Business

BRITAIN: Airline Bills Woman For $105K After Disruptive Behavior Sparks Hijack Scare And Fighter Jets Escort

CNN reports: A passenger whose “extremely disruptive behavior” caused a flight to be diverted with a military escort has been sent a bill for £85,000 ($105,000) and permanently banned from the airline. Chloe Haines has been accused by British operator Jet2 of a “catalog of aggressive, abusive and dangerous behavior,” including “attempting to open the aircraft doors,” during a flight …

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Tariffs On Raw Materials To Shutter Ikea’s Only US Plant

CNN reports: Ikea is shutting down its only furniture factory in the United States. The Swedish company will end production this December at its plant in Danville, Virginia. Operations will move to Europe, where the company says it can cut costs. “We made every effort to improve and maintain the competitiveness of this plant, but unfortunately the right cost conditions …

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Amazon Offer: $10 If You Let Us Track Your Browsing

Reuters reports: Amazon.com Inc has a promotion for U.S. shoppers on Prime Day, the 48-hour marketing blitz that started Monday: Earn $10 of credit if you let Amazon track the websites you visit. The deal is for new installations of the Amazon Assistant, a comparison-shopping tool that customers can add to their web browsers. It fetches Amazon’s price for products …

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ARIZONA: Republican Gov Flip-Flops On Nike Plant

NBC News reports: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is ready to just do it: Change his mind and welcome Nike with open arms. Ducey initially tweeted last week that he was ordering the state’s commerce authority to “withdraw all financial incentive dollars” for Nike to build a plant in the city of Goodyear. His decision followed the sneaker company’s announcement that …

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Kohl’s Stores To Accept And Process Amazon Returns

The New York Times reports: It says volumes about the challenges facing brick-and-mortar stores that the “single biggest initiative” out of Kohl’s this year, according to the national retailer’s chief executive, is that it will now accept and process unwanted orders from Amazon. Kohl’s said on Monday that it was now accepting Amazon returns at its more than 1,100 stores …

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Poland: IKEA Worker Sues After Being Fired For Posting “Death To Gays” Bible Verses On Company’s Intranet

Catholic News Agency reports: An Ikea worker in Poland has filed a lawsuit after being fired last week for posting Bible verses opposing homosexual behavior on the company’s intranet. Tomasz K is suing after he was terminated from his position at the furniture store in Krakow. Poland Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro has also asked the national prosecutor’s office to …

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Amazon Removes Books By “Father” Of Ex-Gay Torture

NBC News reports: Amazon has removed English-language books by a man largely considered “the father of conversion therapy” from its site following mounting pressure from LGBTQ activists. Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, founder of the now-shuttered Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic, as well as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), authored several how-to guides directed to parents of LGBTQ …

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Boeing Pledges $100M To Victims Of 737 Max Crashes

The New York Times reports: Boeing said on Wednesday that it would allocate $100 million to help the families and communities affected by the recent crashes of two of its 737 Max jets. The move was among the most overt acknowledgment of Boeing’s responsibility in the crashes, which were caused in part by a malfunctioning anti-stall system on the new …

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Auto Industry Icon Lee Iacocca Dead At 94 [VIDEO]

CNBC reports: Lido Anthony Iacocca, the automobile industry legend best known as “Lee,” died at the age of 94 on Tuesday morning, his family confirmed. A child of Italian immigrants who grow up in humble conditions, Iacocca became one of the most powerful — and best known — executives in Detroit. Iacocca rose to become president of Ford Motor in …

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Arizona Gov Cancels Nike Incentives After Company Pulls Flag Sneaker: We Don’t Suck Up To Non-Patriots

ABC News reports: In a series of tweets early Tuesday, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced that he has ordered the Arizona Commerce Authority to withdraw all financial incentive dollars to encourage Nike to add a manufacturing plant in the Valley. Ducey’s decision stems from a Wall Street Journal report that said former NFL quarterback-turned-social justice activist Colin Kaepernick convinced Nike …

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Grubhub Under Fire For Making 34,000 “Copycat” Sites That Masquerade As Homepages For Restaurants

The New York Post reports: Grubhub has created thousands of Web sites that masquerade as the sites of restaurants — a practice that can jack up prices for hungry customers, The Post has learned. The online food-ordering giant, which also owns Seamless and Menupages, has scooped up more than 34,000 URLs since 2010 with names that are similar to restaurants’ …

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Nabisco Enrages Wingnuts With Pro-Trans Pride Tweet

Predictable furor from the far-right Federalist: Oreo cookies, a division of international foods giant Nabisco, announced yesterday a “special” LGBT edition that includes lectures about how to use transgender pronouns. “We’re proud to celebrate inclusivity for all gender identities and expressions,” the company wrote in its Facebook post announcing the change. “In partnership with NCTE, we’re giving away special edition …

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Boeing May Reimburse Airlines For 737 MAX Grounding

Axios reports: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the aircraft maker is having “ongoing conversations” with its airline customers about possible reimbursements following the grounding of its 737 MAX during an interview with Axios’ Mike Allen at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday. The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people, highlighting concerns about …

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McSiri: McDonald’s Tests Voice Recognition Drive-Thru

The Wall Street Journal reports: McDonald’s is testing voice-recognition software at a drive-through in suburban Chicago. Inside the restaurant, a robot also tosses chicken, fish and fries into vats of oil. Both technologies are meant to shorten customer wait times that executives acknowledge have grown in recent years. McDonald’s also has stopped serving some burgers and given franchisees more control …

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Apple Seeks Exemptions From Trump’s China Tariffs

Politico reports: Apple wants U.S. trade officials to exclude the iPhone from President Donald Trump’s latest round of proposed tariffs on Chinese-made goods, as the Silicon Valley giant looks to shield its core product from Trump’s trade war with Beijing. Apple contends that a tariff on the iPhone and its other devices, such as tablets and computers, would harm its …

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Gun Distributor Blames Bankruptcy On Hillary’s Loss

Bloomberg reports: Firearms distributor United Sporting Cos. loaded up on guns ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, expecting a surge in sales would follow the election of a Democrat. Then Hillary Clinton lost. The miscalculation sparked a multi-year decline that has reached the courthouse steps in Delaware, where United filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday. When Republican Donald Trump …

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Wells Fargo To Pay Customers $386M In Class Action Lawsuit Over Unneeded Charges For Auto Insurance

Reuters reports: Wells Fargo & Co will pay at least $386 million to settle class-action claims by customers who said the bank signed them up for auto insurance they did not want or need when they took out car loans. The settlement was disclosed in filings on Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, and requires a …

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Texas Sues San Antonio Over Airport Chick-Fil-A Ban

The Statesman reports: Escalating the fight over Chick-fil-A’s religious rights, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued San Antonio on Monday as part of his investigation into the city’s decision to reject the chicken chain as an airport vendor. The lawsuit, filed in state district court in Travis County, seeks a court order requiring San Antonio to turn over emails and …

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Apple Unveils $6000 Mac Pro, $5000 Monitor [VIDEO]

The Verge reports: Having admitted that its glossy “trash can” Mac Pro of 2013 was a mistake, Apple has long promised that the next update to its most professional computer line would be a return to more modular, less thermally constrained computing. That is being realized today at WWDC 2019 with the official debut of an all-new redesigned Apple Mac …

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Forbes: Jay-Z Has Become Hip-Hop’s First Billionaire

Forbes reports: Jay-Z has accumulated a fortune that conservatively totals $1 billion, making him one of only a handful of entertainers to become a billionaire—and the first hip-hop artist to do so. Jay-Z’s steadily growing kingdom is expansive, encompassing liquor, art, real estate (homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, Tribeca) and stakes in companies like Uber. To calculate his net …

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