GM CEO Mary Barra said the automaker is “committed to doing the right thing” with Detroit’s iconic Renaissance Center after moving its headquarters out of the complex next year.
Fast food has long been a staple of American diets because it is, or was, so inexpensive.
Not so much anymore.
Over the past five years, prices for popular menu items at chains like McDonald’s and Taco Bell have risen dramatically. The cost of a Big Mac or a Chalupa has doubled since 2019, according to archived and current pages of the Fast Food Menu Prices online tracker.
Restaurant inflation overall has been significant, though much tamer by comparison, with dining-out prices up 30% on average since 2019.
“My New Year’s resolution is to start taking packed lunches instead of getting fast food every day because it’s so ridiculously expensive now,” one Reddit user proclaimed earlier this year.
Between 2019 and 2024, the price of a medium fries order has more than doubled from $1.79 to $4.79, and the price of a Big Mac Meal has gone from $5.99 to $12.69, according to the tracker at Fastfoodmenuprices.com. A BLT Footlong at Subway has gone from $5.50 to $8.49. And a chicken burrito at Chipotle has gone from $6.50 to $10.70.
Births continued a historic slide in all but two states last year, making it clear that a brief post-pandemic uptick in the nation’s birth numbers was all about planned pregnancies that had been delayed temporarily by COVID-19.
Only Tennessee and North Dakota had small increases in births from 2022 to 2023, according to a Stateline analysis of provisional federal data on births. In California, births dropped by 5%, or nearly 20,000, for the year. And as is the case in most other states, there will be repercussions now and later for schools and the workforce, said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who follows birth trends.
“These effects are already being felt in a lot of school districts in California. Which schools are going to close? That’s a contentious issue,” Johnson said.
In the short term, having fewer births means lower state costs for services such as subsidized day care and public schools at a time when aging baby boomers are straining resources. But eventually, the lack of people could affect workforces needed both to pay taxes and to fuel economic growth.
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE and BARBARA ORTUTAY (AP Technology Writers)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is tried to confront the latest in a succession of legal attacks on its digital empire on Thursday as federal judge began to address anticompetitive practices in the app market for smartphones powered by its Android software.
The San Francisco court hearing before U.S. District Judge James Donato comes five months after a nine-person jury decided Google had turned its Play Store for Android phone apps into an illegal monopoly following a four-week trial in an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite.
At the start of the hearing, Donato told lawyers for both parties not to revisit the jury’s verdict, which is now “carved in stone.” He also said that the case is about “competing generally,” and he is “not looking for a relief that gives a helping hand just to Epic.”
The verdict has given Epic a chance to persuade Donato to impose sweeping restrictions and other changes on how Google manages the distribution of Android apps. Those apps enable a wide range of services on virtually every phone that isn’t made by Apple.
By Gregory Karp, Jae Bratton | NerdWallet
If you’re paying full price at the gas pump these days, you might be missing a way to fuel your household savings. That’s because many rewards credit cards offer bonus points when you use them at the gas station.
Used right, those rewards are like a discount on every gallon you buy. Few consumers would turn down these savings when the average price of a gallon of gas as of May 2024 was $3.61, according to AAA.
It’s fairly common now to get triple points — 3 points per dollar spent — for using a rewards card to pay for gas. Notably, some of the best cards for fill ups don’t feature the names of big oil companies or their service station brands. Instead, you’ll likely save the most with general rewards credit cards or cards associated with warehouse clubs and credit unions.
As you shop around for a card that will shrink your gas budget, keep these tips in mind.
The most lucrative cards for gas offer the equivalent of 3% or more in rewards. Better still, many cards with high rewards rates don’t charge an annual fee, so you’ll pay nothing to earn rewards that can be redeemed for cash back, gift cards, travel and more.