Aviation Apple, United in early discussions to upgrade terminal

United Airlines and Apple Inc. are in early discussions about upgrading United’s terminal at San Francisco International airport. The talks between the companies have just begun and the specific upgrades that would come to the SFO airport terminal are unclear. “The Apple team in San Francisco has been in our baggage hold areas, customer service and the lobbies,” Linda Jojo, executive vice president at United Airlines Holdings Inc., said Friday at the company’s media day in Chicago. “I’m being deliberately vague” on details, she said. Parts of the current terminal look dated, and Apple, a modern technology giant known for sleek design, uses United as its corporate airline to shuttle thousands of employees around the world. United accidentally revealed last year that Apple spends $150 million annually with the company on flights, including 50 business class seats a day from San Francisco to Shanghai. United executives also said that the company has purchased more than 100,000 Apple devices for employees.

Retail | H&M CEO sees ‘terrible’ fallout from consumer shaming

The chief executive officer of fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz AB says a growing movement that shames consumers represents a very real social threat. Karl-Johan Persson is speaking out as a pattern of shaming that initially targeted air travelers spreads into more industries, including his. The movement has gained traction as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen activist, inspires millions of people across the globe to take to the streets and voice their anger over what she says is a climate crisis. Persson, who has been running H&M for a decade, says his concern is that the movement seeks to prohibit behaviors. Many of the protests are “about ‘stop doing things, stop consuming, stop flying’,” Persson said in an interview in Stockholm. “Yes, that may lead to a small environmental impact, but it will have terrible social consequences.” The H&M CEO is a key figure in the $2.5 trillion fashion industry that has come under increasing scrutiny amid concerns about pollution and workers’ rights in the developing economies that have tended to do the bulk of the manufacturing.

Property Australian help for  first-home buyers  dwarfed by price boom

An Australian government program aimed at helping first-time home buyers cuts off support at a little more than half the value of an average property in Sydney where the real-estate market has been booming. The First Home Loan Deposit Scheme will guarantee eligible buyers purchasing a property with a deposit of as little as 5%. The program’s price cap for homes in Sydney is AUD700,000 (3.85 million patacas), according to details announced by the Treasury yesterday. That contrasts with a median property value of AUD1.2 million for the city, where a typical house costs AUD1.4 million, according to CoreLogic, a real-estate data provider. The purchase-price thresholds under the new government program for other major cities are lower than Sydney. Property price rises are largely concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, where home values surged 1.7% in each city last month alone.