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, […]

Once seen as often dry and sometimes intimidating, personal finance advice is a far cry from what it was in your grandparents’ day. It’s not just the array of new online tools, from banking apps to exotic new investing options, such as cryptocurrency. Social media has created a platform for “finfluencers” – nonprofessional personal finance […]

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, […]

When the Atlanta Braves opened Truist Park in 2017, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred called it a “watershed” moment. What drew so much attention to the new Braves’ stadium in suburban Cobb County, Georgia, at the time was its construction within a mixed-use development, known as The Battery Atlanta. Truist Park anchors a live-work-play […]

Americans spend a remarkable amount of time shopping – more than on education, volunteering or even talking on the phone. But the way they shop is shifting dramatically, as major platforms and retailers are racing to automate commercial decision-making. Artificial intelligence agents can already search for products, recommend options and even complete purchases on a […]

The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on April 21, 2026, on federal fraud charges. The Justice Department alleges that the civil rights group known as the SPLC improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist and extremist groups for inside information. The Justice Department […]