McDonald’s is garnering praise after deciding to fire its chief executive for having a relationship with an employee. But the decision is reigniting scrutiny of the company’s handling of sexual harassment incidents that involve restaurant workers. McDonald’s Chief People Officer David Fairhurst, who headed the chain’s human resources department, departed the company on Monday. In August, McDonald’s announced that it would introduce new workplace training for restaurant workers and supervisors ce

Both of these retailers know the 2019 holiday season won’t be an easy one to win. And so Kohl’s and Macy’s, among other retailers, hope to offer consumers something in their bricks-and-mortar stores they can’t find online. “We have a lot of experimentation [going on],” Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass said during an interview on Wednesday at a press event held at Kohl’s new pop-up shop. This also marks the first holiday season where Kohl’s will be accepting Amazon returns at all of its more than 1,150 U

The union that represents the roughly 17,000 Southwest Airlines flight attendants is considering suing Boeing over lost pay in the protracted grounding of the 737 Max, a union official said Wednesday. Southwest’s pilots union sued Boeing last month over what it said was $100 million in lost wages because of the grounding. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly has said the airline plans to share with employees some of the compensation it receives from Boeing because of the grounding. Boeing in July took a $4.

Bill Gates calls his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein ‘a mistake’Bill Gates sits down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Conference to discuss the lessons he’s learned from taking meetings with convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Here are the most important things to know about Thursday before you hit the door. Disney reports fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. The large cut in earnings is mainly due to increased spending ahead of the launch of the new Disney+ streaming service this month. Credit Suisse analyst Douglas Mitchelson said investors will be hoping for some “pre-sale color for the less than one week out Disney+ launch.” Shares of Disney are down about 7% in the last three months but are

Roku also raised its full-year outlook for 2019, expecting revenue of $1.11 billion in revenue, which is at the midpoint of its projected range. The company’s third-quarter revenue of $396.3 million is up 49% from the same quarter a year ago. Shares of Expedia tumbled 13% after the company’s third-quarter earnings miss. Shares of Square climbed more than 2% following the company’s third-quarter earnings that topped expectations. The company’s shares are up about 24% year-to-date.

The XLI industrials ETF, which holds Boeing, Honeywell and Union Pacific, has added more than 2% in the past week. We’re seeing continued rotation into the industrials,” Todd Gordon, founder of TradingAnalysis.com, said on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Tuesday. “I like the chart setup in John Deere with the agricultural play and with obviously a Chinese deal getting closer and closer is the word around the street,” said Gordon. “We have also a pending breakout here above the $180 level in John Deer

Rory Gamble, acting president of the United Auto Workers, speaks with CNBC at the union’s temporary headquarters in metro Detroit on Nov. 6, 2019. DETROIT — Rory Gamble, acting president of United Auto Workers, is concerned that an ongoing federal corruption probe into the union could lead to a RICO case and government oversight. The UAW has been at the center of a multiyear federal corruption probe that has led to charges against 13 people, including 10 convictions. UAW President Gary Jones als

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to run for his old Senate seat in Alabama, joining a jammed field in one of 2020’s most important races. “Jeff Sessions is one of the reasons I decided to get off the sidelines and into the race for Senate. Folks in Alabama know that if we’re going to help President Trump change this country then we’ve got to stop recycling the same old politicians. As attorney general, Jeff Sessions had his chance to have President Trump’s back and take on the establi

Bill Gates said on Wednesday suggested that Windows could have been the world’s dominant mobile operating system had it not been for the antitrust case the U.S. Justice Department brought against Microsoft. Alphabet’s Google has the most popular mobile operating system, with Apple’s iPhone in second place. “Oh, we were so close,” Gates said about the company’s miss in mobile operating systems. Earlier this year Gates said that his biggest mistake at Microsoft was not having Windows become the do

The Department of Justice on Wednesday charged two former Twitter employees for spying on users on behalf of Saudi Arabia. The charges allege that Ali Alzabarah and Ahmad Abouammo used their employee credentials to access information about specific Twitter users, including their email addresses, birth dates, phone numbers and internet protocol addresses. A third individual, Ahmed Almutairi, was also charged for acting as an intermediary between the Twitter employees and the Saudi government, the

Ray Dalio, billionaire and founder of Bridgewater Associates LP, speaks during the Institute of International Finance (IIF) annual membership meeting in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. Central banks have been giving cheap money to investors who have been injecting it into companies that are often unprofitable and don’t contribute to economic growth, says billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio. The founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, recently put

Qualcomm stock jumped 6% in extended trading on Wednesday, after the chipmaker reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue. Qualcomm reported adjusted earnings per share of 78 cents, topping the average estimate of 71 cents, according toRefinitiv. The company attributed its strong profit primarily to its licensing segment, which makes money from patents and other licensing arrangements. The Qualcomm Technology Licensing business generated $1.15 billion in revenue. The company said fourth

But CEO Reed Hastings said Wednesday that subscriber counts aren’t the right metric to track who’s winning the streaming wars — what’s really important is how viewers spend their time. “You’ll hear some subscriber numbers but you can just bundle things so that’s not going to be that relevant. But Hastings is right to point out that many of the major U.S. streaming services have already found distribution partnerships that will juice subscriber numbers in year one. Netflix itself has a deal with

Roku stock tanked 14% in after-hours trading after the company reported Q3 results. It was not immediately clear whether the reported loss and expected loss were comparable. The company reported 32.3 million active accounts, up from 30.5 million during the previous quarter, and an average revenue per user of $22.58 compared to the previous quarter’s metric of $21.06. The company’s platform revenue for Q3 increased by 79% from the year ago period, to $179.3 million. In October, the company announ

Microsoft founder and multibillionaire Bill Gates said Wednesday that he “made a mistake” meeting with convicted sex criminal and wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein to discuss philanthropy. “None of that money ever appeared, and I gave him some benefit by the association, so I made a doubly wrong mistake there.” Epstein, 66, had amassed a long list of famous and wealthy contacts – including Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump – years before he died in a Manhattan federal lockup in August fac

David Drummond speaks during a meeting of the Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten in Paris. Alphabet’s board of directors has opened an investigation into how executives handled claims of sexual harassment and other misconduct, including behavior of Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, who has been accused of having relationships with employees. Alphabet shareholders sued the board in January for allegedly covering up sexual misconduct from executives, including former Android

It also announced that the standard deduction will be increasing next year. The standard deduction is a set dollar amount by which a person’s income is reduced, before income tax is applied to the rest. There are hundreds of possible itemized deductions, including the mortgage interest deduction, and you’d only want to itemize if the total deduction was larger than the standard deduction. In recent years, some 70% of taxpayers took the standard deduction over itemizing, according to the Urban-Br

If billionaire investor Warren Buffett ever wants to take a swing at a career in baseball, then he’ll have at least one Hall-of-Famer in his corner. “He would be a great baseball scout or a great baseball manager,” former MLB catcher Mike Piazza said of Buffett in an interview with Yahoo Finance on Monday. Piazza describes himself as a fan of Buffett, and the former baseball star told Yahoo Finance that he’s previously relied on advice from the “Oracle of Omaha” when it comes to his own investme

In September of 2018, she decided to run for a seat on her local board of supervisors. In October 2017, cyclist Juli Briskman was photographed giving the middle finger to President Donald Trump’s motorcade during a weekend bike ride in Virginia. “Today, I am filing my organizational papers in a bid for local office in Loudoun County, Va. Loudoun deserves transparency in government, fully funded schools & smarter solutions to growth. It’s time for a change,” Briskman shared on Twitter of her deci