Latest news with #TedLee
CBS News
16 hours ago
- CBS News
Postal keys stolen from post office in Upper St. Clair, officials say
Since February, criminals have targeted postal workers three times in western Pennsylvania. The latest incident took place in Upper St. Clair last week, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service says, for the most part, the criminals are looking to steal postal keys to get into collection boxes. In his 30 years as a mailman, Ted Lee has felt great integrity in his job, so it hurts him to learn about recent attacks on his colleagues. "For something like this to happen, it's almost like a betrayal," Lee said. Now president of the western Pennsylvania chapter of the National Association of Letter Carriers, he said his members are filled with angst. "We're doing things to help the community," Lee said. "The last thing that anybody should be doing is targeting a letter carrier." Dave Gealey, U.S. postal inspector team lead for the Pittsburgh area, said last Friday in the late afternoon, a man somehow got into the back of the Upper St. Clair Post Office, showed a gun to an employee, and stole postal keys before running away. "He did not take any customers' mail or packages," Gealey said. Just two days earlier, a mail carrier was treated for a minor injury at the hospital after an attempted robbery in Bridgeville. In February, another was robbed at gunpoint in Homewood, with the suspect stealing packages. "We want to keep our carriers safe so they can go home to their families at the end of the day," Gealey said. Gealey said they're actively investigating these incidents with local law enforcement. Incidents like these started to increase after the COVID-19 pandemic and led the inspection and postal services to create Project Safe Delivery in May 2023. "To basically harden our assets and protect our letter carriers, and the mail from being stolen," Gealey said. Part of that has included the installation of new high-security collection boxes, with electronic keys and locks, making the keys that criminals are trying to steal useless. Now, across the country for the past two years, carrier robberies are down more than 30 percent, but those who do commit one can face up to 10 years in federal prison or up to 25 if they injure a worker. "We want it to be known that we're going to find you, we're going to track you down, and hold you accountable," Gealey said. "The public relies on us. Let the letter carriers do their rounds without disturbing," Lee said. If you have any information about the incident, call the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 877-876-2455 or your local police department.
NZ Autocar
a day ago
- Automotive
- NZ Autocar
Kia commits to hatchbacks with EV4 and K4
Against the general trend, Kia is committed to launching more hatchbacks and saloons, rather than going all-in on SUVs. Its EV4 and K4 are rivals for Volkswagen Golf and ID 3. Kia executive vice-president, Ted Lee, recently told Autocar UK that there was still 'big volume' for hatchback models in Europe. He confirmed that the firm would continue to offer them and indeed launch all-new models. Lee co-ordinates Kia's global business outside of Korea. Read our review of Kia EV3 here. The first of these newcomers is EV4, set to dot down in New Zealand soon. It will be built at Kia's plant in Slovakia, and will also be offered as a saloon built in South Korea. The EV4 will be joined by the K4, a hatchback that debuted at the New York motor show. It replaces Ceed and will be built at Kia's plant in Mexico in both hatch and saloon forms. An estate version is on the cards too. Lee said that Kia currently has a 'strong position in Europe, especially in the UK.' Kia sales have grown more than 30 per cent since 2020 in the EU. In the UK, Kia has sold more than 100,000 cars for three years running. It is the third best-selling brand in 2025, less than 300 units behind second-placed BMW. However, Lee said increased competition in Europe from Chinese brands makes for a 'difficult market '. Kia will further strengthen its aftersales, parts supply and customer journeys in response. However, it will not become embroiled in a price war in Europe in the face of new lower-cost competition. Instead, it will maintain its focus on residual values, which it credits as partly responsible for the 'sustainable growth' the brand has enjoyed. Lee said Kia has done this by maintaining demand. Cars are not pushed to dealers and onto customers at discounted rates but are built and sold according to demand. Describing this as a 'healthy cycle', Lee said: ' It might sound very easy, but in reality it requires a very strong determination and sense of principle.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Kia commits to hatchbacks with wave of Golf rivals
Kia is committed to launching more hatchbacks and saloons, rather than going all in on SUVs, as it prepares the European launch of ICE-powered and electric hatchbacks to rival the Volkswagen Golf and ID 3. Speaking exclusively to Autocar, Kia executive vice-president Ted Lee said there was still 'big volume' for hatchback models in Europe in particular, and he confirmed the firm would continue to offer them and indeed launch all-new family hatchback models. The first of these new hatchbacks, the EV4, will be the first electric Kia to be built in Europe when it's launched in the UK in October. The hatchback will be built at Kia's plant in Slovakia, but it will also be offered as a saloon imported into Europe from South Korea. The EV4 will be joined by the new K4, which was unveiled in hatchback form at the recent New York motor show and will eventually replace the outgoing Ceed in Europe. The EV4 takes the place of the Ceed in the Slovakian factory, so the K4 will be imported to Europe from Kia's plant in Mexico in both hatch and saloon forms. An estate version of the K4 has also been spotted undergoing testing, making what would be a three-strong model range for the K4 ahead of an expected launch later this year. More broadly, Lee believes that Kia currently has a 'strong position in Europe'. He added: 'Especially in the UK, where we have a very strong stance'. Lee was the first Korean to work at Kia UK , joining in 2002, when the UK operation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kia's main global business. He now co-ordinates the firm's global business outside of Korea. While Kia sales in Europe did slip back slightly year-on-year in 2024, they have still grown more than 30% since 2020. In the UK, Kia has sold more than 100,000 cars for three years running, and it is currently the third best-selling brand in 2025, less than 300 units behind second-placed BMW. Increased competition in Europe from Chinese brands makes for a 'difficult market ', Lee admitted, but Kia will look to further strengthen its aftersales, parts supply and customer journeys in particular. 'We have to strengthen the advantages of Kia in the market,' he said. Kia will not get embroiled in a price war in Europe in the face of new lower-cost competition and will not 'push' cars onto the market; it will instead maintain a laser focus on residual values, which it credits as partly responsible for the 'sustainable growth' the brand has enjoyed. Lee said Kia has done this by maintaining a 'pull demand strategy', by which cars are not pushed to dealers and onto customers at discounted rates but built and sold according to customer demand. Describing this as a 'healthy cycle', Lee said: ' It might sound very easy, but in reality it requires a very strong determination and sense of principle.' ]]>
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Geothermal and nuclear could lose big under GOP tax proposal
This analysis and news roundup comes from the Canary Media Weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it every Friday. The House Ways and Means budget proposal would gut the Inflation Reduction Act and slow the rollout of solar, wind, and storage. It'd crimp EV adoption and crush clean-energy manufacturing. Energy costs and carbon emissions would rise. Green hydrogen would remain forever a whisper in the wind, even after so much screaming about the arcane rules governing its incentives. But it'd also derail two Republican hobbyhorses: nuclear power and advanced geothermal. The proposal introduced Monday is 'a backdoor repeal' of the Inflation Reduction Act, Ted Lee, a former Biden administration Treasury official, told Canary Media's Jeff St. John. Onerous 'foreign entity of concern' requirements would likely render an important incentive available to all carbon-free energy sources useless for any project not already underway, including nuclear and geothermal installations. Lee described it as 'death by red tape.' That could be painful for advanced geothermal projects, which are few in number but crucial to developing an industry whose promise of 24/7 carbon-free energy has captivated Republicans, Democrats, and even Big Tech firms. Tax credits help make these early-stage projects financially feasible — and repealing them could cause developers to 'struggle to secure financing and price output competitively,' per a March Rhodium Group report. The proposal would also end the 45U nuclear power tax credit three years early, in 2031, meaning it could disappear before any planned nuclear power plant can even use it. A tax expert told Latitude Media that nuclear would be 'by far the most disadvantaged' if the bill became law. Republicans in the Senate and House have already criticized the tax-credit cuts as too far-reaching and have called for changes, including to the foreign-entity requirements. A geothermal trade group told Axios several Republican offices are open to creating carve-outs for the energy source; at least one GOP lawmaker is pushing to preserve 45U. 'There's going to be lots of changes,' Ways and Means Vice Chair Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican who supports IRA tax credits, told a Politico reporter. 'It's not over.' Other recent moves by Republicans and the Trump administration could create additional headwinds for nuclear. That includes the ongoing effort to dissolve the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, which has backed the only U.S. nuclear reactors to come online this century as well as a more recent effort to revive a shuttered Michigan nuclear plant. All of this is difficult to square with Trump's broad proclamations that he will unleash American energy dominance. It's even harder to reconcile with Energy Secretary Chris Wright's specific call for a 'nuclear renaissance' and explicit support for geothermal. But then, the prevailing principle of this Trump administration has not been tidy logic. Instead, it appears to be volatility and chaos — and this proposal from Congress certainly furthers that tradition. The steady rise of electric vehicles While Tesla sees its sales shrink and cedes its status as the world's biggest EV-maker to China's BYD, the global EV market as a whole is growing apace. This year, more than one-quarter of vehicles sold worldwide will be full EVs or plug-in hybrids, which have big, chargeable batteries, per a new International Energy Agency report. China is by far the biggest EV market in the world. Over 11 million EVs and plug-ins were sold there last year — more than were sold worldwide in 2022. Almost half of all cars sold in the country were electric in 2024. Europe is the next-biggest market, though sales are stagnating in the region. Stateside, the IEA expects modest growth, but that outlook is clouded by the propensity of the Trump administration and Republicans to introduce extreme new measures that could tank EV sales. Maine keeps innovating on heat pumps The persistent myth that heat pumps don't work in the cold has met its match: Maine. In 2023, the very cold state not only reached its heat-pump installation goal ahead of time — it doubled down on more heat-pump adoption. Now, Canary Media's Sarah Shemkus reports that the clean-heat technology is central to the state's plan to lower electricity bills for its residents — even those who aren't planning to get a heat pump themselves. The idea is to install as many heat pumps as possible in order to save households money on heating costs and also suppress statewide power rates, which could lead to an estimated $490 million in savings on electricity rates alone over the long term. Trade war relief… for now: China and the U.S. agree to significantly reduce tariffs on one another for 90 days, easing a tense trade war that has already driven up costs for domestic manufacturers of batteries, solar panels, EVs, and other cleantech and which has cast deep uncertainty over the entire economy. (CNBC) Batteries still face a tough road: Domestic battery manufacturing and deployments have been growing fast — but Trump's trade wars and uncertainty around clean-energy tax credits threaten to derail progress. (Canary Media) Fighting for IRA: A dozen House Republicans come out against this week's budget proposal that would effectively repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, pushing for revisions to its 'foreign entity of concern' and eligibility provisions as well as the preservation of tax-credit transferability. (E&E News) Here comes the sun: The solar industry prepares a lobbying blitz following the House GOP budget proposal that would gut clean energy incentives, the sector's latest attempt to preserve the tax credits that have helped solar installations grow rapidly. (Latitude Media) What emergency? 15 states sue the Trump administration over its executive order declaring an 'energy emergency,' arguing that no such crisis exists and that the declaration is encouraging federal agencies to unlawfully skip over proper environmental protections. (New York Times) Empire Wind wobbles: Equinor says it will abandon its Empire Wind offshore wind project off the coast of New York if the Trump administration doesn't lift its stop-work order. (E&E News) Finding the words: At a recent offshore wind industry conference, speakers had lots of advice on how to make the case for President Trump's least favorite form of energy to Republicans. (Canary Media) The right direction: A new analysis finds that despite China's growing power demand, the nation's emissions have declined by 1% over the last 12 months compared with the year prior, the result of surging clean energy construction. (Carbon Brief)
