Author: William Van-Lear Black

Equifax Chairman and CEO Richard Smith stepped down Tuesday in the wake of a massive cybersecurity breach that exposed the birth dates, social security numbers, and other personal information of 143 million Equifax customers, The New York Times reports. Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. will vacate his post as the company’s president of the Asia-Pacific region to assume the CEO duties in an interim capacity, the Times says. Equifax will consider candidates from both inside and outside the company as permanent replacements. According to the Times, Mark Feidler will become chairman of the board. “Speaking for everyone on the board,…

Coinhive, a Javascript application that uses website visitors’ computing power to mine cryptocurrency, launched on September 14. Since, the program has generated controversy, as website owners and hackers alike insert it into a number of high-profile websites. Coinhive markets itself as a legitimate way for websites to make money, but does not endorse the use of the script without user consent. On September 16, The Pirate Bay, a popular torrent-downloading website, began using the program to mine Monero, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. Visitors to the site noticed spikes in their CPU usage and complained. Later that day, The Pirate…

The Chinese government has disabled Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp, the New York Times reports. Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Paris-based research firm Symbolic Software, told the Times his company began noticing slowdowns in the service Wednesday. By Monday, the block had become comprehensive. Authorities blocked video-chat and file-sharing functions within WhatsApp in mid-July, but the app’s messaging capabilities, which employ a rare and strong form of encryption, remained functional. The government lifted bans on video chat and file sharing later, but has since disabled the app in its entirety, reports say. WhatsApp’s messaging service uses a renowned end-to-end encryption…

As Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi looks to guide the company back to stability after a flurry of corporate upheaval and operational stumbling blocks. Khosrowshahi says the success of the company’s food delivery arm, UberEats, has been a “wonderful surprise,” The New York Times reports. According to the Times, Uber’s aid UberEats generates more revenue than its ride-hailing operations in certain markets, including Tokyo; Taipei, Taiwan; and Seoul, South Korea. Average daily deliveries grew by a factor of 24 from March 2016 to March 2017. Uber’s first forays into the food delivery market came in 2014, when UberEats’ predecessor, UberFresh,…

T-Mobile and Sprint, respectively the third and fourth largest wireless carriers in the U.S., are nearing a merger agreement, undisclosed sources told Reuters Friday. A due diligence period would follow the finalization of the agreement’s terms, but the companies expect a deal by October, according to Reuters’ source. In August, Reuters says, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said an announcement regarding merger talks would come in “the near future.” The merger proposal would be the first one “with significant antitrust risk” to be submitted to the Federal Trade Commission since President Donald Trump took office, Reuters notes. The President was elected on…

Remember when you had to go down to the mailbox or onto your doorstep to pick up items you ordered online? If a program Walmart is testing takes off, people may be asking that question within the next several years. The program will allow delivery drivers to leave packages inside a customer’s home, and groceries in the fridge or freezer, TechCrunch reports. “…we want to do more in the future by delivering groceries and other orders in whatever location works best for our customers – inside the house for some and in the fridge/freezer in the garage for others,” said Sloan…

In January, with funding from Lux Capital and other venture capital firms, two former members of Apple’s Special Projects Group, Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk, started Aeva. The company aims to improve the ability of self-driving cars to see their surroundings, according to New York Times report. Salehian and Rezk are reimagining Lidar—that is, Light Detection and Ranging—technology, which today’s self-driving cars use along with cameras, radar, GPS antennas, and other implements to create a picture of the world around them. Aeva’s lidar, the company says, measures distances more accurately than other such systems. And, unlike other lidar systems, Aeva’s…

Wednesday, the board of reeling technology giant Toshiba announced that it has approved the $18 billion sale of the company’s flash memory operation, Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC), to a group of buyers that includes American venture capital firm Bain Capital, and a pair of government-owned Japanese organizations, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the New York Times reports. The Financial Times says the Japanese government’s involvement in the deal evinces the integrality of Toshiba’s success to the Japanese economy. Toshiba is fighting to stay afloat after its nuclear power subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric Company, lost money on a number of ill-fated…

After a series of struggles, most recently an abysmal fourth quarter of 2016, Crocs, Inc. and its iconic foam clog are making a comeback, the Washington Post reports. The company posted a 28.4 percent year-over-year increase in net profit over the first six months of 2017, and according to the Post. Foot traffic in Crocs stores jumped 12 percent during the back to school season. Founded in Niwot, CO in 2002, Crocs quickly jumped to prominence (or, some might say, infamy) around the world. Former U.S. president George W. Bush, actor Al Pacino, and former model Brooke Shields were all…

Amazon sent several customers e-mail alerts Tuesday notifying them that items on their baby registries had been purchased and were on the way, MarketWatch reports. But, many who received the e-mails did not have registries and were not expecting babies. Some such customers assumed the messages were spam and did not click the link provided. Those who followed the link were directed to a broken page, according to MarketWatch. An informal poll conducted in the Fortune office indicated that most people who received the e-mail did have registries via Amazon. MarketWatch says such customers clicked the link to find that nothing…

There are 2,000 thriving Amish businesses in the Lancaster, PA area, Donald B. Kraybill, a retired professor at Elizabethtown’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, told the New York Times. Many are worth several million dollars. More and more of those businesses are not strictly agrarian. Many now function with the aid of technology, which the Amish traditionally shun. Amish communities are growing rapidly, the Times notes, citing an August report by researchers at Elizabethtown College near Lancaster that estimates the Amish population in the U.S. at 313,000. That figure represents a 150 percent increase from 25 years ago.…

Proterra, the California-based manufacturer of electric buses, said Tuesday that its new, 100 percent electric Catalyst E2 model set a range record at a test track in New Carlisle, Indiana, traveling 1,102.76 miles on a single charge, the LA Times reports. Navistar International, a bus and truck manufacturer that owns the track, verified the test. The previous record belonged to the Schluckspecht-E, a lightweight, single-seat car that demonstrated a range of 1,013.76 miles six years ago. The Catalyst E2 is 40 feet long and weighs almost 20 tons—46 times the weight of the Schluckspecht-E, according to Proterra’s statement. It packs…

In an eCommerce age in which every brick-and-mortar enterprise is expected to roll over and die, Best Buy is adapting to the changing market. Under the guidance of CEO Hubert Joly, Best Buy is engineering an impressive turnaround, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, Best Buy’s revenue has exceeded analysts’ expectations in six of the last seven quarters. The company’s stock has climbed more than 50 percent over the last 12 months. Joly took the reins at Best Buy in 2012, as Amazon was capturing an increasing share of the retail market, and the iconic brick-and-mortar chain was struggling to…

Last Thursday, credit-monitoring firm Equifax announced that hackers had breached its computer systems and compromised the data of as many as 143 million Americans. Thursday, the company confirmed that the perpetrators of the attack did, as rumored, exploit a weakness in Apache STRUTS. Equifax identified the exploited vulnerability as Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638. In March, industry experts pinpointed the CVE-2017-5368 vulnerability. That same month, Apache released a patch to correct it, the New York Times notes. Apache also published instructions describing how to implement the patch. Three days after the Apache STRUTS weakness was discovered, reports surfaced indicating that hackers had…

In yet another effort to appease the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. pharmacy chain Walgreens will likely revise its June proposal to acquire 2,186 individual Rite Aid stores for $5.18 billion, sources told Bloomberg Monday. Walgreens’ announcement could come early this week, the sources said. The two chains have been pursuing a deal for almost two years, but the three proposals they have submitted thus far have met resistance from the FTC. In October 2015, Walgreens proposed an outright takeover of Rite-Aid. Under that deal, the former company would have purchased the latter for $9 per share—that amounts to a…

At 11:00 p.m. Sunday night, workers at General Motors’ CAMI  Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada left their posts and began picketing in front of the facility, Canadian news agency Global News reports. The strike began after GM and Unifor Local 88, a Canadian labor union that represents 3,000 workers, including those at the CAMI facility, failed to reach an agreement by the 10:59 p.m. deadline Sunday. In August, 99.8 percent of the plant’s workers voted in favor of going on strike in such a scenario. The walkout is the first at a Canadian GM facility in more than 20…

The U.S. Air Force announced Wednesday that on Tuesday it awarded Boeing a $600 million contract to design two new aircraft for the President’s Air Force One fleet. Both planes will be 747-8 models; they will replace a pair of aging VC-25A (747-200B) aircraft. President Obama ordered the replacement during his second term, according to LiveScience.com. The Air Force expects the new planes to be operational by 2024. The VC-25As have been in use since 1990, and have carried five different presidents. The Air Force agreed to purchase the replacement planes from Boeing in early August. The la Times quotes…

Bodega, a San Francisco-based startup that operates fully-automated kiosks roughly the size of vending machines, introduced itself to the world Wednesday. The company has raised $2.5 million in a funding round led by venture capital firms Homebrew and First Round Capital, TechCrunch reports. Thirty Bodega kiosks (which the company calls “bodegas”) are already operational in apartment buildings, gyms and office buildings throughout the Bay Area. The company will presumably use the seed money to expand. Bodega users create an account on the company’s smartphone app and input their credit card information. As a customer approaches a kiosk, he/she inputs a…

Bitcoin’s value, which nearly quintupled from the first of the year through the first of September, peaking at $4,950.72 per coin on the latter date, has fallen more than 20 percent this month and over 15 percent in the past seven days, as of 4:15 p.m. EST Wednesday. The decline comes as a number of regulatory agencies and economic experts around the globe express skepticism regarding Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. China banned Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)—the means by which creators introduce and raise capital for new cryptocurrency projects—earlier this month, and Chinese news outlet Caixin reported Friday that the country…

Centene, the United States’ largest Medicaid managed care provider, announced Tuesday that it has reached a “definitive agreement” to acquire Fidelis care for $3.75 billion, USA Today reports.  The deal is scheduled to close in early 2018. It awaits the approval of various New York regulators, who will, among other things, evaluate it for compliance with the NY Not-for-Profit Corporation Law. With the acquisition, Centene expects to generate $60 billion in annual revenue in 2018 and $100 million in savings by 2019. The firm reported $40.6 billion in annual revenue in 2016. Based in St. Louis, the company ranks among…

Credit reporting and monitoring company Equifax is facing at least 23 proposed class action lawsuits in the wake of its announcement Thursday that a cyber attack compromised the personal information of up to 143 million Equifax customers, USA Today reports. Various law firms have filed suits in 14 different states as well as D.C., according to USA Today. More suits will likely come. Victimized customers may receive a pretrial settlement from Equifax, and/or may be entitled to some portion of any financially pejorative judgment levied against the firm. “Equifax probably injured 143 million people, which is kind of a record…with…

Moody’s Analytics estimates that Irma will cost the U.S. economy between $64 billion and $92 billion, CNN reports. Insured losses resulting from the storm will range between $20 billion and $40 billion, the firm said. Moody’s estimated Harvey-related costs between $86 billion and $108 billion, CNBC notes. Harvey and Irma will likely cost a combined $150 billion to $200 billion, Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi says, per CNN. Hurricane Katrina cost the U.S. about $160 billion (adjusted for inflation) when that storm hit in 2005. It was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Irma’s and Harvey’s combined economic…

The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has fined Facebook €1.2 million (just under $1.44 million) for three violations of data protection laws, TechCrunch reports. The two less serious infractions carry fines of €300,000; the more serious one would cost the social networking giant €600,000. The AEPD’s investigation found that Facebook’s privacy policy contains “generic and unclear terms,” and does not adequately familiarize a user possessing “an average knowledge of the new technologies” with the ways in which his/her personal data is collected, stored and used, the regulator said. Facebook gathers data from users’ actions on its site, as well as…

Markets around the world are rising as Florida missed the worst of Irma this weekend, and as North Korea’s founding celebration, which took place Saturday, did not include a missile test, Reuters reports. Irma hit the Florida keys Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, then came into Miami, damaging several buildings and creating a storm surge that caused flooding in the downtown area of the city, The Wall Street Journal reports. The full extent of the damage remains unknown, as many of the hardest-hit areas are still inaccessible. The Journal points out that the National Weather Service expects severe conditions…

Amazon announced Thursday that it intends to build a second headquarters facility in North America, The Washington Post reports. The new location will be “a full equal” to the company’s existing Seattle hub, CEO Jeff Bezos said in the announcement. Amazon will spend more than $5 billion on its new home, which will employ more than 50,000 people making an average salary of $100,000 per year. In addition to the 50,000 long-term jobs, Amazon’s new facility will create “tens of thousands” of ancillary, temporary gigs, the company says. The company has yet to pick an exact location for the new…

Toys “R” Us has hired law firm Kirkland & Ellis as restructuring consultants to help the reeling toy giant negotiate its debt as the holiday season approaches, CBS News reports. The company may seek bankruptcy protection. In its first quarter earnings statement, the company reported over $5 billion in long-term debt as of April 29. Per CBS, $446 million of that is due by the end of this fiscal year, and $2.2 billion is due by the end of next fiscal year. Although Toys “R” Us is privately-held, it reports earnings because its debt is publicly traded, according to CBS. “What…

Deere & Co. announced Wednesday that it has signed a “definitive agreement” to acquire Blue River Technology, an agriculture technology company, in a $305 million deal, TechCrunch reports. The deal will likely be finalized next month. Blue River specializes in “precision farming,” a technique that uses technology to streamline traditional farming methods. Precision farming is crucial to Deere’s future, the company said in its statement regarding the deal. https://twitter.com/JohnDeere/status/905875854802202625 “As a leader in precision agriculture, John Deere recognizes the importance of technology to our customers. Machine learning [read: artificial intelligence] is an important capability for Deere’s future,” said John May,…

IBM will spend $240 million to fund a Watson-branded AI research lab at MIT, CNBC reports. At the facility, MIT and IBM researchers will collaborate to create AI algorithms, optimize AI hardware, study the societal implications of AI, and apply AI to the business world. Researchers will work at the MIT campus as well as at IBM’s nearby Watson Health and Securities Center. Tech companies are increasingly partnering with institutions of higher learning to develop and explore AI technology. DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary dedicated to AI research, has announced plans to open a research facility in Edmonton, Canada, at which…

A recent study conducted by the RAND Corporation suggests that delaying the start of the school day until 8:30 a.m. could boost the U.S. economy by $83 billion over the course of a decade, madison.com reports. Pediatric health experts have long argued that a later start to the school day would better accommodate teenagers’ sleep needs, and would improve students’ concentration, as well as their mental and physical health. According to madison.com, up to 60 percent of teens do not sleep for the recommended eight to 10 hours per night. Researchers have correlated lack of sleep with suicidal thoughts and…

Tuesday, Lego reported a decline in revenue for the first time in 13 years, The LA Times reports. Net profit also fell. The company’s revenue over the first half of 2017 came in at $2.4 billion, a five percent drop year-over-year. Net profit dipped three percent year-over-year, to $544 million. The revenue decrease was especially pronounced in established markets like the U.S. and Europe, but revenue in nascent markets like China grew by double digits, the company said. The press release hints that Lego intends to double down on its presence in China and other budding markets. Sales of new lines,…

Carpooling service Via just completed a funding round, the proceeds of which the company intends to use to expand its service in the U.S. and to establish a presence in Europe, TechCrunch reports. Via will begin London operations in the near future, and Paris service soon after. The amount of the funding round remains undisclosed, but a source told TechCrunch the number was $250 million. Prior to the investment round, Zirra estimated the company’s value between $450 million and $500 million, TechCrunch notes. Following the round, then, Via could be worth as much as $750 million. Via provides carpool service…

Monday, the Chinese government banned the practice of creating and selling new cryptocurrencies, Reuters reports.  With the rise of Blockchain technology, initial coin offerings (ICOs)—which give investors the opportunity to buy newly-created cryptocurrencies—have gained popularity. In total, Reuters says, ICOs have raised $2.32 billion since the inception of the cryptocurrency market; $2.16 billion of that amount has come in 2017. In China this year, 65 ICOs have raised a combined 2.62 billion yuan ($394.6-million) and attracted 105,000 investors, according to Reuters. The value of Ethereum, the cryptocurrency in which most ICOs are transacted, has plummeted on the news. On Sunday,…

Friday, the U.S. Labor Department released hiring and unemployment data for August, The New York Times reports. Employers created 156,000 jobs last month—less than analysts expected. Employers added more than 200,000 in June and July (the Department revised each of those figures downward by 41,000 in this most recent report). August’s figure marks a sequential decrease of 22%. Analysts anticipated a dip, but not one so pronounced. August job-creation figures have come in below analyst expectations in four of the last five years. Still, job creation rose 50 percent year-over-year last month. https://twitter.com/USDOL/status/903652542030151680 The unemployment rate saw a marginal sequential…

A number of organizations have released estimates of the costs of Harvey’s destruction, The Washington Post reports. If the figures are accurate, Harvey will rank among the costliest storms ever to have hit the U.S. A report released Wednesday by risk modeling agency RMS puts the total cost of Harvey’s devastation between $70 billion and $90 billion. The organization notes that these figures are not official estimates and that the costs will continue to rise as flooding persists. “…with the rain still falling heavily and the waters rising, the situation is too fast-moving to be stating with certainty what the…

A photo taken at a Best Buy in Houston after Hurricane Harvey shows 12-packs of Smart Water listed for $29.98 and 24-packs of Dasani water advertised at $42.96. The photo went viral on social media, causing many to accuse the company of price-gouging in the wake of the storm. A Best Buy spokeswoman told CNBC the exorbitant pricing resulted from a “big mistake” made by a few employees at one store. https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/902571298521399296 The company issued a statement Wednesday explaining that because it does not sell water by the case, its computer systems contain no pricing information for cases of water.…

As Uber takes steps to recover from a string of allegations that called its corporate ethics into question, competing ride-share service Lyft is anxious to establish itself as a viable Uber rival, CNBC reports. Thursday, Lyft nearly tripled its coverage across the U.S., adding 160 cities—for a total of 350—and 32 states for a total of 40. 94 percent of Americans, the company says, can now hail a Lyft ride in minutes. The company claims to cover more of the US than any other ride-share service, including Uber. Uber offers service in about 150 US cities. There are holes in…

Tuesday, Cummins, an Indiana-based manufacturer of diesel and natural gas engines for commercial trucks, unveiled a fully-operational, one-hundred-percent electric truck cab, forbes.com reports. The company plans to begin selling the battery systems that power the vehicle to commercial truck fleets and bus operators in 2019. Cummins calls the cab AEOS, Forbes says, after one of the four-winged horses who pulls the chariot of the sun god, Helios, in Greek mythology. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYYk5kbg5Re/ The cab Cummins showed weighs 18,000 pounds (nine tons) and can haul up to 22 tons. A 140 kWh battery pack, which charges in about an hour, gives the…

21st Century Fox announced Tuesday that it will pull Fox News from UK airwaves, The Guardian reports. The network’s final broadcast across the pond took place at 4:00 p.m. local time Tuesday. A spokeswoman told The Guardian: “[Fox] has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK. Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK. We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK.”…

Best Buy’s quarter two earnings report, released Tuesday, shattered analyst expectations, Bloomberg reports. But, the company’s stock has plummeted on CEO Hubert Joly’s warning that the sales growth may not be sustainable. Joly cautioned on the earnings call, per Bloomberg, that investors should not expect comparable sales growth to continue at its second-quarter rate. As of 12 pm ET Tuesday, Best Buy shares are down 11 percent since the market closed Monday. For quarter two, the company reported comparable sales growth of 5.4 percent, more than twice analysts’ expectations of 2.1 percent. Quarter two marks the chain’s best comparable sales growth…

Harley-Davidson, Inc. is set to revamp its Softail lineup with a slew of new 2018 models, Charles Fleming of The LA Times reports. The company told Fleming the new models are “already on their way to dealerships.” The new bikes will weigh less than their predecessors and will feature new engines with more torque. Many will have improved lean angles so that they steer and corner better. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYWMZB7j376/?hl=en&taken-by=harleydavidson The company has announced eight new Softails, according to Fleming: the Fat Boy, the Heritage Classic (formerly the Heritable Softail Classic), the Low Rider, the Softail Slim, the Deluxe, the Breakout, the…

Since June 2, Starbucks stock has fallen more than 16 percent. Shares dipped just over nine percent (to $54.00/share) in 24 hours after the company released its most recent quarterly earnings report on July 27. Investors are losing confidence in the iconic coffee brand due to declining growth rates, Daniel Schönberger of SeekingAlpha writes. Though Starbucks reported an 8 percent jump in revenue and a 12 percent increase in earnings per share last quarter, revenue growth has been falling since the first quarter of 2016, and EPS growth has declined from 37 percent in quarter four of 2013. Still, Schönberger…

Apple announced plans Thursday to build a $1.3 billion data storage center in Waukee, IA, a suburb of Des Moines. Construction will begin early next year, and the facility will be operational by 2020. According to the AP’s David Pitt, the Iowa Economic Development Authority has given Apple $208 million worth of state and local government tax breaks to facilitate the project, which will bring 500 short-term construction jobs and 50 permanent positions to the area. The subsidies include a $188 million in property tax breaks and $19.6 million in sales tax waivers. Apple will purchase 2,000 acres (87.1 million…

Amazon announced in a press release Thursday that it will take control of Whole Foods beginning Monday, The New York Times reports. When Whole Foods stores open Monday, shoppers will see lower prices on a number of products, including bananas, eggs, salmon, tilapia, Fuji and Gala apples, and almond butter. “We’re determined to make healthy and organic food affordable for everyone,” Jeff Wilke, the executive who runs Amazon’s consumer businesses, said in the press release. “Everybody should be able to eat Whole Foods Market quality we will lower prices without compromising Whole Foods Market’s long-held commitment to the highest standards.”…

Chinese authorities have extradited Ji Wenhong, founder of online clothing retailer xiu.com, from Indonesia to face smuggling charges, the AP reports via New York Daily News. Indonesian officials returned Ji to China Saturday. Authorities accuse Ji of having designed a system by which his company illegally imported goods from Europe and the US. Allegedly, the company would order goods from foreign clothing sellers and have the products shipped to Hong Kong. Then, travelers would carry the goods to mainland China, disguising them as personal belongings so as to avoid import taxes. The AP cites Chinese authorities as saying the products…

Icelandic budget airline WOW Air announced Wednesday that it will expand its service to four Midwestern US cities—St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit—beginning in Spring 2018, USA Today reports. WOW will run four flights a week between each city and the airline’s hub, Keflavik International Airport near Reykjavik, Iceland. One-way tickets will start at $99.99. Passengers will have the option of scheduling connecting flights from Reykjavik to any of 12 other cities in Europe, including Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, and more. Connection itineraries originating in the US will start at $149.99 “Our unique opportunity is to use Iceland…

Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signed off on Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, The Washington Post reports. The $13.7 billion deal, which Amazon announced in June, is scheduled to take effect by the end of the year. The FTC said in a statement that it had examined the “proposed acquisition to determine whether it substantially lessened competition.” The deal would give Amazon 2% of the US grocery market, according to the Post. Walmart, which is among Amazon’s fiercest competitors in the grocery space and elsewhere, holds 20% of the market; Kroger has 7%. Last year, Walmart generated $200 billion…

The Village Voice, the liberal, independent newspaper that has been a fixture in New York culture since the mid-20th century, announced Tuesday that it would discontinue its print publication, The New York Times reports. The paper will operate entirely online and will publish on a daily rather than a weekly basis. The publication has not yet finalized the date of its final print edition, a spokeswoman told the Times. The paper’s owner, Peter Barbey, who bought The Voice from Voice Media in October 2015, said in a statement that the decision to go paperless was an effort to keep up…

The US Air Force announced Monday that it has awarded two defense companies—Boeing and Northrop Grumman—each a $359 million contract to design new, land-based, nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), CNBC reports. The companies will compete in what the Pentagon calls the “technology maturation and risk reduction” phase of development, which CNBC describes as the “preliminary design” phase. The development of the new missiles is part of the US Military’s Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) weapon system program. A third potential contractor, Lockheed Martin, has dropped out of the running. The narrowing of the design-competition field marks a…

A host of law firms have proposed class actions against Blue Apron accusing the company of misleading its shareholders, TechCrunch reports. Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. filed one suit, which is more or less a case example of the others, claiming Blue Apron reduced ad spending without notifying shareholders and concealed order-delay obstacles and the resultant customer-retention problems. Quoted from the suit, per TechCrunch: “1) Blue Apron had decided to significantly reduce spending on advertising in Q2 2017, hurting sales and profit margins in future quarters; (2) Blue Apron was experiencing difficulty with customer retention due to orders not arriving…

On Monday, many Americans saw a total solar eclipse for the first time in their lives. The last time United States denizens had a clear line of sight for a total solar eclipse was in 1979, according to a report by Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. So, American workers were more than willing to interrupt their banal daily routines to catch a glimpse of the historical event. And financial experts were busy calculating the losses. According to the aforementioned report, the solar eclipse cost companies throughout the nation almost $700 million in lost time. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas estimated that…

Pharmaceutical giant Mylan will pay $465 million to settle charges that the company had been overcharging Medicaid for EpiPens for a decade, The LA Times reports. Rival Sanofi filed the suit against Mylan under the False Claims Act, which allows companies as well as individuals to sue on behalf of the government when a case involves overcharges for government programs, and to pocket a portion of any resulting settlement. Sanofi will receive $38.7 million. The federal government will split the rest with governments in all 50 states. Following Sanofi’s suit, the Department of Justice launched an investigation, which ultimately revealed…

Thursday, by a vote of 59-30, Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled State Assembly approved legislation that would provide $3 billion worth of incentives—mostly cash—to technology manufacturer Foxconn over 15 years, Reuters reports. Foxconn, based in Taiwan, has proposed to build a 20 million square-foot liquid-crystal display (LCD) plant on a 1,000-acre plot in the southeastern sector of the state. The company’s initial investment in the plant, which would be operational by 2020 will be $10 billion. The bill still awaits approval by the state senate and a joint finance committee, both of which Republicans control. Republicans generally support the bill, while Democrats oppose…

Right wing protesters have a march on Google due to what the group’s website calls “credible Alt Left terrorist threats,” CNET reports. The demonstration, which conservative activist Jack Posobiec organized to protest the firing of engineer James Damore, who distributed this in-house memo about gender and business, was set for Saturday, August 19. The group, known by the monicker March on Google, planned to organize at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA, as well as at Google facilities in eight other cities around the country. “We hope to hold our peaceful march in a few weeks’ time,” the group said.…

As New York commuters suffer through the complications, repairs and shutdowns at Penn Station this summer, the Regional Planning Association (RPA), a think tank dedicated to improving various aspects of life in the tri-state area, has proposed two projects to revitalize the region’s public transportation system, TheRealDeal reports. The plans would cost a combined $10 billion. The RPA’s first plan suggests a new bus station in the basement of the Jacob K. Javits center. The blueprint includes pedestrian walkways from the new station to the No. 7 subway station in Hudson Yards. The organization estimates the cost at $3 billion. According…

In this age of instant gratification, eCommerce retailers like Amazon face a dilemma. A consumer can make a purchase in seconds with a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a screen—it doesn’t get much more instant than that. Then, though, customers must wait for days or weeks before they get their hands on the purchased item. It is arguably the last advantage brick-and-mortar stores have over the eCommerce industry: when customers make a purchase at a physical store, they can walk out with the item(s) in hand. So, Amazon is making a continuous effort to shorten delivery times—to close…

Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler announced plans Wednesday to join an autonomous car development consortium with Germany’s BMW and American tech giant Intel, MarketWatch reports. UK-based Delphi Automotive PLC and German component manufacturer Continental AG each joined the group earlier this summer. Israeli collision-avoidance software developer Mobileye was originally an independent member of the alliance, but in March, Intel acquired Mobileye. The group has released a statement indicating intentions to build a self-driving framework “that can be used by multiple automakers around the world, while at the same time maintaining each automaker’s unique brand identities.” The coalition aims to have a fleet…

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency system that uses mathematical formulas (“cryptography”) in lieu of traditional, centralized financial institutions to protect users’ currency and verify and process transactions. The currency was created in 2009 by an unidentified developer or group of developers operating under the alias Satoshi Naskomoto, who wrote this white paper describing the technology behind the system and the advantages Bitcoin offers in the marketplace. The writer of the paper argues that a monetary system that depends upon a third party to verify transactions cannot make transactions irreversible, as said third-party must always mediate disputes. Moreover, the mediator…

Streaming video service Netflix has $15.7 billion worth of “streaming content obligations,” CNN reports. It plans to pay $6 billion toward those obligations this year. The “streaming content obligations” figure is up more than $3 billion since quarter two 2016, according to CNBC. Several analysts attribute the increase to an intensified focus by Netflix on the creation of original, proprietary content. “The company is actually trying to manage down the amount of content that it’s licensing from other people,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Graham told CNBC. “The plan there really is to draw subscribers to the service with content that Netflix…

As of 2:18 Eastern Monday, a single bitcoin is worth $4,282—an all time high for the cryptocurrency, invented in 2008. The bitcoin-USD exchange has soared more than 200% this year, as investors in Korea and Japan increasingly seek to buy the cryptocurrency—some such investors are willing to pay premiums of up to 30%—and May’s New York Agreement helps it to accommodate expansion. A wide array of investors have jumped on the bandwagon, some more enthusiastically than others. “Whether or not you believe in the merit of investing in cryptocurrencies…real dollars are at work here and warrant watching,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in…

Marcel Goldman is suing The Cheesecake Factory over its billing practices, Buzzfeed reports. When diners request a split bill at the restaurant chain, the “suggested gratuity” figures printed on each customer’s bill are calculated based on the total amount of the collective bill, rather than on an individual diner’s share. Goldman says she paid a “suggested 20% tip” of $15.40, though her individual bill was $38.50. In other words, she paid 40% gratuity on her share of the check. Goldman sent a letter to The Cheesecake Factory’s headquarters in Calabasas, CA, but the company did not reimburse her. The restaurant chain…

Struggling music service SoundCloud just completed a $169.5 million emergency Series F funding round, TechCrunch reports. New York investment bank Raine Group and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek led the round, which Tech Crunch called a “do-or-die moment” for SoundCloud. Soundcloud’s investors approved the financing round on Friday morning, just ahead of the deadline. Last month, the company laid off 40% of its workforce (137 employees), according to TechCrunch. Prior to this most recent investment round, which SoundCloud shareholders approved today, the company was valued at $150 million. In the past, it has been worth as much as $700 million.…

Venture capital firm Benchmark, a prominent Uber investor, is suing the ride-hailing company’s founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick—who, under pressure from Benchmark and other shareholders, resigned as CEO in June amidst a number of scandals—to force him off of the board, Reuters reports via NBC News. The suit claims Kalanick “fraudulently obtained” power of appointment over three of the company’s board seats. In 2016, the board voted to expand its size from eight to 11 members and gave Kalanick unilateral power to appoint the additional members. He used that power to install himself on the board following his resignation.…

In September 2012, South Dakota meat processor Beef Products, Inc. (BPI) sued ABC for defamation over the news agency’s reports concerning a meat additive called Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), which became widely known as “pink slime” following ABC’s story. The suit claimed that the network’s extended coverage of LFTB throughout March 2012 falsely indicated that the product was unsafe, unhealthy, and “not even meat” (Reuters’ words). BPI sought $1.2 billion in damages, alleging that ABC’s coverage of LFTB cost the beef company “hundreds of millions of dollars in profit and roughly half its employees” (Reuters’ words). Indeed, several major players…

Tesla will meet with the California and Nevada Departments of Motor Vehicles to talk about testing a semi-truck in those states, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.  In April, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company planned to “unveil” an electric semi-truck in September. Many had speculated that that vehicle would be autonomous or semi-autonomous. “It’s at least a semi-autonomous truck,” Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., told Bloomberg in April. The reported discussions between Tesla and the DMVs confirm that the semi will drive itself to some degree. A DMV spokeswoman told CNBC that Tesla had “requested the meeting…

Megan Schultz of California sued CVS Health Corporation, the US’s largest pharmacy chain, Monday, accusing the company of charging excessive copayments for certain medicines, The Boston Globe reports. Schultz says she paid a $166 copay for a drug for which she could have paid $92 in cash. The suit was filed in a federal court in Rhode Island, where CVS is headquartered. It alleges that the pharmacy chain has forged agreements with benefit managers—companies that, according to a Bloomberg report, “process prescriptions…and determine whether they will carry a copay”—to conceal the cash price of medicines so that both parties can collect…

The 35 mega-mansions on Presidio Terrace in San Francisco each cost many millions of dollars. They have been homes to some of Washington’s political elite, including House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and California senator Dianne Feinstein. In 2015, Michael Cheng and Tina Lam bought the street itself and its common areas—everything except the houses—for $90,000, The Washington Post reports. Cheng, who makes his living as a real estate investor, told The Mercury News Presidio was “the most unique property I’ve come across, by far.” “I’m talking to my other investors,” he said, “and they’ve never seen anything like this — and…

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has indicated intentions to make inroads into the US ride-hailing market with a multi-billion dollar investment in Uber or Lyft, CNN’s Sherisse Pham reports. At a news conference Monday, Son said his company was “definitely interested” in pursuing a partnership with one of the two ride-hailing operations. Son expects a boom in the ride-hailing industry to accompany the rise of self-driving cars. “…when that stage comes [i.e. when autonomous cars sponsored by ride-hailing companies hit the streets],” said Son, “this ride share business becomes even more important.” SoftBank already holds sizable stakes in a host of…

The technology needed for planes to fly 100 percent autonomously, with no input from a human pilot, could be viable as early as 2025, Ivana Kottasova of CNN reports. Taking pilots off of the payroll could save the airline industry $34 billion a year in training, salaries, and other staffing-related costs, and an additional $1 billion in fuel costs, as pilotless planes would fly more efficiently. If those savings were passed on to consumers, tickets in the US could cost as little as $40 apiece. But few Americans would buy them, a survey suggests. UBS polled 8,000 people and found…

According to an Associated Press report published by Business Insider, cannabis company American Green, Inc. announced Thursday that it is in the process of purchasing the entire town of Nipton, CA, which spans 80 acres and is home to less than two dozen residents, with the intention of turning it into “an energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination.” Nipton’s current owner, Roxanne Lang, said per the AP that the sale was still in escrow, but confirmed that American Green was the buyer. She did not disclose the price but did mention that the town was listed at $5 million when she and…

Marcus Hutchins, the cybersecurity researcher who disabled the WannaCry ransomware, was arrested in Las Vegas Wednesday, August 2 following a July 12 indictment on charges of creating, distributing, and profiting from a malware program that could seize credit card numbers and other banking information, Reuters reported Friday via nasdaq.com. On Friday, Judge Nancy Koppe set Hutchins’ bail at $30,000 dollars. Though she dismissed prosecutors’ claims that the 23-year-old British citizen was a flight risk, she ordered him to surrender his passport. During his bail period, Hutchins will be denied computer use and internet access, and his location will be tracked via…

Toyota announced Thursday that it will join forces with Mazda to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in the U.S., The New York Times reports. The plant will be operational by 2021 and will create 4000 jobs and produce 300,000 vehicles a year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Half of the vehicles would be Toyota Corollas, and the other half would be “an unspecified Mazda model, according to the Wall Street Journal. A source told the Journal the two automakers would also “co-develop electric vehicles, safety features and connected-car technologies.” Mazda and Toyota have shared technology before. In May 2015, they…

In its quarterly earnings call Thursday, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd. dropped its projections of annual profit for the second time this year. Earnings per share is expected to range from $4.30 to $4.50, and dividends have fallen 75%, Bloomberg reports via Fortune. For quarter two, Teva reported a 2% drop in profit despite a 12.86% year over year increase in revenue, as costs of sales rose 32.6%. The greater concern, though, is the $6.1 billion dollars worth of “loss contingencies” the company disclosed, which led to a net loss of almost $6 billion for the quarter. The company’s stock has…

Amazon is amending its returns policy to make it easier for customers to return items they purchased from third party sellers, Ari Levy of CNBC reports. Under the new policy, customers will be able to return such items directly through Amazon, without contacting the seller. The eCommerce giant will also enable “returnless refunds,” meaning merchants can reimburse customers without requesting an item back. According to Levy, Amazon says sellers have advocated such a policy, which would allow them to forgo the cost and hassle of facilitating the return of an item that may be defective, expensive to ship, and/or hard…

The Dow Jones rose 0.45% Wednesday, closing at 22,014.51, crossing 22,000 for the first time in history, Reuters reports. It dropped slightly in after hours trading, but as of 11 am Thursday, it has gained another 0.06%, bringing it to 22,029.11. The Dow’s rise is in large part due to the success of tech giant Apple, which announced its earnings for the third quarter of its fiscal year (ended July 1) Tuesday. The company exceeded analysts’ expectations with 7% year-over-year revenue growth and a 17% year-over-year rise in earnings per share. iPhone sales rose 2% year over year and generated 3%…

Nevada residents now have an extra choice to make as they brew their morning joe: cream, sugar, or…marijuana? According to Claire Shaffer of Newsweek, The Silver State has become the first locale to sell Brewbudz’s cannabis-infused, Keurig-ready “coffee pods,” which have been in development for over a year. The coffee pods come in regular as well as decaf. For those averse to coffee, Brewbudz offers hot cocoa and three different varieties of tea (black, camomile, and decaf). Consumers need not worry about putting downers in their morning pick-me-ups or uppers in their nightly relaxation beverages—Brewbudz is no “hippie speedball.” The…

Müller Battles Corporate Traditionalism As He Pulls Volkswagen Into the Modern Age Volkswagen AG CEO Matthias Müller is fighting against a corporate culture of traditionalism to bring the company into the future of electric vehicles, autonomous driving, digital integration, and ride-hailing partnerships, William Boston of The Wall Street Journal Reports. “Volkswagen must change,” Müller said in May, “because our industry is going to change more deeply in the coming 10 years than in the 100 years before.” Despite widespread support of modernization amongst the company’s shareholders, many top Volkswagen managers continue to prefer traditional approaches in many aspects of the…

An unidentified watchdog organization is urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s new advertising program Store Sales Management (SSM), which collects purchase data and shares it with advertisers, The LA Times reports When Google announced the program in May, saying the “revolutionary” technology would track the credit and debit card purchases of 70% of United States consumers, allowing analysts to draw unprecedented correlations between online ad clicks and brick-and-mortar sales for the first time. Google did not disclose the means by which it obtained the transaction data, nor did the company explicitly confirm that customers had consented to have the data…

Two utilities companies announced Monday that they will abandon construction of a pair of nuclear reactors in South Carolina, Brad Plumer of The New York Times reports. The project has been beset by construction difficulties, regulative hindrances, and financial struggles resulting from decreasing demand for electricity amidst improvements in energy efficiency. The reactors are 40% complete and have already cost a combined $9 billion. The V.C. Summer project, as the effort to build the reactors is known, was proposed in 2007 with a view toward reviving the United States’ nuclear power program. At that time, the country had not built…

Starbucks is set to expand its mobile, “cloud-based” Digital Flywheel technology this fall, Michelle Lodge of The Street reports. The new and improved app, which will be available only to members of Starbucks’ rewards program, will track customers’ ordering patterns, and use “real-time triggers and push notifications” to suggest orders tailored based on a customer’s taste, as well as on factors as specific as the weather, the day of the week, and the occasion Customers will see different suggestions when it is raining than they will when it is sunny. On a customer’s birthday, the app will recommend something special.…

Scripps Networks, the media conglomerate that operates HGTV, the Travel Channel, Food Network, and other channels; and Discovery, which runs The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, etc., have arrived at a $14.6 billion merger deal, Georg Szalai of The Hollywood Reporter reports. The companies believe the merger, which is expected to solidify in early 2018, will facilitate “significant cost synergies,” to the tune of $350 million in savings, and provide new opportunities for digital and direct to consumer sales. The merger will also help Scripps to reach an international audience “through Discovery’s best-in-class global distribution, sales and languaging infrastructure,” the…

Friday, the US Commerce Department published national economic data for the second quarter of 2017. After a sluggish 2016, the economy appears to be modulating toward a strong growth rate. Last year saw the slowest economic growth rates since the recession of the late 2000s, so analysts say the economy is not booming, just regaining equilibrium. “The economy is moving along at a pace that’s unexciting but not worrisome. I wouldn’t want to emphasize that growth is accelerating based on the second quarter. The economy is plodding along at a slow and steady pace,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist…

The FDA announced Friday that it will tighten regulations imposed upon the tobacco industry, with a view toward encouraging manufacturers to produce less addictive cigarettes, Lauren Thomas of CNBC reports. “Envisioning a world where cigarettes would no longer create or sustain addiction, and where adults who still need or want nicotine could get it from alternative and less harmful sources, needs to be the cornerstone of our efforts – and we believe it’s vital that we pursue this common ground,” said FDA commissioner Scott Gotlieb. The agency said it would unveil the outline for a new law enforcement policy “shortly,”…

In its quarter two earnings report, published Thursday, Twitter reported a flatline in Monthly Active Users (MAUs), despite a 12% year-over-year increase in Daily Active Users (DAUs), according to Kurt Wagner of recode.net. Wall Street expected a four percent jump in MAUs after Twitter added 9 million in quarter one. As of 3:45 Eastern, the company’s stock has fallen 14.26% on the news since the market opened Thursday. Twitter added 47 million MAUs in 2014, an average of 11.75 million per quarter. In the two and a half years since, the social media icon has gained just 40 million MAUs—4 million…

Alexander Vinnik, who police allege ran BTC-e and Tradehill, a pair of popular digital currency exchange services, was arrested in Greece Wednesday on charges of laundering over $4 billion for clients involved in a wide range of crimes, Reuters reports. The arrest marked the culmination of a joint investigation spearheaded by the US Department of Justice. Prior to Vinnik’s arrest, the identities of those behind BTC-e were unknown. Vinnik “was charged with 17 counts of money laundering and two counts of engaging unlawful monetary transactions,” according to Stan Higgins of CoinDesk.com. He faces a maximum of 55-years in prison. Prosecutors…

On Tuesday, RootMetrics, a renowned independent research company that collects data on the reliability of cellular networks, released its report for the first half of 2017, Daniel Kline of themotleyfool.com reports. Testers drove 276,607 miles—further than the distance between the Earth and the moon— to perform just under 4.7 million tests of cellular performance. Verizon once again came out on top overall, with a score of 94.5, but competitors closed the gap. AT&T received an overall score of 92.9; Sprint came in third with a score of 87.9, followed by T-Mobile at 86.5.1.6 points separated Verizon and AT&T, the range…

A massive selloff, spurred in large part by last Monday’s earnings call, in which outgoing CEO Jeff Immiet said the company expected the lull of the oil and gas market to continue to cut into profits, has plagued General Electric stock of late. “Given our outlook on oil and gas,” Immelt said in the call, per David Alton Clark of Seeking Alpha,  “we are trending to the bottom end of the range of $1.60 to $1.70 EPS [earnings per share] for the year.” Shares have taken a 4% hit since the earnings call. In fact, they have dipped steadily since the…

If you realize you’re hungry in the middle of a Lyft ride, can you ask your driver to go through a drive-thru? The quandary has plagued hungry passengers ever since the ride-hailing company was established in 2012. But now Taco Bell has partnered with Lyft to create a feature that allows Lyft customers to request a stop at the late night fast food joint with the push of a button, Kate Taylor of Business Insider reports. Taco Mode, as the beta service is called, will be available on a trial basis in Orange County, CA from July 27-29, and again…

Sandell Asset Management, an activist investment firm, has accumulated a large number of shares in Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and is urging the company to go private, CNBC’s Lauren Thomas reports. Sandell, which the Wall Street Journal says is now among the book retailer’s top ten investors, believes Barnes & Noble’s $520 million market value is “unconscionably low,” the result of investors’ skittishness to buy into brick-and-mortar retail operations amidst the continued boom of the online marketplace. On Tuesday, in a letter to the formerly iconic bookstore chain, Thomas Sandell, CEO of the Sandell firm, said investors’ wariness of retail…

China’s most prominent ride sharing company, Didi Chuxing, and SoftBank, a leader in the Japanese telecommunications and internet services industries, have invested a combined $2 billion in southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab, Johana Bhuyan of recode.net reports. Grab expects to collect an additional $500 million dollars during this round of funding. It will use the money to expand geographically, as well as to bolster GrabPay, its mobile pay service. Grab, founded in Singapore in 2012 as “MyTeksi,” now operates in 65 cities across 7 countries in Southeast Asia. The company serves three million daily users, Bhuyan says, and claims to…

Ride-hailing company Lyft announced Friday that self-driving vehicles will be picking up customer  by the end of the year, Brian Fung of The Washington Post reports. The first autonomous Lyft cars will drive on the streets of Boston, but Lyft ultimately aims to create a network of hundreds of thousands of autonomous vehicles, which it will deploy across the country. A litany of factors, including route, traffic, and weather, will determine whether an autonomous car arrives to pick up a Lyft user. The company’s website promises the dispatching algorithm will send a self-driving car only when there is “the highest…

As the FTC investigates Amazon’s pending purchase of Whole Foods for antitrust violations, advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has lodged charges that the eCommerce giant has been misrepresenting list prices so as to make discounts look larger, Diane Bartz of Reuters reports. The FTC, which investigates deceptive advertising as well as antitrust compliance, has yet to launch a full investigation into the allegations, but has made formal inquiries into the matter. Consumer Watchdog examined 1,000 listings on amazon.com, and found list prices (also known as “reference prices”) on less than half of them. Moreover, 61% of the reference prices that were…

A Toyota spokeswoman said Monday the company sold off its shares in American automaker Tesla last year, CNN’s Alec Macfarlane reports. Toyota purchased a stake in Tesla as part of a cooperation agreement the two companies formed in May 2010. Back then, Tesla sold just one model, the avant-garde Roadster. In total, 2400 Roadsters were sold. So, Toyota and Tesla were far from competitors, and Toyota stood to benefit from some of the electric parts Tesla was developing. Soon after the pact was forged, Toyota began production of a RAV4 model that incorporated the Tesla powertrain used in the Roadster.…

Sears announced Thursday that it would begin selling Kenmore appliances on Amazon, Phil Wahba of Fortune reports. By partnering with Amazon, Sears will bring its Kenmore products to a wider market than ever before. “The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.,” Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert said in a statement. Sears Holdings’ stock jumped over 20% on the news in early trading Thursday, to $10.50 a share, but have since modulated to $9.78 per share as of 1:00 Eastern, still an 11% increase since the market…

Google Glass, the heads-up display apparatus resembling a pair of glasses, is making a comeback on the floors of factories around the country, Viad Savov of TheVerge.com reports . The second generation of the product, called Google Glass Enterprise Edition (or Google Glass EE) , has been purchased and is being used by companies like Boeing, GE, and DHL. Today marks the end of a nondisclosure period imposed upon companies using Glass, and the beginning of Google’s parent company Alphabet’s effort to introduce Glass to a larger pool of businesses. So far, companies are pleased with the product. According to…

On Tuesday, Disability Rights Advocates, on behalf of a litany of advocacy groups and individuals, filed a class action discrimination lawsuit against Uber in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court, Winnie Hu of The New York Times reports. The suit claims Uber does not provide adequate service for passengers with disabilities. Of the 58,ooo Uber cars on New York City streets, it alleges, less than 100 are accessible, uberWAV vehicles, which are generally equipped with lift equipment and/or ramps. Moreover, such cars are routinely dispatched to service customers without disabilities. As a result, wait times for customers who require UberWAV service are…

As of 11:17 Eastern Wednesday morning, Harley Davidson, Inc. stock has fallen just under 8%, from $51.96 to $47.82 per share, since the company released its quarter two earnings reports Tuesday morning. The motorcycle behemoth’s stock has not dipped this far since June 2016; on the first of that month, shares were priced at $45.30, according to Yahoo! Finance. Amidst its struggles, Harley plans to cut production for the rest of 2017, Reuters’ Ankit Ajmera reports. The company now expects to ship between 39,000 and 44,ooo motorcycles in the third quarter—that would mean a 20% drop from quarter three of…

The marijuana shortage which befell Nevada’s dispensaries after they sold over $3 million worth of marijuana in the first weekend of sales will be eased by a measure passed by the state’s tax commission Thursday to increase the number of entities who can distribute weed, Grace Donnelly of Fortune reports. After hearing arguments from dispensary owners and alcohol wholesalers concerning whether the alcohol industry was equipped to handle the distribution of marijuana, the commission voted unanimously to pass legislation that will permit businesses outside of the liquor industry to apply for distribution licenses. Presumably, the state’s former medical marijuana distributors,…

As earnings reports for the second quarter of 2017 continue to roll in, the stock market remains strong despite “political gridlock,” disappointing quarterly statistics from a number of financial institutions, and uncertainty in the healthcare sector, Reuters’ Kimberly Chin reports. The S&P financial sector is trending downward as shares of banks like JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup take hits following the release of disappointing earnings reports and underwhelming quarter 3 projections. Bank of America has fallen 1.3% on its own tepid earnings report since the market opened Monday. Nonetheless, the S&P 500 rose 1.47 points (0.06%) Tuesday and set…

Monday, the US Federal Reserve Bank fined BNP Paribas $246 million in connection with a widespread scandal involving the fixing of currency markets, the BBC reports. In a press release, the Federal Reserve claimed to have “found deficiencies in BNP Paribas’s oversight of, and internal controls over, FX [foreign exchange] traders who buy and sell U.S. dollars and foreign currencies for the firm’s own accounts and for customer.” “The firm [BNP Paribas] failed to detect and address that its traders used electronic chatrooms to communicate with competitors about their trading positions,” the statement continues. In a statement of its own …

Two trains lost power at Penn Station Saturday, temporarily stranding a combined 765 passengers, Thomas Tracy of The New York Daily News reports. Officials have attributed both malfunctions to “electrical issues with overhead wires,” Tracy says. A third train, sent to aid in rescue efforts, stalled due to the same problems. The first train, an Amtrak train arriving from Miami with 165 passengers, “became disabled just west of [Penn] station,” an Amtrak spokesman said. After the first rescue train failed to reach the stranded passengers, a second locomotive “was sent in and towed everyone to safety,” Tracy says. The whole…

At the urging of the USDA, Marathon Enterprises, Inc. has issued a class 1 recall on over 7 million pounds of hot dog products, most of which bore the Sabrett brand name, Reuters reports. According to the USDA, a class 1 recall indicates a “reasonable probability” that a product will cause “serious, adverse health consequences or death. Thus far, the only reported “adverse health consequence” resulting from the recalled products is a “minor oral injury” one consumer sustained while eating one of the hot dogs, in which a number of buyers have allegedly found bone and cartilage in the meat.…

FanDuel and DraftKings have made a joint decision to abandon efforts toward a merger that faced heavy opposition from federal antitrust regulators, Alex Schiffer of The Washington Post reports. The deal, which the companies agreed to pursue in November, would have given the merged company 90% of the market share in the daily fantasy sports sector, the Federal Trade Commission said when it announced its intention to intervene. Following the FTC’s statement against the alliance, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order against the deal, Schiffer said in a…

Delta Airlines, Inc. published its earnings report for the second quarter of 2017 on Thursday, according to Reuters’ Alana Wise and Arunima Banerjee. For investors, the report was a mixed bag. Profit fell 21% as compared to quarter 2 of 2016: net income dropped to $1.22 billion from 1.55 billion a year ago. However, passenger unit revenue (PUR), which Reuters says “measures sales according to flight capacity,” rose 2.5%. Stocks across the industry, which had been trending upward recently as a result of sector-wide increases in PUR, dipped following Delta’s report. Delta’s own shares fell 2% Thursday, closing at $54.35.…

Todd Snyder and Raf Simmons, two renowned menswear designers who showcased their work at New York Fashion Week: Men’s this week, have made their livings putting at fashion shows. What turned heads Monday, though, Max Berlinger of The New York Times reports, was each man’s ability to put on a different kind of show: a party. Immediately following Snyder’s fashion show Monday, the Cadillac House ceased to be a modeling venue and became a makeshift lounge of sorts. Spectator seating disappeared, paving the way for an army of waiters carrying trays filled with avocado, squid crostini, champagne, and vodka. Snyder…

The state of Minnesota is suing CenturyLink over alleged “deceptive billing practices,” according to a report by Polly Mosendz and Scott Moritz of Bloomberg. The state suit comes as CenturyLink battles a private $12 billion class action claim which accuses the company of having billed customers for unwanted services, and as the company pursues a $34 billion merger with Level 3 Communications, Inc. Minnesota’s complaint charges that “”CenturyLink has regularly misquoted the price of its internet and television services to Minnesota consumers,” and cites a CenturyLink employee as saying that “maybe 1 out of 5” of the recorded sales she…

Trump Hotels announced Tuesday that data had been breached at 14 of its locations, including those in Las Vegas and Chicago, CNBC reports. Customers’ payment card numbers and security codes were seized by hackers who entered the systems of Sabre, a third party that manages reservations for Trump Hotels. Lee Matthews of Forbes says hackers accessed Sabre’s SynXis Central Reservations system, which contains data pertaining to just 35,000 of Sabre’s 100,000 plus clients. A Sabre spokesperson told Matthews that “less than 15 percent of the average daily bookings on the Sabre Hospitality Solutions reservation system[…]were viewed”” Sabre learned of the attack…

The Audi A8, which debuted Tuesday at the Audi Summit in Barcelona, represents the company’s boldest foray yet into the next generation of auto manufacturing. The car should make its way onto the road in 2018. At the time of this writing, Audi has not released pricing information. The A8 will feature the most advanced autonomous driving technology of any Audi ever made, Benjamin Zhang of businessinsider.com reports. It will be able to take full control of itself on divided highways at speeds under 37.3 miles per hour, using cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and a front-mounted radar. In total, the car…

By a 9-0 vote this week, Seattle’s city council passed a measure that would require residents to pay a 2.5% tax on income over $250,000. Couples who file jointly would be taxed on household income over $500,000, Rick Anderson of the LA Times reports. Though conservative activists have already taken legal action against the tax, it is scheduled to be implemented in 2019. As the Trump administration reduces federal funding to cities, Seattle’s local government is seeking alternative revenue sources, so as to continue its climate change, affordable housing, transit, and education programs. Mayor Ed Murray wants to “ensure Seattle…

The American fashion industry is struggling. In the past year, a number of formerly iconic American clothing retailers have shut their doors. True Religion Apparel, Inc. became the latest casualty earlier this month. Such brands are being pushed out of the market by foreign enterprises like H&M of Sweden and Spain’s Zara, which employ a “fast fashion” business model in which clothes move as quickly as possible from runways to store shelves so that companies can keep up with ever-changing consumer tastes. But New York Fashion Week: Men’s, which kicked off Monday, may provide a much-needed spotlight that will reestablish…

In the first three days after Nevada dispensaries began selling marijuana under the state’s new legislation permitting recreational use of the substance, the state’s 47 pot stores pulled in a combined $3 million dollars in revenue. Nobody anticipated the demand. Now, just ten days after marijuana went on sale at midnight on July 1, the supply at the dispensaries is all but depleted, and at the urging of Nevada’s taxation department, Governor Brian Sandoval has called for a “state of emergency” which would ease regulations halting distribution. In a concession to the liquor industry, which feared legal marijuana would hamper alcohol…

Shares of Snap, Inc. were valued at $16.99 when the market closed Monday, marking the first time the stock has dipped below its $17 IPO price since the company went public in March. The drop comes as the market anticipates a massive selloff of Snap stock when a lockup period, which prevented investors who bought Snap’s IPO from offloading their shares, expires on July 29. At that point, more than 60% of Snap’s stock will become eligible to be sold. Snap entered the public market with a $24 billion valuation, one of the loftiest ever amongst technology companies. Investors bought…

Monday, Midwest electric companies Westar Energy and Great Plains Energy announced plans for a merger. According to Morgan Chilson of The Topeka Capital-Journal, no cash would be exchanged, and neither company would take on any debt as a result of the agreement, which has a “combined equity value” of $14 billion. Westar CEO Mark Ruelle insists “neither company is buying the other” in the deal, which is significantly revised from a previous proposal the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) denied in April. Under that deal, GPE would have purchased Westar for $12.2 billion. Despite widespread support of the takeover amongst both…

Amazon will build a new “fulfillment center” in Orange County, Florida, just south of the Orlando airport, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The company acquired the land on which the 850,000 square foot facility is to be built from Tavistock Development, who has long been working to bring large companies into the area. “We are bullish on attracting well respected, global brands like…Amazon to Lake Nona [an Orlando business district Tavistock helped create],” said Tavistock president Jim Zboril. It is easy to see why. The new center is expected to employ about 1500 people to “pick, pack, and ship small items…like…

Amidst a flurry of commitments by carmakers and governments around the globe to increasingly adopt hybrids and fully electric vehicles, France announced Thursday that it plans to end the sale of automobiles powered by gas and diesel by 2040. The average lifespan of a fossil fuel powered automobile is 15 years, so such vehicles could disappear from French roads by 2055. The plan is part of France’s multi-faceted effort to fulfill its responsibilities under the Paris Agreement, a concerted effort amongst many United Nations members to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change. France will also aim to stop…

AT&T’s $85 billion proposal to acquire  Time Warner, the media and entertainment conglomerate that owns CNN, HBO, and others, has been submitted to the government for antitrust review. Given the tension between CNN and US President Donald Trump, many fear that the White House will use the review process as political leverage against the news network. However, Makan Delrahim, whom Trump appointed as head of the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, has said he does not see any significant dangers in the bill. If the bill does not violate any antitrust regulations, the Trump administration will have no…

Beginning in 2019, Volvo will stop producing automobiles powered solely by gasoline and will build hybrids and fully-electric vehicles exclusively, CEO Hakan Samuelsson announced in a statement Wednesday. The Sweden-based, Chinese-owned company will be the first mainstream auto manufacturer to offer only electrified vehicles. “People increasingly demand electrified cars and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs,” Samuelsson said. Today, only 3% of cars sold worldwide are electric, but Navigant Research expects electrified vehicles to account for about 9% of global new car sales by 2025. That year, Volvo aims to sell 1 million fully electric…

True Religion Apparel, Inc. announced Wednesday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. The company joins a host of fellow California apparel enterprises, including American Apparel Inc., Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., Nasty Gal Inc. and Wet Sea, who have also gone bankrupt. The outbreak of retail failures comes as consumers continue to shun traditional stores in favor of online shopping. According to a 2016 study by performance marketing firm HookLogic, 63% of shoppers make most of their clothing purchases online. Macy’s, J.C. Penny, Sears, and Payless have all shut the doors of many of their physical retail…

British payment processing company Wordplay announced Tuesday that JP Morgan Chase and Vantiv had each expressed interest in acquiring it. Wordplay made the announcement without either suitor’s consent. The New York Times did not receive comment from either prospective buyer. Negotiations were thought to be in the early stages, and many wondered whether a deal would ever be reached. Wednesday morning, Wordplay announced that it had accepted a $10 billion buyout offer from Vantiv, an American competitor. After the announcement Tuesday, which came amidst widespread media speculation that a takeover of Wordplay might be on the horizon, Wordplay’s stock jumped…

Historically, Apple is notoriously hush-hush about its new products, especially its iPhone. Leaks promising new features on a given Apple product are rare, vague, and probably false. Information regarding the iPhone 8, iPhone 7S, and iPhone 7S Plus, however, has been leaking profusely over the past two weeks or so. Famed iPhone insiders Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities and Mark Gurman have just produced the leak to end all leaks, delineating 25 new features of all three iPhone models, which are expected to release this autumn. The screen on the 7S will measure 4.7 inches, making it almost a full…

US automakers reported a decline in new vehicle sales for the fourth straight month on Monday. Experts anticipated the dip, which comes on the heels of a record-setting 2016 in which 17.55 million new vehicles were sold. Retail sales numbers, which account for the sale of used cars, remain stable, and industry stocks are rising despite the underwhelming reports. GM’s shares increased by 1.8% Monday, despite a 5% drop in sales as compared to last June. Ford’s shares jumped 3.3%. GM’s chief economist, Mustafa Mohatarem, notes that “key U.S. economic fundamentals clearly remain positive,” and expects “U.S. retail vehicle sales…

Tesla, Inc. plans to mass produce a budget-friendly electric automobile for the first time. With a $35,000 price tag and a range of 215 miles per charge, the company’s new Model 3 will cater to the average consumer. Tesla aims to produce 30 Model 3s by the end of July, and 20,000 a month (240,000 per year) beginning in December. CEO Elon Musk wants “to get as many cars on the road as possible,” he says. At least 380,000 people, 93% of whom would be first time Tesla customers, have paid $1,000 refundable deposits to reserve Model 3s. If production…

When a little drone built with the backing of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg touched down in May at Yuma Proving Ground, an Army testing facility in southwestern Arizona, no one hardly heard it. It didn’t even make the news until two months later. But that drone, and a fleet of others like it, may one day fly around the world bringing internet connectivity to about 4 billion people who currently live without it. The billionaire has dubbed the project “Aquila.” The solar powered “planes” will use lasers accurate enough to “hit a dime more than 11 miles away while in…

A newly-designed Chinese rocket slated to carry the country’s heaviest ever satellite failed Sunday, Chinese news outlet Xinhua reports. The Chinese plan to conduct “further investigation” into “an anomaly [that] occurred during the flight of the rocket” and allegedly caused its failure. No information has been provided regarding the nature of either the “anomaly,” or the “investigation” China will perform. A rocket of the same design was expected to deliver a lunar probe to the moon on behalf of the Chinese later this year, as China continues preparation to become the third country, after the United States and the Soviet…

Eugene Kapersky, CEO of security company Kapersky Labs, has agreed to share his company’s source code with the US Government in order to “prove that we don’t behave maliciously.” Kapersky Labs, which operates out of Russia and has mediated interactions between the US and Russian governments for years, has apparently become a casualty of the United States’ mounting suspicion of Russia. In the wake of rumors that Russia hacked the 2016 US presidential election and suspicions of Russian connections to President Trump’s campaign, a proposal to sever all relationships between the Department of Defense and any US government agency employing…

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will allocate an additional $1 billion toward the revitalization of public transit throughout the state, and ease environmental regulations and other red tape, which have hitherto impeded the effort. Cuomo’s actions come in response to the mounting danger and inefficiency of New York’s public transportation. Only 63% of MTA subways have arrived on time in 2017. That figure represents a considerable drop since 2011 when 85% of subways arrived punctually. The greater concern is the risk of derailment and other hazardous malfunctions; that risk is exacerbated by the age and disrepair of the subway infrastructure. Earlier…

Blue Apron, the $1 billion dollar online food delivery startup that sells “meal kits” containing everything the customer needs to make a meal at home, opened on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday at $10 a share. The company initially anticipated pricing its IPO in the range of $15-17 per share. The decision to enter the public market at just $10/share is likely a reaction to Amazon’s June 17 announcement that it will acquire Whole Foods in a $13.7 billion deal. Since 2010, only 4% of internet companies have dropped their expected IPO range. The value of Blue Apron’s shares…

The estates of Michael and Andrew Madoff, heirs to the fortune of their father Bernie, will keep just under $4 million dollars after approximately $18 million is seized to pay a legal settlement with Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee tasked with collecting the money lost by Madoff’s investors. Half of the money awarded in the settlement will go to the Madoff Victim Fund, which has paid out $9 billion to those Madoff cheated since it was created by the Department of Justice after Madoff’s conviction. The estate of the senior Madoff’s younger son, Andrew, will retain about $2 million; that…

When a company’s name becomes a verb in the dictionary, there may be evidence of a monopoly. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that EU antitrust regulators have declared Google a monopoly and accused the tech behemoth of “anti-competitive practices.” The EU’s ruling was accompanied by a $2.7 billion fine and is expected to be followed by further regulation as the EU continues an aggressive investigation of the mobile phone and online advertising arms of Google’s business. Google’s new monopoly status makes it easier for competitors to bring civil suits against the company. “We can expect to see a series…