An Applebee's franchise executive was fired after suggesting runaway inflation and increasing gas prices are good for business



An Applebee’s franchise executive who suggested via email that high gas prices could force employees to work longer hours for less pay has been fired.

In an email chain titled “Why gas increase is good for hiring,” Wayne Pankratz told his colleagues that: “As inflation continues to climb and gas prices continue to go up, that means more hours employees will need to work to maintain their current level of living.”

Pankratz is an executive with American Franchise Capital, an investment firm that owns and manages Taco Bell and Applebee’s restaurants in nine states. The company’s annual sales are over $200 million, the New York Post reported.

Pankratz explained to his colleagues that due to the federal government no longer providing stimulus checks to the public and small business having immense difficulty offering workers competitive wages, Applebees has “more potential employees” in the “hiring pool.”

His email stated, “Other competitors (especially mom and pop companies or smaller businesses),” will have to either raise prices, cut employee hours, or pay employees less hourly to lift their profit margins. Some businesses will not be able to hold on. This is going to drive more potential employees into the hiring pool.”

He said that current labor market conditions give the company a chance to hire employees “at a lower wage.”

In his correspondence, Pankratz said, “Most of our employee base ad potential employee base live paycheck to paycheck. Any increase in gas cuts into their disposable income. As inflation continues to climb and gas prices continue to go up, that means more hours employees will need to work to maintain their current level of living.”

“We are no longer competing with the government when it comes to hiring,” he continued. “Stimulus money is no more, supplemental unemployment is no more. This benefits us as prices rise, people who [were] relying on unemployment money, simply will have less money to spend. It will force people back into the work force.”

On Saturday, the New York Post reported that the statements Pankratz made were leaked to the manager of a Missouri-based Applebee’s franchise owned and operated by American Franchise Capital.

Jake Holocomb, the manager in question, printed out copies of Pankratz’s emails for servers to find and gave everyone that came into the restaurant that same day free meals.

He said, “I gave everyone in the restaurant their food for free and we just left; we didn’t even close the store,” the Associated Press reported.

Applebee’s Chief Operations Officer Kevin Carrol said that the views expressed by Pankratz were his and his alone.

He said Pankratz shared “the opinion of an individual not Applebee’s.”

Two of China's most populated cities reimplement COVID restrictions as case numbers rise



As Omicron and Delta variant case numbers rise, China is reimposing COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions in parts of the country.

The New York Times reported that two of China’s largest cities, Shenzhen and Shanghai, initiated stringent COVID protocols on Sunday that restrict the movements of city residents.

These lockdowns stand to further exasperate the ongoing disruption of global supply chains.

Shenzhen, a city along the border of the Hong Kong province, is the hub of China’s tech sector and is a magnet for electronics manufacturing. The city is going into a one-week lockdown in which all nonessential workers must stay home and adults must take three PCR COVID tests.

Public transit systems in Shenzhen have been closed, but supermarkets, farmers’ markets, pharmacies, medical institutions, and express delivery services will be allowed to continue operating.

Shanghai halted its intercity bus service but stopped short of ordering a whole-city lockdown.

Shenzhen and Shanghai officials have barred their residents from leaving either city unless it is deemed necessary, and even then, residents must present a negative PCR test to the government.

Both cities are reporting fewer than 100 cases of COVID-19. Shenzhen reported 66 cases, and Shanghai reported 65 cases on Sunday. In some of the infected, symptoms are apparent, which means they have an increased chance of passing the virus to other people.

In February, Shenzhen took steps to limit the spread of COVID from truck drivers. City officials reportedly took measures to prevent truck drivers from bringing infectious diseases into the Chinese mainland from Hong Kong, where there is currently a massive outbreak of the virus.

On Sunday, according to Reuters, Hong Kong health authorities reported 32,430 new cases of COVID-19.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said that the government was taking steps to reach out to the 300,000 people in Hong Kong who are isolated at home.

She said, “With so many people put under isolation or quarantine, the government has been strengthening our capability to support them. However, we’re still catching up.”

Lam said she could not comfortably say whether virus numbers had peaked in this recent outbreak.

ABC News reported that as of Friday, more than 3,000 Hong Kong residents had died in the province’s current wave of COVID.

Many users of Weibo, a Chinese social media network, blame Hong Kong for the outbreak of COVID-19 in Shenzhen due to the province’s hesitance to implement wide sweeping lockdowns like those seen in mainland China.

Convoy of American truckers hits Washington, DC, takes laps on the Beltway



The American answer to Canada’s Freedom Convoy has arrived.

The trucker convoy drove around the Capital Beltway — the metropolitan interstate highway loops surrounding Washington, D.C. — before heading back to Hagerstown, Maryland to regroup and organize, NBC News reported.

Last month, lawmakers in the D.C. metropolitan area requested support from the National Guard as they prepared for thousands of American truckers to descend on the nation’s capital.

Organizers of the American trucker convoy requested a permit from the National Park Service to allow 1,000 to 3,000 people to gather in Washington, D.C., as they protest policy pertaining to domestic energy production, mandatory COVID-19 vaccination, and federal disregard for immigration law.

Bob Bolus, an organizer of the American trucker convoy — known as the “People’s Convoy” — said that protesters are interested in shutting down the Capital Beltway like a “giant boa constrictor that basically squeezes you.”

The People’s Convoy left California in late February, and according to the New York Times, there are at least 1,000 trucks, recreational vehicles, and cars participating in the protest.

One man, who described himself as the lead trucker in the convoy, said he plans to drive his rig into the heart of Washington, D.C.

He said, “D.C., the government, whomever, can claim that they have all this opposition for us waiting in D.C., but the flag on the back of my truck will go down to Constitution Avenue between the White House and the Washington Monument.”

Christopher Rodriguez, the director of the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said that if the People’s Convoy enters Washington, there will be authorities waiting for them.

He said, “We’ve been preparing for this for over a month now. In the event we do see impact in the district, those personnel and equipment can help move traffic through with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department.”

The People’s Convoy is one of several protests inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy.

People gathered across the world in places like New Zealand, France, Austria, and now the United States to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Most of these protests, however, occurred in nations that do not have legally guaranteed protections for peaceful assembly and protests and were subsequently squashed.

In Canada, for instance, the police enforced a “zero tolerance” policy for “any activity in the area” where the Freedom Convoy assembled to protest, per NBC News.

In the aftermath of the Canadian government cracking down on the protests, Canadian police vowed to identify anyone involved in the protests and issue them with financial sanctions and criminal charges.

Iran returns donated COVID-19 vaccines because they were made in America



The Iranian government has rejected more than 800,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines because they were manufactured in the United States, the Associated Press reported.

Poland donated nearly 1 million doses of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran, only to have more than half of the donation returned to them.

Mohammad Hashemi, an Iranian Health Ministry official, said, “When the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States.”

Hashemi said, “After coordination with the Polish ambassador to Iran, it was decided that the vaccines would be returned.”

In 2020, Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Iran would deny American or British vaccines from entering the country, calling them “forbidden.”

However, Iran openly imports vaccines manufactured in Western countries other than the United States and the United Kingdom.

Despite the fact that Iran is currently facing its sixth major wave of COVID-19 infection, the country still refuses to accept vaccines from its enemies.

Earlier in the pandemic, leaders in the Iranian parliament made clear that they would refuse all American-made vaccines even as the country repeatedly set new records for daily COVID deaths.

Iran has the highest national death toll from COVID-19 in the Middle East, with more than 135,000 total covid deaths. The Iranian government says that roughly 90% of its population over the age of 18 has been vaccinated with two shots, while only 37% have received a booster.

Largely, Iran has relied on the Chinese state-backed Sinopharm vaccine but provides many others for its citizens to choose from. Iranians can also receive Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the Indian Covaxin, and the domestically developed COVIran vaccine.

Despite the ayatollah’s stance against using British vaccines, the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine is also prevalent in Iran.

In recent weeks, the United States and Iran have had a souring of relations.

In the autumn of 2021, Iranian-sponsored Houthi rebels breached the American embassy in Yemen. The Iran-backed terrorists took several hostages.

In early February, the U.S. State Department announced that Iran was “weeks” away from being able to power an atomic bomb. After 10 months of renegotiating the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord agreement, the State Department under President Joe Biden has made little progress in deterring the country from developing a nuclear arsenal.

Shortly after making this announcement, the Iranian government debuted a new solid-fuel missile — called the Khaibar-buster — that is able to strike American bases in the Middle East and hit targets deep within Israel.

It is believed that the Khaibar-buster is able to circumvent Israel’s sophisticated missile defense systems.