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Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees in mass job reductions that arrive as the telecommunications giant says it must “reorient” its entire company. The job cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen by The Associated Press, Schulman said Verizon’s current cost structure “limits” the company’s ability to invest—pointing particularly to customer experiences. “We must reorient our entire company around delivering for and delighting our customers,” Schulman wrote. He added that the company needed to simplify its operations “to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate o…

NBC recently debuted a new show: Stumble, a comedy about a former cheer coach leading a team of misfits. Some earlier reviews of the show, which premiered on November 7, called it “hilarious” and “full of sharp writing.” But the new sitcom, starring Kristin Chenoweth, Jenn Lyon, and Taran Killam, has audiences chuckling at more than just cheer squad antics. It also makes narcolepsy, a serious neurological disorder, into a recurring joke. Narcolepsy, a chronic condition that can lead to major challenges for sufferers, takes center stage in the show as a character named Madonna (Arianna Davis) has the condition. Due to the disorder, Madonna collapses without warning…

While President Donald The President has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans’ concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, “We hear you” and “there’s a lot more work to do.” But the American people need to have “a little bit of patience,” Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News. The vice president’s remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this month’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. Vance said the The Presiden…

This week, chips were on the menu in the White House. “When you ask about AI and chips, Saudi Arabia has a huge need for computing power,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said at a press conference on Tuesday with President The President, where he floated a potential $50-billion purchase of American microchips. The President’s Commerce Department signed off on exporting 70,000 such advanced microchips made by Nvidia to state-owned AI firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Little wonder why Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s high-flying CEO, joined a gaggle of tech moguls – including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Michael Dell – at a dinner honoring the Saudi …

If the football games, boxing matches, and comedy specials weren’t indication enough that Netflix is making a bold move for the live television market, here’s another: Beginning in 2026, it will air live baseball for the first time. Major League Baseball announced a new three-year media rights agreement on Wednesday with NBC, ESPN, and Netflix that could see baseball fans channel surfing to find their games. The shakeups in the agreement mostly see NBC and its parent company, NBCUniversal, commanding a larger share of baseball coverage, picking up several key games and events previously aired by ESPN, including “Sunday Night Baseball.” And, for the first time in …

For consumers heavy on savings and light on credit history, a new partnership in the world of credit scores could help you lock down a loan. FICO, the company basically synonymous with the credit score, is teaming up with Plaid to bring real-time data showing how much cash you have on hand to lenders. Plaid, a fintech company that links bank accounts with financial apps, has a lot of visibility into how its customers move cash between bank accounts, payments apps, investment platforms, and just about everything else. Plaid’s technology runs under the hood across a huge network of 12,000 financial institutions that partner with the fintech startup, which has grown into…

In our consumer driven culture, where the cost of goods is soaring, one of the most radical things you can do this Black Friday is not to buy anything. That’s the message from “Mass Blackout,” a coalition of grassroots groups that are protesting the The President administration’s policies and urging you not to participate in this year’s extended Black Friday sales. starting the day before Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26) until the day after Cyber Monday, (Tuesday, December 2). There’s also a second boycott underway targeting Amazon, Target and Home Depot called “We Ain’t Buying It” around the same time. Don’t think boycotts work? Just look at Target, which jus…

Earlier this year Pepsi purchased probiotic drinker maker Poppi, and now the soda giant is introducing a new prebiotic cola drink in its quest to capture Gen Z drinkers: Pepsi Prebiotic Cola. The drink drops on November 28 and will be available at Walmart, on Amazon, and TikTok shop, as well as in select markets on Kroger.com, DashMart, and GoPuff. The “Unbelievably Pepsi” drinks will be available in two flavors: Original and Cherry Vanilla and contain 30 calories and five grams of sugar. They also have three grams of prebiotic fiber. Still, the drinks are highly marketable, given they’re a soda alternative, and appear to offer some health benefits. As many Amer…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Back in May, ResiClub teamed up with Stessa, an asset management and accounting software for real estate investors, to survey real estate investors about how they were navigating the rental market. Over the past month, we teamed up with Stessa again to survey real estate investors about their market conditions, portfolio plans, and property management strategy. Investors who own at least one single-family investment property were eligible to respond to the Stessa-ResiClub Real Estate Investor Survey—Q4 2025, fielded between October 24 and Novembe…

U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, the highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The unemployment rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the labor market—either working or looking for work—in September and not all of them found jobs right away. The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labor Department revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in Augus…

A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December. The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree that’s delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot (4-meter) tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world. This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,” which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago res…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on gathering some informed opinions from people trying out Google’s new Gemini 3 Pro AI model. I also look at another “circular” AI investment agreement. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. What smart people are saying about Google’s Gem…

A 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo of her asleep in a bed could make history Thursday when it goes on sale by Sotheby’s in New York. With an estimated price of $40 million to $60 million, “El sueño (La cama)” – in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — may surpass the top price for a work by any female artist when it goes under the hammer. That record currently stands at $44.4 million, paid at Sotheby’s in 2014 for Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1.” The highest price at auction for a Kahlo work is $34.9 million, paid in 2021 for “Diego and I,” depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. Her paintings are reported …

They’re cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionship—but artificial intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to children’s and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season. These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2 years old, are generally powered by AI models that have already been shown to harm children and teenagers, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, according to an advisory published Thursday by the children’s advocacy group Fairplay and signed by more than 150 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators. “The serious harms that AI chatbots have inflicted on children are we…

As cases of potentially deadly botulism in babies who drank ByHeart infant formula continue to grow, state officials say they are still finding the recalled product on some store shelves. Meanwhile, the company reported late Wednesday that laboratory tests confirmed that some samples of formula were contaminated with the type of bacteria that has sickened more than 30 babies in the outbreak. Tests by an independent food safety laboratory found Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that produces toxins that can lead to potentially life-threatening illness in babies younger than 1, the company said on its website. ByHeart officials said they notified the U.S. Food and …

In utterly bleak news, AI Overviews are now more accurate about the lack of a relationship between autism and vaccines than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). On Wednesday, November 19, the CDC published an updated web page that defies broad scientific consensus and even its own past statements. The page now alleges that “‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” It must be said as early and clearly as possible that there is no link between vaccines and autism, as overwhelming data has demonstrated. Despite that fact, the first paragr…

Maybe your car broke down, your computer was stolen, or you had a surprise visit to urgent care. Emergencies are inevitable, but you can prepare to deal with them by building an emergency fund. “There are so many things that happen in our lives that we don’t expect and most of them require financial means to overcome,” said Miklos Ringbauer, a certified public accountant. The industry standard is to save three to six months of expenses in an emergency fund. However, this can feel daunting if you live paycheck to paycheck or if you have debt. But if you’re in either of these situations, it’s even more crucial to build a financial safety net that can help you in tim…

For the 150th episode of my award-winning podcast series, FUTURE OF XYZ, I sat down with Nick Foster, former head of design at Google X and leading futures designer. We quickly found common ground in our strong belief that society doesn’t think about the future in the right way. ​​Too often, the future is reduced to flashy visions, both in media headlines and through messages from leading corporations. The future feels like a sci-fi movie that still seems far away. Nick and I both believe the future isn’t some distant fantasy, but rather a tomorrow already unfolding before us. To prepare, we must pay closer attention to what we know now and how people are acting today. Wh…

Picture the scene. You’ve advertised a job on LinkedIn and received applications from around Europe. The perfect candidate lives in one of the world’s top tech cities—Paris, Berlin, or Amsterdam, for instance. Your company is based somewhere in Europe, so hiring them should be easy, right? Unfortunately, no. Despite their geographical proximity, countries in Europe still vary significantly in their hiring rules and regulations, making it hard to compliantly pay cross-border workers. Let’s take a closer look at the problem. So close, yet so far There’s naturally a certain amount of friction in terms of labor law compatibility between European states in…

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to announce its new return-to-work (RTO) mandate. The first phase of the mandate is set to start in February 2026, requiring Seattle-area employees living within a 50 miles radius of a Microsoft office will need to be in office at least three days a week. Over the next year, the company expects the same from the rest of its U.S. and international employees. Microsoft was one of the last big companies to offer their workforce flexibility. Competitors like Google, Meta, Amazon, Zoom, and AT&T have all announced their own unique policies requiring workers to be in the office. These are all innovative, technology-led companie…

In recent conversations with customers and peers, I’m not hearing “Which AI model or tool should we pick?” I’m hearing “How do we operationalize AI across our critical workflows?” People are starting to understand real digital transformation doesn’t come from a bolt-on solution. It happens when we treat AI as a foundational force and an engine for lasting change. The shift toward an AI-powered workplace requires leaders to enable organizational intelligence across the enterprise. WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL INTELLIGENCE? At Wrike, we define organizational intelligence as the seamless integration of human insight and AI capabilities to drive measurable outcomes a…

Yesterday, after the stock market’s closing bell, Nvidia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) reported its Q3 2026 financials. Investors were eagerly anticipating the results, as the company is widely seen as a bellwether for the broader artificial intelligence market. Nvidia’s Q3 results were all the more anticipated as fears over an AI bubble have grown in recent months. But those fears seem to be put to bed, at least temporarily. Nvidia didn’t just meet expectations. It beat them. As a result, Nvidia’s stock price is jumping in premarket trading today—and it’s helping lift the stock prices of most other chipmakers and Big Tech giants. Here’s what you need to know. …

In a world where AI can churn out chart-toppers in seconds and ticketing algorithms treat fans like data points, we risk losing the soul of live music. But a quiet countermovement is making a comeback right in people’s living rooms, backyards and basements. Once the gritty domain of garage bands and DIY punks, house shows are becoming a structured, sustainable model for music communities embraced by a myriad of musical genres and accessible to all ages. House shows aren’t just an indie throwback. They serve as a blueprint for re-humanizing music and sustainable artist development, and cities should treat them as civic infrastructure. Today, fans crave authentic…

Timothée Chalamet just posted an 18-minute-long video to his Instagram to promote his upcoming A24 film, Marty Supreme. It might be his best role yet. In the video, Chalamet—sporting a bright yellow tank top, buzz cut, and dainty necklace—joins a Zoom call full of supposed marketing executives who will be leading the promotional campaign ahead of the film’s release on December 25. After awkward introductions, Chalamet proceeds to fill up the meeting’s airtime with increasingly ridiculous suggestions for the film’s marketing efforts, leaving the eight other members of the call scrambling to accommodate his wild ideas. On A24’s YouTube channel, where the video…

Here’s the thing about Wellington boots: They’re great when it’s raining, because they keep your toes dry and toasty. But when the rain stops, you feel a little silly stomping around in heavy rubber boots. But what if your rain boots looked like any other fashion-forward boot you’d be comfortable wearing rain or shine? What if they looked like, say, a classic pair of Dr. Martens? I have good news. Dr. Martens has designed a rain boot that mimics one of its most iconic designs, the 1460 eight-hole lace-up boot, which first came to market in 1960. It has a lot of the hallmarks of a Dr. Martens boot, like the heel tab for easy pull-on, the grooved sole, and even the…