Looking to slash their electric bill, retired couple Ron and Sarah Hall installed solar panels on their Southern California home. Nearly a year later, they haven't saved a dime.
The panels are considered too powerful, NBC Los Angeles reports, and were never turned on. A company called Solar City installed 36 panels on the Hall's Lake Elsinore house for free; they would make their money back by filling out rebates through residential energy conservation programs. SoCal Edison, however, would not let the couple activate their system because it exceeded California's standards for residential energy production. "They're saying that the system that I have will generate 128 percent, that's 28 percent over what they estimated," Ron Hall said.
The problem isn't necessarily the fact that the panels would generate wasted electricity, NBC Los Angeles explains. Instead, the state is concerned that homeowners could sell their excess energy. A SoCal Edison representative said that a homeowner who produces excess solar energy is considered a potential energy retailer, and becomes subject to commercial business regulations. Solar City has removed the panels, and said because of a design flaw, they miscalculated how much energy the Halls needed. The whole experience is one that the family would like to forget. "It's frustrating," Ron Hall said. Catherine Garcia
While working to cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, Deutsche Bank officials discovered that the disgraced financier not only had dozens of accounts, but he had also made several suspicious transactions involving moving money out of the United States, three people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
The bank decided to drop Epstein late last year, after the Miami Herald published a report on sexual abuse allegations against Epstein from teenage girls; earlier this month, he was arrested and charged with sex trafficking. He opened his first accounts with Deutsche Bank in 2013, five years after he was accused of sexual abuse but pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution in exchange for a lenient sentence.
Even before the Miami Herald report, Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering compliance officers sounded the alarm, notifying executives that it wouldn't reflect well on the bank if the public learned Epstein was a client, the Times reports. The compliance officers also noted potentially illegal activity tied to Epstein moving his money outside the U.S., and filled out a suspicious activity report; it's unclear if that was filed with the Treasury Department's financial-crimes division, the Times says.
Deutsche Bank is under scrutiny for its relationship with President Trump, having given him $2 billion in loans over two decades when other major banks refused to do business with him. When asked about the Times report Tuesday night, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell she believes it is "exactly on-brand for Deutsche Bank. They seem to be the lender of last resort for unsavory characters." Catherine Garcia
The Justice Department announced Tuesday it will open a broad antitrust review into tech giants and how they acquired so much power.
The DOJ said in a statement the review will "consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online." The Federal Trade Commission and Congress have both already started similar inquiries, and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called for the breakup of these massive companies.
The DOJ said the goal of the review is to identify antitrust issues so they can be fixed, The Wall Street Journal reports. In after-hours trading on Tuesday, shares for Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook were all down. Catherine Garcia
A businessman who remembers what it was like to rely on free lunches as a child approached the Wyoming Valley West School District in Pennsylvania with an offer he didn't think they would refuse.
Todd Carmichael, CEO and co-founder of La Colombe Coffee, said he told the school board president, Joseph Mazur, that he wanted to give the district $22,000 to wipe out all student lunch debt. Carmichael proposed the gift after learning that the district was sending letters to parents warning them that if they didn't pay the lunch money owned, they could be "sent to dependency court for neglecting your child's right to food," possibly leading to children being removed from their homes and put in foster care.
Mazur rejected his offer, Carmichael's spokesman Aren Platt told The Associated Press, saying the money is owed by parents who can afford to pay up. "The position of Mr. Carmichael is, irrespective of affluence, irrespective of need, he just wants to wipe away this debt," Platt said. Mazur did not return AP's phone calls.
A lawyer for the school board said he doesn't know what they plan on doing regarding lunch debt; previously, there had been talk of placing liens on properties and filing complaints in a district court. As for the foster care threat, Luzerne County child welfare agency officials said it's false to claim that parents who don't pay lunch debt could be sent to court, AP reports, and the school district needs to stop making this threat. Catherine Garcia
Special Counsel Robert Mueller will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday with one of his longtime aides, Aaron Zebley, by his side, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times on Tuesday.
At the last minute, Mueller requested Zebley be sworn in as a witness, but instead, he will be there as Mueller's counsel, offering guidance on how to answer questions about the two-year investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice.
Zebley was a deputy special counsel with "day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by the office," Mueller spokesman Jim Popkin said. Zebley was also Mueller's chief of staff when he served as FBI director. Mueller is also appearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, but it's unclear if he made the same request to the panel. Catherine Garcia
Snap is finally on the upswing again after its disastrous 2018 redesign.
On Tuesday, Snapchat's parent company revealed the app gained 13 million new users in the second quarter, its largest boost since it went public in 2017. It also reported a boosted revenue of $388 million up 48% from a year earlier, sending stocks up 11% in post-market trading, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Snapchat had been either losing users or remaining stagnant from when it posted its IPO until the first quarter of 2019. It also saw a year of falling stock numbers, hitting a record low of $4.99 at the end of last year. Shares have since rebounded 180% to hit $16.50 after Snap shared its Q2 earnings Tuesday, though that's still below its debut price of $17, CNBC notes.
Snap's 203 million total user base exceeds the 192 million expectation analysts predicted for this quarter, Snap said on Tuesday. That's largely thanks to popular gender-swapping filters that apparently even helped one college student catch an alleged predator cop. An updated Android interface also helped retain and add users, Snap said. Snap expects its revenue and user base to continue growing in the third quarter, with an anticipated Q3 revenue of between $410 million and $435 million. Kathryn Krawczyk
You might want to get the tissues out for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's eulogy for her former colleague, the late former Justice John Paul Stevens, who died last week at 99.
Ginsburg kept her remarks short and sweet, but they lent credence to reports that Stevens was not only a well-respected judicial mind, but a man of high character — with a sense of humor to go along with it.
Stevens was laid to rest in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, but CNN obtained a transcript of Ginsburg's eulogy. She spoke of how Stevens was actively playing sports and traveling across the Atlantic well into his 90s. In fact, the two of them saw each other at a conference in Lisbon, during what turned out to be the last week of Stevens' life.
On their last evening there, Ginsburg said she told Stevens that it was her dream to remain on the bench as long as he did. (Stevens, who served for 35 years, has the third longest Supreme Court tenure in U.S. history). Stevens' response? Stay longer.
At the end of the day, Ginsburg said, "in a capital city with no shortage of self-promoters" the "genuinely genial, unpretentious, and modest" Stevens "set a different tone." Read the full remarks at CNN. Tim O'Donnell