Wire stories category, Page 50
Inflation weighs on back-to-school buying for many families
NEW YORK — To understand the impact of surging inflation on this year’s back-to-school spending, look no further than children’s rain boots with motifs like frogs and ladybugs made by Washington Shoe Co. Spending held steady for these evergreen items even after the Kent, Washington-based business was forced to pass...
Robinhood cuts 23% of its workforce as fewer users trade
NEW YORK — Robinhood Markets said Tuesday it’s cutting nearly a quarter of its workforce, as crashing cryptocurrency prices and a turbulent stock market keep more customers off its trading app. CEO Vlad Tenev said the company, whose easy-to-use app helped bring a new generation of investors to the market,...
Banana Boat recalls scalp sunscreen spray for cancer risk
The maker of Banana Boat sunscreen is recalling a scalp spray because it contains trace amounts of benzene, a chemical which can cause cancer with repeated exposure. Edgewell Personal Care Co. announced the voluntary recall Friday. It said benzene was detected in internal reviews of Banana Boat Hair and Scalp...
With Frontier deal dead, Spirit ponders sale to JetBlueVideo
Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines agreed Wednesday to abandon their merger proposal, opening the way for JetBlue Airways to acquire Spirit after a monthslong bidding war for the budget carrier. The decision by Spirit and Frontier to terminate their deal was announced while Spirit shareholders were still voting on the...
Stocks rise on Wall Street after new Fed rate hike, earnings
Stocks on Wall Street are solidly higher in afternoon trading Wednesday after the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by a widely expected three-quarters of a point as the central bank ratchets up its campaign to quell surging inflation. The Fed’s move, its second three-quarters of a point hike...
Wawa agrees to payment, security changes for data breach in 2019
HARRISBURG — A Pennsylvania-based convenience store chain will pay $8 million to several states over a 2019 data breach that involved some 34 million payment cards, authorities announced Tuesday. The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office said Wawa Inc. did not take reasonable security measures to prevent hackers from installing malware that...
Explainer: How do we know when a recession has begun?
WASHINGTON — By one common definition, the U.S. economy is on the cusp of a recession. Yet that definition isn’t the one that counts. On Thursday, when the government estimates the gross domestic product for the April-June period, some economists think it may show that the economy shrank for a...
Unilever hikes prices for products but expects strong sales
LONDON — Unilever, the consumer goods giant that owns brands ranging from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to Dove skin care, raised prices by more than 11% between April and June as inflation surged around the world. That shored up revenue in the first half of the year, with the...
Fed set to impose another big rate hike to fight inflationVideo
WASHINGTON — Conflicting signs about the health of the U.S. economy have thrust the Federal Reserve into a difficult spot. With inflation raging at a four-decade high, the job market strong and consumer spending still solid, the Fed is under pressure to raise interest rates aggressively. But other signs suggest...
Ex-U.S. congressman among 9 charged in insider trading cases
NEW YORK — A former U.S. congressman from Indiana, technology company executives, a man training to be an FBI agent, and an investment banker were among nine people charged in four separate and unrelated insider trading schemes revealed on Monday with the unsealing of indictments in New York City. It...
Rents spike as big-pocketed investors buy mobile home parks
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — For as long as anyone can remember, rent increases rarely happened at Ridgeview Homes, a family-owned mobile home park in upstate New York. That changed in 2018 when corporate owners took over the 65-year-old park located amid farmland and down the road from a fast food joint...
Zimbabwe debuts gold coins as legal tender to stem inflation
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe has launched gold coins to be sold to the public in a bid to tame runaway inflation that has further eroded the country’s unstable currency. The unprecedented move was announced Monday by the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, to boost confidence in the...
Janet Yellen says signs of U.S. recession aren’t in sight for nowVideo
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed confidence in the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation and said she doesn’t see any sign that the U.S. economy is in a broad recession. “We’re likely to see some slowing of job creation,” Yellen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I...
Governor seeks to salvage aluminum mill deal promised to Kentucky
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gov. Andy Beshear made a pitch Thursday to a steel company that took over plans to build an aluminum plant once promised to Kentucky, hoping to salvage a deal struck by his predecessor. Beshear said his economic development team has reached out to Steel Dynamics Inc., offering...
Home sales fell in June as prices reach new heightsVideo
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the fifth consecutive month in June as higher mortgage rates and rising prices kept many home hunters on the sidelines. Existing home sales fell 5.4% last month from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.12 million, the National Association of...
Netflix loses nearly 1 million subscribers, but helped by ‘Stranger Things’
The popularity of sci-fi series “Stranger Things” helped Netflix fight back against a stream of subscriber cancellations. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based streamer said Tuesday that it lost 970,000 subscribers in the quarter, marking the second consecutive quarter of subscriber declines. Nonetheless, the drop was not nearly as bad as the...
How weird could things get if Twitter settles with Elon Musk?
As Elon Musk’s imbroglio with Twitter moves from the boardroom to the courtroom, one might expect that, under the watchful eye of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, things will take on a more predictable trajectory than they have so far. In theory, the lawsuit that the social media platform launched Tuesday...
Retail sales up 1% in June, easing fears of a recession
NEW YORK — Consumers picked up their spending from May to June, underscoring their resilience despite painfully higher prices at the gas pump and in grocery aisles and allaying fears that the economy might be on the verge of a recession. U.S. retail sales rose 1% in June, from a...
Crypto plunge is cautionary tale for public pension funds
MINNEAPOLIS — When the Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund bought $25 million in cryptocurrencies, with the fund’s chief investment officer touting their potential, retired fire Capt. Russell Harris was concerned. Harris, 62, has attended the funerals of 34 firefighters killed in the line of duty. He was already worried...
He worked from home and died suddenly. 5 days passed before his body was found
LOS ANGELES — Dominic Green signed out of work as he always did, exactly at 4:30 p.m. “Good afternoon everyone, my shift has ended,” the 28-year-old emailed from his desk in the living room of his Los Angeles apartment on a winter Wednesday afternoon. A remote contract worker, Dominic had...
Is Twitter down? Service appears to return after outage
Twitter appears to be returning for some users after experiencing an hourlong outage that affected both its app and website on Thursday. Individuals attempting to use the social media platform were met with a message saying “Tweets aren’t loading right now. Try again.” According to Downdetector, users began reporting the...
Rite Aid officially moves HQ from central Pa. to PhiladelphiaVideo
It’s the end of an era. One of the most well-known companies in the country no longer has a Camp Hill address. Rite Aid, the long-time East Pennsboro-based pharmaceutical chain has official moved its headquarters to Philadelphia. On Wednesday, Rite Aid opened its new headquarters in the Navy Yard district....
Twitter sues to force Elon Musk to complete his $44B acquisition
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter sued Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday, trying to force him to complete his $44 billion takeover of the social media company by accusing him of “outlandish” and “bad faith” actions that have caused the platform irreparable harm and “wreaked havoc” on its stock price. Back...
Amazon Prime Day comes amid slowdown in online sales growth
Amazon is heading into its annual Prime Day sales event on Tuesday much differently than how it entered the pandemic. The company has long used the two-day event — one of its biggest all year — to lure people to its Prime membership, for which Amazon recently raised the price...
Peloton to stop making its own bikes, treadmills
Peloton will stop making its own interactive stationary bikes and treadmills, outsourcing those duties to a Taiwanese manufacturer as it attempts to revive sales that surged during the pandemic. The New York City company, which recorded its only profitable quarters during the pandemic, is seeking to lower costs after sales...
