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Some good news on the weight-loss front: Customers can now go to Costco to get Ozempic and Wegovy, brand-name injectable prescription drugs manufactured by drug maker Novo Nordisk, which contain the same active ingredient: semaglutide. The Danish pharmaceutical firm announced Friday that both are available at the big-box retailer’s pharmacies nationwide, for $499 for a month’s supply—the same price as sold in CVS, Walmart, and the company’s direct-to-consumer website. You’ll still need a prescription to buy the drugs. Fast Company has reached out to both Costco and Novo Nordisk for comment. Also—Costco is offering a 2% discount for both Costco executive member…

According to the company’s annual analysis, this year’s shopping season won’t just break records—it’ll rewrite the playbook. AI assistants are set to steer how people search, shop, and spend, while buy-now-pay-later plans help stretched consumers keep the holiday magic alive. Each year, Adobe uses data from its Adobe Analytics platform to predict what the shopping landscape and consumer behavior will look like between November 1 and December 31. According to Adobe’s description, the data includes inputs from many of the top 100 retailers in the U.S., covering over 1 trillion visits to retail sites, 100 million SKUs, and 18 product categories. In 2025, Adobe says …

Some flavor crazes flirt with us and fade. Others stay and make themselves at home. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but the Dubai chocolate movement seems to have put down roots and is spreading at a brisk clip. The sweet flavors and thick texture that have made Dubai chocolate bars a hit are morphing into other kinds of confections too. Let’s back up for a minute. The original and now-classic Dubai chocolate bar was created by Fix Chocolatier in the United Arab Emirates in 2021, and by 2023 had exploded on social media. Rich and indulgent, it features a thick, milk chocolate shell usually encasing a creamy pistachio (and often tahini) filling mixed with crispy, s…

A quarter of a century after the Acela began whisking passengers between Washington, New York, and Boston, the Acela’s slightly faster replacement finally began service at the end of August. But the most obvious upgrade NextGen Acela offers over its predecessor is not speed, but shininess. On the train’s second day of revenue service, I boarded a train in Washington, D.C., for a day trip to New York. Standing alongside a previous-gen Acela at Union Station, my train was positively gleaming, and looked just as sharp on the inside. Then came the ride, which took just as long as previous trips and went no faster. NextGen Acela can hit 160 mph on upgraded track,…

It’s the life of a saleswoman. Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” sold 2.7 million copies in traditional album sales — which include physical and digital formats — in its first day in the U.S. That’s according to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company. The album was released Friday. The sales are impressive for a number of reasons. Swift has broken her record for most first-week sales… in one day. Her last album, 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” amassed 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week. “The Life of a Showgirl” has also become the second-largest sales week for any album in the modern er…

For its 50th anniversary, Zara has partnered with 50 designers and creators for a collection you might not expect from a fast-fashion mall brand. The Spanish fashion retailer unveiled its 50th anniversary collection at Paris Fashion Week with collaborators that include photographer Annie Leibovitz, supermodel Cindy Crawford, stage designer Es Devlin, and musician Robbie Williams. Available worldwide beginning Oct. 6, the collection does include plenty to wear (Leibovitz contributed a photo for a t-shirt), but what stands out most are the non-apparel items. This is about a whole lot more than clothes. Devlin, whose build stages for artists like Adele, Beyoncé, …

Semiconductor maker AMD will supply its chips to artificial intelligence company OpenAI as part of an agreement to team up on building AI infrastructure, the companies said Monday. OpenAI will also get the option to buy as much as a 10% stake in AMD, according to a joint statement announcing the deal. It’s the latest deal for the ChatGPT maker as it races to beef up its AI computing resources. Under the terms of the deal, OpenAI will buy the latest version of the company’s high performance graphics chips, the Instinct MI450, which is expected to debut next year. The agreement calls for supplying 6 gigawatts of computing power for OpenAI’s “next generation” AI …

The list of retailers that have yanked pasta products from their shelves continues to grow in the wake of a deadly Listeria outbreak. On October 4, grocery retailer Kroger Co voluntarily recalled deli pasta salads sold at Kroger-owned locations including Ralphs, Smith’s, and Fred Meyer, in addition to Kroger stores. The products were recalled due to a risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The recall notice was published to the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Saturday. To date, no illnesses have been reported in connection with this recall. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the USDA’s Food Safety and …

Paramount said Monday that it has bought the news and commentary website The Free Press and installed its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, saying it believes the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based. It’s a bold step for the television network of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and “60 Minutes,” long viewed by many conservatives as the personification of a liberal media establishment. The network is placing someone in a leadership who has developed a reputation for resisting orthodoxy and fighting “woke” culture. “I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News,” said David Ellison, who t…

Six years ago, I wrote (with colleague Jennifer Riel) a Harvard Business Review article on functional strategy. But the questions about functional strategy keep coming unabated. It is a vexatious issue for CEOs, functional leaders, and boards of directors. So, I thought it would make sense to dedicate a Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) to Functional Strategy: The Three Key Functional Leader Tasks. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. How Did We Get Here? In the business world today, there are great differences of opinion as to what functional strategy is or even whether functions should have strategies. A prevalent view holds that …

Empathy is not just a “nice-to-have” soft skill—it is a foundation of how children and adults regulate emotions, build friendships, and learn from one another. Between the ages of 6 and 9, children begin shifting from being self-centered to noticing the emotions and perspectives of others. This makes early childhood one of the most important periods for developing empathy and other social-emotional skills. Traditionally, pretend play has been a natural way to practice empathy. Many adults can remember acting out scenes as doctor and patient, or using sticks and leaves as imaginary currency. Those playful moments were not just entertainment—they were early lessons …

As top congressional Republican and Democratic leaders dig in their heels—a signal that the ongoing federal government shutdown may continue for a while—many older Americans are wondering if they will still get their Social Security checks, and questioning how a prolonged showdown will affect their future benefits. Currently, thousands of federal employees are working without pay and President Donald The President is threatening mass federal layoffs. During the shutdown, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is continuing to issue retirement and disability benefits, but is furloughing 12% of its staff, per USA Today. Medicare and Medicaid payments also continue…

Below, Tim Higgins shares five key insights from his new book, iWar: Fortnite, Elon Musk, Spotify, WeChat, and Laying Siege to Apple’s Empire. Tim is a business columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he covers Silicon Valley and writes about the world’s most influential business leaders. He is also a frequent contributor to CNBC and has previously written for Bloomberg News. What’s the big idea? Those who operate in the digital world accessed by the iPhone have no choice but to operate by Apple’s rules—or do they? Objections that Apple has overstepped fair play in the app economy resulted in pushbacks, including one of the biggest antitrust battles of the…

The plan started coming together inside a luxury box at MetLife Stadium. As the Premier League’s Chelsea was on its way to a shutout victory at the Club World Cup final in July, President Donald The President and FIFA President Gianni Infantino were deep in discussion at the New Jersey sports complex outside New York City on another matter: where the draw for next year’s World Cup would be held. The high-drama spectacle decides which teams will face each other in the group stage of soccer’s most prestigious tournament, along with the schedule for competition. It was widely expected to unfold in Las Vegas, home to the 1994 draw when the U.S. last hosted the World Cup and…

For actors, it’s the Golden Globes. Musicians, it’s the Grammys. Now, content creators have their own award to aspire to. Introducing Instagram Rings. As social media’s place in the entertainment ecosystem grows, the new award program from Instagram is meant to honor those creatives “who don’t just participate in culture – but shift it, break through whatever barrier holds them back to realize their ambitions,” according to a blog post about the launch. Judged by a panel of creatives spanning fashion and makeup to sports and entertainment, each nominated their own longlist of favorite creators and voted on which 25 of Instagram’s three billion users will be…

A group of countries that are part of the OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries has agreed to a small boost in oil production, citing a steady global economic outlook. The group said after a virtual meeting on Sunday that it will raise oil production by 137,000 barrels per day in November, the same amount it announced for October. The group has been raising output slightly in a series of boosts all year, after announcing cuts in 2023 and 2024. In a statement, the group said the move was due to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals.” It added the production adjustments may be paused or reversed as market conditions evolve. …

The AI arms race turned a new page on Monday, as OpenAI and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced that the two have agreed to a new partnership to create new data centers powered by AMD’s chips. The deal could also see OpenAI take a roughly 10% stake in AMD. Specifically, the partnership sees OpenAI committing to buying 6 gigawatts of AMD GPU chips, with the initial gigawatt deployment scheduled for the second half of 2026. The deal will ultimately see OpenAI deploy the remaining gigawatts over multiple years and multiple hardware generations. The deal also sees AMD issuing a warrant for as many as 160 million shares of AMD stock to OpenAI. Those shares…

Verizon just announced that its current CEO, Hans Vestberg, is stepping down—and the wireless carrier is pulling another seasoned leader out of retirement to take its helm. In a press release published on October 6, Verizon announced that former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman will be leading the company, effective immediately. In the meantime, Vestberg (who has held the title since 2018) will stay on as a special adviser at the company until October 4, 2026. Schulman has served on Verizon’s board of directors since 2018, and was elected lead independent director in December 2024. “Dan is a seasoned and decisive leader with a unique set of experiences, and a proven re…

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. could deliver a policy win for the The President administration in just a few months after the Food and Drug Administration enlisted GSK to help it fast-track approval of a decades-old drug to treat an autism-related disorder. The FDA’s unusual move will allow it to bypass a lengthy label update for generic versions of the drug, leucovorin, or new clinical trials, a tactic academics, lawyers and doctors questioned. A GSK spokesperson told Reuters it plans to complete the new use application for the branded version of leucovorin “as quickly as possible.” Once the British drugmaker does that work, the FDA would normally…

Wall Street is hanging near its records on Monday, as technology stocks keep rising. The S&P 500 rose 0.3%, coming off its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 17 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher. Advanced Micro Devices soared 32.6% to help lead the market after announcing a deal where OpenAI will use its chips to power artificial-intelligence infrastructure. As part of the deal, OpenAI could own up to 160 million shares of AMD if it hits certain milestones. A frenzy around AI has been one of the main reasons Wall Street has been hitting record after record, though that’s also …

Fifth Third on Monday agreed to buy regional lender Comerica in an all-stock deal valued at $10.9 billion, creating the ninth-largest U.S. lender with a robust presence in the Midwest. Regional lenders are looking to diversify revenue streams, strengthen balance sheets and expand into faster-growing markets as they recover from an industry-wide crisis in 2023 that shook investor confidence and exposed the risks of bank runs and troubles in commercial real estate. Analysts have said consolidation is crucial for smaller lenders to compete with the nation’s largest banks, with several banks looking to take advantage of a potentially lighter regulatory environment und…

American scientists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for work shedding light on how the immune system spares healthy cells, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments. This year’s prize relates to peripheral immune tolerance, or “how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease”, said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska Institute. Sakaguchi told reporters outside his university laboratory that “I feel it is a tremendous honour,” Kyodo news age…

Republican and Democratic lawmakers at an impasse on reopening the federal government provided few public signs Sunday of meaningful negotiations taking place to end what is about to be a six-day shutdown — with President Donald The President saying that layoffs are occurring. Asked on Sunday night when federal workers would be fired as he has threatened to do, The President told reporters: “It’s taking place right now and it’s all because of the Democrats.” “The Democrats are causing the loss of a lot of jobs,” The President added, declining to answer a question about which agencies are subject to the cuts. The possibility of layoffs would escalate an already tense si…

October ushers in changing foliage, cooler temperatures, and the spooky season made eerier with less daylight. Costumes are donned and even the night sky wants to help set the mood. Much to the dismay of werewolves, October’s Harvest supermoon will peak tonight (Monday, October 6) at 11:47 p.m. ET, according to the Farmer’s Almanac. Let’s break down the science behind this nighttime spectacle and take a look at future events. Why is October’s full moon called the Harvest Moon? The full moon closest to the autumnal equinox gets the moniker Harvest Moon. September’s offering took place on September 7 and the equinox took place on September 22 in the Norther…

Uniqlo, the Japanese retailer known for its monochromatic casual wear and accessories, is gearing up to significantly expand its U.S. physical footprint next year. The brand will open 11 new stores across seven cities in spring and summer 2026, Uniqlo told Fast Company. The expanded fleet will include four new stores in New York City: three in Manhattan and an additional location in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The new locations come two decades after Uniqlo opened its first U.S. store in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood in 2006. For fans of Uniqlo’s ultra-stretch jackets, Pufftech vests, and functional backpacks, it gets even better: The company is al…