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Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government. Republicans supported a short-term measure to fund the government generally at current levels through November. 21, but Democrats blocked it, insisting the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald The President’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. Republicans called the Democratic proposal a no…

The U.S. government has shut down. Last night, Congress failed to pass a new funding bill that would have kept the federal government operating normally. However, at 12:01 a.m. today, the existing funding bill ceased to be in effect, and with no new one in place, large parts of the government are now shut down. Fast Company has previously explored how the government shutdown will affect everyone, from Social Security recipients to travelers to federal workers. But the shutdown will also no doubt have an effect on the markets. And not just the stock markets. The U.S. government shutdown appears to already be having an impact on cryptocurrency markets. Her…

It’s a familiar frustration: You miss your connection because of a delayed flight. The line at the customer assistance desk is 30 people deep. The airline app offers little help, and the call center puts you on hold for half an hour. Will you ever escape Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)? Enter Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS) Assist, a new generative AI travel agent that helps customers with post-booking travel questions, changes, and disruptions. HTS assist was built by Hopper, the mobile-only travel-booking platform that’s known for its intuitive, user-friendly interface and for predicting flight prices with near-flawless accuracy and pinging users when i…

The U.S. federal government shut down one minute into October, bringing with it uncertainty about jobs and the economy. The shutdown hasn’t brought significant turmoil to the stock market as of yet. Most notably, futures have dropped but not significantly, with the Dow shrinking 0.41%, the S&P 500 down 0.45%, and the Nasdaq losing 0.50%, at the time of publishing. Meanwhile, gold prices have skyrocketed in response to the shutdown, reaching an all-time high early Wednesday morning that neared $4,000. Just after the day’s 12:01 a.m ET shutdown, spot gold reached over $3,894, while U.S. gold futures hit $3,922. Both have since dropped slightly, but rem…

The United States has agreed to allow South Korean workers on short-term visas or a visa waiver program to help build industrial sites in America, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. The announcement came weeks after South Korea flew home more than 300 of its nationals who had been detained in a massive immigration raid at a battery factory being built on Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant campus near Savannah, Georgia. The roundup, along with U.S. video footage showing Korean workers shackled at the hands, ankles and waist, fueled public outrage and a sense of betrayal in South Korea — a key U.S. ally that had pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. investment…

Several pharmaceutical companies have said they will sell drugs direct to patients in the U.S. and offered discounts following President Donald The President’s calls to bring down drug prices and cut out “middlemen” like pharmacies, insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. The The President administration announced on Tuesday plans to launch a government-run website called The PresidentRx.gov in early 2026, offering reduced prices for prescription drugs. U.S. patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations. The President sent letters to 17 major companies in July demanding they slash U…

Last week, in subway stations and train cars across all five boroughs of New York City, stark black-and-white print ads appeared featuring a variety of servile messages. “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink,” one read. “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans,” another said. “I’ll binge the entire series with you,” a third promised. The ads—which rolled out on September 25 in the form of more than 11,000 car cards, 1,000 platform posters, and 130 urban panels—are part of a massive outdoor campaign for Friend, a wearable AI company billed as a portable “companion.” Since the campaign rolled out, it has received overwhelming criticism from local New Yorkers, with…

Japan’s chief trade negotiator has defended a tariffs deal with the U.S., expressing respect for President Donald The President and calling him a “tough negotiator.” Trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa noted that the pact setting on most Japanese exports to the U.S. at 15% was comparable to a deal between Washington and the European Union. Unlike the EU, Japan did not have to lower its tariffs on U.S. goods, he noted. Japan has also committed to investing $550 billion in U.S. projects. The President initially set Japan’s tariff rate to increase by 25%. Critics in Japan had ridiculed Akazawa’s repeated trips to the U.S. to work toward a deal as a waste of taxpayer money, saying…

If you’ve ever flipped over a Walmart snack or frozen pizza to check the ingredients list, the company’s about to make that label a whole lot cleaner. The retail giant just announced it’s giving its U.S. private food brands a major makeover, cutting out synthetic dyes and dozens of other additives you probably can’t pronounce. Altogether, the retailer is removing synthetic dyes and 30 ingredients from store brands including Bettergoods, Freshness Guaranteed, Great Value, and Marketside. Artificial sweeteners, certain preservatives, and fat substitutes are among the ingredients being phased out. The full list of every synthetic dye and ingredient being removed is …

TikTok is a one-stop-shop for recipe inspo, viral dance trends, tin-foil-hat conspiracies, and, increasingly, political commentary. Now, it’s also where one in five Americans are getting their news. That’s according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week, which has tracked a dramatic uptick in news consumption on the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. “During that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption,” Pew noted. In Pew’s survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago. But it’s not just younger people. A quarter of adults between the …

Factory activity shrank in much of the world last month, private surveys showed on Wednesday, as signs of a slowdown in U.S. growth and the anticipated impact of President Donald The President’s tariffs added to pressure from weak Chinese demand. Euro zone manufacturing slipped back into contraction as new orders fell at their fastest rate in six months, with export markets acting as a particular drag, signalling that the recovery in the region’s industrial sector was fragile. The HCOB Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, fell to 49.8 in September from August’s 50.7, which was the first reading above the 50.0-point l…

Discontent has surged across U.S. society, largely defined the last three presidential elections, and now appears set to challenge business owners in the workplace. The rising sense of grievance expressed across all demographic groups has reached new highs, according to a new survey, with both companies and their CEOs suffering some of the biggest drops in trust among respondents. The rising tide of acrimony and accusation recorded in the 25th Annual Edelman Trust Barometer shouldn’t be too surprising for anyone who followed the November election campaigns—or who just listens to conversations in the office and shop floor. Whether it was Democrats warning of a “fascist…

Last week, two Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) LP decks leaked to Newcomer. As far as I (and Google and ChatGPT) can tell, this is only the second time ever that internal Andreessen Horowitz documents have leaked. The firm is notoriously secretive. I am much too humble and my fund is much too insignificant to seriously believe that my Substack from September 3—“Andreessen Horowitz is not a Venture Capital Fund”—and its subsequent republishing on Fast Company could possibly have annoyed the Sand Hill Road behemoth so much that it decided to leak its own LP deck for the first time in history. But you gotta love the timing. 😜 Regardless of why the decks were leaked o…

President Donald The President’s administration said Wednesday it was putting a hold on roughly $18 billion to fund a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey and the city’s expanded Second Avenue subway project because of the government shutdown. The White House budget director, Russ Vought, said on a post on X that the step was taken due to the Republican administration’s belief the money was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles. In a statement, the U.S. Transportation Department said that it had been reviewing whether any “unconstitutional practices” were occurring in the two massive infrastru…

Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer – the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June – President Donald The President said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free. Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes. But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under The President’s proposals are those with the most valuable real estate. As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow is facing mounting legal battles—including a lawsuit Tuesday brought by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Zillow paid rival Redfin $100 million to exit and stop competing in the online apartment rental listings market. The FTC claims the arrangement—framed publicly as a “partnership”—was in fact an unlawful anticompetitive agreement that eliminated Redfin as a meaningful competitor in the online rental space. According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the February 2025 deal requi…

The U.S. government is taking a minority stake in Lithium Americas, a company that is developing one of the world’s largest lithium mines in northern Nevada. The Department of Energy will take a 5% equity stake in the miner, which is based in Vancouver. It will also take a 5% stake in the Thacker Pass lithium mining project, a joint venture with General Motors. Thacker Pass is considered crucial in reducing U.S. reliance on China for lithium, a critical material used to produce the high tech batteries used in cell phones, electric vehicles and renewable energy. Both Republicans and Democrats support the project and narrowing the production gap. China is the world’…

The federal government shut down after midnight last night. Capitol Hill is snarled by a partisan impasse, with no word as to which side might cave, work across the aisle, and try to garner the votes needed to pass a new spending bill. The last government shutdown was at the end of 2018—during President The President’s first term in office—and lasted into the early part of 2019. At 35 days, it was the longest shutdown in four decades. As for what caused this latest shutdown? In the simplest terms, a previously passed bill to fund the federal government’s operations expired as of Wednesday, October 1. The House and Senate need to pass a new spending bill, which th…

“Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high . . . take a look, it’s in a book“: Reading Rainbow, PBS’ iconic kids show, is back after 20 years off the air. This time around, it’s hosted by beloved TikTok librarian Mychal Threets. But you don’t have to take my word for it. The news was announced on September 29 through an Instagram post shared by Threets, the official Reading Rainbow account, and Buffalo Toronto Public Media. Episodes of the new series will premiere at 10 a.m. ET every Saturday during October on the KidZuko, a kids’ YouTube channel from Sony Pictures Television, as well as on Reading Rainbow’s website. Reading Rainbow was first launched in 1983 a…

It’s official: AOL‘s dial-up internet has taken its last bow. AOL previously confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Tuesday (Sept. 30) — writing in a brief update on its support site last month that it “routinely evaluates” its offerings and had decided to discontinue dial-up, as well as associated software “optimized for older operating systems,” from its plans. Dial-up is now no longer advertised on AOL’s website. As of Wednesday, former company help pages like “connect to the internet with AOL Dialer” appeared unavailable — and nostalgic social media users took to the internet to say their final goodbyes. AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many hou…

Amazon is pushing deeper into the grocery aisle with the launch of Amazon Grocery, a food brand that keeps most prices under $5. The idea of buying much of anything for $5 seems like a distant memory for most shoppers these days, as The President’s tariffs and persistent inflation keep the price of everyday consumer goods high with little relief in sight. Keenly aware of that, Amazon is looking to undercut the competition’s prices with its own newly unified private label brand for everything from eggs and pre-made salads to ground beef and olive oil. The company plans to expand its offerings to more grocery staples like frozen pasta, granola and cakes in the coming mo…

On Tuesday, Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek announced he will step down from his leadership role after nearly two decades. Ek will serve as the company’s executive chairman and two former co-presidents — Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström — will share the role as co-CEOs. “Over the last few years, I’ve turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav — who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase,” Ek said in a news release. Ek continued, “This change simply matches titles to how we already operate. In my role as Executive Chairman, I will focus…

Rumor has it that soda fountains at a handful of gas stations and convenience stores across the Midwest are serving a thicker, more syrupy variant — with extra sweetness. Aptly dubbed “heavy soda”, the drink option can be traced back to a singular post on the subreddit r/Soda, and a few TikTok videos. “You know when the gas station fountains have this option you’re in gods country,” creator Kate Boyer wrote in the caption of a post earlier this year. The video has since gained almost seven million view. The drink has recently been picked up by a number of news organizations. Not to be confused with the recent dirty soda or protein soda trends, heavy soda is all …

Tesla has raised lease prices for all its vehicles in the U.S. after a $7,500 federal tax credit that helped boost electric vehicle sales expired, according to the company’s website on Wednesday. The change follows the end of tax incentives under sweeping legislation passed by Congress, which eliminated the $7,500 credit for new EV leases and purchases, as well as a $4,000 credit for used EVs, effective September 30. Tesla and its rivals had been passing these credits on to customers through competitive lease offers. The monthly lease of the electric vehicle manufacturer’s best-selling Model Y increased to a range between $529 and $599, from a range of $479 to…

Scientist and global activist Jane Goodall, who turned her childhood love of primates into a lifelong quest for protecting the environment, has died at the age of 91, the institute she founded said on Wednesday. Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour, the Jane Goodall Institute said in a social media post. “Dr. Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” it said on Instagram. The primatologist-turned-conservationist spun her love of wildlife into a lifelong campaign that took her from a seaside English village to Africa an…