Business category, Page 134
Company holiday parties are back — but with some restraint
NEW YORK — Say goodbye to virtual wine tastings, and bust out the karaoke. Love them or hate them, company holiday parties back — in a toned-down kind of way. After more than two years of working in pajama bottoms and clinking glasses over Zoom, many office workers seem to...
The problems with using buy now, pay later to fund travel
Book a flight or hotel room now, and pay it off later? It’s an increasingly common trend in travel spending. Companies like American Airlines , United Airlines and vacation rental website Vacasa now offer the option to make reservations now and pay it back incrementally over time with “buy now,...
3 West Virginia reporters who condemned interview of ex-coal CEO fired
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Three reporters from a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in West Virginia say they have been fired after publicly criticizing an interview conducted by their company president with a former coal executive who was convicted of a safety violation in connection with the worst U.S. mine disaster in decades....
Wawa goes west: Convenience chain is eyeing locations in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana
Wawa is scouting new store sites in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, with the first gas-and-sandwich convenience stores under the flying-goose signs to be announced next year and opened after 2025, the company said recently. It also plans to move into Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia by 2024. The company...
ByHeart recalls baby formula because of potential bacterial contamination risk
A company that makes baby formula has voluntarily issued a recall of five batches “out of an abundance of caution” after a third-party packaging facility sample tested positive for the bacteria, cronobacter sakazakii. ByHeart said none of its product has tested positive for bacteria and the recall is not related...
FTX’s Bankman-Fried charged by U.S. for scheme to defraud
NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors charged Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with a host of financial crimes and campaign finance violations on Tuesday, alleging he played a central role in the rapid collapse of FTX and hid its problems from the public and investors....
Wall Street closes higher after inflation cooled in November
NEW YORK — Stocks on Wall Street finished higher Tuesday after a report showed inflation cooled more than expected last month, cementing expectations that the Federal Reserve is about to dial down the size of its interest rate hikes. The encouraging inflation data raised hopes for easing pressure on the...
U.S. inflation slowed sharply to 7.1% over past 12 months
WASHINGTON — Inflation in the United States slowed again last month in the latest sign that price increases are cooling despite the pressures they continue to inflict on American households. Consumer prices rose 7.1% in November from a year ago, the government said Tuesday. That was down sharply from 7.7%...
Musk’s Twitter disbands its Trust and Safety advisory group
Elon Musk’s Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform. The council had been scheduled to meet...
John Dorfman: Bunny Portfolio has averaged 13.6% per year
What do you call a stock that has a great earnings-growth history yet sells for modest price? You might call it a paradox. I call it a candidate for the Bunny Portfolio. I invented the Bunny Portfolio in 1999 and have written about it almost every year since. It’s named...
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrested in the Bahamas
NEW YORK — The former CEO of failed cryptocurrency firm FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government, U.S. and Bahamian authorities. Bankman-Fried had been under criminal investigation by the two countries following the collapse last month of FTX. The firm filed...
Wall Street rises ahead of year’s last barrage of rate hikes
Stocks closed higher Monday as Wall Street kicked off a busy week when central banks are likely to unload the year’s final barrage of interest-rate hikes meant to drive down the world’s painfully high inflation. The S&P 500 rallied 1.4%, trimming its loss for the year to 16.3%. The Dow...
U.S. reports another Takata air bag death, bringing toll to 33
DETROIT — U.S. safety regulators are urging drivers once again to make sure their vehicles haven’t been recalled after another person was killed by an exploding Takata air bag. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday that the person was killed in a crash involving a 2002 Honda Accord...
Fight to curb food waste increasingly turns to science
Hate mealy apples and soggy french fries? Science can help. Restaurants, grocers, farmers and food companies are increasingly turning to chemistry and physics to tackle the problem of food waste. Some are testing spray-on peels or chemically-enhanced sachets that can slow the ripening process in fruit. Others are developing digital...
Amazon will tip your delivery driver if you ‘thank’ them through Alexa
Amazon customers with Alexa-enabled devices can send a dose of goodwill to their delivery driver through a program the company announced this week. And the gratitude won’t cost the customer anything. Customers can use the device to say “Alexa, thank my driver” to have an appreciative message — and $5...
Short stack, short staff: Restaurant industry still hurting for workers
For Tracy Allison, a bartender who serves the dining room at Ligonier Tavern and Table while completing a host of other tasks, finding good employees has been an ongoing challenge. “I have no earthly idea why” it has been so hard to attract and retain workers, said Allison, a Ligonier...
New York Times journalists, other workers on 24-hour strike
NEW YORK — More than 1,000 New York Times journalists and other staff walked off the job for 24 hours Thursday, frustrated by contract negotiations that have dragged on for months in the newspaper’s biggest labor dispute in more than 40 years. Hundreds of reporters, editors, photographers and other employees...
FTC sues to block Microsoft-Activision Blizzard $69B merger
The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued to block Microsoft’s planned $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard, saying it could suppress competitors to Microsoft’s Xbox game console and its growing games subscription business. The FTC’s challenge could be a test case for President Joe Biden’s mandate to...
Women sue Musk’s Twitter alleging discriminatory layoffs
Two women who lost their jobs at Twitter when billionaire Elon Musk took over are suing the company in federal court, claiming that last month’s abrupt mass layoffs disproportionately affected female employees. The discrimination lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal challenges over Musk’s decimation of Twitter’s workforce...
Wiz Khalifa to make W.Pa. stops to push his medical marijuana products
Rapper Wiz Khalifa is making another mark on the Pittsburgh area — his medical marijuana products will be available at Trulieve locations statewide starting Monday. Khalifa, a graduate of Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill, will be back in his old neighborhood at the Trulieve location there, as well as...
Apple: Most iCloud data can now be end-to-end encrypted
BOSTON — As part of an ongoing privacy push, Apple said Wednesday it will now offer full end-to-encryption for nearly all the data its users store in its global cloud-based storage system. That will make it more difficult for hackers, spies and law enforcement agencies to access sensitive user information....
New York Times journalists, other workers on 24-hour strike
NEW YORK — Hundreds of New York Times journalists and other staff walked off the job for 24 hours Thursday, frustrated by contract negotiations that have dragged on for months in the newspaper’s biggest labor dispute in more than 40 years. Reporters, editors, photographers and other employees planned a rally...
Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ stir controversy on social media
Drama surrounding billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter continues to escalate as a series of tweets deemed “The Twitter Files” showcases the social media giant’s internal struggle over the 2020 story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter Biden is the son of President Joe Biden, who was a...
‘City of Steel’ lets former workers chronicle the rise and fall of Pittsburgh steel industry
When Bruce Spiegel was a child, he would look out his Greenfield window at the heart of American industry: the U.S. Steel Homestead Works. “I would look out into the night and watch the Homestead furnaces blowing blue flames,” Spiegel said. “I thought steel-making was never going to end.” In...
Juul reaches settlements covering more than 5,000 cases
Juul Labs has reached settlements covering more than 5,000 cases brought by about 10,000 plaintiffs related to its vaping products. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Juul said that it has secured an equity investment to fund it. Juul rocketed to the top of the U.S. vaping...
