Britons woke up this morning to news that the UK economy shrunk by 20.4% in the second quarter, the worst slump on record and the biggest drop of any major global economy. The crash follows a 2.2% contraction in the first quarter, meaning the economy is officially in recession. The country’s finance minister, Rishi Sunak,…

After news of a massive federal loan caused Eastman Kodak’s stock to skyrocket, a company insider donated millions of shares to a religious nonprofit for which he has served as president. On July 29, the peak of Kodak’s recent 2,757% stock surge, a member of the company’s board of directors, George Karfunkel, and his wife…

UK economic output shrank by 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020, the worst quarterly slump on record, pushing the country into the deepest recession of any major global economy. This crash in GDP in the April-June period, compared with the first quarter, is the worst since quarterly records began in 1955. Industries most exposed…

Add Dr Pepper to the list of pandemic-induced shortages. Like toilet paper before it, the popular soda is widely unavailable in some parts of the US. The shortages apply to every flavor, Dr Pepper said in a note on Twitter. The low inventory is the result of increased demand for the product, according to Keurig…

TikTok has picked the first round of content creators to be on the receiving end of a $200 million fund designed to reward their top users and bring in new ones. The video app announced the new program on July 22 with the intention of supporting “ambitious creators who are seeking opportunities to foster a…

Robert Davis, a bartender at the Atlanta airport, was never late paying rent prior to Aug. 1. But that didn’t stop his landlord from sending him an eviction notice on Friday. A day earlier, the 51-year-old single dad who was furloughed in March wrote a letter to his apartment building’s owners explaining his predicament and…

Airbnb is reportedly close to filing to go public, marking a surprise turnaround for the company that recently cut a quarter of its workforce during the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reports that the home-sharing company is planning to file IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission later this month and could be publicly…

Teen Vogue is joining the ranks of other news organizations by dedicating resources to covering voting rights ahead of the November elections. “The Uncounted,” launched on Tuesday by the Condé Nast-owned magazine, is a series about disenfranchised voters that specifically highlights the stories of women of color. The digital cover for its August issue, titled…

Investors have piled into tech stocks during the coronavirus pandemic, sending shares in companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple into the stratosphere as demand for their services increased. The same has happened for Japan’s SoftBank, but for different reasons. Not so long ago, it looked like the conglomerate was in pretty rough shape.…

20th Century Fox, one of the most-recognized names in entertainment history, is officially no more. Disney announced on Monday it would be rebranding one of its TV studios, 20th Century Fox Television, as 20th Television. The new name cuts both the “Century” and the “Fox” from the studio’s name. The move follows Disney dropping the…

The S&P 500 is so close to a new record high — its first since the pandemic hit and exceeding its all-time high from February. The stock index fell short of a new peak on Tuesday, but it remains just an arm’s length away. A new all-time high in the next few days would mean…

IAC recently spun off its stake in Tinder-owner Match. But the company apparently has its sights set on people taking a different kind of gamble: It has bought a nearly $1 billion stake in MGM Resorts. The stake purchased by IAC, a conglomerate run by media mogul Barry Diller, amounts to about a 12% interest…

Saudi Aramco said Sunday that its net profit plunged 73.4% in the second quarter to $6.6 billion. But CEO Amin Nasser said there are signs of improvement as coronavirus shutdowns ease. It was the second consecutive quarter of falling earnings at the world’s top oil producer — net profit in the January-March period slumped 25%.…

Ousted McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook lied to the board about the extent of his relationships with employees, the company alleged in a new lawsuit. He misled investigators about engaging in physical sexual relationships with three employees in the year before his ouster, according to the documents. Now, McDonald’s is suing Easterbrook for the amount of…

Amazon may replace closed department stores at struggling malls. The company is in talks with Simon Property Group, the largest mall owner in the United States, to convert former or current JCPenney and Sears stores into distribution hubs to deliver packages, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Both retail chains have filed for bankruptcy (Sears…

The BBC has apologized for airing an uncensored racial slur in a news segment, after initially defending the use of the word in a report broadcast last month. Social Affairs Correspondent Fiona Lamdin used the N-word in a segment on an apparently racially aggravated assault in the city of Bristol, sparking more than 18,600 complaints…

A group of Democratic women leaders is calling out sexist coverage of female Democratic vice presidential contenders — and they’re asking that newsrooms to do better. In an open letter to top newspaper and network executives, the group said newsrooms should not merely pay attention to problematic stereotypes of women being considered for the position,…

In May, millions of Americans watched as Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, two veteran NASA astronauts, strapped into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and took a 17,000 mile per hour ride to the International Space Station. It was the first time NASA astronauts launched from US soil since 2011 — and the first time in…

Berkshire Hathaway is recovering from a rough start to a year in which it was hard hit by the coronavirus. Its second quarter earnings, released Saturday morning, were up almost 87% from last year, and a big turnaround from its huge first quarter loss. Billionaire Warren Buffett’s industrial and insurance conglomerate is typically considered a…

On March 2, Wendy’s finally launched its highly anticipated breakfast menu nationwide. Then, two weeks later, the morning commute basically collapsed because of lockdown measures encouraging people to work from home. Wendy’s breakfast should’ve flopped because of this. It didn’t. The appetizing array of new menu items, like the Breakfast Baconator and Frosty-ccino, have been…

If you get paid more to stay at home than go to work, why would you go to work? That’s the logic Larry Kudlow, the White House’s Director of the National Economic Council, and the Trump administration subscribe to. In a testy back and forth with CNN’s Poppy Harlow, Kudlow said Republicans want to scale…

Up to 40 million Americans could be evicted by the end of this year, according to a new report published Friday by the Aspen Institute. The report warns that the United States may be facing the most severe housing crisis in history if conditions do not change, with up to 43% of renter households facing…

In just a matter of months, reusable face masks — the kind you wash and wear — have quickly evolved from being a niche product to an essential public health item in the fight against the spread of the pandemic. This has led to a sudden, immediate consumer demand for cloth face masks for daily…

Shopping online during the upcoming holiday season could get more expensive if it’s delivered by UPS. The company will begin imposing surcharges of several dollars on companies that ship a huge amount of items this fall and early winter, anticipating rising costs as more more people shop online because of coronavirus. The new fees would…

The US economy added another 1.8 million jobs in July, a sharp slowdown from June and a small step for an economy that’s still down 12.9 million jobs during the pandemic. It was the third-straight month of improvement after the spring lockdown that decimated the labor market, and the July job gain exceeded economists’ expectations.…

Hasbro says it is pulling a Trolls doll from store shelves after a petition with over 150,000 signatures accused the toymaker of promoting child abuse by placing a button on the doll’s “private area under her skirt.” The “DreamWorks Trolls World Tour Giggle and Sing Poppy” has a button on her stomach that when pressed…

Three Bon Appétit journalists of color said Thursday they will no longer participate in the Condé Nast-owned food brand’s popular video series. Priya Krishna, Sohla El-Waylly and Rick Martinez posted simultaneous announcements on social media about their decisions following their unsuccessful contract negotiations with the company. Krishna and Martinez alleged in their posts they were…

The US government and Federal Reserve on Thursday took action against Capital One in response to the bank’s massive 2019 data breach. The Fed filed a cease and desist order, laying out steps Capital One must take to improve its risk-management program and internal controls related to cybersecurity and information security. It’s part of consent…

Americans have less debt for the first time in six years, as they spent less money during the pandemic lockdown, new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. American credit card balances fell by $76 billion, their steepest decline on record, between April and June, which included the most restrictive period of…

LEGO is launching a line of braille bricks. The LEGO Foundation designed and created a line of bricks molded with studs that correspond to numbers and letters in the braille alphabet. The foundation is sending the blocks, free of charge, to school districts across the United States, according to a press release from American Printing…

A bug in Instagram’s algorithm systemically shielded Donald Trump from negative hashtags without doing the same for rival Joe Biden, the company confirmed. According to an investigation from the Tech Transparency Project, since at least June, searches for Biden-related content returned hashtags with counter-messaging, while searches for Trump-related content did not return any hashtags at…

Demand for air travel will not fully recover until 2024 “at the earliest,” Lufthansa said on Thursday as it unveiled a record quarterly loss and warned that layoffs in its home market, Germany, can no longer be ruled out. The Lufthansa Group posted an operating loss of €1.7 billion ($2 billion) in the second quarter,…

As investors carefully scan an uncertain horizon, one thing is clear: The backdrop for markets will look very different in three months’ time. In a note to clients this week, Goldman Sachs strategists including Kamakshya Trivedi predicted a “substantially different landscape” by December. They pointed to three potential developments: We’ll know the results of sending…

William “Bill” English, the engineer who helped create the first computer mouse, died July 26 in California. He was 91. With the mouse, English — alongside his partner, Douglas Engelbart, who died in 2013 — helped revolutionize modern computing, at a time when most computers were slow, impersonal metal behemoths. According to the New York…

You can add Cheetos Mac ‘n’ Cheese to your list of pandemic comfort foods. The new PepsiCo product comes in three flavors — Bold & Cheesy, Flamin’ Hot and Cheesy Jalapeño. It will be sold at Walmart in boxes and single-serve cups and will be available beginning on Saturday. For PepsiCo, the product is a…

The nation’s newspaper of record is looking more and more like a digital shop, and it has the subscription numbers to show it. Digital revenue for The New York Times exceeded its print revenue for the first time in its history, the company reported Wednesday in its second quarter report. The Times added 669,000 digital…

America’s fragile jobs market recovery, after just two months of improvement, appears to be losing steam as Covid-19 infections rise and federal funds for businesses begin to dry up. On Friday, the US government is set to release its monthly jobs report, and economists are predicting another 1.6 million jobs were added in July —…

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating how Eastman Kodak received a a $765 million loan from the US government to help make drug ingredients, according to the Wall Street Journal. Last week’s surprise announcement sent Kodak’s shares soaring — as much as 2,757% — and sparked heavy trading volume for the largely forgotten…

Virgin Australia is slashing about a third of its headcount, offloading some planes and focusing on shorter flights under its new owner, Bain Capital. The airline announced a sweeping restructuring plan Wednesday as it works to reduce costs amid the coronavirus pandemic. To adjust to ongoing challenges, Virgin Australia will cut 3,000 jobs, remove some…

Virgin Atlantic has filed for bankruptcy in the United States as it races to finalize a $1.5 billion plan to rescue it from the aviation industry’s worst crisis. The company, which is based in the United Kingdom, filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in New York on Tuesday, which shelters the US assets of foreign…

Argentina has struck a deal with its major creditors to restructure roughly $65 billion in sovereign debt, a hopeful sign for a country that now faces a brutal coronavirus-related recession on top of longstanding economic problems. The agreement, announced by the government, breaks an impasse between Argentina and a group of private investors, including BlackRock…

Black-owned businesses have been hit substantially harder by the coronavirus pandemic than companies overall, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The New York Fed on Wednesday unveiled a study on the virus’ impact on business owners nationwide, and the results show disparities in how the business owners of various races have struggled.…

Audi has apologized for an advert showing a young girl eating a banana in front of a premium car, admitting it was “insensitive” and promising not to use the image in future. The German carmaker posted the advert for the Audi RS4, which was captioned “Lets your heart beat faster — in every aspect,” on…

Kodak is back in the news again after some time flying under the radar, and for a somewhat surprising reason: The Trump administration has tapped the legacy film and photography pioneer to produce pharmaceutical ingredients. The company will receive a $765 million government loan to launch a new division called Kodak Pharmaceuticals, which will eventually…

Award-winning author and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates will guest edit the September issue of Vanity Fair, the magazine’s editor-in-chief Radhika Jones told CNN Business in an exclusive interview. The issue will focus on art, activism and power in 21st century America. Jones said she and Coates had been talking about the opportunity for a while. Vanity…

Amazon has removed a post selling shoes described as “n***er brown” after a British lawmaker discovered the listing while shopping online, prompting calls for tighter controls on Amazon’s item descriptions. “Just buying brown brogues tonight leads to this racist micro aggression. Is it 2020 or 1720? Please ⁦⁦@amazon⁩ take it down,” wrote David Lammy on…

Convenience store operator Wawa is testing a new store format as people look for contactless ways to shop during the pandemic. Wawa said the 1,850 sq-ft test store is expected to open in December in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. It’s one of two drive-thru locations planned this year. (The other one will be in Westhampton, New…

Chipotle wants its customers to eat — and wear — its avocados. The company announced a new “responsibly sourced” clothing and goods line Monday, and all of the T-shirts, sweatshirts and tote bags will be dyed with the food chain’s used avocado pits that would otherwise go to waste. After using avocados to make guacamole,…