Upcoming BMW Lets You Stand Outside Car While Parking It

There may soon be a solution to the woes of parallel parkers everywhere.

The forthcoming BMW’s 7 Series will maneuver into parking spots without a driver sitting in the car. The drivers navigates the control from outside the vehicle by using a new key fob, which combines a remote control and an LCD screen and can guide the car in and out of tight spots and garages.

According to Gizmodo, the car's official design hasn't been unveiled yet. No word yet on when the 7 Series will be released, either.

Check out the feature in action in this promotional video BMW released April 18:

Mercedes-Benz has a similar automated parking feature called "active parking assist," though the driver must remain in the car to operate the accelerator and brake pedal.

Though the 7 Series is not a true driverless car, it may pit BMW once more against Tesla, which announced recently that it would roll out self-driving software for its cars as early as this summer. The software update, which is for Model S sedans sold after last October, would free up drivers on long commutes on major highways. Tesla plans to equip forthcoming Model X sports utility vehicles with the autopilot feature, as well.

“We can basically go between San Francisco and Seattle without the driver doing anything,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said of the feature.

BMW released its own mass-produced electric car, the i3, early last year. At around $45,000, it is significantly cheaper than Tesla’s Model S, which has a price tag of $70,000, and drives between 80 and 100 miles between charges. BMW previously tested a "remote valet parking assistant" app on the i3, allowing the vehicle to park itself and come back to pick up the driver. But the app would require detailed maps of every parking garage, casting doubt on its practicality.

Mercedes-Benz and Google have been testing their own driverless cars in recent months. The Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion was teased at the Consumer Electronics Show last year, and popped up in San Francisco last month.

Google also patented external airbags and bumpers for its self-driving car just a few weeks ago. The design would protect pedestrians in the case of a collision, and signals an early effort to respond to ethical debates over automated control.

Apple Makes New Commitment To Fight Climate Change, But Has A Long Way To Go

Apple on Monday released its 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report, underscoring its commitment to lessening the environmental impact of its products and operations. "We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it," the company stated in the report.

But Apple still has a long way to go when it comes to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down on paper use and eliminating the amount of toxic substances in its devices.

The report said Apple's overall carbon footprint increased between 2013 and 2014, in part because the company is selling more products. It also noted that Apple is working to make products less carbon-intensive to manufacture and use.

The report went on to say that renewable resources power 100 percent of Apple's data centers, corporate offices and retail stores in the United States, as well as 87 percent of its global facilities. In addition, all of its U.S. data centers have been powered with 100 percent renewable energy since 2012.

Yet the report says that the energy used by Apple facilities in the 2014 fiscal year represented only 1 percent of the company's carbon footprint. By contrast, manufacturing accounted for a whopping 73 percent of the company’s 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

While the new report doesn't address the volume of paper products used for packaging, it does says that during the 2014 fiscal year, "over 80 percent of the paper and corrugated cardboard used in our iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, and Apple TV packaging came from certified sustainably managed forests, controlled wood sources, or recycled materials."

Last week, Apple announced it was purchasing 36,000 acres of forest -- 3,600 in North Carolina and 32,400 in Maine -- to supply paper for its packaging.

The new report also addresses toxic substances in electronics and Apple's efforts to reduce or eliminate these materials for the sake of the environment and human health. "Our goal is to make not just the best products in the world, but the best products for the world," the company wrote.

A 2014 BBC investigation showed allegedly poor working conditions and exhausted employees in undercover footage from a Chinese factory producing Apple products. Apple's previous reports on its suppliers show that "30 percent [of them] don't comply with the company's own safety standards and 18 percent fail to comply with standards on hazardous chemical exposure," according to Wired.

Apple's environmental efforts are led by Lisa Jackson, who joined the company in May 2013 after serving as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2009 to 2013. Her voice can be heard in the "Better Starts Here" video Apple released alongside the report. The ad touts plans to build a 40-megawatt solar farm in China to offset the electricity used by its offices and stores in that country.

"We're directing our innovation into conservation, to get to net zero," Jackson says in the video. “We are learning more and more about new places where we can be better, with renewable energy, hydropower and forest preservation. New ways in which we can leave the world better than we found it."

At last year's annual shareholder meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook told members of a think tank skeptical of manmade climate change that they should ditch Apple stock if they didn't agree with the company's environmental efforts.

Both Google and Microsoft also have made commitments to improving their sustainability and offsetting their operations with renewable energy.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

Why 'Sweatworking' Is The New Lunch Meeting

(Reuters) - Sweatworking, the growing practice of meeting clients for a walk, a run or a fitness class, is elbowing networking out of bars and restaurants and into boutique fitness studios.

A yoga, barre or spin class has become the new nine holes of golf, fitness experts said, chased by a post-workout smoothie rather than a three-martini lunch.

“Sweatworking was born out of a desire to connect with clients on a deeper level that wasn’t so sales-y,” said Sarah Siciliano, 32, an advertising executive who has been entertaining clients with workouts. “A lot of sales jobs revolve around drinking.”

Siciliano, who is based in New York City, considers taking her mostly female clients, who range in age from 22 to 52, to yoga, spinning, bootcamp and dance studios a great tool to develop relationships.

“People like to move along with the trends,” said Siciliano, who organizes her workout events.

“I do all the leg work but I exercise everyday anyway so for me it’s a win-win,” she said. “If you can knock out a client event and your workout at the same time, why not?”

Sweatworking began in the advertising world, but has spread to more traditionally conservative professions such as law and banking, according to Alexia Brue, co-founder of the wellness media company Well+Good.

“Now a lot of client entertaining in many industries has moved into boutique studios,” she said, “especially to those with workouts that aren’t super awkward, or super-sweaty to do with a client.”

Gabby Etrog Cohen, vice president of public relations and brand strategy at SoulCycle, a national chain of 39 indoor cycling studios, said in four years sweatworking has become a regular part of her business.

“We get a mixed bag, a lot of people in financing and advertising,” said Cohen. “We have groups that come in every week. One group comes every Thursday.”

Part of the appeal, she speculates, resides in the dim studio lights.

“There’s something about not wanting to sweat in front of clients,” she said. “We ride in the dark so there’s a sense of anonymity.”

For 45 minutes and $35 per class, the studio provides an alternative to the traditional four-hour round of golf.

Cohen said the rise of sweatworking marks the distance traveled from the chain-smoking, inebriated lifestyle of the 1960’s portrayed in the hit AMC series “Mad Men.”

“We’ve taken ‘Mad Men’ and turned it on its head,” she said.

(This version of the story corrects HBO to AMC in the second-to-last paragraph)

Here's What Uber Is Doing For Its Very Best Drivers

Uber is the poster child for disruption and technological innovation. Yet with a new program meant to inspire its drivers, the startup is deploying a pretty old-school tactic: an employee-of-the-week award for drivers.

There's a bit of a twist though -- Uber drivers aren't technically company employees.

Each week, Uber awards two drivers a Sixth Star for exceptional service. Winners get a $1,000 American Express gift card, some corporate schwag -- hat, medal of honor, etc. -- and public recognition for being awesome.

“We want to recognize service for which our five-star rating system is simply not enough,” Uber vice president David Richter told The Huffington Post in an email, referring to how the ride-share app lets customers rank drivers on a scale of one to five stars.

Marketing and management experts said the program, which was just expanded globally, has the potential to inspire drivers, and signals to customers that Uber values drivers.

“It’s a nice way to say we care about high quality and we’re working on ways to reinforce it,” said Derek Rucker, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management. Rucker said the program could also motivate Uber drivers to provide better service.

Yet some Uber drivers HuffPost spoke with hadn’t yet heard about the awards. A few said that adding a “sixth star” does little to alleviate problems they have with Uber’s five-star rating system, a source of anxiety.

Now valued at more than $41 billion, Uber is growing rapidly. It now operates in 300 cities across 56 countries. Slowly, Uber seems to be doing more for its growing fleet of drivers, who operate essentially as small business owners. Uber calls them "driver partners," and they don't receive benefits like health insurance, paid vacation or sick leave.

A month after starting Sixth Star this fall, the company also launched a rewards program that offers its drivers discounts on auto care and wireless services, as well as help finding health insurance. In March, the company launched an internal magazine to foster more community between drivers.

Launched in October and expanded globally last week, the Amex-sponsored program gives awards to two Uber drivers each week for exceptional service. One driver is chosen because she has the highest rating and number of trips in a given region. The other driver is nominated by an Uber passenger for doing something extraordinary. The winners rotate between six regions, in Europe, Asia/Pacific and three areas in the Americas. While the company has done things like this at the local level, the program is one of its first global marketing pushes. So far, 28 Uber drivers have won.

Edith Woodie, a driver in Atlanta, won a Sixth Star for voluntarily helping a man healing from amputation surgery do his grocery shopping inside the store -- instead of just dropping him off and leaving.

Ideen Barimani, an Uber X driver in Baltimore with the highest rating on the East Coast (4.96), told HuffPost that winning a Sixth Star was a “validation” of all the hard work he puts into the job. Barimani said he pulls in anywhere from $600 to $800 a week driving his grey Toyota Corolla for around 40 to 50 hours. The 35-year-old takes Uber’s advice on customer service -- keeping his car stocked with bottled water and Starbursts, Hershey miniatures and other candies. He also provides riders with chargers for their phones. And, as a self-professed animal lover, he’s totally cool with carting around passengers’ dogs. He’s open to conversation with passengers, if desired. “If riders want to be left alone, I get the hint,” he told HuffPost.

Sixth Star winner Ideen Barimani.

Giving workers prizes for doing their jobs doesn’t always work out the way business owners and managers plan. In close-knit workplaces, employee of the month awards can sow seeds of animosity, said Kellogg’s Rucker. “You create unnecessary competition in the workplace. Someone wins and everyone else is upset.”

But Uber’s program avoids some of the classic pitfalls, said Rucker. Uber has a huge and disparate workforce. It’s unlikely the program will foment jealousy of management “favorites” or some kind of worker revolt.

“Given it’s a rare award and a big workforce, it’s more like winning the lottery than a typical award,” said Timothy Gubler, a doctoral candidate at Washington University who has researched employee awards. "People don’t feel like ‘I should’ve won the lottery,'” he said.

Uber drivers had a mixed reaction to the program. “If you give me a thousand dollars, that means I’m doing my job right,” New York Uber driver Mina Morgan said.

Sixth Star winner Edith Woodie.

Others either hadn’t heard about it yet, or were more skeptical. “The award is a marketing ploy. It isn’t going to encourage drivers to do anything they weren’t going to do,” said Casandria Harris, a driver in San Antonio. “It might encourage passengers to acknowledge drivers who go above and beyond."

Beyond the Sixth Star, drivers said the ratings system can be unfair. Ratings can drop for reasons beyond their control -- like traffic, or if Uber raises its prices because of increased demand. Driving people around at night -- when they're more likely to be inebriated -- also puts the rating at risk. Uber said its system accounts for this, and notes that the more rides drivers give, the harder it is for one bad rating to knock them back. Still, it's nerve-wracking -- if the rating drops below a certain threshold, drivers could lose their job.

Over the past year, a few Uber drivers were charged with rape and assault, and there was a big dust-up last fall over the company’s interactions with journalists. Partly due to the bad publicity, the percentage of U.S. adults who’ve actually heard of Uber grew to nearly 60 percent from about 45 percent over the past four months, according to data from market research firm YouGov BrandIndex.

One big challenge for Uber is getting more people to sign up, said YouGov CEO Ted Marzilli. He noted the brand gets very favorable ratings from those who actually use the service. A program like Sixth Star, which personalizes drivers and tells their stories, could help gain more goodwill for the brand -- though it’s still in the early stages.

Uber customers will like knowing their ratings could help their drivers, said Uber user Erin Flior, a vice president at communications firm Levick who works on digital marketing campaigns. Flior doesn’t always take the time to rate her drivers, but now that she knows something positive could come out of it, she said she’ll be doing it more often.

--Timothy Stenovec contributed reporting.

6 Of The Fastest-Growing Jobs In America Pay Low Wages

Retailers and policymakers are finally hearing workers’ call for wage hikes, but it may be a little too late.

Low-wage industries in the United States are growing rapidly, but wages aren't. A new report from the National Employment Law Project, a wage advocacy group, found that six of the occupations that are expected to grow the fastest in the coming years are also jobs that pay a median wage of under $15 per hour -- which is barely enough to make ends meet.

These high-growth fields, according to the NELP report, include retail sales employees, food and service workers, nursing assistants, laborers and freight movers, personal care aids, janitors and cleaners (excluding housekeepers and maids).

“These are jobs that aren’t going anywhere,” said Irene Tung, one of the report’s co-authors along with Paul Sonn and Yannet Lathrop. “You can’t outsource fast food in China. You have to grapple with that. This is where we have to lift wages if we want to begin to rebuild the disappearing middle class in the country.”

Around 46 percent of workers earning less than $15 an hour are over 35 years old, the NELP's report found. “There’s a common perception that these occupations are for teenagers,” Tung told The Huffington Post. “But there are a lot of people spending decades in these jobs and supporting families. It calls into question the kind of economy we want.”

As the baby-boom generation ages, one of the biggest-growing sectors is personal care for the elderly. Wages there are stagnant and turnover is high. “It’s hard to retain good personal care aides because the wages are so low,” Tung said.

The report also notes that the percentages of women and African-Americans making less than $15 per hour are disproportionately large. Female workers make up 48 percent of the total U.S. workforce but represent 54 percent of those making under $15 an hour, per the NELP. African-Americans, who comprise 12 percent of the total workforce, represent 15 percent of those making less than $15.

Workers have become increasingly vocal in their fight for better wages, and they're gradually effecting change. McDonald’s bumped up hourly wages to $9.90 earlier this month, though this applied only to a fraction of employees.

Many workers called the raise insufficient and are continuing to call on McDonald's and other corporate giants to hike wages. On Wednesday, a strike organized by the group Fight for $15, which advocates for a minimum hourly wage of $15 for fast-food employees, began in cities across the U.S and expanded to include demonstrations for other low-earning workers.

In February, retail giant Walmart increased wages to $9 for its lowest-paid workers. Rivals such as T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and Target soon followed suit. But many of these low-income workers rely on government assistance programs, and $9 an hour still forces them to remain tied to Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness.

“Workers have been organizing, and they’ve been able to elevate the conversation about wages in this country,” Tung said. “But it’s still a drop in the bucket. Nine dollars an hour is less than $25,000 a year for full-time workers, and that’s nowhere near enough for them to survive.”

The public is responding in turn and putting pressure on lawmakers. Seattle is currently transitioning to a $15 minimum wage, a year after the city first announced its commitment to a living wage for workers. Voters in San Francisco, as well as Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, approved wage increases last year.

CEO Slashes $1 Million Salary To Give Lowest-Paid Workers A Raise

Three weeks ago, Dan Price took a $930,000 pay cut.

Growing income inequality had been on his mind for months. But as he went for a hike with a friend one afternoon and listened to her describe her struggle with rising rent prices, he realized he had to do something for his own employees.

So Price, the founder and CEO of Gravity Payments in Seattle, decided to raise the minimum salary at his 120-person payment processing company to $70,000. At a company where the average pay was $48,000 per year, the move -- which was first reported by The New York Times on Monday -- affected 70 workers, 30 of whom saw their salaries double.

Most of the money for these raises will come from cutting Price's salary -- which is now $70,000 per year rather $1 million. The rest will come out of the $2.2 million the company expects to earn in profit this year.

“There’s greater inequality today than there’s been since the Great Recession,” Price told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “I’d been thinking about this stuff and just thought, ‘It’s time. I can’t go another day without doing something about this.’”

The $70,000 figure is just below the $75,000 salary pegged in a 2010 Princeton University study as an ideal benchmark for achieving happiness. About 28 percent of Americans said they would feel successful earning at most $70,000 per year, according to a 2012 survey from the jobs site CareerBuilder.

The pay cut won’t affect Price's lifestyle much. He has saved a lot of the money he has earned since starting Gravity in 2004. He said he has no plans to replace his 12-year-old Audi, which has clocked more than 140,000 miles. And his new salary will still allow him to pick up the bar tab for his friends once a month, he said.

“There will be sacrifices,” said Price, 30. “But once the company’s profit is back to the $2.2 million level, my pay will go back. So that’s good motivation.”

In the U.S., the average CEO earns more than 350 times what the average worker does. Seattle has become a hotbed in the fight for higher wages as the city phases in a $15 minimum wage, one of the highest in the country. The city is also home to wealthy investor Nick Hanauer, a self-styled champion for higher pay who has warned his fellow billionaires that pitchfork-wielding mobs will follow them to their private jets if income inequality isn’t addressed.

Rather than see this as a charitable offer to his workers, Price sees the pay raises as an investment. In theory, workers motivated by higher salaries will ultimately attract more business and handle clients better.

“This is a capitalist solution to a social problem,” Price said. “I think it pays for itself, I really do.”

Uninsured Rate Gets Lower And Lower, Thanks To Obamacare

WASHINGTON-- The Affordable Care Act was designed to slash the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance, and it's working.

The uninsured rate fell to 11.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, 1 percentage point below the rate at the close of 2014, according to the findings of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll published Monday. The decline coincides with the start of benefits for new Obamacare enrollees at the beginning of 2015.

The latest uninsured figure from the Gallup survey is the lowest since the polling firm began tracking the number in 2008, and contributes to a remarkable decline of 5.2 percentage points in the share of people without health coverage since the end of 2013, just before the first wave of Obamacare health insurance enrollees joined the ranks of the insured.

Source: Gallup

African-Americans, Hispanics and people with low incomes saw the greatest gains in insurance coverage, Gallup found.

Some of the increase in the proportion of Americans with health coverage likely is related to the improving job market, and the health benefits provided by employers, Gallup notes. But the pollsters conclude that Obamacare is mostly responsible for the current trend because the uninsured rate is lower than it was in early 2008, when the economy was in recession.

About 12 million people are covered by private health insurance obtained via the exchanges, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A separate analysis published by the department last month estimates that 16 million fewer Americans are uninsured because of the Obamacare coverage expansion, including the exchanges and Medicaid.

Were more states to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the uninsured rate would fall more sharply, as it did in Indiana earlier this year. Previous surveys showing state-by-state numbers illustrate that Obamacare's effect on the uninsured is diminished by states' refusal to expand Medicaid.

Although Montana appears poised to adopt the Medicaid expansion this month, efforts in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah this year have been stymied by Republican opposition. Almost 5.5 million people had enrolled into Medicaid because they qualified under the expansion in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Friday.

The sharp reduction in the uninsured rate since Obamacare benefits began to take effect last year could soon be undone, however. The Supreme Court is slated to rule in June ona lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that claims the Affordable Care Act's subsidies can only be provided in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, not in the federally run exchanges in the rest of the country.

A high court ruling for the plaintiffs would invalidate the subsidies received by more than 85 percent of exchange enrollees and destabilize the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges. The Rand Corp. estimates this would result in 9.6 million people becoming uninsured.