Wed, April 24, 2024 at 9:35 AM EDT
Business
Selfie sticks bloom beneath Vancouver’s cherry blossoms, as petal power goes global
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It’s springtime in Metro Vancouver, when thickets of selfie sticks and tourists sprout beneath canopies of the region’s famous cherry blossoms.
On Sussex Avenue in Burnaby, east of Vancouver, a group of five fashionably dressed women set up an iPhone on a tripod under the blossoms.
One accessorizes with a green scarf then pauses to give instructions to her friends, adjusting their angles, just so, for the perfect shot. They’re too busy to talk, as they strike a series of poses, hands on hips.
Such scenes are familiar for Linda Poole, founder and creative director of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, which runs from April 1 to 23.
She recalls the sight of tourists getting out of a tour bus at Queen Elizabeth Park, one of Vancouver’s most popular locations for blossom viewing.
“And they are literally dancing under the blossoms and singing and modelling and posing. It’s really cute. I see that all the time,” said Poole.
Vancouver’s cherry blossoms have become a domestic and international tourist draw, with Chinese tour companies offering flower viewing packages for thousands of dollars, competing with more traditional locations such as Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan.
Edward Xie, manager of Richmond, B.C., travel agency First Express Travel, said his company advertises Vancouver flower viewing in international markets.
He said guides pick up travellers from China and the U.S. at the airport and drive them around the city’s best cherry blossom locations.
An eight-day, seven-night trip from China to Vancouver and Victoria promoted by First Express is dubbed the “two cities flower viewing” tour and costs 33,603 yuan, or $6,580.
“Walk into a colourful world to enjoy flowers, watch whales and roam freely outdoors. Experience the romance brought by pink cherry blossoms and feel the vibe of April on Canada’s West Coast,” reads the advertisement.
Vancouver’s blossoms have become renowned in East Asia, where the city’s trees have their origin. The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival includes a walking tour of the blossoms through the Kitsilano neighbourhood in Mandarin. Like the English-language tours, it’s fully booked.
Poole said that in the 1930s, the mayors of the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Kobe gave 500 cherry trees to the Vancouver Park Board to honour Japanese Canadians who served in the First World War.
Now, Destination Vancouver says there are more than 40,000 cherry trees in the city.
Charlene Liu, president and CEO of Panasia Holidays, a Calgary-based tourism company, said cherry blossom viewing is extremely popular among Chinese-speaking domestic tourists, many of them from Edmonton and Calgary.
“For them, it’s like a perfect combination to gaze upon the cherry blossoms while exploring the local culinary scene since Vancouver is also famous for food,” said Liu in an interview conducted in Mandarin.
Cities like Kyoto and Washington, D.C., might have bigger international reputations, but Xie said many blossom tourists to Vancouver also have family in the city.
“Taking photos under the cherry trees is a universal thing — everyone loves it,” said Xie.
Some spots are favourites
It’s not just tourists drawn to the blossoms that drift down like pink snow when caught by a breeze.
Burnaby resident Emmanuel S.T. Yu, enjoying a stroll under Burnaby’s cherry blossoms with wife Connie, said the flowers reminded him it was “a blessing” to live in B.C.
“It’s my family’s annual tradition to walk around to see the cherry blossom trees and we have been keeping doing this for 11 years straight. We never get tired of it,” said Yu in Mandarin.
“The flowers always easily cheer us up, reminding us about how lucky we are to live here.”
Jordan Liu, B.C.-based director of the tour guide training program with the Canadian Inbound Tourism Association of Asia Pacific, said there were more than 2,700 cherry blossom locations across Metro Vancouver, and the choices could be overwhelming.
But he has some favourites — Graveley Street on Vancouver’s Eastside, West 22nd Avenue in Arbutus Ridge, Nelson Street in the downtown core, Yukon Street and outside Vancouver City Hall.
On West 22nd Avenue, Sophie Chan said she travelled on multiple buses to get to the neighbourhood from her home in Surrey. The slight rise and fall of the street makes it possible to see a corridor of blooming trees stretching into the distance, and it’s a favourite location on Instagram.
Chan said the secret to a good cherry blossom photo is patience — you need to wait for the right moment, with the right light, and the right wind to bring the petals fluttering down.
Retired mechanical engineer Kenneth Kwan, 84, was standing outside his home on Sussex Avenue in Burnaby, wearing a straw hat as he greeted people taking photos of the blossoms.
He said the flowers made him feel alive after an illness confined him to hospital for more than six weeks last year.
“My friends from San Francisco will soon come to Vancouver to visit me. I will show them around the city, including the cherry blossoms in my neighbourhood,” said Kwan.
“Friends, flowers and laughter are the best.”
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta-Canadian Press News Fellowship, which is not involved in the editorial process.
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Business
Oil Firms Doubtful Trans Mountain Pipeline Will Start Full Service by May 1st
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Oil companies planning to ship crude on the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada are concerned that the project may not begin full service on May 1 but they would be nevertheless obligated to pay tolls from that date.
In a letter to the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), Suncor Energy and other shippers including BP and Marathon Petroleum have expressed doubts that Trans Mountain will start full service on May 1, as previously communicated, Reuters reports.
Trans Mountain Corporation, the government-owned entity that completed the pipeline construction, told Reuters in an email that line fill on the expanded pipeline would be completed in early May.
After a series of delays, cost overruns, and legal challenges, the expanded Trans Mountain oil pipeline will open for business on May 1, the company said early this month.
“The Commencement Date for commercial operation of the expanded system will be May 1, 2024. Trans Mountain anticipates providing service for all contracted volumes in the month of May,” Trans Mountain Corporation said in early April.
The expanded pipeline will triple the capacity of the original pipeline to 890,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 300,000 bpd to carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to British Columbia on the Pacific Coast.
The Federal Government of Canada bought the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) from Kinder Morgan back in 2018, together with related pipeline and terminal assets. That cost the federal government $3.3 billion (C$4.5 billion) at the time. Since then, the costs for the expansion of the pipeline have quadrupled to nearly $23 billion (C$30.9 billion).
The expansion project has faced continuous delays over the years. In one of the latest roadblocks in December, the Canadian regulator denied a variance request from the project developer to move a small section of the pipeline due to challenging drilling conditions.
The company asked the regulator to reconsider its decision, and received on January 12 a conditional approval, avoiding what could have been another two-year delay to start-up.
Business
Tesla profits cut in half as demand falls
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Tesla profits slump by more than a half
Tesla has announced its profits fell sharply in the first three months of the year to $1.13bn (£910m), compared with $2.51bn in 2023.
It caps a difficult period for the electric vehicle (EV) maker, which – faced with falling sales – has announced thousands of job cuts.
Boss Elon Musk remains bullish about its prospects, telling investors the launch of new models would be brought forward.
Its share price has risen but analysts say it continues to face significant challenges, including from lower-cost rivals.
The company has suffered from falling demand and competition from cheaper Chinese imports which has led its stock price to collapse by 43% over 2024.
Figures for the first quarter of 2024 revealed revenues of $21.3bn, down on analysts’ predictions of just over $22bn.
But the decision by Tesla to bring forward the launch of new models from the second half of 2025 boosted its shares by nearly 12.5% in after-hours trading.
It did not reveal pricing details for the new vehicles.
However Mr Musk made clear he also grander ambitions, touting Tesla’s AI credentials and plans for self-driving vehicles – even going as far as to say considering it to be just a car company was the “wrong framework.”
“If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy I think they should not be an investor,” he said.
Such sentiments have been questioned by analysts though, with Deutsche Bank saying driverless cars face “technological, regulatory and operational challenges.”
Some investors have called for the company to instead focus on releasing a lower price, mass-market EV.
However, Tesla has already been on a charm offensive, trying to win over new customers by dropping its prices in a series of markets in the face of falling sales.
It also said its situation was not unique.
“Global EV sales continue to be under pressure as many carmakers prioritize hybrids over EVs,” it said.
Despite plans to bring forward new models originally planned for next year the firm is cutting its workforce.
Tesla said it would lose 3,332 jobs in California and 2,688 positions in Texas, starting mid-June.
The cuts in Texas represent 12% of Tesla’s total workforce of almost 23,000 in the area where its gigafactory and headquarters are located.
However, Mr Musk sought to downplay the move.
“Tesla has now created over 30,000 manufacturing jobs in California!” he said in a post on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
Another 285 jobs will be lost in New York.
Tesla’s total workforce stood at more than 140,000 late last year, up from around 100,000 at the end of 2021, according to the company’s filings with US regulators.
Musk’s salary
The car firm is also facing other issues, with a struggle over Mr Musk’s compensation still raging on.
On Wednesday, Tesla asked shareholders to vote for a proposal to accept Mr Musk’s compensation package – once valued at $56bn – which had been rejected by a Delaware judge.
The judge found Tesla’s directors had breached their fiduciary duty to the firm by awarding Mr Musk the pay-out.
Due to the fall in Tesla’s stock value, the compensation package is now estimated to be around $10bn less – but still greater than the GDP of many countries.
In addition, Tesla wants its shareholders to agree to the firm being moved from Delaware to Texas – which Mr Musk called for after the judge rejected his payday.
Business
Stock market today: Nasdaq futures pop, Tesla surges after earnings with more heavyweights on deck
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Tech stocks rose on Wednesday, outstripping the broader market as investors welcomed Tesla’s (TSLA) cheaper car pledge and waited for the next rush of corporate earnings.
The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose roughly 0.6%, coming off a sharp closing gain. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) was up 0.2%, continuing a rebound from its longest losing streak of 2024, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell 0.1%.
Tesla shares jumped nearly 12% after the EV maker’s vow to speed up the launch of more affordable models eclipsed its quarterly earnings and revenue miss. That cheered up investors worried about growth amid a strategy shift to robotaxis and the planned cancellation of a cheaper model.
The results from the first “Magnificent Seven” to report have intensified the already high hopes for Big Tech earnings, that the megacaps can revive the rally in stocks they powered. The spotlight is now on Meta’s (META) report due after the market close, as the Facebook owner’s shares rose after the Senate voted for a potential ban on rival TikTok. Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOG) next up on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Boeing (BA) reported better than expected first quarter results before the opening bell with a loss per share of $1.13, narrower than the $1.72 estimated by Wall Street. Shares rose about 2% in morning trade.
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