Author: Editor

The Taco Bell logo is displayed at a Taco Bell restaurant on July 14, 2026 in Pasadena, California. Mario Tama | Getty ImagesYum Brands on Wednesday reported mixed quarterly results but provided no details on how the cyclospora outbreak tied to Taco Bell restaurants is affecting its business.Since the Food and Drug Administration first linked the parasitic outbreak to iceberg lettuce served by Taco Bell in mid-July, daily traffic to the chain’s locations has plunged by double digit percentages, according to Placer.ai data. Yum depends on Taco Bell as a “growth engine” for the company, and the crisis puts that title…

Asylum seekers queue at the entrance of Mexico’s Refugee Help Commission and UNHCR offices in Tijuana, Mexico on January 24, 2025. Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images The Trump administration, for over a year, has chipped away at immigrants’ ability to claim asylum, undercutting one of the few remaining ways for people fleeing persecution to stay in the U.S. In the latest change this week, asylum officers could send hundreds of thousands more asylum applications to immigration courts. As a result, more asylum seekers are expected to be denied legal permission to…

A new Jeep Wrangler 4-Door Sahara 4×4 vehicle displayed for sale at a Stellantis NV dealership in Miami, Florida, US, on Saturday, April 5, 2025.Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAuto giant Stellantis on Thursday swung to profit in the second quarter, boosted by rising demand in North America as the company showed tentative signs of benefitting from CEO Antonio Filosa’s turnaround plan. The multinational conglomerate, which owns household names including Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot, posted second-quarter net profit of 293 million euros ($335.3 million), versus a loss of 1.87 billion euros a year earlier. Adjusted operating…

Ukrainian strike drones flying hundreds of miles into Russian territory have been hitting oil refineries, military sites — and now the country’s biggest e-commerce warehouses.At least 10 facilities run by Russia’s largest online retail firm, Wildberries, have been struck by long-range drones in the last two weeks.The fixed-wing drones have been hammering the retail giant’s facilities in the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, annexed Crimea, and other regions since July 18, causing major fires and killing at least nine people.Kyiv’s strike campaign has been widely seen as an effort to pressure the Russian economy by kneecapping one of the country’s largest…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Goki Akuzawa, 62, the owner of Toronoki House in Japan. It has been edited for length and clarityFor eight years, I lived a dual life. I’d spend weekdays in Tokyo working on hotel and real estate investments. On weekends, I’d escape to rural Niigata, about a two-hour train ride from Japan’s capital.Along the way, I became passionate about satoyama — a Japanese concept describing the relationship between people and the rural landscape. I started spending more time in the countryside and eventually came across an abandoned kominka, or traditional folk house,…

Whatnot is proving there’s still room for consumer startups in the AI era.Live shopping startup Whatnot is in talks to raise financing at about a $20 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter.This would be a significant jump from the $11.5 billion valuation at which the company raised capital late last year.Whatnot hosts livestream shopping across categories ranging from fashion and sneakers to sports cards and vinyl records, taking a cut of each sale made on its platform in North America and Europe.The round is in progress, and details could change. Whatnot did not respond to requests for…

The infrastructure behind Meta’s AI-powered advertising machine is swallowing almost every dollar of cash the company produces.Meta said on its Wednesday earnings call that its free cash flow — the money left from operating cash after capital investments — plunged 91% from a year ago to $784 million in the second quarter of 2026. Its free cash flow exceeded $12 billion last quarter.The collapse wasn’t because Meta’s business stopped delivering. Net cash from operating activities rose 25% year-over-year to $31.86 billion. Meanwhile, capital expenditures on servers, data centers, and networking — which all power Meta’s AI systems — surged 83%…

As companies pour eye-watering sums into AI while automating more work, one question remains: How will it affect the number of tech jobs available?Much has been said about whether AI will lead to leaner teams with fewer layers of management. In the past year, a number of prominent tech companies have conducted layoffs and restructuring — with some leaders explicitly tying those cuts to AI.”The intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” Block CEO Jack Dorsey…

A Carvana sign and signature vending machine in Tempe, Arizona.Michael Wayland | CNBCShares of Carvana fell drastically during after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported full-year guidance that failed to meet some of Wall Street’s expectations for the auto retailer.Carvana’s stock fell by more than 20% shortly after the company reported its second-quarter results and guiding for earnings of between $2.7 billion and $3 billion this year. The stock recovered some of those losses, but was still trading down roughly 10% before the company’s earnings call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET.The guidance was lower than analyst expectations, which included…

Kevin Warsh is living up to his hawkish reputation.The Federal Open Market Committee opted to hold rates steady at its July meeting, the second with former Wall Street executive Warsh at the helm. FOMC leaders voted 9-3 in favor of the decision, with the dissenters hoping for a quarter-point hike.The market reaction was muted at first, and then volatile. After whipsawing most of the day, indexes plunged as bond yields spiked. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped seven basis points, and the 30-year bond yield hit its highest level since 2007 after fixed-income investors digested the hawkish tone on inflation from the…