>>Amazon, Starbucks Strikes Over
(Undated) -- Amazon and Starbucks workers are back delivering packages and whipping up holiday drinks. Strikes at both companies have ended without a resolution. Delivery drivers with the Teamsters Union walked off the job ahead of Christmas at Amazon in several cities over pay and demands Amazon recognize them as employees. Starbucks Workers United was striking at more than 300 stores over wages and benefits. It's unclear if the strikes had any impact on the bargaining power of the workers.
>>Musk, Ramaswamy Face Backlash For Supporting Foreign-Born Tech Engineers
(Undated) -- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are getting backlash for defending Silicon Valley's reliance on foreign-born engineers. The billionaires are heading up President-elect Trump's new "Department of Government Efficiency." This week, they both claimed on X that the U.S. does not have enough talented engineers. Musk wrote on Wednesday that "there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America." On Thursday, Ramaswamy wrote, "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers."
>>Mortgage Rates Up At Year's End
(Undated) -- Mortgage rates are up as 2024 draws to a close. For the week ending December 26th, average 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were at six-point-85 percent, according to Freddie Mac. That's higher than the year's average despite several cuts to the interest rate made by the Federal Reserve. Mortgage rates are more influenced by the bond market, which the Fed doesn't directly influence.
>>Weekly Jobless Drops Slightly
(Washington, DC) -- The year's final report on first-time requests for unemployment benefits can be summed up as a mixed bag. The Labor Department's report shows first-time jobless claims fell by a thousand last week to 219-thousand. That was against projections of 225-thousand. But the report also showed the highest number of people collecting unemployment benefits since November 2021, at nearly two-million.
>>Richard Parsons Dies At 76
(Undated) -- Richard Parsons, the former CEO of Time Warner, has died at the age of 76. Parsons became the CEO in 2002, directly after Time Warner's disastrous takeover of AOL. He helped divorce the two companies, dropping the "AOL" from the corporations name and grew Time Warner back to a multi-billion dollar company before stepping away in 2007. His death was reported Thursday.
>>"Mufasa" Wins Christmas Day
(Los Angeles, CA) -- "Mufasa: The Lion King" was the winner at the Christmas Day box office, raking in 14-point-seven-million-dollars. The new vampire film "Nosferatu" made eleven-and-a-half-million on its debut day and took second. "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" finished in third with ten-point-three-million, while the Bob Dylan biopic "A Complete Unknown" made seven-point-two-million from its first day in theaters. "Wicked" finished in fifth with over five-million.
