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President Donald Trump is continuing to pile the pressure on Chinese tech companies in the closing days of his administration. Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order banning transactions with eight Chinese apps, including Ant Group’s Alipay. The order will also hit Tencent’s QQ Wallet and WeChat Pay, as well as the apps CamScanner, SHAREit,

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here. What is the most important fact about Wednesday’s effort to reject the Electoral College votes and stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win? That it’s going to fail. So that fact should probably come

Bill Gross started off his investment outlook for 2021, titled “A Little Bit Softer Now,” on an unusual note, discussing a legal spat involving a neighbor and complaining that his new automatic toilet seat didn’t lift as quickly as it should. Then he got down to brass tacks. His favorite market sector: natural gas pipelines,

Shake Shack is kicking off 2021 by introducing a new contender to the fast food industry’s already-crowded chicken sandwich wars. The burger chain announced the rollout of its Korean-style Fried Chick’n Sandwich and Korean-style Gochujang Chick’n Bites on Tuesday. Both items use Gochujang, a fermented red chili paste common in Korean cuisine. The new sandwich

Pizza Hut is doubling down on one of its classic innovations as the pandemic-era pizza wars rage. In a nod to the 25th anniversary of stuffed crust’s debut, Pizza Hut is offering a pizza-less ring of cheese-stuffed dough. The name? “Nothing But Stuffed Crust,” of course. The cheesy promotion — which comes just weeks after

A group of major oil producers have agreed to keep production broadly steady in February and March as the pandemic forces some economies back into lockdown and governments struggle to distribute vaccines. Russia and Kazakhstan will produce more oil over the coming months under the deal. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, said it would voluntarily cut its

A group of major oil producers have agreed to keep production steady in February and March as the pandemic forces some economies back into lockdown and governments struggle to distribute vaccines. Saudi Arabia said it would voluntarily cut its production by one million barrels per day from January’s levels, while Russia’s and Kazakhstan will produce

“Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, tried to explain to President Trump in a call last Saturday. In Trump’s world, however, that isn’t a bug — it’s a feature. Throughout his presidency and during his failed re-election campaign,

US car sales have picked up again — and Americans are back to buying vehicles at their pre-pandemic pace, according to General Motors. As the nation’s largest automaker, GM has a pulse on industrywide trends, and the company said overall car sales to US consumers are now back to where they were before auto sales

Adobe has officially killed off Flash Player, the buggy, hated, security vulnerability of a web browser plug-in that was once widely used for viewing rich content like games, videos and other media online. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. Although Flash played a crucial role in the early days of

Microsoft is rumored to be working on a major redesign of Windows 10 that could bring big changes to the way the PC operating system looks and functions. Windows 10 could use a refresh. Aside from twice-annual tweaks, Windows 10 been mostly unchanged since its release in 2015. Six years is long in the tooth

Georgia isn’t just the center of the political universe. It’s center stage on Wall Street, too. The Peach State’s Senate runoffs will decide control of the US Senate — and that in turn will play a pivotal role in shaping the economic recovery as well as the investing environment. “It is impossible to overstate how

McDonald’s is launching new sandwiches next month in an effort to win fast food’s chicken war. On Monday, the company announced three versions of a new chicken sandwich, which will be available nationally on February 24: The Crispy Chicken Sandwich, topped with pickles and served on a potato roll, the Spicy Chicken Sandwich, which adds

Battery electric vehicles accounted for more than half of all cars sold in Norway last year, putting the country way out in front in efforts to kill off the internal combustion engine. And Tesla lost its sales crown to the Volkswagen Group. Norway is using huge tax incentives to help ensure that every new passenger

Staying home and gaming is definitely a trend during the pandemic, but it has been hard for people to get their hands on the latest consoles. Since their November launches, Sony’s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have generated greater demand than the companies can keep up with, frustrating customers

Gary Cohn, who quit a top job at Goldman Sachs to join the Trump administration in 2017, is the new vice chairman at tech giant IBM. Cohn said in a tweet Tuesday that he was “honored to be joining IBM,” which he described as “one the world’s most important companies, providing technology that helps organizations