CNN – Business/Consumer

By Anna Bahney, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — Mortgage rates fell for the third straight week and applications to purchase a home increased by the most in five weeks, in a promising sign for a housing market that has stalled out as mortgage rates edged towards 8%. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to an average

By Chris Isidore and Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN New York (CNN) — Rank-and-file members of the United Auto Workers union approved their labor deal with General Motors, despite significant opposition that saw it voted down by workers at more than a dozen plants. The deal reached between the union and the company on October 30 won the support

By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — Alibaba has dropped plans to spin off its cloud computing arm, sending its stock tumbling, because of US controls on chip exports to China which the company said had created “uncertainties” for the division’s prospects. The announcement came only hours after crucial talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN New York (CNN) — Lower grocery prices may soon be coming for shoppers. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday that the US food industry may be heading into a period of deflation after three years of punishing price hikes that have caused sticker shocker for shoppers at the grocery store. Food

By Anna Bahney, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — Homebuilder confidence dropped for the fourth month in a row in November as mortgage rates neared 8%. But recent economic data suggests housing conditions may improve in coming months. Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes in November fell six points to 34, according

By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN New York (CNN) — New York’s water and parks are full of plastic waste. But litterbugs aren’t the problem, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James. It’s the company that puts so many plastic bottles and packages into world, PepsiCo — the maker of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Lay’s chips and dozens

By Chris Isidore and Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN New York (CNN) — Thousands of Starbucks workers at hundreds of stores went on strike Thursday, as they protested the lack of their first contract despite a nearly two-year organizing drive. The strike at Starbucks, which some have dubbed the Red Cup Rebellion, was intended to last just

By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — Mars is buying Hotel Chocolat in a deal that values Britain’s largest independent chocolate maker at £534 million ($661 million) and could boost its growth prospects outside of the United Kingdom. News of the deal sent Hotel Chocolat’s shares up 164% Thursday to within striking distance of the

By Nectar Gan and Juliana Liu, CNN (CNN) — China is willing to be “a partner and a friend” of the United States, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told American business leaders in San Francisco on Wednesday, as he sought to court US businesses amid a decline in foreign investment in China. In a speech evoking

By Michelle Toh, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Tencent rushed to build up “one of the largest inventories of AI chips in China” before US export restrictions took hold, an executive said Wednesday. Martin Lau, president of the Chinese tech giant, told analysts on an earnings call that it had purchased components from Nvidia (NVDA)

By David Goldman, CNN New York (CNN) — Agreeing with an antisemitic post on his social media platform X, Elon Musk endorsed the claim that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.” An X post Wednesday afternoon said: “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to

By Oliver Darcy, CNN (CNN) — Lachlan Murdoch is stepping onto center stage. On Wednesday, his father, Rupert Murdoch, officially stepped down as chairman of News Corporation, the print publishing arm of the billionaire mogul’s powerful media empire, marking the end of an era. Rupert, who maintained he will continue an “active role” in the company, will formally

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN New York (CNN) — Anheuser-Busch InBev’s US chief marketing officer is stepping down after the company reported a slump in Bud Light sales, as the backlash against the beer continues. In a statement Wednesday, Anheuser-Busch said Benoit Garbe, the company’s US chief marketing officer, “will be resigning at the end of

By Brian Fung, CNN Washington (CNN) — A group of US senators is demanding that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hand over troves of emails and documents that could show how the company handled the knowledge that its platforms could harm the mental health of teens. In a letter dated Tuesday and addressed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg,

By Nicole Goodkind, CNN New York (CNN) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway unloaded its entire $850 million worth of General Motors (GM) stock last quarter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Shares of the automaker, which recently forecast that a strike by autoworkers this fall would cut pretax earnings by about $800 million

By Bryan Mena, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — Maryland’s job market has reached a historic milestone. The mid-Atlantic state registered a record unemployment rate of 1.6% in September — less than half the national unemployment rate of 3.8% that month — Labor Department data shows. That’s the lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of any state

By Clare Duffy and Donie O’Sullivan, CNN New York (CNN) — Meta will allow political ads on its platforms to question the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, part of a rollback in election-related content moderation among major social media platforms over the past year ahead of the 2024 US presidential contest. The policy

By Liam Reilly, CNN (CNN) — Did Apple and Jon Stewart part ways over China? Members of Congress would like to know. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on Wednesday sent a letter to Apple chief executive Tim Cook asking that he explain why the company will no longer produce “The Problem With Jon Stewart”

By Matt Egan, CNN New York (CNN) — Robinhood is trying hard to lure customers fed up with traditional banks that pay little to no interest on savings. To attract deposits, the stock trading app made famous by the GameStop craze is offering fatter and fatter interest rates. Robinhood will now pay subscription customers a

By Samantha Murphy Kelly, CNN (CNN) — China has started to roll out what it’s calling the world’s most advanced internet network, which promises to operate several times faster than current networks. The network – which can travel at about 1.2 terabits (or 1,200 gigabits) each second – is fast enough to transfer data from