Today’s Business and Stock Market News: Live Updates – The New York Times

If the appeals court had not ruled, Apple on Thursday would have had to start allowing companies to include links within their apps directing customers to outside websites where they can pay for those companies’ services or subscriptions.

The order was initially made in September as part of the verdict in a yearlong court case between Apple and Epic Games, the creator of the popular video game Fortnite.

In a brief document, three judges on the U.S.

But she did say Apple was violating California competition law with its so-called anti-steering provision, which blocked developers from telling their customers about ways to pay outside the App Store.

failed to show Apple’s conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California’s Unfair Competition Law,” the judges on the appeals court wrote.

In a statement, Apple thanked the appeals court and reiterated its argument against tweaking its strict App Store rules.

In a hearing held by a Senate subcommittee on consumer protection, lawmakers grilled Mr. Mosseri on internal research leaked by a whistle-blower that showed Instagram had a toxic effect on some teenagers.

“Facebook’s own researchers have been warning management, including yourself, Mr. Mosseri, for years,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the subcommittee.

The hearing is part of a growing effort in Washington to rein in the power of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies.

Calls for legislative changes have intensified in recent weeks, after a whistle-blower at Facebook leaked internal research that said Instagram led one out of three teenagers to feel worse about their body image and for as many as 16 percent of some teenagers in Britain to have thoughts of suicide.

He joined the company in 2008 as a designer and gradually rose in the ranks to run the News Feed, a central feature of the Facebook app.

He told lawmakers that Instagram often had a positive role in the lives of teenagers, such as by helping them establish connections during difficult times.

Mr. Blumenthal’s office has received hundreds of calls and emails from parents about their negative experiences with Instagram, he has said.

Though lawmakers often show bipartisan unity in the hearings, dozens of data privacy bills have been stymied by intense industry lobbying and partisan disagreement over how stringent laws should be.

Senator John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, has introduced a bill that would force companies to reveal more about their algorithmic ranking system.

He wouldn’t commit to give up completely on the idea of building a version of the Instagram app for users under the age of 13.

SAN JOSE, Calif.

On Wednesday, lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, concluded their defense in her fraud trial.

“You understand they were entitled to truthful answers about Theranos’s capabilities?” asked Robert Leach, an assistant U.S.

The end of her defense marked the final stages of a trial that has lasted nearly four months and captivated the public as a referendum on Silicon Valley’s start-up culture.

Then the jury will begin deliberations for a verdict in the case, which stands out because so few technology executives face criminal fraud charges.

Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and the president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers, said the pace of Ms. Holmes’s trial was sluggish.

Ramesh Balwani, known as Sunny, was Theranos’s president and chief operating officer from 2009 through 2016 and was in a romantic relationship with Holmes.

And she focused on Ramesh Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and business partner, who she said was responsible for overstated financial projections and problems in Theranos’s lab.

Mr. Balwani, who is known as Sunny and is roughly two decades older than she is, was also controlling and abusive, Ms. Holmes testified.

She said she regretted adding the logos of pharmaceutical companies to validation reports that she had sent out to investors, which led them to believe that the drug companies had endorsed Theranos’s technology.

“I wanted to convey the impact,” she said.

It was all meant to support the defense’s main argument, as outlined in opening statements in September.

Mr. Leach pointed out times when Ms. Holmes allowed false or misleading information about Theranos to spread to investors and patients.

They attacked the credibility of investors, trying to show that they should have done better research on Theranos before investing to understand the risks and the details of its business.

These sectors were pummeled by the pandemic but have recovered a bit as cases caused by the Delta variant of the coronavirus showed signs of easing in some places.

Still, the level of turnover in the labor market suggests that job seekers have more power and greater prospects than they have had in many years.

“The pickup in openings does seems to be driven by a slowdown in coronavirus cases,” said Nick Bunker, the director of economic research at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Hiring has been volatile at restaurants and bars and in the travel industry, waxing and waning along with the virus.

Last month, employers added only 210,000 jobs, well below the 546,000 jump in October.

The huge number of open positions, and the falling unemployment rate, underscore why many companies have been complaining that they can’t find enough workers.

But in congressional testimony last week, Mr. Powell signaled that the central bank could pivot from stimulating growth to keeping a lid on prices.

While the federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, in many metropolitan areas employers say it’s hard to find workers for less than $15 an hour.

“It’s not just quitting for the sake of quitting, it’s quitting to find better employment,” said Gregory Daco, the chief U.S.

An over-the-air update this summer added solitaire and two other games that can be played by a driver or by a passenger in full view of the driver, raising questions about safety and the potential for distracting drivers from the road.

Some safety experts have criticized Tesla’s Autopilot system, which can steer, slow, and accelerate a car on its own and has few safeguards to ensure drivers keep their hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road.

Tesla appeared to be aware the new games can be played while the car is in motion.

In a letter to employees dated Tuesday, the executive, Vishal Garg, wrote that he failed to show the “appropriate amount of respect and appreciation” for those who were laid off.

“This is the second time in my career I’m doing this and I do not — do not want to do this,” he said in the call, recordings of which were widely shared online.

He said employees were being laid off for reasons including the market, performance and productivity.

Last week, after the Zoom call, Mr. Garg told staff who had not been laid off in a separate call that he regretted not making layoffs earlier, according to a manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, who was on the call and who left the company voluntarily.

In his apology letter to employees on Tuesday, Mr. Garg said that he was grateful for their accomplishments and acknowledged that the manner in which he announced the layoffs made the situation worse.

Better.com, which is backed by SoftBank, is a mortgage lender for home buyers seeking rates, loans and other resources, and is licensed to underwrite mortgages in 47 states and Washington, D.C.

SoftBank has struggled with some of its investments, including bailing out WeWork, the office-space leasing giant, when it withdrew the 2019 initial public offering and was in danger of bankruptcy.

The hearing was called by Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who leads the committee, as part of an effort to understand fast-growing digital assets — and how to regulate them.

Ms. Waters expressed concern about how quickly crypto is being adopted, noting that the “rapid growth” has been fueled in part by celebrity endorsements.

In one later exchange, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, expressed doubt about executives’ arguments that crypto represented a radical reshaping of commerce and finance.

Brian Brooks, an acting comptroller of the currency under President Donald J.

Eroding the power of the tech giants, an issue with bipartisan support in Congress, is an argument commonly advanced by crypto enthusiasts to promote web3 — the industry term for a vision of the next generation of the internet run on blockchain-based tokens.

She told Charles Cascarilla, the head of Paxos, that she was “concerned” about a pilot program his company was involved in with Novi, a digital wallet created by Meta, the parent company of Facebook.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the chief of the crypto exchange FTX, noted that his company had recently submitted a proposal to regulators suggesting a “unified joint regime” on crypto for agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The executives repeatedly criticized Gary Gensler, the chairman of the S.E.C., who has said that many crypto tokens fall under the agency’s purview and should be registered as securities, which would require extra disclosure and compliance costs.

Cryptocurrency is back on the agenda in Congress again next week: Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has called a hearing on stablecoins.

Mr. Brown said in an interview that his hearing would be a “step” toward legislation and that he was “working together” with financial regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department.

Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, which previously installed 84 kilowatts of solar power in the cargo area and 27 kilowatts in the taxi area, recently added more than 6,600 solar panels on a garage roof.

The S&P 500 had jumped more than 3 percent to start the week, rebounding from a string of declines as fears over the Omicron variant of the coronavirus receded.

Pfizer and BioNTech said on Wednesday that a third dose of their vaccine provided significant protection against the Omicron variant.

Travel and leisure stocks were among the best performers in the S&P 500, with Norwegian Cruise Line up more than 8 percent, while Carnival Corp.

The House approved legislation on Tuesday that would settle a path to lift the government’s ability to borrow and avert the threat of a first-ever federal default.

The disruption came during the peak holiday season, with Amazon already dealing with more complicated and expensive logistics during a labor shortage.

…Read the full story