By Laura He, CNN Business One month ago, Li Jiaqi disappeared from the internet. The 30-year-old livestreamer, also known as Austin Li, was — until recently — one of China’s biggest internet celebrities, with 64 million followers on Taobao, an online shopping platform. He once sold 15,000 lipsticks within five minutes in a sales competition
Continue Reading By Brian Fung, CNN US telecom providers will now be required to block millions of illegal robocalls a day advertising extended vehicle warranties, the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday, taking aim at a group of individuals accused of sending more than 8 billion such messages since 2018. Thursday’s order by the FCC requires voice providers
Continue Reading By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Snap’s rough year continues. Shares of Snapchat’s parent company tanked more than 25% in after-hours trading Thursday after it posted even worse sales growth results for the three months ended in June than it had expected. Snap last month warned investors that the economy had worsened faster than it expected,
Continue Reading By Chiara Grimes, CNN Business Mattel, Inc. announced Wednesday that it has entered into a multi-year, worldwide agreement with SpaceX to create a line of rocket- and astronaut-themed toys “to cater to the inner explorer in every child.” Not only is this targeted at younger age groups but also to collectors. The company said it
Continue Reading By Nicole Goodkind, CNN Business Between 2020 and 2022, stocks shot toward the moon. This year, they’ve been jettisoned back to Earth. The S&P 500 is down about 18% year-to-date, inflation rates are at 40-year highs, geopolitical chaos abounds and a recession is looming. The easy-money environment that many investors grew accustomed to over the
Continue Reading By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Domino’s is still struggling with delivery. “The delivery business continued to be more pressured,” in the second quarter due to staffing problems, said CFO Sandeep Reddy during an analyst call Thursday. Delivery sales at stores open at least a year fell 11.7% year-over-year in the second quarter, he said. In
Continue Reading By Paul R. La Monica, CNN Business Bitcoin prices were cooling off Thursday following a big spike in the past week. And it appears Elon Musk might be partly to blame. The price of one bitcoin fell 3% Thursday to about $23,000 after Tesla disclosed in its latest earnings report Wednesday that it sold about
Continue Reading By Clare Duffy, CNN Business YouTube on Thursday said it will no longer allow misinformation related to abortion on its platform, including false claims about the safety of the procedure and potentially unsafe instructions about how to self-induce an abortion. The video-sharing service added abortion-related content to its medical misinformation policies, which also prohibit false
Continue Reading By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Europe’s economy, which accounts for almost a fifth of the world’s output, is facing its toughest test since the pandemic erupted more than two years ago. A cocktail of risks threatens to throw growth into reverse at a moment of deep uncertainty. Like the United States and other developed economies,
Continue Reading By Anna Cooban and Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Europe’s economy grew unexpectedly in the second quarter of this year, allaying concerns — for now — that the continent may have slid into a recession. The European Union’s economy grew at a seasonally adjusted 4% last quarter when compared to the same quarter a year ago
Continue Reading By Anna Bahney, CNN Business Mortgage rates ticked higher for the second week in a row as more economic indicators flashed warning signs of an impending recession. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.54% in the week ending July 21, up from 5.51% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. That is significantly higher than this
Continue Reading By Catherine Thorbecke Amazon on Thursday said it has entered an agreement to acquire primary healthcare company One Medical in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $3.9 billion. One Medical is a membership-based primary care service that promises customers “24/7 access to virtual care.” The company operates in a dozen major US markets, according to
Continue Reading By Clare Duffy, CNN Business Facebook’s rumored redesign has arrived. Starting Thursday, the platform is splitting up its main “home” section into two tabs. The move is part of a push by Facebook to show users more entertaining, recommended content — to become what cofounder Mark Zuckerberg has called a “discovery engine” — as it
Continue Reading By Catherine Thorbecke, CNN Business Tech giant Baidu announced Monday that it has obtained permits to operate fully autonomous taxis without any human assistants on board in two of China’s megacities, marking a first for the country. Baidu, which operates China’s largest search engine, said it received the regulatory approvals for its autonomous ride-hailing service
Continue Reading By Chris Isidore, CNN Business American and United airlines both reported their first operating profit since the start of the pandemic, as strong demand for air travel and high fares allowed the carriers to overcome rising fuel prices. But the good news for airline investors was bad news for airline passengers. The amount passengers paid
Continue Reading By Frank Pallotta, CNN Business Netflix lost roughly a million customers last quarter — the most in the company’s 25-year history. But it stopped the bleeding in a nightmarish year, and the company believes that its new long-term initiatives will boost sales and subscribers. Those efforts — which include cracking down on password sharing and
Continue Reading By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business In a bold attempt to get inflation under control, the European Central Bank on Thursday announced it would hike its key interest rate by a half percentage point. That marks the first time since 2011 that the ECB has raised rates, and takes Europe’s main rate back to zero. Rates
Continue Reading By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Baidu has unveiled plans for an electric self-driving car with a removable steering wheel, marking another step forward in the fast-moving robotaxi race in China. The Chinese tech giant, the country’s answer to Google, revealed the Apollo RT6, its sixth-generation autonomous vehicle, at its annual flagship conference on Thursday. Baidu’s
Continue Reading By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Part-time work has become a lot less popular, both with job seekers and employers. The number of workers who are working part of the time for economic reasons — because they can’t find full-time jobs, or because their employer has cut back their hours — hit a 20-year low of
Continue Reading By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business The European Central Bank is about to raise interest rates for the first time in 11 years as it attempts to put a lid on record inflation fed by surging energy prices. What’s happening: The ECB has made clear that it will hike rates at its meeting on Thursday for
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