Kroger is teaming up with Alibaba to sell groceries on the Chinese e-commerce giant's platform, the company announced Tuesday.
The big picture: The battle between American retailers is heating up overseas, with iconic U.S. brands all vying for massive — and rapidly growing — foreign markets. The Chinese market is the biggest of them all, and while few American companies have been able to crack it, many are partnering with China's domestic titans to try.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that she "can't guarantee" that the president has never used the N-word, but said that she has never heard him say it.
Key quotes: Sandersaccused Omarosa of trying "to tear this entire place down," and blamed the press for providing "a large platform to someone they know not to have a lot of credibility." She did not reveal whether or not she had signed an NDA, but pointed out that the practice is "common in a lot of places," especially for government jobs for employees with a security clearance. Sanders defended the president in explaining that calling Omarosa a "dog" did not have anything to do with race.
The founders of dating app Tinder filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the app's owner, IAC, and its subsidiary Match Group, CNBC reports.
The details: The lawsuit alleges that the two "robbed Tinder employees by manipulating financial information, undermining Tinder's valuation and unlawfully stripping away their Tinder stock options," per CNBC. Current executives at the company, and early employees, filed the suit along with founders Sean Rad, Jonathan Badeen, and Justin Mateen.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn will no longer try to get shareholders to vote against Cigna's pending takeover of Express Scripts.
Why it matters: So much for that brief spat. Icahn didn't think the battle was worth fighting any more after the two major proxy advisory firms recommended shareholders approve the deal. Icahn's retreat makes it a lot more likely investors will vote for the acquisition, but federal and state antitrust reviews are still pending.
Bustle Digital Group (BDG) will announce today the acquisition of Flavorpill Media Inc., an online publisher and experiential brand focused on events. Terms will not be disclosed.
Why it matters: The acquisition gives BDG an entrance into the large-scale experiential events business, which is a massive growth point for some of BDG's biggest competitors in the millennial, female-focused digital media industry, like Refinery29 and PopSugar.
On October 23, 2017, Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement removed an entire webpage that contained detailed contact information for 22 different staffers, including ORR Director Scott Lloyd, according to a Web Integrity Project investigation and confirmed by HHS.
Why it matters: ORR is the agency that is responsible for caring for the separated migrant children following the implementation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' "zero-tolerance" policy, which sparked international outrage. Although HHS claims there is no correlation, family separations began as early as October 2017, according to the New York Times — around the time the website was modified.
Bayer stock fell more than 10% on Monday, representing a loss of more than $10 billion in market cap, on the first day of trading after a California jury found that the German company owed $289.2 million to a man who claims to have gotten cancer from exposure to Roundup weed killer.
The bottom line: Bayer might have taken on a bigger liability than it realized in buying Roundup maker Monsanto, via a $64 billion merger that closed this past June, as this could be just the first of thousands of similar lawsuits.
The MSCI world equity index, which tracks markets in 47 countries, is down 1.7% since Friday as the Turkish lira hit another record low against the dollar Monday morning, prompting fears of contagion to other currencies, reports Reuters.
The big picture: Turkey's central bank vowed to take "all necessary measures" to stabilize the lira, but investors have not been reassured. The euro hit a 13-month low against the dollar, while emerging market currencies like South Africa's rand (down 2.7%) and Mexico's peso (down 1.9%) have also suffered.
