CNN BUSINESS | Why the 911 will be last the Porsche model to go electric

(CNN) – Porsche is making a big push to go green. By 2030, the high-performance automaker says it will be “carbon neutral” and that 80% of the cars and SUV it makes will either be electric or plug-in hybrids.

One model, in particular, will be the final holdout and will continue to run on gasoline for the foreseeable future, said Porsche’s head of global sales, Detlev von Platen. The 911.

Even more than most high performance cars, the Porsche 911 is defined by its gasoline engine as much as its unique teardrop profile. Its six-cylinder engine is mounted over the rear wheels, putting a significant mass of weight far behind the driver and giving the car a distinctive feel when driving on a twisting road. The car is iconic to the Porsche brand, representing it more than any other. The company has built over a million examples over multiple generations since 1963.  —read more—

CNN BUSINESS | The Fed is yanking away big banks’ ‘get out of jail free’ card

New York (CNN Business) – Federal regulators said Friday they won’t extend a Covid relief provision granted to big banks, dashing Wall Street’s hopes for an extension.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC) and other big bank stocks retreated on the news, helping to drive the Dow down as much as about 300 points, or 1%. US Treasury yields also crept higher, weighing on the broader markets.

Last spring, when the economy and markets were in chaos, the Federal Reserve handed a sort of “get out of jail free” card to America’s big banks: It loosened leverage rules that JPMorgan, Bank of America (BAC) and other large lenders must abide by.  —read more—

CNN BUSINESS | Higher mortgage rates still aren’t cooling the hot housing market

New York (CNN Business)Mortgage rates have been steadily rising this year, but that doesn’t seem to be slowing demand for housing — yet.

According to Freddie Mac, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now 3.05%, up from the all-time low of 2.67% at the end of 2020. Rising long-term bond yields could lead to even higher mortgage rates in the not-so-distant future.

So the question is whether the housing market — which remained surprisingly resilient as consumers fled cities for more space in the suburbs during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak — will continue to hold up well if mortgage rates keep climbing.  —read more—

CNN BUSINESS | Angie’s List changes its name in a complete rebranding

New York (CNN Business) – In the early days of the internet, it was novel and exciting to find ratings and reviews of contractors on a site like Angie’s List. That’s long changed — and it’s one reason the Angie’s List brand is being retired on Wednesday.

In an ever-so-slight name change, Angie’s List will rebrand as Angi starting Wednesday. The company’s owner will change its name from ANGI Homeservices to simply Angi Inc. (Its ticker symbol will remain “ANGI.” (ANGI))

Angi CEO Oisin Hanrahan told CNN Business the name change is meant to help highlight that the company owns other housing-related services, notably HomeAdvisor and gig economy marketplace Handy. (Hanrahan is a Handy co-founder, who joined Angi in 2018 after the company bought his startup.)  —read more—

CNN BUSINESS | Volkswagen could soon steal Tesla’s crown

London (CNN Business) – Tesla knows all about how to disrupt an industry. It may soon find out what it’s like to be on the receiving end.

After years as the undisputed king of the electric car, Tesla (TSLA) could be matched sale for sale by Volkswagen (VLKAF) as early as 2022, according to analysts at UBS, who predict that Europe’s biggest carmaker will go on to sell 300,000 more battery electric vehicles than Tesla in 2025.

Ending Tesla’s reign would be a huge milestone in Volkswagen’s transformation into an electric vehicle powerhouse. Badly burned by its diesel emissions scandal in 2015, Europe’s largest carmaker is investing €35 billion ($42 billion) in electric vehicles, staking its future on new technology and a dramatic shift away from fossil fuels.  —read more—

CNN style Architecture | Champions of French social housing win the ‘Nobel of architecture’

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, known for transforming and revitalizing neglected buildings across France, have been named winners of architecture’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

The duo, whose “never demolish” ethos has given new life to pre-existing urban architecture, will be awarded the 2021 Pritzker Prize at a ceremony later this year, organizers announced Tuesday.

Born in France and Morocco, respectively, Lacaton and Vassal met as students in Bordeaux before co-founding the Paris-based practice Lacaton & Vassal in 1987. Together, they have designed a number of major cultural and educational buildings, including the Nantes School of Architecture’s riverside campus, completed in 2009, and an ambitious 2012 expansion of the Palais de Tokyo art gallery in Paris, which saw the museum increase in size by 20,000 square meters (215,000 square feet).  —read more—

CNN style Fashion | Grammys 2021: Best red carpet fashion moments

Dua Lipa arrives to the Grammys in Versace. Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

As we’ve come to expect, the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards adopted a part-digital ‘hybrid’ format for Sunday night’s ceremony, resulting in a mixture of physical red carpet looks and glamorous at-home fashion.

But, as ever, the music awards’ style was brighter, bolder and more colorful than most of its film and TV counterparts.

While many nominees watched from home, performers and award presenters arrived in person at the Los Angeles Convention Center. And they weren’t about to miss a rare opportunity for a red carpet moment.  —read more—

CNN BUSINESS | Wireless companies shelled out billions of dollars to fix this 5G problem

New York (CNN Business) – Excitement around 5G, and its promise of lightning fast download speeds and huge data capacity, has ratcheted up since the first 5G-enabled iPhone was released last fall. But the actual experience of 5G doesn’t always live up to the hype — not yet, at least.

This is partly because there’s been a lack of available infrastructure (called “spectrum”) needed to build fifth generation wireless networks that are both noticeably faster than 4G and widely accessible across broad geographic areas. That changed with the completion of the Federal Communications Commission’s latest spectrum auction last month, where carriers shelled out a collective $81 billion to get their hands on the crucial resource.  —read more—

CNN style Fashion | Paris Fashion Week: Escapism, innovation and hints of joy

In late February last year, Paris was quietly falling into the clutches of the coronavirus pandemic as packed runway shows took place at locations around the city during Paris Fashion Week. Event attendees joked uneasily about adopting the fashion cliché of air kissing, and applied extra lashings of hand sanitizer as they compared notes about who was being allowed back into the office or had been asked too quarantine at home “as a precautionary measure.” Despite it all, the event was largely uninterrupted and most attendees went about the business of fashion in what we now recognize as careless naivety.

A year on, and the event could not be more different. As is the norm across all the fashion weeks, the Paris shows were virtual, and international editors, journalists and buyers had to forgo their usual trip, watching the season’s latest presentations from home instead.  —more—

CNN | Minneapolis City Council approves $27 million settlement to Floyd’s estate

(CNN) – The Minneapolis City Council has unanimously voted to approve a $27 million settlement to George Floyd’s estate.

“George Floyd’s horrific death, witnessed by millions of people around the world, unleashed a deep longing and undeniable demand for justice and change,” Ben Crump, an attorney for Floyd’s family, said in a statement. “That the largest pre-trial settlement in a wrongful death case ever would be for the life of a Black man sends a powerful message that Black lives do matter and police brutality against people of color must end.”

The news comes as jury selection is underway for the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in May 2020 by kneeling on his neck for almost eight minutes.  —read more—