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An assortment of Bath & Body Works products.Courtesy of Bath & Body WorksBath & Body Works Champagne Toast body wash, with no minimum shipping threshold, is now just a click away for Amazon Prime members.The mall-favorite brand is making some of its best-selling fragrances, body washes, hand soaps and candles available for Amazon’s U.S. shoppers. The selection is also eligible for Prime shipping. Amazon is the No. 1 online destination for U.S. beauty shoppers, accounting for 47% of the online beauty and personal care market in the U.S. in 2024, according to Euromonitor. Sephora is second with 9% share. Euromonitor…

Blue Owl Capital, a leading investor in the data center boom, was unable to arrange financing for a $4 billion data center it is co-developing in Pennsylvania after pitching lenders to help bankroll the project in recent months.The facility, 80 miles west of Philadelphia in the city of Lancaster, will be occupied by CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence cloud computing services that has become a closely watched name in the AI race for its rapid expansion — and the billions of dollars of high-interest-rate debt it has taken on to fuel that growth.An executive who arranges debt for major…

Alexander Nathanson always wanted to live in Manhattan.”When you get to Manhattan, you’ve made it in New York,” the Brooklyn native told Business Insider.When he and Josette Chang married in 2018, they fulfilled that dream by buying an apartment together in Midtown East. Beyond the personal significance for Nathanson, the purchase also made financial sense.Chang, who had been renting in New York since moving there for graduate school, was tired of the annual rent hikes. “I realized, ‘Wow, this is only going to go up.'”The couple went from pricey New York City rent to a monthly mortgage, and, eventually, to…

An esteemed American economist isn’t feeling good about where things are headed.Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and Columbia economist, said he believes the US economy would continue to weaken when speaking to CNBC about his macro outlook on Thursday. That’s largely due to a handful of issues he sees hanging over the US, he said, pointing to tariffs, a decline in jobs, and interest rates in particular.”Not great right now, and the prospects are that we’re just going to get worse,” Stiglitz said of his economic outlook.His downbeat sentiment regardi g the US economy doesn’t square with recent growth figures.…

TikTok superstar Khaby Lame’s $975 million deal is getting squeezed.Hong Kong-based Rich Sparkle Holdings last month unveiled plans to merge with Lame’s social media and e-commerce business.The deal made Lame’s payout dependent on Rich Sparkle’s share price, which has plunged to $11 as of market close on Thursday from a high of $180 last month.Lame, a Senegalese-Italian creator, built a following with dialogue-free videos mocking overly complicated life hacks, like using a gadget to open a soda can instead of just popping the tab. He is now the world’s top TikTok influencer with over 160 million followers.As part of the…

Meta is dialing back the metaverse to mean something far less futuristic: an app on your phone.The company, which spent billions of dollars to build Horizon Worlds — an immersive, virtual hangout zone on its Quest virtual reality headsets — is “shifting focus” for Horizon Worlds “to be almost exclusively mobile,” according to a blog post published on Thursday.Horizon Worlds is part of Meta’s Reality Labs division for VR products and smart glasses, a unit that has burned nearly $80 billion since 2020.”Last year, we began to experiment with Worlds as a mobile platform, and we saw positive momentum,” wrote…

No-brainer; kicking back; up against the wall and other highlights of recent tax cases.Processing ContentPrior Lake, Minnesota: Caesar Munir Wilson has been indicted in federal court on allegations that he filed and conspired to file false tax returns seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent refunds from the IRS.Wilson is charged with conspiracy to file false claims for tax refunds; filing a false claim for a tax refund; money laundering; and bank fraud.Federal prosecutors allege that between 2022 and 2023, Wilson submitted tax returns falsely requesting more than $90 million in refunds. According to the indictment, Wilson used the…

President Donald Trump has been given a deadline of next week to respond to claims that his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service poses a glaring conflict of interest, setting up an early flash point in the historic case. Processing ContentThe president’s lawyers can respond by Feb. 25 to a group of former government officials who say that the lawsuit seeking damages for the illegal leak of his tax information sets up Trump to unfairly control both sides of the case. They note that as president, he has authority over the IRS as well as the Justice Department, which…

Canadian filmmaker James Cameron poses during a photocall for the opening of the exhibition entitled ‘The Art of James Cameron’ at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris on April 3, 2024.Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty ImagesLegendary “Titanic” director James Cameron is likening the theatrical experience to a “sinking ship” if Netflix acquires Warner Bros. Discovery’s film studio. Cameron penned a letter to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, last week, which was obtained by CNBC, in which he argues Netflix’s proposed acquisition of WBD’s studio and streaming assets could lead to massive job losses in Hollywood, fundamentally alter the theatrical landscape…

Signs for Walmart (L) and Amazon.Getty ImagesFor the first time, Amazon has dethroned Walmart as the company with the largest annual revenue. Walmart on Thursday reported annual revenue of $713.2 billion for its most recent fiscal year, shy of Amazon’s $716.9 billion in revenue. The milestone was brewing for months, as Amazon leapfrogged Walmart in quarterly sales for the first time about a year ago.The shuffle, while largely symbolic, underscores the battle the two retailers have waged both to define and keep up with ever-changing consumer preferences. They are kicking off a new chapter of that rivalry as artificial intelligence…