New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is directing the city's municipal office workers to return to in-person work by Sept. 13, the New York Times reports.
The big picture: Despite growing concerns about the Delta variant, de Blasio is intent on showing the city reopening, a promise made during an aggressive vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan’s humanitariancrisis is inextricably tied to its crumbling finances. U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, stemming from 2001, are now causing a flight of capital and aid from the country as the distinction between providing services to Taliban and non-Taliban actors becomes more difficult to vet.
Why it matters: The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan’s government put U.S. financial services companies squarely in the middle of the geopolitical clash.
Take things only accessible to rich people and make them available to everyone else. That was the startup advice given by serial entrepreneur and investor Joe Marchese to Jake Wood.
The result is Groundswell, a new corporate philanthropy platform that turns donor-advised funds (DAFs) into an employee benefit. The platform announced Wednesday $5 million in seed funding (via a SAFE), and is said to be speaking with VCs about a Series A round that could total between $15 million and $20 million.
Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks, is in talks to buy Mailchimp, an Atlanta-based email marketing company, for more than $10 billion, per Bloomberg.
Why it matters: Mailchimp hasn't taken a dime of venture funding since its 2001 formation, making it one of tech's most successful bootstrapped companies. It's also survived the rise, "death" and revival of email (and email newsletters).
NASA and Joby Aviation are kicking off acoustic measuring tests as part of a program to promote public confidence in emerging aviation markets, Joby announced Wednesday.
Why it matters: If electric air taxis are to gain wide adoption, they need to be quiet aircraft, so measuring their precise noise footprint gives Joby an early mover advantage versus the competition in this area.
This year’s extreme weather, caused by climate change, is impacting crops to extremes that farmers haven't seen in their lifetimes.
Catch up quick: Prolonged heat waves and droughts have caused this year's corn, soybean, almond, honey, citrus and avocado production to crash and prices to skyrocket.
The skirmish overJay Powell's future as Fed chair provides a glimpse of a much bigger fight — one that could mark the beginning of the end of the modern era of independent central banking.
Why it matters: Powell epitomizes the way in which central banks, working alongside the government, took on the role of rescuing the economy from the shock of the pandemic. Now some lawmakers want to keep the relationship much closer than it has been in recent decades, to harness some of the power only central banks have.
As more and more employers nix college degrees as a hiring requirement, students are choosing cheaper, faster alternatives to college like coding boot camps.
Why it matters: The cost of college keeps climbing, and federal student loan debt sits at a whopping $1.6 trillion. Students are debating whether college is worth it — especially when it may no longer be necessary to get a high-paying job.
A majority of employees around the world say they're choosing their jobs based not just on salaries and benefits, but also social impact and their personal beliefs, according to new data.
Why it matters: That attitude represents a seismic shift that has intensified during the pandemic: People no longer work to live; they live for their work.
A Florida man was accused Tuesday of trying to extort $25 million from Don Gaetz, the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz, in an alleged scheme linked to a federal sex trafficking investigation into the Republican congressman.
Driving the news: The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida announced Tuesday that Stephen Alford was indicted by a federal grand jury over an alleged scheme "to obtain money based upon false promises or guarantees he made" to Don Gaetz that he "could deliver a Presidential Pardon for a family member."
