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Lawyers representing victims of a deadly Hawaii wildfire reached a last-minute deal averting a trial that was scheduled to begin Wednesday over how to split a $4 billion settlement.The agreement means victims and survivors will not have to testify, reliving in court details of the massive inferno in Lahaina that killed more than 100 people, destroyed thousands of properties and caused an estimated $5.5 billion worth of damage.Before the trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday morning, lawyers met in private with Judge Peter Cahill, who later announced that a deal had been reached. Lawyers, who reached the deal late Tuesday, are expected to file court documents detailing the agreement in a week.Some victims had been ready to take the witness stand, while others submitted pre-recorded testimony, describing pain made all the more fresh by the recent destruction in Los Angeles.“Some folks I’m sure will be disappointed, because in their minds this was their time to share their story,” Jacob Lowenthal, one of the attorneys representing individual plaintiffs, said Wednesday. “Other folks are going to be relieved because they don’t have to go in and testify.”One of the individual plaintiffs is Kevin Baclig, whose wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law were among the 102 people known to have died.Baclig said in a declaration that if called to testify he would describe how for three agonizing days he searched for themfrom hotel to hotel, shelter to shelter. “I clung to the fragile hope that maybe they had made it off the island, that they were safe,” he said.A month and a half went by and the grim reality set in. He went to the Philippines to gather DNA samples from his wife’s close relatives there. The samples matched remains found in the fire. He eventually carried urns holding their remains back to the Philippines.“The loss has left me in profound, unrelenting pain,” he said. “There are no words to describe the emptiness I feel or the weight I carry every day.”Hawaii Gov. Josh Green announced the $4 billion settlementagreed by the state, power utility Hawaiian Electric, large landowners and othersabout a year after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century devastated Lahaina in 2023. At the time, he touted the speed of the deal to “avoid protracted and painful lawsuits.”The trial was supposed to determine a percentage split between two groups of plaintiffs, including some who filed individual lawsuits after losing their family members, homes or businesses, and other victims covered by class-action lawsuits, including tourists who canceled trips to Maui because of the blaze.Only a nominal portion of the settlement should go to tourists whose trips were delayed or canceled, Lowenthal said previously.“The categories of losses that the class is claiming are just grossly insignificant compared to our losses,” he said.Attorneys for the class have not responded to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the averted trial.In their trial brief, they challenged the idea that everyone who has a claim worth suing over had already done so. Many people held off hiring attorneys, the brief said, because of the fire’s disruption to life, “distrust in heavy attorney advertising, and a desire to see how the process plays out first.”Separately, the state Supreme Court is considering whether insurers can sue the defendants for reimbursement for the $2 billion-plus they have paid out in fire claims, or whether their share must come from the $4 billion settlement. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Feb. 6.“That is the last big piece that needs to be decided before the global settlement can move forward,” Lowenthal said. Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, Associated Press
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Nissan is slashing production at its U.S. plants and offering buyouts to factory workers there as part of the Japanese automaker’s urgent efforts to return to profitability.The move is part of Nissan Motor Corp.’s plans, announced two months ago, to slash 9,000 jobs globally, including in China, after it racked up a quarterly loss due to sinking sales and ballooning inventory.At Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, one production line will maintain two shifts, while the other line will consolidate to one shift, the company said.The Smyrna plant makes Murano, Pathfinder and Rogue sport-utility vehicles and the Infiniti QX60 luxury model.In the Canton plant in Mississippi, which makes the Altima sedan and Frontier pickup, Nissan is reducing the speed on one line and consolidating another.In the Decherd plant in Tennessee, which makes engines, shift adjustments will be more gradual. Some will be maintained while others will be reduced by one shift, it said.When it announced its recovery plan in November, Nissan didn’t give details on where the job cuts might come.The workforce reduction of 9,000 people amounts to about 6% of its more than 133,000 global employees. The company also plans to slash its global production capacity by 20%.Nissan, based in the port city of Yokohama, said the latest offers count toward its overall job reduction plans, and are designed to make its operations more efficient and flexible.“Nissan is taking urgent measures globally to turnaround its performance and create a leaner, more resilient business capable of swiftly adapting to changes in the market,” the company said in a statement.Separately, Nissan and Japanese rival Honda Motor Co. are working to form a joint holding company to integrate their businesses, planned for 2026.Nissan and Honda announced in March they will work together on electric vehicles. In August, they said that partnership was being broadened. They plan to have a “definitive agreement” by June.Nissan is set to release its October-December financial results on February 13. Nissan stocks jumped 2% in Tokyo trading after the reports about the U.S. plans surfaced. Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@yurikageyama Yuri Kageyama, AP Business Writer
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Microsoft said Wednesday that its profit for the October-December quarter grew 10% as it works to capitalize on the huge amounts of money it has spent to advance its artificial intelligence technology.But while its overall profits and revenue beat Wall Street expectations, it slightly missed projections for its closely watched cloud computing business, a centerpiece of its AI efforts.The company reported net income for the quarter of $24.1 billion, or $3.23 per share, beating Wall Street expectations of $3.11 per share. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker posted revenue of $69.6 billion in the quarter, up 12% from the previous year, also beating expectations.Analysts polled by FactSet Research expected Microsoft to generate revenue of $68.87 billion in the last three months of the year.Sales from Microsoft’s cloud-focused business segment that includes its flagship Azure computing platform grew 19% from the same time last year to $25.5 billion, which was less than the $25.83 billion forecast by FactSet analysts.Microsoft’s productivity business segment, which includes its Office suite of email and other workplace products, grew 14% to $29.4 billion.Its personal computing business, led by its Windows division, remained steady at $14.7 billion, with a drop in consumer device sales offset by growth in advertising revenue tied to the Bing search engine.Microsoft shares dropped 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday but were still higher than Monday, when the tech giant was hit by a broader tech stock sale caused by a frenzy over the new ChatGPT competitor developed by Chinese tech startup DeepSeek.Microsoft is a close partner of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and also sells its own AI chatbot services, branded as Copilot. Part of what drove the Wall Street panic this week was concern over the startup’s claims that it was catching up to U.S. tech titans on a fraction of their budget.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella downplayed those concerns on an investor call Wednesday, saying “DeepSeek had some real innovations” and it is good to have efficiency gains and lower prices in AI development because it “means people can consume more and there’ll be more apps written.”Microsoft also added DeepSeek’s latest AI model to those available on its Azure computing platform Wednesday.Building and operating AI systems is costly, and Microsoft has said it plans to spend $80 billion this year as it expands its global network of energy-hungry computing centers and supplies them with specialized chips to train and run AI models.“We have more than doubled our overall data center capacity in the last three years and we have added more capacity last year than any other year in our history,” Nadella said. Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
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