The future of the country in the Independence Movement in catalonia. Ftse higher. Cac and the dax down. Lauren stocks in japan closing lower. Bank of Japan Holding steady on Interest Rates. Shanghai composite at the third of 1 . Gerri apple admits what we are at the new. The iphone get slower as it gets older by design. Well tell you why. Fbn am starts right now. Trade 350 am in new york. It is theirs day, December December 21st and lauren simonetti. Gerri good morning. And gerri willis been for cheryl casone. Lauren subtlest week ever. Gerri you are eager for christmas. Lauren overnight in australia, 14 people injured after a white suv plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on a busy sidewalk filled with Holiday Shoppers in melbourne, the countrys largest city. Among those hurt comment a preschool child in serious condition with head injuries. Police arrested the driver of the vehicle as well as another person. An investigation underway, but police say this was no accident. This is a deliberate act in a repeat at this stage we believe it was a deliberate act. However, we do not know the motivation and its still early stages with the investigation. Lauren eyewitnesses say bodies went flying as they were headed. The driver ran a red light going at least 40 miles an hour. We continue to update the story as we get more information. Some of americas biggest corporations announcing new plans to help employees hours after Congress Passed a massive tax cut plan. At t and comcast will hand out 1000dollar bonuses to hundreds of thousands of workers. Boeing will invest 300 billion its facilities employee training and wells fargo say they will raise the minimum wage of workers. Chuck schumer is calling out at t on capitol hill. At t, big American Company, find American Company tax rate over the last 10 years as a mere 8 and 8 indicate 80,000 jobs. That one statistic lies all the trickledown bulk. Gerri Major Companies have announced 80 billion in Share Buyback ahead of passage of tax reform. D. Keep it running after tomorrow without part of the story. Good morning lauren, jerry. If this is a sporting event you sporting event youd hear a lot of talk about not wanting to lose momentum fresh out this major legislative victory in tax cuts. The last thing anyone wants is a government shut down. That is at midnight on friday. A look at this than me into next year and we will deal with all the spending issues. Military issues and all the other issues the beginning of next year. The house has a plan weve been hearing about in which they would be a stopgap funding bill to get us through the 19th of january. That includes the military, also then theres separately in a plan for 81 billion in Disaster Relief funding. The other issue coming up on the senate side of the socalled paygo rules come essentially requiring tax cuts be paid for so the president can sign. Will the democrats stand in the way . Just as weve done in the past we need to avoid intercounty and waiver. Americans are kind enough not to inflict harmful threats on medicare and other essential operations. I look forward to working together in the coming days to fund our government in a manner that is right by the American People. Add up in the democrats are being pressured out week to get it fixed at the dreamers come together documentary right at it doesnt look like that stands in the way, that she never know how this will play out. All day today a day game tomorrow. Well be watching. Jerry, lauren back to you in new york. Lauren we love drama for christmas. Confirming the obvious is your next story. Your iphone made getting slower as it gets older. Gerri who knew. Tracee carrasco joins us with more on new headlines. Good morning. Everything we know. Trying to how many times have you said is your iphone getting lower . Whenever a new iphone is released with the installing new Software Update on an older model. Apple finally confirmed what many of us have long speculated. Older models closely with age. Apple says such a slowdown were a deliberate effort to keep older phones running longer as the lithium ion battery wears down. Not a push to buy a new model pull. Believe it or not. Unexpected shutdown some older phones and this in turn can lower the funds down. Tree into its all about the battery. I thought they wou have some kind of excuse. Inhe amazostory and rlly interested in. Theyontinue thei fight with google. Tracee this continues to play out. Not long ago google pulled you to print some amazon devices because amazon has long refused to sell google is competing product on its website. A week seemed like a truce had finally been called, but not for long. Amazon file to get trademarks for two items. Amazon tube and open to. Amazon may be planning for a youtube list future or perhaps launching a competitor. Lauren going with the latter and i have to say youtube kids has saved me on many occasions. Downtime at work, we dont know what that is. No idea, but pretty costly. Tracee American Workers are spending hours doing nothing and its costing their companies more than 100 billion a year according to research by the journal of applied psychology. Idle time when an employee from the clout that unable to get any work done. The industry and occupation raised him from an investment anchor who cant finish a Powerpoint Presentation because he or she is waiting for data from a college to a store cashier without customers to check out. Three quarters of the 1003 workers surveyed across 29 occupational categories said they experienced idle time experienced idle timeout work was nearly 22 but it happens daily. Employer should encourage workers to be open about their walls so bosses know whos free to do some work. Tracee basically the companies fault that some employees have nothing to do. Sometimes you overload the employees are at employees are at a stretch of employees are they stretch out their work so they seem busy. Gerri on the other hand we are working more hours than ever before. Social media, eight to 10 to 12. My hearts not really going out to Corporate America on this one. Lauren with her. Gerri republicans are celebrating victory on tax reform want democrats say they will when the midterm elections on tax cut. Our Political Panel weighs in and another deception of the north korean soldier across the border with south korea. You are watching fbn am. With fidelitys realtime analytics, youll get clear, actionable alerts about potential Investment Opportunities in real time. Fidelity. Open an account today. Fidelity. Hey. Pass please. Im here to fix the elevator. Nothings wrong with the elevator. Right. But you want to fix it. Right. So who sent you . New guy. What new guy . Watson. My analysis of sensor and Maintenance Data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. There you go. You still need a pass. Gerri welcome back. The picture caught up in the headlines. Heightened tensions on the tour korean peninsula. Warning shots at a turning back north korean soldiers apparently pursuing a defect or they ran through a heavy fog. Officials say is the fourth time this year and north korean soldier has tried to flee across the heavily armed demilitarized zone. Blaming the driver for the best crash that killed eight americans in mexico yesterday. They say the driver was most likely speeding when he lost control of the bus. When he tried to get back on the narrow highway, the bus flipped and struck a tree before landing on the road side. The 11yearold lawyers among the dead americans. Senator al franken had a date for his departure from congress. The last day will be january 2nd. His appointed successor, minnesota Lieutenant Governor tina smith will be sworn in the next day and that is what is happening right this very minute. Lauren thank you so much. A victory lap on historic tax reform. Democrats however jury not to use what they call a tax scam against republicans in the 28 t. Midterm elections. We want to know if that strategy is going to work. Robyn biro and former Colorado State senator and committee to defend the president chairman ted harvey. Good morning, gentlemen. I begin with you because lets face it, democrats have momentum. They are coming off in new jersey, virginia, alabama and for a firstyear president , trumps Approval Ratings are pretty low. They have momentum. Yes, we do. We are from nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer how they plan to frame this and they work it also may very well backfire on the democrats because not a single one supported this. What americans do start to see tax cuts in their paychecks come february, it could backfire, but the americans were promised massive tax cuts for the middle class will get 15 extra per paycheck. I think when they see that, it may work as far as Nancy Pelosis plan to frame this as a tax scam. I would like to call up more of a shell game because we were promised these giant massive tax cuts mostly going towards the rich and corporations. You a democrat saying this could backfire because in february the administration and the irs had told us americans are going to start to see savings. I dont know about you, but when i go to the polling station to vote a vote with my wallet. If im richer, is not bad for democrats and good for republicans . Is this one for tad . Im sorry, but youre talking to robin. Actually, a great tax cut for republicans in 2018. The main reason why as we are lowering the Corporate Tax rate from 35 down to 21 and that will encourage corporations to hire more employees and we are to have the lowest africanamerican Unemployment Rate in the history of the country. Hispanic Unemployment Rates are dropping as well. You have this tax cut to the plate, you are going to see more and more people across the country employed in people who are employed will have more money in their pocket. Going into 2018 will be a huge plus for the American People in the republican party. Maybe well see more Companies Come with the likes of at t giving up on essays, hiking wages. They wont. Robin, this is for you that Dan Hettinger wrote in the wall street journal. If barack obama pursued bipartisan efforts to 2011 to cut the Corporate Tax rate, Hillary Clinton would be president. Yet, i see what you are saying. I also want to point out this plan is not popular right now in the polls and neither was upon the care after we adopted a 507 gop amendments to it. And it kills us come 2018. In the midterms. I think that may very well have been to republicans come 2018 because this right now is losing popularity and i think that that nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer planning on seizing on. I just dont know like i said come february that will be the case because its not a lot of money that middleclass americans will be saving, but money is money. Lauren you are right to my right out of the gate tax reform in the past is often unpopular. Andrew cuomo, governor of new york says he sees tax reform plan could trigger an economic triggers an economic civil war. This is a tax scam. Let me ask you a question. What if say the governor of new york or california started to repeal surcharges to pay most of the taxes. Could that happen and are we going to see state action here . You should see state action because the reason why liberal Governor Cuomo saying you will have a huge hit on the date is because the taxpayers across the country have been subsidizing those very leftist states and their high taxes. Under this bill, they are not going to be able to write off those high taxes on their federal tax return. The high income earners and those states will have a significant tax increase and that is why cuomo in california will have their wealthy taxpayers will have a tax hit because of this tax bill. We hope they stay put and dont move on out. Thank you so much. Coming up, santana is coming to town. Santana is coming to town. Gerri i love will ferrell. Hes so awesome. Traffic jams. Well tell you how to avoid them. We will get the forecast from fox meteorologist adam klotz. You are watching fbn am. My business was going nowhere. So i built this kickin new website with godaddy. Building a website in under an hour is easy 68 of people. Who have built their website using gocentral, did it in. Under an hour, and you can too. Type in your business or idea. Pick your favourite design. Personalize it with beautiful images. And. Youre done and now business is booming. Harriet, its a double stitch not a cross stitch build a better website in under an hour. Free to try. No credit card required. Gocentral from godaddy. Lauren giving you two just to see her khmer holiday forecast. A series of data to determine whether its the best thing to the road. To try second of december between 3 00 p. M. And 5 00 p. M. The heaviest of all traffic at the best data travel is on Christmas Day itself. Here is the sacking gift. Leanne neesons voice. Users have the opportunity to choose his words to direct somewhere they want to go. You have until january 14th because thats when his new movie comes out, the commuter. Tranter thursday thing that could make Holiday Shopping orders, the first day of winter. Is that also the solstice . Theres a lot going on. Im telling you. Fox meteorologist adam klotz here with your Holiday Travel forecast. Transfer with him like scientists, addon. Reporter you guys are really good. From here on out longer days. The worst is now behind us. Here is your forecast across the country. The upper third of the country looking into the 30s in some cases the coldest spots but the real question will be precipitation in the next couple days. The last 24 hours we are seeing solid iraqis. Eventually affect teen travel plans for a lot of folks the next couple days. Pay attention to that area as it sweeps across the country eventually what the line of thunderstorms in the south the stretch and into texas on friday. Folks on friday across the country. It continues to track east eventually running up into boston and new york and all up and down the east coast. It is an issue for folks traveling on saturday. You will see some cold temperatures soaring mix of rain and snow. Possibly delays again on friday. More of these threads and travel problems saturday, so that is something were watching closely the next couple days. Are you going home to atlanta . I will be here. Gerri they have a good christmas dinner just so you know. Lauren merry christmas, addon. One of the losers in the tax bill could be the housing industry. We will tell you what the value of your home could crater. The most personalized coffee drink youve ever seen is called a self teaching now. Gerri and then you eat it . Lauren that just seems wrong. The the moment a fish is pulled out from the water, its a race against time. And keeping it in the right conditions is the best way to get that fish to your plate safely. Bacteria can multiply to high enough levels that even cooking it will not destroy all of them. Its definitely the most important thing in my business. How fresh is the fish . Where it comes from . How it gets here. The more i know, the better. Sometimes the product arrives and the cold chain has been interrupted, and we need to be able to identify where in the cold chain that occurred. We took our world Class Network and we developed devices to track environmental conditions. This device allows people to understand whats happening not only with the location of that asset, but also if its too hot, if its too cold, if its been dropped. Its completely unique. We ship fish, beef, poultry, vaccines, insulin. This is about monitoring and protecting everything we ship. I catch all this amazing, beautiful fish and then once its out of my hands, i have no control over what happens to it. If you have a sensor that can keep track of your product, it keeps everybody kind of honest that way. Its really all about the network. You are looking at trillions of transactions a year. Not too Many Companies in the world can even scale to that type of volume. Who knew a tiny sensor could help keep the food chain safe . Food has to be fresh. Its that simple. Lauren breaking news at least 14 people hurt after a nasty vivos down pedestrians in melbourne, australia. Two people under arrest. No word on the modus. Police call this a deliberate act. President trump and republicans celebrate a victory on tax reform like at t and comcast already seen daily use tax savings to get employees bonuses. Stocks lower for the second day of tax reform. Features this morning up four points. Europe all could determine the future of the country in the Independence Movement in catalonia. Take a look at the markets for the ftse higher. Asias hawks closed the session. Japan Holding Steady at manchester a policy in china the shanghai composite rising by 4 . The latest health scare at chipotle sending stocks down. Well tell you what happened. Transcendence starts right now. Lauren good morning. Almost 530 in the morning in new york. Thursday december 21st. M. Lauren simonetti. Gerri ayin gerri willis in for cheryl casone. A very sad story today. And its overnight in australia. 14 people injured after a car plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on a busy sidewalk full of pedestrians in melbourne. A preschool child in serious condition with head injuries. Police arrested the driver and another person. Police say this was no accident. At this stage would live a deliberate act. Gerri bodies went flying as they were at running a red light around 40 miles per h