Author: Maggie Caraway

On Tuesday, America’s largest retailer announced its minimum wage from $12 to $14 an hour amid efforts to retain store and warehouse workers. According to CNN, “In many areas of the country, particularly southern states that have not adopted higher wage laws, Walmart’s starting wage often serves as the local minimum wage.” The company’s decision is believed to influence the service industry as a whole. Walmart’s president and CEO,...

On Tuesday, the song management company, Hipgnosis, announced that it had acquired the rights to Justin Bieber’s entire music catalog in a $200 million deal. The company will now receive a payment every time a song it owns is streamed, used on the radio or used in a film or TV. Hipgnosis has also acquired Bieber’s share in the original master recordings of each of his...

On Tuesday, Amazon launched a new prescription drug program for Prime members that offers unlimited prescriptions for $5 a month. Sounds crazy, right? According to Amazon, “There are no hidden fees and no markups to the $5 per month subscription.” “RxPass is a benefit for Prime members that gives subscribers access to the most common generic medications for a flat fee of $5 a month. Subscribers can get...

Elon Musk has taken his plans to cut costs at Twitter too far. The landlord of the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco filed a lawsuit this month accusing Twitter of “shirking its rent payments over the last two months, amounting to roughly $3.4 million in each December and January,” Yahoo News reported. According to the lawsuit, SRI Nine Market Square LLC, the building’s owner, claims it has...

On Monday, M&Ms announced that they will be retiring the “spokescandies” after the changes made to the characters sparked nationwide criticism. “In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet,” M&Ms announced in a statement. “But now we get it – even a candy’s shoes...

On Monday, Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment deal with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. ChatGPT is OpenAI’s artificial intelligence tool that automatically generates text based on written prompts. According to CNBC, “The software debuted in late November and quickly turned into a viral sensation as tech executives and venture capitalists gushed about it on Twitter, even comparing it to Apple’s debut of the iPhone in 2007.” Monday’s announcement is the third phase of the...

Netflix’s new ad-supported tier is a hit and has brought in an unexpected number of subscribers for the fourth quarter. The ad-supported tier debuted in November at $6.99 per month in the U.S. This subscription service consists of four minutes of ads for every hour of content and is compared to Netflix Basic, $9.99/mo, Netflix Standard, $15.49/mo, and Netflix Premium, $19.99/mo. Netflix had originally expected to get...

T-Mobile announced last week that 37 million current customers are victims of a data breach that started on November 25 and was discovered on January 5, 2023. CNN reported, “the hacker stole customer data that included names, billing addresses, emails, phone numbers, dates of birth, T-Mobile account numbers and information describing the kind of service they have with the wireless carrier. T-Mobile said no social security...

The Tennis Channel is diving deeper into the fastest-growing sport in the nation, pickleball. On Thursday, it was announced by Major League Pickleball that the league’s premier-level tournament semifinals and finals will be broadcasted on the Tennis Channel. The Tennis Channel is taking advantage of the extreme surge in the popularity of pickleball. According to the CEO of the Tennis Channel, Ken Solomon, the TV network has...

Amazon hit US charities and AmazonSmile users with bad news on Wednesday. Amid cost-cutting efforts, Amazon announced that it plans to discontinue its charity donation program, AmazonSmile. The program was first launched in 2013 and since then, Amazon said it has donated about $500 million to charities. In an email to users and a statement posted online, Amazon said it plans to “wind down” AmazonSmile by February,...