Author: Editor

Economic boycotts are a familiar tool of protest. The problem is they often place the greatest strain on the smallest businesses.That was the case during Friday’s nationwide general strike, which was designed to pressure the Trump administration to dial back its aggressive anti-immigration policies.For many small business owners, the shutdown created a dilemma. Supporting the cause often means losing a day’s revenue and risking their ability to keep staff employed. Across social media, owners voiced solidarity alongside an apology for staying open.There may, however, be another way, according to Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University famous for…

A canister of pepper spray launched by Texas troopers flies towards protesters outside the South Texas Family Residential Center detention facility where Liam Ramos and his father are being detained in Dilley, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. Eric Gay/AP hide caption toggle caption Eric Gay/AP SAN ANTONIO — A judge on Saturday ordered the U.S. government to release by Tuesday a 5-year-old boy and his father from a Texas detention center where they were taken after being detained by immigration officers in a Minneapolis suburb last month. Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, with a bunny hat and Spiderman backpack being…

Kraft Heinz announced plans to split into two separately traded companies, reversing its 2015 megamerger, which was orchestrated by billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesBig Food is slimming down. As both consumers and regulators push back against ultra-processed foods, the companies that make them have been splitting up or divesting iconic brands. Last year, Unilever spun off its ice cream business into The Magnum Ice Cream Company. Kraft Heinz is preparing to break up later this year, undoing much of the merger forged more than a decade ago by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway…

As a CEO, merely investing in AI isn’t enough.Rodney Zemmel, the global head of Blackstone’s operating team, who leads a group that advises the firm’s 250 portfolio companies, shared a playbook for how CEOs should use AI to get the most out of their investments. As of last February, those companies made a combined $226 billion in annual revenue, according to a press release announcing Zemmel’s hire.AI is what “we’re all going to be working on for the rest of our professional careers,” Zemmel said at a Blackstone-hosted conference for CEOs last month. He shared Blackstone’s five key questions for…

I love my Edison phonograph, my antique wall phone, and my grandmother’s quilts. I have two sets of china and enough table linens to serve royalty. My husband and I are the repository of the older generations.Our kids explicitly told us they don’t want any of our stuff. They tell me young people don’t use elaborate china patterns; they don’t cover anything with handmade lace doilies; they don’t care that the rocking chair belonged to Great Grandpa.So my house is filled with random items, augmented by things we’ve added over the years and by our affection for garage sales.Now that…

For decades, the path to success at the Big Four has been clear, if unglamorous.Juniors used to cut their teeth on time-consuming, repetitive tasks like drafting documentation and slide decks, data input, reconciliations, and quality checks.The tasks taught them foundational skills and the reasoning behind the work they’d later lead as directors and partners.Agentic AI is changing that. Big Four leaders say agents will soon handle the grunt work, freeing up junior employees to focus on strategic work.The shift is creating a new challenge for junior employees and talent leaders — if they skip the grunt work, how do they…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeremy Brand Yuan, 39, who is from New York and lives between his apartment in Taipei and his boat. The following has been edited for length and clarity.For a long time, I thought of myself as an office person. But after I got a taste of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, I didn’t want to set foot in one again.I was living in a shared house in San Francisco and decided to use the freedom of remote work to be near my mom in North Carolina for a while. I…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with James Hwang, a 28-year-old job seeker who lives in southern Michigan. He previously worked for Amazon as an IT support engineer until being laid off last October. The following has been edited for length and clarity.One morning in October, I got an automated text message from Amazon telling me to check my personal email before clocking in. I saw an email from HR telling me I’d been laid off.I was very surprised because I believed I was a high performer who had contributed a lot to the organization over my four…

“Bound by Honor,” billed as a “top series” on ReelShort, opens with a young woman being drugged and coerced into marriage. In “Divorced at the Wedding Day,” a “popular” pick on DramaBox, a pregnant widow is whipped and pushed onto broken glass at an engagement party before being locked up in a crate.ReelShort and Disney-backed DramaBox are the market leaders in the rising category of micro dramas, made-for-mobile soaps that feature fast-paced action and wild plots. As the format has ballooned into a $1.4 billion business in the US, producers and fans tell Business Insider they have grown increasingly uncomfortable…

The average American’s skyrocketing electric bill has caught the attention of everyone from President Donald Trump to Microsoft executives — just don’t expect lower rates in 2026.Electric and gas utilities asked state regulators to approve $31 billion in rate increases last year, more than double the $15 billion they sought in 2024, a new study from PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers, found.The surge in requests from utilities to tack on additional charges to customer bills comes as Big Tech companies continue their sweeping buildout of power-hungry AI data centers across the country. Many utilities have attributed rate…