Business

President Joe Biden on Friday directed federal authorities to go door-to-door in eastern Palestine, Ohio, screening families affected by the toxic train derailment, which has turned into a heated political controversy. On Biden’s order, teams from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Agency for Emergency Management will be visiting homes starting Saturday.…

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is suing Paramount Global, saying its competitor aired new episodes of the popular animated series South Park after Warner paid for the exclusive rights. Warner signed a deal in 2019 paying more than $500 million for the rights to existing and new episodes of the irreverent show, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York…

The Supreme Court need look no further if it wants a personal assessment of the “crushing weight” of student debt underlying the Biden administration’s plan to forgive college loans. Judge Clarence Thomas was in his 40s and in his third year on the nation’s highest court when he paid off the last of his Yale Law School debts. Thomas, the…

In the 10 or so days since it made its grand debut, ChatGPT has been everywhere: littering Twitter feeds, cluttering promotional emails, igniting ethical debates in schools and newsrooms, infiltrating dinner tables — it’s inevitable, and apparently has already made its way into important business decisions made by companies. OpenAI originally launched ChatGPT towards the end of November, but the…

The Federal Trade Commission voted to drop an antitrust complaint against Meta Platforms Inc.’s purchase of virtual reality startup Within Unlimited, officially closing the agency’s case. The FTC sued last year to block the deal, filing dual complaints in federal court and its internal court. After a December trial in federal court in San Jose, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila…

Blackstone chief executive officer Steve Schwarzman took home a record $1.27 billion for 2022 as the investing titan continued to grow its fortune into one of the largest in the world. Schwarzman, who owns about 20% of Blackstone stock, has taken in about $1 billion in dividends alone. He also earned $253.1 million in compensation, most of it from incentive…

A pandemic-driven adoption of remote work helped push the employment rate of people with disabilities to an all-time high last year. The percentage of employed people with disabilities rose to 21.3% in 2022, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s an increase of more than two percentage points from 2021 and the highest since 2008,…

Before anyone else there was Thomas H. Lee and the company that bore his name. Lee, a billionaire whose best-known transaction was a 334% return on equity from his purchase of Snapple Beverage Corp. in 1992, died Thursday at his New York office at the age of 78. His death was ruled a gunshot suicide, Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for…

Another cold reminder that inflation is staying hotter than hoped caused Wall Street to slide on Friday, and stocks ended their worst week since early December. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% to cap its third straight weekly loss. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 510 points before shedding 336 points, or 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost…

“Although some optimism appears to have crept into the housing sector, it represents a rise from a very low level of activity and risks falling again if interest rates reverse,” Fannie Mae economists wrote in their latest report. In early 2023, a combination of factors came together to make the slumping real estate market feel a little warmer. For starters,…