WSJ What’s News - Hezbollah Pagers Explode in Lebanon, Killing Eight in Apparent Attack

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

P.M. Edition for Sept. 17. Lebanon and Hezbollah are blaming Israel as pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded at about the same time. And a decade after a movement to promote American women to corporate leadership, women are still lagging behind. The Journal’s Vanessa Fuhrmans explains why. Plus, JPMorgan is in talks to take over Apple’s credit-card business. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent Uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Eight people killed and thousands injured in Lebanon after an apparent attack on Hezbollah with exploding pagers. Lebanon after an apparent attack on Hezbollah with exploding pagers. And in the 10 years since the movement to advance women at work, what has changed for American women in the C-suite? The way companies have really added more gender diversity to their executive teams is that

they haven't actually promoted women at a higher rate into, say, the really big jobs that lead to the CEO position. Plus, JPMorgan is in talks with Apple to take over credit cards from Goldman Sachs. It's Tuesday, September 17th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Eight people were killed today after pagers carried by Hezbollah operatives exploded

across Lebanon at about the same time. More than 2,700 were injured. People familiar with the matter say the affected pagers came from a recent shipment received by the group in recent days. It couldn't be immediately determined what caused the blast. Hezbollah in Lebanon are blaming Israel for the attack. Israel has declined to comment. Iranian state TV says Iran's ambassador to Lebanon was also injured. His injuries are not critical. Iran is a main supporter of Hezbollah, a U.S. designated terrorist group that has grown

into one of the world's best armed non-state militias. The apparent attack comes amid growing concerns that tensions along the Lebanese border are in danger of escalating as a daily exchange of cross-border fire grows in intensity and efforts to strike a deal to pause the fighting in Gaza fail to bear fruit. As the nearly year-long war between Israel and Hamas continues, we want to hear from you. What do you want to know about the conflict and where it may be headed? Send a voice memo to wnpod at wsj.com or leave a voicemail with your name and location at 212-416-4328.

We might use it on the show. U.S. stock indexes wobbled on the first day of the Federal Reserve meeting to decide on interest rates. The Dow industrials and S&P 500 moved less than 0.1 percent on the day. The Nasdaq composite edged up 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, new data showed U.S. retail sales rose 0.1 percent in August, slightly ahead of expectations. Vice President Kamala Harris, doing an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists

this afternoon in Philadelphia, said that she spoke with former President Donald Trump earlier in the day, checking on him to see if he was okay, following an apparent assassination attempt last weekend. I told him what I have said publicly, there is no place for political violence in our country. I am in this election and in this race for many reasons, including to fight for our democracy. And in a democracy,

there is no place for political violence. We can and should have healthy debates and discussion and disagreements, but not resort to violence to resolve those issues. As to she had confidence in the Secret Service, Harris said, I do. During the NABJ interview, Harris condemned the Republican ticket's comments about migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. She said, quote, most people in the country, regardless of their race, are starting to see through this nonsense. Coming up, why ten years after the Lean In movement in the U.S., women still lag behind men in corporate leadership.

That's after the break. There are more women holding top corporate jobs in America than ever before. But when it comes to getting promotions to management early in their careers, they still lag behind men. That's according to a new 10-year study of roles and promotion rates of millions of men and women across the U.S. The study was conducted by the consultant firm McKinsey and LeanIn.org, the nonprofit founded by former Facebook executive

Sheryl Sandberg. Researchers also found that while the population of women in the C-suite rose to 29% from 17% in 2015, those roles are usually in marketing or human resources, positions that don't typically lead to CEO jobs. And now that diversity programs are coming under attack, sustaining this progress might get tougher. Vanessa Firmans is the Deputy Bureau Chief of Careers and Workplace Team for the Wall Street Journal as she joins us now.

Vanessa, what does the study say about women reaching those CEO positions? On executive teams, that's where we saw really the biggest progress from as you said 17 to 29 percent. The issue with that though is these are where the numbers of both men and women are relatively small. An executive team, a C-suite might be eight to ten perhaps twelve people so one or two appointments can make a big difference. But when you look further down the corporate ladder,

especially at the very first management layers, there has been virtually no change in representation for women. It was 10 years ago at 37%. Now it's 39%. And this comes after so many efforts around gender diversity at companies. So that's what the progress has been with a lot of effort behind it. And what about women of color? Was there any progress there?

What we did see is that in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, companies really redoubled both gender and racial diversity commitments, but especially regarding people of color. And we saw promotion rates actually jump briefly for a couple of years right after that in 21 and 22, particularly for black women. Black women were almost at the rate of white men in terms of getting that very first promotion. And that has since regressed. And it's since regressed for women of all colors, actually,

to more 2019, 2020 levels. There's now been a huge backlash against these sort of DEI initiatives, diversity and inclusion initiatives. If that pushback continues, what would that mean for efforts to get more women in these leadership roles? We're seeing some retreat from that, more so from diversity initiatives around racial and ethnic diversity. For women, though, the commitments have been pared back as well.

The number of companies that considered gender diversity a priority even a year or two was nearly 90%. Now that's closer to 78%. Companies, though, more critically, have been dialing back specific programs for recruiting women, programs specifically focused on helping women find sponsors, that is senior executives at the companies that will help open doors for them and champion them for bigger roles. This is something that research shows has been hugely helpful for women. So

the question is what happens now if that becomes less of a focus? Vanessa Firmans is a Deputy Bureau Chief of the Careers in Workplace Team for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Vanessa. Thank you so much, Vanessa. Thank you. We can exclusively report that JPMorgan is in talks with Apple to take over the tech company's credit card program. But a final deal could still be months away. That's according to people familiar with the matter who said the discussion started earlier this year and have advanced in recent weeks.

Goldman Sachs had been operating Apple's credit business, which includes credit cards and savings and counts, but the two parted ways last year. Apple's credit card has more than 12 million users. A deal between JP Morgan and Apple would further tie together America's biggest bank and one of the largest technology companies in the world. The People said the team at JPMorgan, negotiating the deal, wants to pay less than the full-face value of the roughly $17 billion in outstanding balances in the Apple credit card program. Credit card portfolios often sell at par or for a premium to the total loans, while accounts that have high delinquencies or some other flaw can sell at a loss. Instagram is placing teens in a protective bubble. Starting this week, it will automatically make youth accounts private

with the most restrictive settings in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia within the next two months. The changes will be implemented in Europe later this year. They will apply to teens in the rest of the world starting in January. Teens won't be able to get around the restrictions by changing the settings or creating adult profiles with fake birth dates. But who should be responsible for verifying those birth dates? WSJ's family and tech columnist Julie Jargon explained to our tech news briefing podcast

how Instagram head Adam O'Shaeri views the issue of age verification. There's been an ongoing debate about whose responsibility it is to verify the age of users. Mosseri has said and continues to say that he believes Apple and Google, which make the operating systems for most phones, should provide age verification at the device level and allow app makers to access that data. Apple has said that social media companies are the ones that should verify age because if they share users' ages with third-party apps, that could violate the privacy expectations

people have of Apple. Instagram is going ahead and doing this, but they do say that their AI models for predicting age aren't perfect. So there are likely to be mistakes. And you can hear more about the changes to Instagram in tomorrow's tech news briefing podcast. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansi and Pierre Bienneme with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis.

I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.