TUI ‘Urgently' Needs New Boeing Jets as Delays Hit Profitability
TUI AG said Boeing Co. delivery delays are hurting profitability, as the German travel firm plans to expand in eastern Europe and southeast Asia.
Among the delayed aircraft is Boeing's new 737 Max 10 model, which is yet to be certified. The single-aisle jet will offer 30 more seats that would give TUI a cost advantage, Chief Executive Officer Sebastian Ebel said Friday.
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
The Memo: Uneasy truce descends in Trump-Musk war
President Trump and Elon Musk let an uneasy truce mostly take hold Friday, a day after their previous alliance imploded in spectacular fashion. On Thursday, Musk cast innuendo on Trump's decades-old association with deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, implying that the 'Epstein files' had not been released because they contained incriminating information about the president. Musk also contended the president would not have won last year's election against then-Vice President Kamala Harris without his help. Those jabs followed comments from Trump, during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, where he took aim at Musk. Trump asserted that Musk had grown critical of the massive budget bill making its way through Congress for selfish reasons — because it cut incentives to buy electrical vehicles such as Teslas. He also suggested the businessman was operating out of a sense of pique because the White House recently withdrew its nomination of a Musk ally, Jared Isaacman, to lead NASA. There was nothing nearly so spectacular during the day Friday — although that could change at any moment give both men's irascibility and penchant for verbal combat. Instead, Trump mostly confined himself to phone calls to TV anchors, where he expressed shoulder-shrugging lack of interest in speaking with Musk. Musk maintained his usual prolific social media posting, but mostly about topics unrelated to Trump. Still, it was hardly a full ceasefire. On his round of phone calls — none of which appeared to have been recorded for broadcast — Trump told Bret Baier of Fox News, 'Elon has totally lost it,' informed Jonathan Karl of ABC News that Musk had 'lost his mind,' and asserted to Dana Bash of CNN that 'the poor guy's got a problem.' The White House also let it be known that Trump intended to either sell or give away the Tesla he bought in March as a public display of support for Musk. Musk, among many other posts, approved of the idea advanced by another social media user that he had 'criticized Congress, not Trump. Trump then attacked Elon personally.' 'Exactly,' Musk responded. The businessman also called Trump's erstwhile chief strategist Steve Bannon 'a criminal.' Musk and Bannon have a long-running feud. But many Republicans will settle for hostilities between Trump and Musk at least not ramping up any further from their Thursday levels. Trump seems reluctant to get into an all-out verbal war with Musk, especially given the massive megaphone wielded by the world's richest man. Musk has more than 220 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns. Though unpopular with the general population, Musk has a strong hold over the younger, male-dominated online right. CBS News also reported that, despite the feud, 'there has been no effort to oust the over 100 administration officials who came from Musk's orbit.' The leveling-off of tensions will come as a relief to Republicans on Capitol Hill. Exasperation with Musk neared the boiling point Thursday, when he implied he might back the creation of an alternative party, while also lambasting Trump and congressional leaders — including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) for how far they have moved from past statements bemoaning growing deficits. The current legislation, which Trump called the 'big beautiful bill,' would increase deficits by $2.4 trillion over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Republican leaders are already grappling with tight math as they try to get the bill through the Senate, where the GOP has a 53-47 majority. Republican senators have expressed misgivings from different perspectives, with Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) dismayed that the legislation does not curb government spending, while others such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) are uneasy about changes to Medicaid that are projected to lead to millions of Americans losing health insurance. Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to turn some of the Trump-Musk chaos to their advantage. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising appeal telling supporters that the clash between the two men meant 'we knew our moment to get ahead had arrived.' Democratic Reps. Stephen Lynch (Mass.) and Robert Garcia (Calif.) wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel seeking more information about Musk's comments regarding Trump and Epstein. The move was first reported by Axios. The two congressmen — both of whom serve on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with Lynch as its acting ranking member — cited Musk's contention that the 'real reason' the Epstein files had not been released was because Trump was mentioned in them. 'We ask that you immediately clarify whether this allegation is true,' the two Democrats wrote. They also requested a description of 'the role of President Donald Trump in reviewing documents pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.' The White House has dismissed the request as a stunt, and many other Republicans will argue it is mischief-making. But the bigger question is whether the Trump-Musk feud will burst back into life anytime soon — and, if so, who will get caught in the blast zone.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Musk and the Millers Got Cozy Outside the White House
During happier times at the White House, Elon Musk was known to spend large amounts of time with Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie, even outside of work. Katie Miller, an aide in the Department of Government Efficiency, was with Musk 'almost all the time' while he was at the White House, before opting to follow him out the door last month, The Wall Street Journal reports. Her departure is thought to have caused friction among White House officials. Miller was reportedly on Musk's payroll the entire time, even when her official role was as a special government employee, according to Politico's Playbook. 'And, like … who was she looking out for?' one unnamed administration official said. The idea that Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was a close companion of Musk now seems far-fetched. The two have since had a public falling-out after Musk condemned President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a 'pork-filled' spending bill and a 'disgusting abomination.' Miller, one of Trump's most loyal allies, fired back with a thinly veiled attack on Musk on X on Thursday, writing: 'The only 'new' spending in the bill is to defend the homeland and deport the illegals—paid for by raising visa fees. All the other provisions? Massive spending cuts. There is no 'pork' in the bill. Just campaign promises.' Musk unfollowed Stephen Miller on social media around the same time his attacked him online. The Journal highlighted the fallout between Musk and Miller as yet another example of Musk burning bridges and irritating allies during his stint in the White House. Of course, there was an even more explosive falling-out between Musk and another former close ally on Thursday. The simmering tensions between Musk and President Donald Trump reached boiling point with an extraordinary back-and-forth playing out on social media. Trump lashed out at Musk for opposing his One Big Beautiful Bill Act and accused him of going 'crazy' over his plans to eliminate the electric vehicle (EV) mandate implemented under the Biden administration. Trump also suggested that the quickest way to save billions in federal spending would be to terminate the government subsidies and contracts awarded to Musk's tech companies. Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that he believes Musk has 'TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome].' Responding with a furious post, Musk claimed on X: 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election,' and reposted in agreement a call for the president to be impeached and replaced with JD Vance. He also warned that Trump's import tariffs would trigger a recession later this year. Musk then dropped a 'really big bomb' in the spiralling feud. 'Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,' Musk wrote. It is well known that Trump and billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, were at least acquaintances. Epstein partied with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the 1990s, and Trump flew on Epstein's private jet multiple times during that period. The two reportedly fell out around 2004 over a property dispute in Palm Beach, Florida. There is no evidence Trump was connected to or aware of Epstein's crimes. In a statement regarding the public falling-out, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: 'This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.' 'The president is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again.'
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Germany on tenterhooks for Merz's first official meeting with Trump
Germany's new conservative leader, Friedrich Merz, is due in Washington on Thursday for his first official meeting with Donald Trump, putting political Berlin on tenterhooks like no other transatlantic encounter in living memory. Discussions between the German chancellor and the US president will focus on Ukraine, the Middle East and trade policies. How well or badly the talks go – during a small group meeting, followed by a lunch and then, perhaps most nailbitingly, a press conference in the Oval Office – may shape relations for decades to come, analysts say. Long before Merz's plane was due to take off on Wednesday evening, political observers in Berlin were weighing up the most nuanced of indicators as to how the visit might play out. The fact that Merz is being put up in Blair House, the official government guesthouse – a factor that convinced his advisers he should stay the night, when he otherwise might have just slept on the plane – is being seen as a positive sign. Also, having reportedly spoken by phone four times since Merz's election win in February, swapped numbers and exchanged an undisclosed number of text messages, the two leaders are now on first-name terms – something that, culturally at least, doesn't come easy to a German. German government advisers say it bodes well that they have dropped 'Mr President' and 'Chancellor' in favour of Donald and Friedrich. But Merz knows the road to a normal friendship is thorny. The transatlantic relationship has been altered almost beyond recognition since Trump's return to office, and the shock 'sits very deep', said Mariam Lau, a journalist and the author of a new in-depth portrayal of Merz. 'It's the equivalent of a medical emergency in political terms: the speed and degree to which the Merz government has had to react to the disintegration of the transatlantic alliance, one of its main foreign policy pillars, is like being forced to undergo dialysis or an organ transplantation,' Lau said. Related: Friedrich Merz calls for US to 'stay out' of German politics Berlin has viewed as menacing and dangerous the unprecedented interference in German politics by leading members of the Trump administration – by his former adviser Elon Musk; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the vice-president, JD Vance, in particular. There is the lack of unity over how and even whether to punish Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine, there are tensions over defence spending levels, and there are diverging viewpoints over the Middle East, and over Trump's looming tariffs. Lau said Merz would have to 'walk a tightrope between keeping an open dialogue with Trump and standing up to him, not giving into his whims'. She said his immediate concern would be that the US did not back out of supporting Ukraine. The German leader's first proper taste of conversing with Trump came shortly after Merz entered office last month. He told an audience in Berlin that during a half-hour phone conversation the two spoke, among other things, about places and people in the US with which they were mutually acquainted, Merz from his time when he took a break from politics and worked there as a commercial lawyer. 'Every second or third word was 'great',' Merz recalled. He made sure to congratulate Trump on the election of the new North American pope. Several people on both sides have stressed the 'positive tone', the importance of which Lau said was not to be underestimated, 'because the tone is the politics'. But nobody in Berlin is resting on their laurels. As to just how quickly leaders' inaugural visits to the Oval Office can curdle, one only needs to recall Volodymyr Zelenskyy's lions' den encounter three months ago, or more recently the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa's. It has not gone unnoticed that Merz called the latter last Friday, reportedly to pick up a few Trump-whisperer tips. Normally, a visit such as this would not get so much attention in Berlin, according to Henrike Rossbach, a parliamentary correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. 'But the chancellery has long since recognised that the most reliable thing about Trump is his unpredictability … and the Oval Office has been labelled as an item on the agenda containing residual risk.' The type of reception Merz gets could come down to the mood Trump happens to be in that day. Not something a typical German mind, keen on structure and order, usually finds easy to deal with. But Merz is said to have been coached on an array of eventualities and is armed, rhetorically at least. If pushed by Trump on longstanding issues of bilateral disgruntlement such as Germany's underspending on the military, Merz will lay out his new government's plans to increase contributions to 3.5% of GDP in future, as well as investing a further 1.5% in 'defence relevant infrastructure'. 'Though, keeping it short for Trump, he may just round it up to 5%,' said the Frankfurter Allgemeine's political correspondent Matthias Wyssuwa. Getting the grounding right on this will be seen as crucial by Germany's allies before the G7 summit in Canada in mid-June and, a week later, the Nato summit in The Hague, both of which Trump is expected to attend. Merz will also stress his government's tightened immigration policy, recalling how Trump criticised Angela Merkel on this topic during his first term of office in 2017. When it comes to tariffs, in particular a punishing 50% on aluminium and steel introduced the day before his arrival, Merz has already prepped – and used – the firm sentence that the US should remember it is dealing with a marketplace of 500 million consumers when it does business with the EU's 27 members. Merz knows that keeping things brief, not interrupting, heaping praise and stressing the commonalities is the accepted playbook when dealing with Trump. The subject of Trump's German roots might also help. It was apparently the US president who brought it up when they spoke – even though until well into the 1980s Trump had been apparently keen to hide the fact. Trump's grandfather Friedrich changed his name to Frederick upon emigrating to the US in 1869. Merz has already discussed with Trump the idea of bringing him on a heritage tour of his old heimat, Kallstadt, a village in the rural wine region of south-west Germany famous for its grape juice and speciality pig's stomach (there has been speculation this might be what he ends up giving the teetotal president as a gift). However, it would require treading carefully with the locals who, anecdotally at least, seem far from enthusiastic about hosting him, far less erecting a statue of their most famous son as some have suggested. Usefully, Merz knows the region, having completed his military service there in the 1970s. One subject he may choose to avoid, though, is the fact that Trump's grandfather was in effect kicked out, deported as punishment for having skipped the mandatory military service of the day.
