Max jet, and that officials responsible for approving the plane did not know how powerfully the system could push the plane's nose down.

Government personnel involved in flight tests knew about changes Boeing made to the flight-control system, but engineers responsible for certifying the plane did not, according to the report, which is expected to be released Wednesday.

Engineers for the Federal Aviation Administration didn't perform a detailed examination of the flight-control system, called MCAS, until after the first crash, in October 2018 off the coast of Indonesia.

In that crash and another less than five months later in Ethiopia, MCAS pushed the nose of each plane down and pilots were unable to regain control. The crashes killed 346 people and led regulators around the world to ground every Boeing 737 Max — nearly 400 of them.

This week, Boeing and the FAA began certification flights using FAA test pilots. If the FAA deems the flights satisfactory, it could let airlines resume using the plane later this year, which would be a massive victory for Boeing even as the company contends with dozens of wrongful-death lawsuits filed by families of passengers.

Many of the findings in the report by the Transportation Department's acting inspector general have previously been published in news accounts. But the report provides more evidence for lawmakers who want to overhaul FAA's process for approving new aircraft.

The report was requested by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and congressional leaders, including Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., whose committees are investigating the FAA's approval of the Max.

In a comment attached to the report, FAA said the inspector general's view "will help FAA to better understand some of the factors that may have contributed to the crashes and ensure these types of accidents never occur again." The agency said it was working on improvements to the aircraft-certification process.

In a statement, Boeing spokesman Bernard Choi said the company is making sure that improvements to Max "are comprehensive and thoroughly tested." When the plane returns, he said, "it will be one of the most thoroughly scrutinized aircraft in history, and we have full confidence in its safety."

The inspector general's report is a timeline of the plane's history from design work in 2012 until 2019, when the plane was grounded.

In early development of the Max, Boeing indicated MCAS would not activate often, and so the system didn't receive a detailed review by FAA. In 2016, as the plane was going through test flights, Boeing changed MCAS to increase its power to turn the nose down under some conditions. But the company did not submit documents to the FAA detailing this change, the inspector general found.

FAA flight-test personnel knew, "but key FAA certification engineers and personnel responsible for approving the level of airline pilot training told us they were unaware of the revision to MCAS," the inspector general said.

The FAA began reviewing its certification of MCAS more than two months after the Indonesian crash. It was the first time agency engineers had taken a detailed look at the system, according to the report.

As disclosed during a House Transportation Committee hearing last year, an FAA analysis estimated that Max planes might crash 15 more times if MCAS were not fixed. However, the agency let the plane continue to fly while Boeing began fixing the system, a job Boeing expected to complete by July 2019.

The second Max crash occurred in March 2019.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report ahead of its publication. The findings were previously reported by Reuters.