AFP

Ford on Thursday announced fresh multi-billion-dollar capital projects in Midwestern factories near its Detroit home, as the auto giant spreads new investments throughout the United States.

The 119-year-old carmaker plans to spend $3.7 billion to add manufacturing capacity for a mix of electric vehicles (EVs) and conventional gasoline-powered autos in the states of Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, much of it at existing plants that have been in the company’s portfolio for years.

The move follows an announcement last September of an $11.4-billion push with SK Innovation, a South Korean battery company, to build greenfield car production and battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.

Major car companies are investing billions of dollars in a race to bring EVs to market, develop driver-assistance programs and outfit their products with the latest and greatest digital equipment.

“We’re investing in American jobs and our employees to build a new generation of incredible Ford vehicles,” said Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley. 

Thursday’s announcement was made jointly with the United Auto Workers, which agreed to the new projects outside of standard union contract negotiations.

Ford will add more than 6,200 new manufacturing jobs and convert around 3,000 temporary UAW employees to permanent status.

“This announcement is a testament to UAW members who contribute their skill, experience, and knowledge to the success of Ford Motor Company,” said UAW President Ray Curry.

“We are always advocating to employers and legislators that union jobs are worth the investment. Ford stepped up to the plate by adding these jobs and converting 3000 UAW members to permanent, full-time status with benefits.”

About $2 billion of the investment will go to projects in Michigan, including boosting production of the new F-150 Lightning electric truck and the production of new pickup and coupe vehicles.

The company will spend $1.5 billion in Ohio on assembly of new EV models and other projects, and $95 million in Missouri to add a shift at a plant that makes commercial vans and will add an electric van.

A Rolex watch worn by a British prisoner during the real-life “Great Escape” from the Nazi Stalag Luft III concentration camp is going on sale in New York.

Christie’s expects the timepiece to fetch between $200,000 and $400,000 at auction on June 9.

The watch was worn by Gerald Imeson on the night of March 24, 1944 when a group of Allied soldiers undertook the daring escape that inspired the 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen.

The steel watch with a black luminous dial and hands was “instrumental in the planning and execution” of their bid for freedom, Christie’s said.

The auction house said it believed Imeson’s watch helped calculate the time it would take the prisoners to crawl through tunnels used in the breakout as well as timing the patrols of the camp guards.

Imeson wore the Oyster Chronograph watch as he waited 172nd in line to escape, according to Christie’s.

Of the 200 prisoners who participated in the plan, 76 briefly escaped. Imeson was not among them. All but three of the men were captured and 50 were executed.

Imeson was liberated from another POW camp at the end of the war in 1945.

He wore the watch until his death in 2003 at the age of 85. It was first auctioned in Britain in 2013.

A cross-party group of US senators was set to renew talks Thursday on a narrow package of firearms controls, as lawmakers face calls to tackle soaring gun violence including recent massacres in Texas and New York State.

Nine senators have been meeting this week to discuss a response to the mass shootings that have appalled the nation, projecting optimism over the prospects for modest reforms.

The group has focused on school security, bolstering mental health services and incentives for states to grant to courts “red flag” authority to temporarily remove guns from owners considered a threat.

Moderate Republican Susan Collins said the group was making “rapid progress” while Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said he had “never seen more Republicans at the table willing to talk.” 

“There’s something different happening right now and I hope it ends in a piece of legislation before the Senate,” Murphy told MSNBC on Wednesday. 

Even as lawmakers were mulling responses to the racist murders of 10 Black supermarket shoppers in Buffalo and a school shooting in Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers, another attack took place in Oklahoma on Wednesday.

A man with a pistol and a rifle murdered four people in a Tulsa hospital complex before reportedly killing himself as police arrived.

Lawmakers are aware that they risk wasting momentum as the urgency for reforms sparked by the killings dissipates, and another smaller group of senators is holding parallel discussions on expanding background checks on gun sales.

The political challenge of legislating in a 50-50 Senate, where most bills require 60 votes to pass, means that more wide-ranging reforms are unrealistic.

Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, told reporters that senators were trying to “target the problem,” which he said was “mental illness and school safety,” not firearms. 

– ‘Leading cause of death’ –

House Democrats are nevertheless set to pass a much broader but largely symbolic “Protecting Our Kids Act,” a package of gun control proposals that includes raising the purchasing age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21.

Other highlights include a ban on high-capacity magazines and background checks on so-called “ghost guns,” do-it-yourself, homemade guns made from easily available kits.

The package will likely pass the Democratic-led House next week before dying amid Republican opposition in the Senate.

With regulation being so difficult at the federal level, an effort is also underway among state legislatures to push for tighter gun laws.

California lawmakers advanced a gun control package in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting that included proposals to open up gunmakers to civil legal liability in certain cases.

“Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America,” California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. 

“While the US Senate stands idly by and activist federal judges strike down commonsense gun laws across our nation, California will act with the urgency this crisis demands.”

The proposals echo action by lawmakers in New York state, who passed a law last year allowing civil suits against gun manufacturers and dealers for improper marketing or sales.

A permit-to-buy bill is moving through the Delaware state legislature, while in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott asked lawmakers in the pro-gun rights state to “make legislative recommendations” in response to the Uvalde shooting.

Activists for greater gun restrictions fear a setback at the federal level however as the Supreme Court is set to issue its first major Second Amendment opinion in more than a decade.

Justices are expected to rule in the coming weeks in a dispute over New York state’s stringent limits on the concealed carry of handguns outside the home.

A narrow opinion could affect just a few states with similar laws, but campaigners fear the conservative majority will make a broader ruling clearing the way for constitutional challenges to gun safety laws across the country.

The United States placed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s money-manager and a Monaco company that provides luxury yachts to Moscow’s elite on its sanctions blacklist Thursday, stepping up pressure over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Washington hit Sergei Roldugin, labelled “Putin’s middle-man,” Roldugin’s opera singer wife Elena Mirtova, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova with sanctions, as well as several large yachts in which Putin allegedly has an interest, the Treasury said.

The sanctions also included several senior government officials and powerful businessmen, and aircraft and a luxury yacht tied to Andrei Kostin, the chief executive of VTB Bank, one of the country’s largest.

And, in parallel, the US Commerce Department placed some 70 Russian companies on a list that blocks them from obtaining crucial US technologies and goods.

The sanctions are designed to “degrade the key networks used by Russia’s elites, including President Vladimir Putin, to attempt to hide and move money and anonymously make use of luxury assets around the globe,” the Treasury said.

The White House said the action was meant to step up pressure on Moscow more than three months after it invaded Ukraine.

“The United States, alongside over 30 partners around the world, has imposed unprecedented sanctions and export controls to hold President Putin to account for his war against Ukraine, restrict Russia’s access to critical technology it needs to fund its war machine, and turn Russia into a global financial pariah,” the White House said in a statement.

The Treasury said it declared four luxury yachts linked to Putin and on which he has taken numerous trips as “blocked property,” meaning they can be seized.

In addition, it took aim at Imperial Yachts, based in Monaco and operating a Moscow office serving Russian tycoons, and its owner Evgeniy Kochman.

Imperial both leases yachts to the Russian elite and manages yachts owned by Russian oligarchs, the Treasury said. 

The sanctions on Imperial include placing a block on its largest yacht, the three-year-old, 136-meter “Flying Fox,” which was raided by authorities in the Dominican Republic on April 1 on a US request as part of an investigation on alleged money laundering and arms trafficking.

Roldugin and his wife were blacklisted by the US for the first time, after having been placed on European sanctions lists in February.

He is better known as a cellist and the artistic director of the St. Petersburg Music House, and has been a friend of Putin for more than four decades. Roldugin is godfather to one of the Russian president’s daughters.

But the Treasury says he is a key figure in managing Putin’s personal wealth offshore.

“Russia’s elites, up to and including President Putin, rely on complex support networks to hide, move, and maintain their wealth and luxury assets,” said Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson. 

“Today’s action demonstrates that Treasury can and will go after those responsible for shielding and maintaining these ill-gotten interests,” Nelson said.

Actress Amber Heard is unable to pay her ex-husband Johnny Depp more than $10 million in damages, her lawyer said Thursday, after a US jury took the side of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star in a bitter defamation trial.

The high-profile televised court battle ended Wednesday when a seven-person jury found that Depp and Heard had defamed each other, but weighed in far more strongly with Depp.

The jury, after a six-week trial featuring claims and counterclaims of domestic abuse, awarded him $10.35 million in damages, in contrast with $2 million awarded to Heard.

Asked on NBC’s TODAY show if Heard will be able to pay up, her attorney Elaine Bredehoft said: “Oh no, absolutely not.”

She added that the “Aquaman” star wants to appeal the verdict and “has some excellent grounds for it.”

The 58-year-old Depp, who lost a libel case against the British tabloid The Sun in London in 2020 for calling him a “wife-beater,” celebrated the split verdict in the case as a victory while Heard said she was “heart-broken.”

Depp sued Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The Texas-born Heard did not name Depp in the piece, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and sought $50 million in damages.

The 36-year-old Heard countersued for $100 million, saying she was defamed by statements made by Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the Daily Mail her abuse claims were a “hoax.”

– ‘Horrible message’ –

Bredehoft said Depp’s legal team worked to “demonize” Heard and suppressed crucial evidence in the trial, preventing the jurors from examining evidence of Depp’s alleged abuse.

“A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused,” she said.

“We had an enormous amount of evidence that was suppressed in this case that was in the UK case,” she said. “In the UK case when it came in, Amber won, Mr. Depp lost.”

The lawyer said the ruling bodes ill for the MeToo movement and will discourage women from reporting sexual harassment and abuse.

“It’s a horrible message,” Bredehoft said. “It’s a significant setback, because that’s exactly what it means.

“Unless you pull out your phone and you video your spouse or your significant other beating you, effectively you won’t be believed.”

Bredehoft was asked by TODAY about Heard’s immediate reaction to the verdict in the trial, which took place in Fairfax County Circuit Court near the US capital.

“One of the first things she said is that, ‘I am so sorry to all those women out there,'” she said. “This is a setback for all women in and outside the courtroom, and she feels the burden of that.”

– ‘Zoo’ –

In a statement, Heard said “the disappointment I feel today is beyond words.

“I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she said.

For his part, Depp welcomed the verdict, saying “The jury gave me my life back.”

“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” Depp said in a statement.

Bredehoft said social media may have had an impact on the case although jurors had been instructed not to look at it.

“There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it, and it was horrible,” she said. “It really, really was lopsided.”

Heard’s attorney also said she opposed having the trial televised.

“I was against cameras in the courtroom, and I went on record with that and had argued against it because of the sensitive nature of this, but it made it a zoo,” she said.

Actress Amber Heard is unable to pay her ex-husband Johnny Depp more than $10 million in damages, her lawyer said Thursday, after a US jury took the side of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star in a bitter defamation trial.

The lengthy, high-profile televised court battle ended Wednesday, when a seven-person jury found that Depp and Heard had defamed each other, but weighed in far more strongly with Depp.

The jury awarded him $10.35 million in damages, in contrast with $2 million awarded to Heard.

Asked on NBC’s TODAY show if Heard will be able to pay up, her attorney Elaine Bredehoft answered: “Oh no, absolutely not.”

She added that Heard wants to appeal the verdict.

The 58-year-old Depp, who lost a libel case against The Sun tabloid in London in 2020 for calling him a “wife-beater,” celebrated the split verdict in the case as a victory while Heard said she was “heart-broken.”

Depp sued Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The Texas-born Heard, who had a starring role in “Aquaman,” did not name Depp in the piece, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and sought $50 million in damages.

The 36-year-old Heard countersued for $100 million, saying she was defamed by statements made by Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the Daily Mail her abuse claims were a “hoax.”

Bredehoft said Depp’s legal team worked to “demonize” Heard and suppressed crucial evidence in the trial, preventing the jurors from examining evidence of Depp’s alleged abuse.

“A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused,” she said.

The lawyer said the ruling bodes ill for the MeToo movement and will discourage women from reporting sexual harassment and abuse.

“It’s a horrible message,” Bredehoft said. “It’s a significant setback, because that’s exactly what it means.

“Unless you pull out your phone and you video your spouse or your significant other beating you, effectively you won’t be believed.” 

For his part, Depp welcomed the verdict, saying “The jury gave me my life back.”

“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” Depp said in a statement.