Author: Editor

Yum Brands on Tuesday reported earnings that beat expectations, but a cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce at Taco Bell weighed on the company’s same-store sales growth.However, Yum said Taco Bell, which the company considers a “growth engine” for its business, has since rebounded. “Since the end of September, Taco Bell U.S. has been outpacing the [quick-service restaurant] industry on same-store sales growth,” Yum CEO Chris Turner said in a statement.Shares of Yum rose more than 3% in premarket trading.Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:Earnings per share:…

Versant Media on Tuesday reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations and reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance, citing strength across its portfolio and growth in its platforms revenue.The media company reported $245 million in revenue from digital platforms including Fandango, marking a nearly 10% year-over-year increase. Versant said Fandango saw “significant growth” in ticketing revenue in the third quarter, notching its highest level since the pandemic. Advertising revenue, however, slipped to $373 million during the period, down 5.3% from last year, primarily due to the impact of last year’s Ryder Cup, according to the company. The Versant portfolio includes CNBC, MS…

A rich guy had a very bad day on the internet.An embarrassing incident involving a flashy car went viral. TMZ picked it up, as did local news. On Reddit, one commenter called the centimillionaire a “douchebag.”That’s all according to Div Churiwal, who runs Nexus Multimedia, a California-based reputation-management company that caters to wealthy clients.Churiwal won’t tell me the client’s name, so I try to reverse-engineer it from the clues he gives me. Google gets me nowhere. Neither does ChatGPT nor Gemini. Div Churiwal puts his legion of Gen Zers to work on one particular reputation-shaping platform: Reddit.  Gilbert Flores/Billboard via…

Baked by Melissa will enter the at-home baking aisle in Target stores as the retailer tries to persuade shoppers to spend more at its locations this holiday season. As of Sunday, Target is exclusively selling the brand’s cupcake kits, liners and a cupcake pan, all in the dessert company’s signature bite-size portions. The line includes three cupcake flavors: Christmas Tie-Dye, Marshmallow Hot Cocoa and Red Velvet. The company’s entry into at-home baking comes as a number of restaurants turn to consumer packaged goods to boost sales in an otherwise challenging time for the industry. Some players, such as California Pizza…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alex Greenberg, an American founder living in Chengdu, China, who runs Observed Media, a creative studio. He is also the creator of the Instagram account @shanghaiobserved. His words have been edited for length and clarity.As graduation from college in Vermont approached, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I’d studied abroad in Australia during my junior year and knew I loved traveling, but I drew a blank on what to do next. Then, in November of my senior year, I received an offer to teach skateboarding…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tyler Bell, 28, a first officer at JetBlue Airways, who is married to Jenn Hoare, 33, a first officer at Breeze Airways. It has been edited for clarity and length. All cockpit photos were taken in accordance with applicable federal regulations and company policies.My wife, Jenn, and I recently had an unusual date night: Better Buzz, a coffee shop inside the San Diego airport. Not idyllic, but our best option as two working airline pilots.Our trips overlapped, barely. She had time between flights, so I arrived early to meet her before…

David Ellison has assembled a leadership team that he hopes will help Skydance compete with media powerhouses like Netflix and Disney.Skydance has unveiled the executives who will oversee its streaming, tech product, TV, sports, and advertising teams, weeks after completing the mega-merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.Ellison’s media giant informed employees of changes to their teams in recent weeks and sent a companywide email on Friday evening with links to memos detailing Skydance’s new leadership.Business Insider previously reported on the new leaders for Skydance’s product and tech teams under product chief Dane Glasgow, as well as its advertising unit…

Anthropic is giving corporate customers a new way to scrutinize how their employees use its artificial intelligence chatbot Claude — and how much the AI work is costing them.The AI giant announced “smart reports” for Claude Enterprise users last week. The interactive chart tool is designed to analyze a sample of a team’s AI session transcripts and group work into categories, including the types of tasks employees use Claude for, the outputs it generates, and the cost.The reports can also — and this is the part that is undoubtedly making teams sit up straight — flag “inefficiencies” to employers, including…

A federal judge dealt another blow to the Trump administration’s plans to cap student-loan borrowing.US District Judge Michael Simon ruled that the Department of Education exceeded its authority when it intended to restrict access to federal lending for certain professional degrees.It’s the third ruling by a federal judge blocking the department’s plan from taking effect. The department had planned to implement a new rule on July 1 that would have limited professional degrees to 11 programs, including dentistry and medicine, while excluding others like nursing and social work.Only these programs would qualify for a $200,000 lifetime borrowing cap, while other…

Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui speaks before a debate at the Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C. in November 2024. Craig Hudson/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption i Craig Hudson/The Washington Post via Getty Images A federal magistrate judge on Monday dismissed the Justice Department’s criminal case against two former FBI officials charged in connection with the bureau’s investigations into former President Joe Biden’s son. Bradley Benavides and Nikki Floris were charged around two weeks ago with lying to Congress in 2023 about their knowledge of the FBI’s investigations into Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. It is…