By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Microsoft’s nearly $70 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard could make it a leader in gaming. But it also risks creating a new headache for the tech giant in a key part of its operations: corporate culture. For months, Activision Blizzard has been under pressure to overhaul its workplace
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By Rachel Metz, CNN Business Jeremy Bailenson has studied virtual reality for decades. But it wasn’t until last year that the Stanford professor felt the technology was good enough that he could actually teach a class in VR. Over the summer and again in the fall, Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction
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By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Higher prices and chicken sandwiches are helping boost McDonald’s sales. But earnings disappointed Wall Street Thursday morning. Last year, sales at US stores open at least 13 months jumped 13.8%, the largest annual increase since McDonald’s started reporting comparable sales in 1993, the company said Thursday. In the fourth quarter,
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By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business The stock market has been jolted by indications the Federal Reserve will move to aggressively raise interest rates to rein in inflation. What’s happening: The Fed announced Wednesday that it would begin lifting rates “soon” to combat the sharp rise in prices. Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is
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By Jordan Valinsky and John General, CNN Bud Light Next, the first zero-carb beer from Anheuser-Busch, is hitting shelves next week. The new beer goes on sale nationwide February 7, about a week before the Super Bowl, traditionally one of the most popular days for beer consumption. Anheuser-Busch is using the championship football game to
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By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Put America’s most popular sporting event in its second-largest metropolitan area. Put the stadium’s home team in the game facing an opponent that has never won a championship. What do you get? Unsurprisingly, you get record Super Bowl ticket prices. SeatGeek said that the average price customers are paying for
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By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Southwest Airlines reported its first quarterly operating profit since the start of the pandemic. Still, when excluding the financial help it received from the government, Southwest reported another full-year loss. The airline reported it earned $85 million in the quarter, far better than the $23 million forecast by analysts surveyed
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By Michelle Toh, CNN Business Apple has once again become the top-selling smartphone brand in top market China, along with the rest of the world. That’s according to findings from two separate research reports, which come just before the tech giant is set to release its earnings for the most recent quarter on Thursday. A
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By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Pizza Hut is hopping on the spicy food trend. Beginning Thursday, it’s rolling out the “Spicy Lover’s Pizza” for a limited time. The pie features spicy marinara sauce, two types of pepperoni (classic and crispy cupped), red jalapeño peppers and a sprinkled topping custom made with herbs and crushed chili
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By Laura He, CNN Business Global stock markets dropped Thursday after the US Federal Reserve signaled it that will move quickly to hike interest rates. Asian markets tumbled. Japan’s Nikkei slid 3.1% to close at its lowest level in 14 months and South Korea’s Kospi slipped into a bear market after declining 3.5%. China’s Shanghai
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By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here. Journalists in Mexico are fed up. In a country whose climate is infamous for being exceedingly hostile toward journalists, a spate of murders has disillusioned an already cynical press corps,
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By Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Business Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island have shown enough support to hold a union election, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) confirmed on Wednesday. For months, a grassroots group called Amazon Labor Union led by former Amazon employee Chris Smalls has worked to collect signatures from employees
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By Jennifer Korn, CNN Business The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation named four new members to its board of trustees on Wednesday, marking the first outsiders added to the charity’s board in its two-decade history. The new additions, which include a billionaire, a baroness and the CEO of the Gates Foundation, are being brought on
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By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Tesla shook off supply chain issues to more than triple earnings from year-ago results, easily topping Wall Street’s expectations for the quarter. The company had adjusted earnings of $2.9 billion, up sharply from $903 million a year earlier and well above $2.6 billion forecast by analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. Revenue
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By Anna Bahney, CNN Business Rents are continuing to rise across the US. The cost of rent, on average, was 10.1% higher in 2021 than in 2020, growing five times faster last year than it did in the first year of the pandemic, according to Realtor.com’s Monthly Rental Report. By December, national rents had the
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By Matt Egan, CNN Business The Covid era of free money is coming to an end. After dropping interest rates to zero in March 2020 to revive the economy, the Federal Reserve is shifting gears and going into inflation-fighting mode. Fed officials indicated Wednesday they plan to raise interest rates in March, launching a series
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By Matt McFarland, CNN Business Frederica Wilson, the US Congresswoman representing much of Miami, says she must leave home by 6:30 a.m. to beat traffic on South Florida’s highways. “If I wait 10 more minutes, it’s too late,” Wilson, a Democrat first elected to Congress in 2010, said. “Then it becomes a literal parking lot.”
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By Anneken Tappe, CNN Business The Federal Reserve is getting ready to raise interest rates, the central bank said in its monetary policy update Wednesday. But it kept rates near zero for now. “With inflation well above 2% and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target
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By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN Business Bad news for coffee lovers: Climate change will make it much harder to grow Arabica coffee in the coming years, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Plos One. The study examined how coffee-growing conditions will change by 2050 based on projections from several global climate models.
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By Charles Riley, CNN Business Some are calling it the “nuclear option.” As Western governments threaten Russia with a package of unprecedented sanctions aimed at deterring President Vladimir Putin from ordering an invasion of Ukraine, there’s one measure in particular that appears to strike fear at the heart of the Kremlin: cutting the country off
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