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Firefighters were struggling Thursday to bring a major wildfire on Greece’s southern island of Crete under control, hampered by gale force winds whipping up the flames.Thousands of people were evacuated from hotels and homes overnight after the fire started Wednesday afternoon in the Ierapetra area on the island’s southern coast, officials said.The head of the hoteliers’ association of Ierapetra and southeastern Crete, Giorgos Tzarakis, told local media about 5,000 tourists had been evacuated from the area, and that several homes and businesses had been damaged.By Thursday morning, 230 firefighters backed by 10 water-dropping helicopters were battling the flames advancing through forest and farmland.Gale force winds in the area, with gusts reaching about 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, “are constantly creating . . . new outbreaks, making firefighting work very difficult,” said fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis.Two people were evacuated by boat overnight, while six private boats were on standby in case further evacuations by sea became necessary, the coast guard said.Nektarios Papadakis, a civil protection official at the regional authority, told The Associated Press overnight that tourists who had been evacuated from the area had been taken to an indoor basketball arena and hotels in other parts of the island.Several residents were treated for breathing difficulties, officials said, but there were no reports of serious injuries.The Fire Service and a civil protection agency issued mobile phone alerts for the evacuations and appealed to residents not to return to try to save their property.As fires crested ridgelines and edged toward residential areas overnight, the blaze sent clouds of ash into the sky, illuminated by the headlights of emergency vehicles and water trucks that lined the coastal road near the resorts of Ferma and Achlia on the southeast of Crete.Crete is one of Greece’s most popular destinations for both foreign and domestic tourists.The risk of wildfires remained very high across Crete and parts of southern Greece Thursday, according to a daily bulletin issued by the Fire Service.Wildfires are frequent in the country during its hot, dry summers, and the fire department has already tackled dozens across Greece so far this year.In 2018, a massive fire swept through the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens, trapping people in their homes and on roads as they tried to flee. More than 100 died, including some who drowned while trying to swim away from the flames. Derek Gatopoulos and Elena Becatoros, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Its one thing to declare, We care about our people. Its entirely different to prove it in messy, unscripted moments, especially when no one is watching. Too often, corporate messaging about empathy and respect falters under pressure. We proclaim well-being, then demand overtime. We champion inclusion, then maintain biased systems. We insist on dignity, then terminate employees over Zoom. This disconnect, which I call corporate message incongruency, erodes trust, corrodes culture, and ultimately undermines everyones performance. The Cost of Incongruency When organizations fail to live up to their own rhetoric, employees notice, and they dont stay quiet about it. A 2024 study found that perceiving corporate hypocrisy (characterized by gaps between stated values and actual behavior) is strongly linked to increased employee cynicism, disengagement, and a higher risk of turnover. Meanwhile, only 23% of workers worldwide are engaged in their work, according to Gallupmeaning the vast majority are either emotionally detached or actively disengaged. Executives often overestimate their impact. In its 2024 Well-Being at Work Survey conducted in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, Deloitte found that 90% of executives believe working for their company has a positive effect on worker well-being, skills development, career advancement, inclusion and belonging, and [employees] sense of purpose and meaning. At the same time, just 60% (or fewer) of workers agree, according to the survey. That gap isnt just a miscommunication; its a structural signal. And when leaders default to convenience over care in high-stakes moments, the message reverberates far beyond a single event. Consider the now-infamous 2021 Zoom layoffs at Better.com, where 900 employees were let go in a terse three-minute video. The backlash was swift and severe, spotlighting a painful truth: When corporate actions contradict their stated values, their reputation takes a hit. There Doesnt Have to Be a Disconnect Most misalignment stems from good intentions, not malice. But business values must be lived in practice, not just in glossy branding. And regardless of your rolewhether youre a CEO, director, manager, or individual contributoryou have the power to bridge the gap. 1. Audit intent versus impact. Start with brutal honesty. Map your organizations stated values against real moments where behaviors divergevacation policies that go unused, diversity statements that dont reflect candidate slates. In my leadership sessions, consistently mapping these dissonances reveals opportunities to realign, rather than rebrand. Invite feedback from across levels and treat misalignment not as a failure, but as data. 2. Lead with ritual integrity. Values dont stickthey ritualize. Meaningful, small-scale rituals reinforce intent: a weekly check-in circle to honor well-being, no-meeting afternoons to protect focus, transparent sharing of equity data even when it stings. Culture is less magic and more habit. These rituals become touchpoints for trust and vehicles for transformation. 3. Embed accountability. Accountability is the bridge from talk to trust. Expand success metrics to include psychological safety, sense of belonging, and alignment of personal narratives, a practice I call story audits. Nearly 85% of large U.S. employers offer workplace wellness programs; despite this, anticipated improvements in well-being are not being realized, indicating a mismatch between investment and outcomes. Measuring the invisible matters because it makes visible what is valued. This grassroots approach doesnt just uncover pain points; it creates buy-in and shared ownership for change. 4. Empower action at all levels. Aligned culture isnt a top-down decree; its a distributed commitment. Empower alignment champions across departments. At one biotech firm I advised, peer-led story circles uncovered voice imbalances more effectively than any digital survey and enabled real-time corrections. 5. Normalize vulnerability and repair. Inevitably, we slip. The question isnt whether it happens, but what happens next. Acknowledge missteps publicly. Leaders who say I was wrong often deepen trust more than those who avoid the subject. Vulnerability is strength, not weakness. Repair strengthens culture when its visible and sincere. Cultural congruence isnt a quarterly campaign; its a daily practice. Every decision, conversation, and interaction carries a message. When we treat values as design principles rather than billboards, we build systems that reinforce them. Words shape our intentions, but actions shape our outcomes. Try this in your next meeting: Ask, Where are we out of sync, and what might it take to realign? Its a simple question, but it signals a profound commitment. When organizations align their words with their actions, they do more than retain loyalty. They earn trust.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. employers added 147,000 jobs in June as the American labor market continues to show surprising resilience despite uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s economic policies. The unemployment rate ticked down 4.1% from 4.2% in May, the Labor Department said Thursday.Hiring rose modestly from a revised 144,000 in May and beat economists expectations of fewer than 118,000 new jobs and a rise in the unemployment rate.The U.S. job market has cooled considerably from red-hot days of 2021-2023 when the economy bounced back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns and companies were desperate for workers. So far this year employers have added an average 124,000 jobs a month, down from 168,000 in 2024 and an average 400,000 from 2021 through 2023.Hiring decelerated after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. But the economy did not collapse, defying widespread predictions that the higher borrowing costs would cause a recession. Companies kept hiring, just at a more modest pace.But the job market increasingly looks under strain. A survey released Wednesday by the payroll processor ADP found that private companies cut 33,000 jobs last month. “Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. (The ADP numbers frequently differ from the Labor Department’s official job count.)Employers are now contending with fallout from Trump’s policies, especially his aggressive use of import taxestariffs.Mainstream economists say that tariffs raise prices for businesses and consumers alike and make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters.The erratic way that Trump has rolled out his tariffsannouncing and then suspending them, then coming up with new oneshas left businesses bewildered.Manufacturers responding to a survey released this week by the Institute for Supply Management complained that they and their customers were reluctant to make decisions until they understood where Trump’s tariffs would end up. “That whiplash has to stop and it has to stay stopped,” said Susan Spence, chair of the ISM’s manufacturing survey committee.Trump’s assault on the federal bureaucracy could also show up in June’s job report. Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, expects federal jobs dropped by 20,000 last month, “reflecting a hiring freeze, voluntary quits and retirements.” For now, she wrote in a commentary Wednesday, court rulings “have put massive federal layoffs on hold.”The president’s deportationsand the threat of themalso are likely to start having an impact on the job market by driving immigrants out of the job market. In May, the U.S. labor forcethose working and looking for workfell by 625,000, the biggest drop in a year and a half. Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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