Business

A violent winter storm on Saturday cut power to 1.7 million homes and businesses across the United States, leaving millions more worried about the prospect of more outages and crippling police, fire departments and an airport in snow-covered New York state. Across the country, officials have traced at least a dozen deaths to exposure, freezing car crashes and other effects…

The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates for the seventh straight year this year. This time, however, the hike is smaller: Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced a half-point hike in interest rates on Dec. 14, down from three-quarter-point hikes at recent meetings. The last time it hiked rates that much in a single year was in the 1980s. To curb…

A teenager was killed in a shooting at the Mall of America on Friday, which put frightened shoppers at the country’s largest mall in lockdown ahead of the bank holiday weekend, police said. Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges said the victim was a 19-year-old man. A bystander’s jacket was also grazed by a bullet during the shooting at the mall’s…

Yes, it’s Saturday and yes, it’s Christmas Eve. Neither seems like a typical day for watching NFL games, but (let’s face it), 2022 is kind of an odd year. Realizing that family comes first at Christmas, the NFL is trying to prevent a player uprising by forcing all teams to play at Christmas and has moved most of this week’s…

A judge hid that two of Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates had turned against him to keep the cryptocurrency entrepreneur from being spooked and fighting extradition from the Bahamas, according to court transcripts released Friday. US prosecutors in New York waited until Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, was in FBI custody before revealing that his business partners Carolyn…

Even the most disciplined budgeters can get carried away in the holiday spirit and spend more than planned. If you find yourself in this situation, it is unlikely that you are alone. The National Retail Federation (NRF) expects Americans to spend 6% to 8% more this holiday season than they will in 2021, totaling between $942.6 billion and $960.4 billion.…

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison said she and FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried knowingly misled lenders about how much the trading firm borrowed from the cryptocurrency exchange. Ellison made her first public account of her actions in a December 19 hearing in federal court in Manhattan. “I knew it was wrong,” she said, according to a transcript of the hearing.…

A $1.7 trillion spending bill to fund federal agencies through September and provide further aid to a devastated Ukraine was cleared from the House of Representatives on Friday as lawmakers rush to complete their work for the year and a partial to avoid government shutdown. The bill passed mostly along party lines, 225-201. It is now up to President Joe…

Chinese President Xi Jinping has praised Hong Kong leader John Lee for reviving the local economy and safeguarding national security, while Premier Li Keqiang has called for better coordination in reopening the city’s border with the mainland. According to the South China Morning Post, Xi Lee said the city was on “the right path” when the two met in Beijing…

Have we ever found out if the chicken or the egg came first? I’m asking because the answer might help explain recent data from WFH Research showing that people who work in a hybrid environment — in the office one to four days a week — earn more than people who work either from home or work full-time in person.…