Rob Wile

Walmart will close all 51 of its doctor-staffed health clinics as part of an announcement that its Walmart Health initiative is shutting down. The clinics, located in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Texas, had been open just a few years. Walmart also said Tuesday it is winding down its virtual care option. Walmart pharmacies and vision centers will not be affected. Patients with scheduled appointments will continue to be seen, and Walmart will make efforts to direct patients to high…

Consumers will have to be patient as they wait for price increases to meaningfully slow down, economists say. With annual inflation rates stalling above its 2% target, the Federal Reserve was expected to keep its key interest rate unchanged at between 5.25% and 5.5% — the highest level in more than a decade. Last month, the consumer price index came in at 3.5% on an annual basis, driven by rising housing costs and insurance rates, especially auto insurance. “We’re just a mile a way from the fi…

The Biden administration plans to require that all new cars and trucks come with pedestrian-collision avoidance systems that include automatic emergency braking technology by the end of the decade. In an interview, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the requirement is designed to reduce pedestrian deaths, which have been on the rise in the post-Covid 19 era. “So many Americans [are] losing their lives on our roadways,” Buttigieg said. “We think we really have a responsibility to get t…

In addition to a cease-fire in Gaza, protesters on college campuses across the country are calling on their schools to divest from all financial support of Israel. Divestment usually refers to selling shares in companies doing business with a given country. Divestment has long been a goal of a movement that seeks to limit what it considers hostile operations by Israel and an end to expanding what the United Nations has ruled are illegal settlements. Now, college protesters are hoping to force th…

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said Thursday that the campus protests launched nationwide in response to Israel’s campaign in Gaza are another parallel of the lead-up to the Holocaust. In an interview Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Kraft, a longtime supporter of Columbia University, said that when he created the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, in part as a response to the “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, he saw rising signs of extreme hatred. In the…

The Biden administration is sending out $5.6 million in refund payments to certain Ring home security system customers after the company settled a federal complaint accusing it of security lapses. In a statement this week, the Federal Trade Commission said it would be sending out 117,044 payments via PayPal to affected customers as compensation for claims that Ring allowed employees and contractors to access consumers’ private videos. The agency accused Ring in 2023 of failing to implement prop…

TikTok’s fate in the U.S. has never been more in doubt after Congress approved a bill that gives its parent company two options: sell it to an approved buyer or see it banned. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on Wednesday. But it could take years for the TikTok ban to actually go into effect, since its Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, is likely to challenge the statute in court. And even if it survives a legal challenge, no one is quite sure what would happen next.…

Tesla’s stock jumped about 8% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the electric vehicle giant reported its steepest annual revenue drop in over a decade. Despite softer sales and a growing chorus of skeptics about CEO Elon Musk’s focus on the company, investors cheered its vow to “accelerate the launch of new models,” likely including more affordable ones like the long-awaited low-cost Model 2. “They need to adjust to a new environment,” Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities financia…

The Biden administration has issued a nationwide ban on the ability of employers to make their workers sign noncompete agreements, a move regulators said would help boost employee pay but which is set to be challenged in court by business groups. In a ruling Tuesday afternoon, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said noncompete clauses would henceforth be illegal. The measure was necessary, it said, for “protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fost…

It will take some time for the Caitlin Clark effect to be felt across the WNBA. Clark enters the league as a budding superstar who is already widely recognized as having been the biggest figure in a sea change for women’s basketball. Shortly after she helped the NCAA women’s Final Four set broadcasting records, she went first overall in the WNBA draft, helping the event draw a bigger TV viewership than the most recent MLB and NHL drafts. Tickets for the Indiana Fever, who drafted Clark last week…