Category: Finance

You did the right thing this morning. Instead of the one-click default to your laptop’s last opened tab, you opened Etsy and bought a ceramic mug from a maker you’d been following on Instagram. Yesterday, your sister’s birthday gift came from a Shopify store run by a kitchenware designer in Sacramento, California. You felt something […]

Social scientists and commentators have for years been expressing concerns about what they call the “authoritarian playbook.” To be clear, no such book exists. But would-be and actual dictators do tend to follow a common set of strategies to consolidate power. Since the 2000s, populist leaders from Russia to Venezuela have used their countries’ own […]

Nonprofit fraud is in the news a lot these days. Federal investigators in Minnesota prosecuted one of the largest alleged COVID-19 pandemic fraud schemes, in which several nonprofits and individuals are accused of stealing about US$250 million from a federally funded child nutrition program. The defendants were found guilty in 2025, three years after the […]

Car crash. Cancer diagnosis. Mental health crisis. Autoimmune disease flareup. A serious medical condition can turn your life upside down in an instant, making everyday tasks feel overwhelming. And if you’re employed, you may find that work emails keep coming and your manager keeps calling – when the only job you should focus on is […]

The more than 250,000 shops and stores that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as payment for groceries will have to meet tougher requirements starting on Nov. 4, 2026, according to new U.S. Department of Agriculture rules. Any retailers that accept SNAP benefits from their customers will have to stock a wider variety of food, […]

Across corporate earnings calls, investor presentations and marketing pitches, “artificial intelligence” has become the buzzword of choice. Yet a troubling pattern lies under the hype. Many claims vastly overstate actual AI sophistication, misleading people about true capabilities, future outcomes and potential harms. A case in point is the recent 600% share price surge of Allbirds, […]

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has proposed a US$1 fee on all Uber, Lyft and other rideshare trips in the city to begin in 2027. The projected $48 million annual revenue would go entirely to support the chronically underfunded Philadelphia school district, which faces a $300 million budget deficit. Critics, including Uber, claim the tax will […]

People who shop at the more than 8,700 farmers markets operating in the U.S. either year-round or seasonally generally fall into six distinct groups. Three of them are more interested in farmers markets than the others. I study local food systems as a strategic communications scholar, and that’s the main takeaway from a study that […]

President Donald Trump just can’t quit tariffs. He suffered a major defeat when the Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 against the sweeping emergency tariffs he announced the previous year. Then, on May 7, a federal court knocked down the interim tariffs he announced after the high court’s decision. Yet Trump appears undeterred and keeps […]

Most Americans tend to think about bats only around Halloween, but the U.S. economy benefits from these furry flying mammals every day. Bats pollinate plants, including many important food crops, when they stop by flowers to drink nectar. Their guano is mined from caves for fertilizer. And they eat a lot of bugs – the […]