Author: Editor

A Senate proposal to sell millions of acres of public land to help pay for President Donald Trump’s massive package of tax cuts and spending has been blocked by the Senate’s rule keeper. The parliamentarian ruled the proposal — which would have raised billions through the sale of as much as 3 million acres of federal land — is outside of the scope of the fast-track budget process Republicans are using to pass the legislation implementing a $4.2 trillion tax cut. While it’s possible Republicans can try to rewrite the proposal so it complies with Senate rules, the decision represents a triumph…

AI has venture capitalists back on the prowl for new consumer social startups.”We’re on the brink of another big consumer wave,” Vanessa Larco, a former NEA partner, told Business Insider. She’s launching a new consumer-focused venture firm called Premise.Larco’s eyeing consumer-focused AI startups like Midjourney (a generative AI image maker), Tolan (an AI companion platform), and Sitch (an AI-powered dating app). Larco said she is not an investor in Midjourney or Tolan, but is an angel investor in Sitch.For some consumer startup founders, AI feels like a must-have in any pitch meeting.”There’s been no real crazy big raises in many…

Glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts.Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesKrispy Kreme and McDonald’s are ending their partnership for good.The chain will stop selling its doughnuts at McDonald’s restaurants on July 2, the companies said in a press release Tuesday. McDonald’s USA’s Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer Alyssa Buetikofer said the collaboration was going well for the burger chain and its franchisees, but it “needed to be a profitable business model for Krispy Kreme as well.”Their deal had placed Krispy Kreme doughnuts in 2,400 McDonalds locations. The companies paused their partnership in May after sales slowed down, and…

Rhode Island real estate professionals are criticizing two new taxes that will increase costs for Ocean State homeowners, including a levy dubbed the “Taylor Swift tax.” State lawmakers last week approved a $14 billion fiscal year 2026 budget, which now awaits Gov. Dan McKee’s signature. Included in the proposed budget is a 63% increase in a conveyance tax for all home sellers, and a new tax on homes appraised at $1 million or more which are unoccupied for more than 183 days per year. The pending tax on pricier homes has been dubbed the “Taylor Swift tax” as the singer could owe…

As a senior software engineer at Google, Taalai Djumabaev, 37, was earning over $450,000 a year.He’d spent 15 years in tech — including over seven years at Deutsche Bank and over four years at Google — when he quit his job in September 2023.Now, he uses his career experience to run an educational platform for IT specialists that helps them improve their interview readiness and performance.Google was a grindDjumabaev had received several competing offers from Amazon, Reddit, GrubHub, and Coinbase before he accepted his Google role in 2019.Djumabaev chose the Google Ads domain and worked with Google Ad Manager, which…

The clouds hanging over San Francisco since the pandemic appear to be finally lifting — leading to predictions of a real estate rebound.Following years of emptying office buildings and vacated storefronts, Fog City is buzzing again, thanks to return-to-office mandates at Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and more. This is good news for the city’s apartment buildings — and now some professional investors are taking notice.”San Francisco had become an unsavory city, but we believe we’re starting to see a real recovery and we think it’s a good time to buy,” said Tom Shapiro, the president and founder of GTIS, a New…

Chris deFaria, a former animation president at Warner Bros. and Comcast’s DreamWorks, is betting he can create the next Hollywood franchises with the help of AI — and just raised $11.6 million in venture capital to do it.His company, Chronicle Studios, is backed by Patron and Point72 Ventures, with participation from Z Ventures, Sands Capital, and others.DeFaria and his cofounder, Aaron Sisto, met a few years ago through mutual friends. Sisto is a partner at First Spark Ventures, a firm cofounded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The pair saw marketing and distribution as the best way to help creators take…

Over the past 18 months, Evan Loveless has led seven rounds of layoffs, personally informing hundreds of his ad-agency colleagues that they were being let go.”It’s a chronic feeling of sadness because it’s so frequent for me,” said Loveless, a senior human-resources partner in St. Louis. “It’s like being stuck under a raincloud.”Loveless recalled a particularly soul-crushing layoff conversation with a worker who thought he was reaching out with news about a promotion.”Sometimes the person’s husband or wife also just lost their job,” he said. “You see their faces and then their faces haunt you a little bit.”Working in HR…

Sean Combs (seen here Beverly Hills in 2018) has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images For more than six weeks, Sean Combs has sat amongst his nine attorneys in a lower Manhattan federal courtroom as more than two dozen witnesses who include ex-girlfriends, former employees and law enforcement agents have testified against him. Combs — who faces charges for sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transporting for prostitution — has been accused by the U.S. government of running a criminal enterprise that facilitated and…

Police tell Spanish-language reporter Mario Guevara (left, red shirt) to move back during a protest on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportation arrests on Chamblee Tucker Road in Atlanta on Saturday, June 14. Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP hide caption toggle caption Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP The arrest of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara in Georgia earlier this month highlights the risks journalists who are not citizens face under a Trump administration aggressively pursuing mass deportations. Guevara is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after he live streamed his own arrest by local law enforcement for alleged unlawful…