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By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Air traffic control staffing issues are delaying flights for a second straight day at numerous U.S. airports as the government shutdown reaches its seventh day, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a notice on Tuesday. More than 3,000 flights have been delayed, according to flight tracking data, as staffing shortages have impacted a widening number of airports, including Houston, Nashville, Dallas, Chicago O'Hare and Newark. The FAA is reducing the number of arriving flights per hour at Chicago O'Hare, citing staffing, with average delays of 41 minutes, and there are also staffing issues at Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center. Arriving flights were being held for up to 30 minutes at Newark due to the staffing issues, the FAA said, while Washington Reagan might see new slowdowns due to low staffing on Tuesday. Nashville air traffic control is facing significant staffing issues and will curtail operations later on Tuesday, the FAA said. Approach control will be taken over later by Memphis Center, it added. Both political parties are pointing the finger at each other for the impacts. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Democrats were to blame for the aviation slowdown, while California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said President Donald Trump was responsible. Severe weather is also impacting flights across the country. Some 13,000 air traffic controllers and about 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers must still turn up for work during the government shutdown, but they are not being paid. Controllers are set to receive a partial paycheck on October 14 for work performed before the shutdown. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Monday the FAA had seen a slight increase in controllers taking sick leave and air traffic staffing has been cut by 50% in some areas since the shutdown started last week. "If we don't have controllers, we're going to make sure the airspace is safe. So what we do is we'll slow traffic," Duffy said on Tuesday on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." FlightAware, a flight tracking website, said more than 3,000 U.S. flights had been delayed on Tuesday, including 225 at Nashville, or 20% of its flights, and more than 570 flights at Chicago O'Hare, or more than 20% of its flights. Southwest Airlines has delayed more than 500 flights and American Airlines 400 flights, FlightAware data showed. In 2019, during a 35-day shutdown, the number of absences by controllers and TSA officers rose as workers missed paychecks, extending checkpoint wait times at some airports. Authorities were forced to slow air traffic in New York, which put pressure on lawmakers to quickly end the standoff. The U.S. has faced air traffic control shortages for more than a decade, and many controllers had been working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks even before the shutdown. The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Sanders and Jamie Freed)

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(Reuters) -Elon Musk's xAI is raising more financing than initially planned, including an equity investment from Nvidia, to bring its ongoing funding round to $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The financing, which includes equity and debt, will be tied to the Nvidia graphics processing units that xAI plans to use in Colossus 2, according to Bloomberg. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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By Abhirup Roy and Harshita Mary Varghese (Reuters) -Tesla rolled out "affordable" versions of its best-selling Model Y SUV and its Model 3 sedan, but the starting prices of $39,990 and $36,990 were too high, some said, to attract a new class of buyers to the electric vehicle brand. CEO Elon Musk has touted the car as a way to tap a wider swath of buyers, saying last year that a price below $30,000, after incentives, was the key. Tesla is trying to reverse falling sales of its aging lineup amid rising competition in Europe and China, and the loss of a $7,500 U.S. tax credit. The new cars drop some premium finishes and features but offer driving ranges above 300 miles. Tesla's stock closed down 4.5% and Tesla bull Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said he was disappointed that the cars were only about $5,000 cheaper than the next-level trims of the models. The new Standard versions cost more than the cheapest U.S. models in September, when the now-expired tax credit was included. Musk has for years promised mass-market vehicles, though last year he canceled plans for an all-new $25,000 EV, Reuters first reported. Instead, he chose to build lower-priced versions based on Tesla's current models, sparking concerns among investors and analysts that the cheaper cars would cannibalize sales of existing vehicles and limit growth. "It's basically a pricing lever and not much of a product catalyst," said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at research firm Futurum Equities. "I don't see it as unlocking new demand at scale." Fearing a drop in demand after losing the tax credits, some automakers in the U.S. have already cut prices while some others have figured out mechanisms to effectively extend the benefit of the incentives. Investors and analysts said dropping the price below $40,000 will help drive sales as the latest offerings compete next year with Chevrolet's Equinox, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia's EV4. Some, though, expected a bigger slash by Tesla to below $30,000. "I just don't know that this is enough," said Shawn Campbell, an advisor at Camelthorn Investments. "Longer term, this news doesn't solve the problem posed by lower cost Chinese competitors in global markets. In my opinion, Tesla needs a sub-30k EV." In Europe, where Musk's far-right political views have undermined brand loyalty, the new entries will be up against more than a dozen electric and plug-in-hybrid models with price tags below $30,000. Sales in the September-ending quarter rose to a record as consumers rushed to take advantage of the EV tax credit before its expiration on September 30, but expectations are that they will slow down for the rest of the year, unless the affordable car comes to the rescue. "The desire to buy the car is very high. (It's) just (that) people don't have enough money in the bank account to buy it," Musk said in July during Tesla's second-quarter earnings call. "So the more affordable we can make the car, the better." 'A WALMART HOODIE' FOR TESLA Both Standard versions offer 321 miles (516 km) of range and less powerful acceleration than the current higher trims, called Premium. The Model 3 includes a smaller battery pack. Both cars can be ordered immediately, with deliveries set to start between December 2025 and January 2026 for many locations, Tesla's website showed.  The Standard versions do not come with Autosteer, Tesla's driver assistance system, touchscreens and seat heating for rear passengers. Tesla has also removed the LED lightbar in the cheaper Model Y. Both come with textile seats, with vegan leather available for the Model 3, and manually adjusted side-view mirrors.  Musk has been pivoting the company toward artificial intelligence, focusing on robotaxis and humanoid robots, but the new cars are key to hopes of near-term revenue growth. "For the market, this is Tesla dropping its Steve Jobs turtleneck and slipping into a Walmart hoodie," said Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point. "It's no longer the cool rebel at the edge of innovation – it's the establishment trying to play both Tesla and Toyota at once." (Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Akash Sriram and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson, Richard Chang, Sriraj Kalluvila and Alan Barona)

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