Fort Hood soldier dies from injuries sustained during Bradley vehicle maintenance

A Fort Hood soldier died from injuries sustained while conducting maintenance on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Interested in Pentagon?

Pfc. Mason Webber, 22, of Marion, Iowa, died on Sept. 5, according to a news release from Fort Hood issued on Monday.

Webber joined the Army in March 2018 as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle system maintainer and has been assigned to 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division since August 2018.

“The Darkhorse Squadron is deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic loss of Private First Class Mason Webber,” Lt. Col. Adam Cannon, commander of the 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, said. “We send our most heartfelt condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of Pfc. Webber. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them in this trying time. He was an indelible part of the squadron and his loss is deeply felt.”

Fort Hood did not provide details of the incident but said it was under investigation by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center.

Bradley vehicles are able to provide protected transport for infantry troops and can weigh over 25 tons.

Uber to open new Chicago office, add about 2,000 jobs

CHICAGO — Uber plans to open a new office in Chicago and add 2,000 people to its area workforce over the next three years.

The office will officially house the company’s freight business and a related engineering hub.

Uber UBER, +1.19%  already has a significant presence in the city. It has about 1,300 workers in Chicago, some with the ride-hailing unit but most working on Freight.

Uber Freight uses the company’s app technology to link shippers with trucking firms, with Uber getting a fee in return.

The unit had been divided between San Francisco and Chicago. Uber wanted to consolidate it in Chicago because of the transportation logistics expertise in the area.

Uber said Monday that it signed a 10-year lease for the office in The Old Main Post Office in the Chicago River area. It said in a statement that it plans to spend over $200 million a year in the Chicago region on personnel, real estate and other expenses.

“Chicago is the heart of American’s transportation and logistics industry, and there is no better place to open our dedicated Freight HQ,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.

The Chicago expansion is part of Uber’s broader move to branch out into several “talent hubs,” said spokesman Xavier Van Chau.

Last month the company announced it would open a new administrative hub in Dallas that will bring 3,000 jobs. It’s also expanding in Toronto, he said.

Mystery illness causes deaths of dozens of dogs in a few days

Norwegian authorities haven’t been able to detect the cause behind an unexplained disease that is estimated to have killed dozens of dogs in the country in recent days, officials said.

The Norwegian Food Safety Authority said that it had been informed of another six cases of dogs falling ill, with two them already dead, all with the same symptoms of vomiting and bloody diarrhoea.

The disease seemed “very serious for a dog. But we don’t know yet whether this is contagious or just a series of individual cases”, an agency spokesman said.

China's August producer prices shrink the most in 3 years

• The producer price index, a key barometer of corporate profitability, dropped 0.8% from year earlier in August, National Bureau of Statistics said.
• Analysts polled by Reuters had expected factory gate inflation to have shrunk 0.9% year-on-year last month, following a 0.3% decline in July.

China's factory gate prices contracted for the second month in August and at a sharper rate, reinforcing the urgency for Beijing to step up stimulus as a deepening trade war with the United States heaps pressure on its manufacturing sector and the broader economy.

The producer price index (PPI), a key barometer of corporate profitability, dropped 0.8% from year earlier in August, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

It was the worst year-on-year contraction since August 2016, when it fell 0.8%.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected factory gate inflation to have shrunk 0.9% year-on-year last month, following a 0.3% decline in July.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 2.8% in August on-year, unchanged from July. That compared with a 2.6% increase predicted by analysts.

Video shows Tesla driver apparently asleep as car zips along highway

BOSTON — A Massachusetts man has posted a video online that appears to show the driver of a Tesla sleeping as the car speeds along a highway.

Teslas TSLA, +1.91%  have an Autopilot function, but the company says drivers are expected to remain alert.

Dakota Randall took a video Sunday that shows the driver’s head down. Randall said the car was a Tesla. In the passenger’s seat, another person appears to be sleeping.

The video was shot on the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton.

Randall says the car was traveling 55 to 60 mph, and he honked to try to wake the driver.

He did not call police. State police say they’re aware of the video.

A Tesla spokesperson said the driver-monitoring system repeatedly reminds drivers to remain engaged and prohibits the use of autopilot when warnings are ignored.

China’s consumer inflation rises in August

BEIJING–China’s consumer inflation beat market expectations in August thanks to a surge in pork prices, official data showed Tuesday.

The consumer price index rose 2.8% in August from a year earlier, matching the level in July, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

The rise in the key inflation gauge exceeded the median 2.6% gain forecast by 14 economists in a poll by the Wall Street Journal.

China’s pork prices surged 46.7% last month from a year earlier due to a shortage in pork supply, accelerating from July’s 27% gain, official data showed. August’s tally, the strongest monthly growth since mid-2008, lifted the headline consumer inflation by more than 1 percentage point in August.

Overall meat prices, including pork, beef and mutton surged nearly 31% in August, compared with July’s 18.2% increase, as more consumers shifted to other meat items for protein.

The CPI increased 0.7% in August from July. In July, it rose 0.4% from the preceding month.

The government aims to keep consumer inflation under about 3% in 2019.

China’s producer-price index fell 0.8% in August from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said. In July, PPI fell 0.3% on year.

The drop was slightly smaller than a 0.9% decline expected by economists.

-Grace Zhu and Liyan Qi