More than 90 percent of Starbucks workers in the United States have disclosed their vaccination status, according to the memo, and “the vast majority” are fully vaccinated.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision last Thursday, Starbucks is one of the first major employers to backtrack on its plans to require vaccines.
Starbucks’s move to drop its vaccine requirement comes as the company faces a growing effort among its work force to unionize.
“You see people every day, you work closely with them, there’s not much of an opportunity for distancing,” Ms. Hilaire said.
Starbucks also announced a variety of new Covid-19 safety protocols on Tuesday.
As of early afternoon, more than 260 flights had been canceled in the United States, according to FlightAware, an aviation data firm.
The companies said the new service could interfere with some radio altimeters, devices that, among other things, determine a plane’s altitude, posing a safety risk especially in bad weather.
On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration expanded the list of planes and altimeters approved to land in low-visibility conditions at airports where 5G service is deployed.
The 5G expansion had already been delayed twice over aviation safety concerns, first from late December to early January and then again to this week.
President Biden said that change would avoid “potentially devastating disruptions” while allowing more than 90 percent of the expansion to proceed as planned.
The emergence of the Omicron virus variant late last year weighed on demand, forcing United to start this year with a pared-back flight schedule and to lower its forecast for the number of seats it plans to fly to below 2019 levels, it said.
United expects to start flying some of the 52 Boeing 777 planes with Pratt & Whitney engines that were taken out of service for inspection last year after a series of startling engine failures.
United said it plans to fly between 16 and 18 percent less in the first three months of this year compared to a similar period in 2019, and operating revenue will be down between 20 and 25 percent.
About 8,000 Delta Air Lines employees — more than 1 in 10 — called in sick over the holidays, that airline said last week.
The industry recovered from that mess last week only to face another potentially disruptive threat this week: An expansion of 5G cellular service that airlines warned could interfere with flight safety devices.
The group of oil producers known as OPEC Plus continues to fall short of its promised 400,000-barrel-a-day monthly increases, raising production by only 250,000 barrels a day in December.
Brent crude, the international standard, briefly traded above $89 a barrel on Wednesday, while West Texas Intermediate, the U.S.
The International Energy Agency said these prices were likely to lead to more drilling and production in the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, and elsewhere.
Oil in tank farms and other storage facilities in industrialized countries has reached seven-year lows, while so-called spare capacity, the amount of oil that could be quickly produced, is likely to decrease to around three million barrels a day, or 3 percent of world supply, the group estimated.
The consumer goods giant reported that price increases for products like Crest toothpaste and Tide detergent helped drive revenue 6 percent higher from a year earlier, to $21 billion, in the three months that ended Dec.
The company added that it expected more price increases throughout the year, starting in February on fabric care products like Gain, Bounce and Downy.
As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, demand for at-home products will also go up as more people stay indoors.
Revenue for fabric and home care products, which include brands like Swiffer and Mr. Clean, rose 8 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter, the company said.
Many companies are struggling to offset the costs of supply chain disruptions, which could be exacerbated by renewed lockdowns in China and worker shortages for factories, ports and trucking companies in the United States.
Earnings season kicked off last week, and economists are looking for signs of how long companies will be able to pass on costs by raising prices.
In the United States, the Consumer Price Index climbed by 7 percent in the year through December, its biggest annual increase since 1982.
The surprise came both because consumers have been spending heavily — particularly on goods — and because global supply chains have been struggling to ramp up production to meet that demand as coronavirus outbreaks cause factories to shut down and shipping backlogs clog ports and delay part deliveries.
Mr. Biden’s administration has tried to ease price gains around the edges, encouraging longer port operating hours, trying to promote corporate competition and releasing strategic petroleum reserves in a bid to lower fuel prices.
But controlling inflation is primarily left to the Fed, which operates independently of the White House and can raise interest rates to slow down borrowing and spending.
In doing so, he has emphasized the importance of both fostering a strong labor market and of keeping a lid on prices.
The package was not the sole or even primary cause of inflation — price gains have swept many countries around the world amid the pandemic reopening, and data earlier Wednesday showed that British inflation is running at the fastest pace in 30 years.
Republicans have made a habit of blaming Democrats and the administration for high prices, an argument that could resonate with voters headed into 2022 midterm elections.
“When a factory shuts down in one part of the world, shipments to shops and homes and businesses all over the world are disrupted,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday.
“It’s not been the reason we’ve had high inflation today — it’s not the only reason,” Mr. Biden said of concentrated industries on Wednesday.
The company bought the rights to “The Lord of the Rings” for more than $200 million in November 2017, when there was a power vacuum in the executive wing of its streaming division.
Payne and Patrick McKay to be showrunners of the series in July 2018, and production has been underway in New Zealand, where Mr. Jackson filmed his trilogy.
In a special meeting, the board voted to go forward with its planned acquisition of The Sun-Times, a deal that would make Chicago Public Media one of the largest nonprofit news organizations in the nation.
WBEZ, which carries National Public Radio shows and co-produces “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” and The Sun-Times will share some content while working in separate newsrooms under the Chicago Public Media banner.
The Sun-Times, which has changed hands numerous times in recent years, is owned by a patchwork group of unions, philanthropists and businesspeople, including Rocky Wirtz, the owner of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team, and Michael Sacks, an investor.
Struggling papers these days face a range of options: Hope for a billionaire to swoop in, as Dr.
Nykia Wright, the chief executive of The Sun-Times, said she was enthusiastic about the Chicago Public Media plan.
The annual rate of inflation was 5.4 percent, up from 5.1 percent in November.
Since the pandemic disrupted supply chains and labor markets as economies unevenly shut down and reopened, many countries are facing higher-than-expected inflation rates that are lasting longer than policymakers anticipated.
The Bank of England increased interest rates in December with inflation running substantially above its 2 percent target and not expected to peak until April, when households are estimated to face a more than 50 percent increase in their energy bills.
Inflation is already outstripping wage growth in Britain, a separate report from the statistics agency showed on Tuesday, so the combination of higher food prices, rising energy bills and tax increases coming in the spring is raising concerns about a squeeze on household budgets.
Companies are passing highercosts from materials, shipping and wages on to their customers.
“There is no doubt that prices are being boosted by factors that should moderate in time, including surging energy costs and supply chain problems,” Ambrose Crofton, a strategist at J.P.
Bank of America, the country’s second-biggest lender, said its latest quarterly profit rose 28 percent to $7 billion, exceeding analyst expectations.
Profits were fueled by an improving economy in which the company added loans and deposits, while “investment banking had its best year ever, and global markets had its highest sales and trading revenue in a decade,” he said in a statement.
Morgan Stanley, the investment-banking heavyweight, reported a 9 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit, to $3.7 billion, which also beat expectations.
Sharon Yeshaya, Morgan Stanley’s chief financial officer, said in an interview that the bank had more deals in the works.
“I’m not leaving now, and I’m not going to be here in five years,” he said on a call with analysts, responding to a question about the bank’s future leadership plan.
Investors worried about rising costs as banks competed for high-priced talent and the uncertain economic outlook caused by a wave of coronavirus cases, high inflation and snarled supply chains.
Morgan Stanley and Bank of America benefited from a one-stop-shop business model that combines services like wealth management and brokerage, said Mike Mayo, an analyst at Wells Fargo.
“As you know, Better’s C.E.O.
Better.com, which is backed by SoftBank and was ranked last year as LinkedIn’s top start-up, had announced last month that Mr. Garg would take time off from his leadership role after he faced a backlash over his firing of about 9 percent of his staff in a Zoom call.
Better.com has since conducted a “thorough, independent” review of its culture, according to the board’s memo on Tuesday.
As a result of that investigation, the company is working to expand its leadership by recruiting a new chairman for the board, a president and a chief human resources officer.
The nearly $70 billion deal is Microsoft’s biggest ever and one that places a major bet that people will be spending more and more time in the digital world.
The acquisition helps Microsoft gain on its rival Sony in the long-running battle for gamers’ attentions and wallets by offering top titles.
The metaverse refers to the world of virtual and augmented reality world, where users interact with others through their digital avatar in a kind of second life online.
Some gamers, who have been souring on Activision, saw the deal as a chance for the company to reverse a decline in the quality of its online games and improve its workplace culture.
Mexico’s national oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, is about to take control of an oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas.
He wants to replace the gasoline and diesel supplies the country currently buys from other refineries in the United States with fuel produced domestically or by the refinery in Deer Park, which would be made from crude oil it imports from Mexico.
While Mr. Lopez Obrador’s policies diverge from the rising global concern over climate change, they reflect a lasting temptation for leaders and lawmakers worldwide: replacing imported energy sources with domestically produced fuels.
Twenty-two percent of 187 companies surveyed by the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, said they could not estimate when their offices would reach even half capacity.
The Omicron variant has also prompted offices to change policies, such as reinstating mask mandates, sending nonessential workers home, and suspending in-person meetings and business travel, according to the survey, which was conducted starting Jan.
More than a third of the businesses surveyed were financial services firms. Executives in the industry, which employs more than 330,000 people in the city, have been outspoken in pressing for in-office working.
Even Goldman Sachs, which unlike many competitors did not encourage staff members to work from home during the holidays, has pushed back its planned return date twice this month.
David M.