5 days Ago
NEW YORK — Most U.S. stocks ticked higher Nov.
18 to recover some of their sharp slide from last week. The S&P 500 rose 0.4 percent Monday for its first gain in three trading sessions.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1 percent, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6 percent.
CVS Health rallied 5.4% after adding four new directors to its board. Liberty Energy also helped pull the market upward after rising 4.
9%. President-elect Donald Trump named its CEO, Chris Wright, as his Secretary of Energy. Trading of Spirit Airlines, meanwhile, was halted after the budget carrier reached an agreement with its debtholders on a plan to take it through bankruptcy protection.
Stocks regained some momentum after giving back more than half their postelection gains at the end of last week. Investors had sent the S&P 500 nearly 4 percent higher in the days immediately following Trump's win. More recently, though, they have braced for some of the potential downsides for the market.
NEW YORK — CVS Health has added four new board members, including the CEO of a hedge fund that has been critical of the struggling health care giant. The company said Nov. 18 that it now has 16 directors following "productive discussions" with Glenview Capital Management.
The hedge fund holds about a 1 percent stake in CVS. Glenview has said the company , which has cut its forecast several times this year, is operating well below its potential. The fund's CEO, Larry Robbins, is among the new directors.
CVS runs one of the nation's largest drugstore chains and a huge business that handles prescription drug coverage for employers, insurers and other clients. It also owns health insurance giant Aetna. NEW YORK — McDonald's is spending $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E.
coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant's Quarter Pounder hamburgers. The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said. The U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli.
Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak. Colorado reported at least 30 cases; Montana reported 19; Nebraska, 13; and New Mexico, 10. The illnesses were reported between Sept.
12 and Oct. 21. At least 104 people got sick and 34 were hospitalized, according to federal health officials.
One person died in Colorado and four people developed a potentially life-threatening kidney disease complication. The Food and Drug Administration has said that "there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald's restaurants." But the outbreak hurt the company's sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak. McDonald's identified an alternate supplier for the 900 restaurants that temporarily stopped serving the burgers with onions. Over the past week, McDonald's resumed selling Quarter Pounders with slivered onions nationwide.
NEW YORK — The Associated Press said Nov. 18 that it would begin offering buyouts and lay off selected employees, part of a plan to reduce the news outlet's staff by about 8% and accelerate a transition to a digital-first organization. The move is part of what is expected to be a dispiriting end-of-year period in the news industry, which is beset by business woes that go back years.
The end of a busy presidential-election cycle was also expected to accelerate reorganization plans. The AP said those eligible for buyouts were to learn of the offer, which would include severance pay and partial health coverage for 18 months, by late Monday. Those whose positions are due to be eliminated would learn about their fates over the next few weeks.
Once considered the world's largest newsgathering organization, the AP no longer makes that claim and does not reveal the size of its staff. As a result, it was impossible to say on Monday how many workers would be affected. The AP said less than half of the anticipated cuts would involve news employees, with the bulk within the U.
S. ATLANTIC CITY — New Jersey's internet gambling market set another record in October, the latest proof that people are betting more of their money online rather than coming to Atlantic City to gamble it in person. Figures released Monday by the state show the casinos and their online partners won $213.
6 million in October, surpassing September's previous record of $208 million. When in-person casino winnings, internet and sports betting revenue are included, the nine casinos, two horse tracks that take sports bets and their online partners won just under $500 million in October, an increase of 2.6 percent from a year ago.
But internet and sports betting money is not solely for the casinos to keep; it must be shared with outside parties including sports books and tech platforms. For that reason, the casinos consider money won from in-person customers to be their core business. And that business continues to lag for two-thirds of the casinos.
Only three casinos — Borgata, Hard Rock and Ocean — won more from in-person gamblers last month than they did in October 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The swing toward internet gambling and away from in-person casino gambling accelerated during the pandemic, and is becoming a more permanent feature of New Jersey's gambling landscape..
