Business Headlines
TikTok thanks Trump after it begins restoring service to US users
ABC NewsTikTok said Sunday it's "restoring service" after a ban in the United States initially began to take effect earlier in the day."In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive," the company said in a statement. "It's a strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship. We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States."In a pop-up message visible to users upon reopening the app on Sunday, ... Read More
Inflation report shows upsurge days before Trump takes office
Javier Ghersi/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Consumer prices rose 2.9% in December compared to a year ago, ticking up from the previous month and extending a resurgent bout of inflation just days before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The reading matched economists' expectations.The fresh data arrives after a jobs report last week showed stronger-than-expected hiring in December, which sent the stock market plummeting and bond yields soaring on fears that the Federal Reserve may delay long-forecasted interest rate cuts.The Fed may find additional reason to delay those interest rate cuts in Wednesday's report, since stubborn price hikes may raise concern that inflation would move even higher if interest rates were to be lowered.The inflation reading in December marks an increase from year-over-year ... Read More
Los Angeles fire losses could reach $30 billion for insurers
Benjamin Fanjoy/Bloomberg via Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) -- Multiple fires raging across the Los Angeles area will cost insurers as much as $30 billion, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs estimated in a report released this week.After accounting for non-insured damages, the total costs will balloon to $40 billion, the report said.The ongoing fires, according to analysts, “appear to already be the costliest wildfire event in California history.”The forecast would make the fires one of the 20 costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, when calculated as a share of the nation’s gross domestic product, analysts added.The wildfires have left a path of wreckage in their wake. More than 12,000 homes and other structures have burned down in the fire, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.At ... Read More
Will TikTok users be able to access the app after a potential ban? Experts explain
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- TikTok mounted a last-ditch effort at the Supreme Court on Friday meant to stop a ban of the app set to take effect within days -- but the platform's arguments may have landed with a thud.A majority of the justices appeared inclined to uphold a federal law that would ban the company unless it divests from China-based parent Bytedance.TikTok has challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, claiming that a ban would limit free-expression rights on a platform used by one of every two Americans. Lower courts, however, have found merit in security concerns about potential data collection or content manipulation that could be undertaken by the Chinese government.If the court challenge fails and ... Read More
Online holiday shopping soars to record high amid rise of AI shopping assistants, Adobe data shows
Alexandr Kolesnikov/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Online holiday shopping soared to a fresh record high in 2024, driven by an array of e-commerce discounts and adoption of AI-fueled shopping assistants, according to data released on Tuesday by Adobe.E-commerce sales topped $240 billion in November and December, climbing nearly 9% when compared with the gift-buying season a year prior, data showed.The data indicated that three product categories accounted for more than half of the online holiday spending: electronics, apparel and home goods.Spending on cosmetics totaled nearly $8 billion, jumping more than 12% compared to a year prior. That marked the largest year-over-year spending increase for any product category, the data showed.Discounts helped drive strong sales for some high-priced items, Adobe said, pointing to a 20% jump ... Read More
Facebook to rely on ‘Community Notes,’ replacing fact checkers, Zuckerberg says
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Facebook plans to replace its fact-checkers with "community notes," a move that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would allow the social network to return "to our roots around free expression.""We're replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes," Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. "Looking forward to this next chapter."The changes, which will also be in place for Instagram and Threads, will lift restrictions "on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse" and will focus the company's "enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations," Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer, said in a blog post.Meta executives sought in their statements to tie the update to what they described as ... Read More
New federal rule will remove medical debt from credit reports
Prapass Pulsub via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- In a major change that could affect millions of Americans' credit scores, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday finalized a rule to remove medical debt from consumer credit reports.The rule would erase an estimated $49 billion in unpaid medical bills from the credit reports of roughly 15 million Americans, the CFPB said.That could help boost those borrowers' credit scores by an average of 20 points, helping them qualify for mortgages and other loans."No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency," Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement touting the new rule.She announced the proposal for the rule last June alongside CFPB Director Rohit Chopra."This ... Read More
Biden blocks US Steel takeover by Japan-based Nippon
CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Joe Biden on Friday announced a decision to block the $14 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan-based Nippon Steel, saying domestically produced steel is essential to U.S. national security."Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure," Biden said in a statement.The move marks the latest effort on the part of the Biden administration to protect U.S. markets from foreign-owned firms.Biden has preserved many of the tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump, and he enacted a law that would ban China-based social media platform TikTok later this month if the company doesn't find a new parent company. The Supreme Court is set to hear ... Read More
Will 2025 be a better year to buy a house?
(Phillip Spears/Getty Images)(NEW YORK) -- Homebuyers eager to forget this year's housing market may ring in 2025 with an extra dash of zeal.A rapid rise in home prices has coincided with stubbornly high mortgage rates, shutting out potential buyers with daunting costs.A burst of supply could have eased prices, but no such relief was forthcoming. Instead, homeowners have balked at swapping out their current mortgage rates for higher ones, and construction has failed to make up for a long-standing shortage in new homes.Unfortunately, next year's housing market will likely bring more of the same, experts told ABC News.Home prices may rise at a slower pace, offering a glimmer of hope as high mortgage rates fall slightly but continue to weigh ... Read More
These states will raise the minimum wage in 2025
Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Nearly half of U.S. states are set to raise their minimum wage at the outset of 2025, boosting pay for millions of workers stretching from California to Maine.In all, 21 states will raise their wage floors on Jan. 1 in keeping with inflation-adjusted increases or as part of scheduled hikes that take effect at the beginning of each calendar year.The pay increases will affect about 9.2 million workers, who will gain a combined $5.7 billion over the course of 2025, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, or EPI.After the wave of wage hikes, Washington will become the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $16.66 per hour. Workers in California and New York will enjoy the second-highest wage ... Read More
Bernie Madoff’s victims to receive final payout totaling $131 million
Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- The fund disbursing money to the victims of Bernie Madoff’s legendary Ponzi scheme began its 10th and final distribution on Monday, putting another $131 million in the pockets of swindled investors.Twenty-three thousand victims worldwide are receiving payments, bringing their total recoveries to 94% of their losses. Most of these victims were small investors who lost less than $500,000 in the fraud, according to federal prosecutors.Since the collapse of Madoff’s investment house and his 2009 guilty plea, the Madoff Victim Fund has paid more than $4 billion to nearly 41,000 victims in 127 countries.“This office has never stopped pursuing justice for victims of history’s largest Ponzi scheme,” acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said.For ... Read More
Shares of Boeing slide after South Korea plane crash
SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Shares of Boeing fell in early trading on Monday, one day after a Boeing model 737-800 was involved in the Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea that killed scores of passengers.The stock price dropped more than 4% at the open of trading on Monday morning. The slide came hours after South Korea's transportation ministry announced it would investigate the crash and conduct a full inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in use in South Korea.All but two of the 181 people on board died Sunday in what authorities said was the deadliest plane crash in South Korea in decades.The only survivors, a man and a woman, were among the six crew members onboard the Jeju Air ... Read More
Trump asks Supreme Court to delay TikTok sale deadline
Rebecca Noble/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Two weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments over TikTok's future, President-elect Donald Trump has asked the justices to delay a Jan. 19 deadline for the app to be sold to a new owner or face a ban in the U.S.An amicus brief filed by Trump's nominee to be solicitor general, John Sauer, is asking the court to grant a stay delaying the deadline so that the incoming president can work out a "negotiated resolution" that would save the app.The filing casts Trump as someone who "alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national ... Read More
The stock market soared this year. What will happen in 2025?
Matteo Colombo/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- The stock market climbed to record highs in 2024, extending banner gains achieved the previous year.The S&P 500 -- the index that most people's 401(k)'s track -- climbed nearly 28% this year, as of Monday.The tech-heavy Nasdaq leapt a staggering 34% over that period; while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 16%.Consecutive years of strong stock market performance have posed a quandary for forecasters: Will high stock prices scare off would-be investors in 2025, or will momentum push shares even higher?Experts have attributed the rise of share prices this year to a set of favorable trends: Solid economic growth, enthusiasm about artificial intelligence and the long-awaited start of interest rate cuts at the Federal Reserve.Those ... Read More
Holiday shopping surges, flexing strength of US economy
Alexandr Kolesnikov/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Holiday spending surged in 2024, blowing past expectations and outpacing customer purchases over the gift-buying season last year, according to data released on Thursday by Mastercard SpendingPulse, which gauges in-store and online retail sales.The end-of-year flex of consumer strength marks the latest indication of resilient U.S. buying power, which has kept the economy humming despite a prolonged stretch of high interest rates.Retail sales climbed 3.8% from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 compared with the same period last year, Mastercard SpendingPulse data showed. The boost in spending exceeded a Mastercard SpendingPulse estimate of 3.2%, while outperforming last year's growth of 3.1%. The retail sales data excludes automotive purchases."Solid spending during this holiday season underscores the strength we observed from ... Read More
Fed cuts interest rate by half a point
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point, a dramatic shift after more than two years of high rates that helped tame inflation but also made borrowing painfully expensive for American consumers. The rate cut, the Fed’s first in more than four years, reflects its new focus on bolstering the job market, which has shown clear signs of slowing. Coming just weeks before the presidential election, the Fed’s move also has the potential to scramble the economic landscape just as Americans prepare to vote. The central bank’s action lowered its key rate to roughly 4.8%, down from a two-decade high of 5.3%, where it had stood for 14 months as ... Read MoreWynn Resorts paying $130M for letting illegal money reach gamblers at its Las Vegas Strip casino
LAS VEGAS -- Casino company Wynn Resorts Ltd. has agreed to pay $130 million to federal authorities and admit that it let unlicensed money transfer businesses around the world funnel funds to gamblers at its flagship Las Vegas Strip property. The publicly traded company said a non-prosecution settlement reached Friday represented a monetary figure identified by the U.S. Justice Department as “funds involved in the transactions at issue†at the Wynn Las Vegas resort. In statements to the media and to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said the forfeiture wasn’t a fine and findings in the decade-long case didn’t amount to money laundering. U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath in San Diego said the settlement showed that casinos are ... Read More
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