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Births at Erlanger East rise to a record high in ’22
Erlanger East Hospital was once again Chattanooga’s top hospital for births last year with a record-high 3,144 babies born at the East Brainerd hospital in 2022.
Erlanger East Hospital, which began its labor and delivery services in 1996, also shattered its previous record for most births in a month with 320 births in December 2022. Erlanger East has been recognized as The “Best Place to Have a Baby” for each of the past 15 years in the annual Times Free Press reader survey.
The new year of 2023 began with Chattanooga’s first baby born early Sunday at 5:14 a.m. to William and Laura Probasco of Lookout Mountain at Erlanger East. The 7-pound 1-ounce baby girl was named Laura “Lollie” and was born with the help of Dr. Kathleen Mitchell of Erlanger Women’s Institute for Specialized Care. Both mom and baby are doing well. Erlanger spokeswoman Blaine Kelley said Friday.
Southwest scrapped 16,700 holiday fights
Southwest Airlines is anticipating a money-losing fourth quarter after a winter storm and technology meltdown led to nearly 17,000 canceled flights and stranded hundreds of thousands of holiday travelers.
The cancellations will result in a pretax hit of $725 million to $825 million from lost revenue, plus extra costs, including reimbursements for travelers and premium pay for employees, Southwest said Friday in a regulatory filing.
The storm and slow recovery was a devastating turn financially and reputation ally for the Dallas-based carrier, which led all U.S. airlines in profit during the first nine months of 2022, a year of recovery for the pandemic-battered airline industry.
The massive disruptions started with a winter storm that hit much of the country before Christmas. They snowballed when Southwest’s outdated crew-scheduling technology was overwhelmed, leaving crews and planes out of position to operate flights. Managers and a cadre of volunteer employees at company headquarters were forced to manually reassign pilots and flight attendants to flights.
It took Southwest eight days to recover just before the New Year’s Day weekend, while other major airlines were up and running quickly after the storm passed.
Southwest said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it canceled more than 16,700 flights between Dec. 21 and Dec. 31, causing a loss of $400 million to $425 million in revenue. In early December, before the meltdown, Southwest projected fourth-quarter revenue would rise by up to 17% over the same period in 2019, before the pandemic.
Walgreens overstated theft impact, CFO says
A Walgreens executive said this week that the company, which cited “organized” shoplifting as a reason to close five stores in San Francisco in October 2021, might have overstated the effect of theft on its business.
“Maybe we cried too much last year,” James Kehoe, the company’s chief financial officer, said during a Walgreens earnings call with investors.
Kehoe also said that the company had “probably” spent too much on security measures and that it might have mischaracterized how much theft took place in its stores.
It was a remarkable admission, retail experts said. Walgreens and other retailers have in recent years complained about an increase in shoplifting, inflaming political debates about crime.
Kehoe said Walgreens’ shrinkage — the industry term for inventory that was bought but cannot be sold, primarily because of theft — was now around 2.5% to 2.6% of sales, compared with around 3.5% last year, and had “stabilized.” Shrinkage can also be attributed to product damage, theft or loss of goods by employees or vendor fraud.
Twitter leak exposes 235 million emails
Personal emails linked to 235 million Twitter accounts hacked some time ago have been exposed, according to Israeli security researcher Alon Gal. The hacks could make millions vulnerable to having their accounts compromised or identities exposed if they have used the site anonymously to criticize oppressive governments.
Gal, co-founder and chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock, wrote in a LinkedIn post this week that the leak “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing.” While passwords were not leaked, malicious hackers could use the email addresses to try to reset people’s passwords, or guess them if they are commonly used.
Fuel leak shuts down part of Colonial pipeline
The Colonial Pipeline says a diesel fuel leak in Virginia has shut down part of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline, but it is expected to restart Saturday.
Colonial spokesperson David Conti says the spill was discovered Tuesday. And while this particular line is shut down, the rest of the system is operating normally. The pipeline supplies roughly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.
The Georgia-based company says crews are fixing equipment that failed at the Witt booster station near Danville. It says the failure caused a spill that was detected during a routine station check and appears to be contained to the property. Patrick De Haan is an analyst with GasBuddy. He said the incident shouldn’t impact gasoline prices.
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