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Your pantry, your portfolio, even your flight plans all made headlines this week. The FDA turned everyones favorite spice into a hazard warning, while the worlds wealthiest got a new credit card that skips the whole Social Security number thing. Washingtons still stuck in neutralthough a few lucky borrowers are finally seeing their student loans disappearand airports are feeling the fallout. Meanwhile, Bitcoins on a downward spiral, golds having a moment, and the housing markets math still doesnt add up no matter how many times you punch the calculator. Retailers, at least, seem to be thriving in chaos. Walmart doubled down on AI, cutting a deal with OpenAI so shoppers can chat their way through checkout, then followed up with plans to blanket its supply chain in smart sensors. Over in the cultural corner, major news outlets refused to play ball with the Pentagons new press rules, and the Boy Scoutsnow Scouting Americarolled out merit badges in AI and cybersecurity. If that sounds like a lot, it is. The throughline? Whether its your cinnamon or your shopping list, everything familiar is getting rewired in real time. Here’s a look at what made headlines this week. FDA widens ground cinnamon warning over elevated lead The FDA expanded its list of ground cinnamon products to avoid, citing testing that found elevated lead levels and urging consumers to discard affected items. Sixteen products now sit on the list, spanning multiple distributors and retailers with specific lots and best-by dates. No illnesses are confirmed, but the agency warns long-term exposure can harm childrens development, and the list has grown through multiple updates since July 2024. A premium no-SSN card takes aim at AmEx Platinums turf Fintech startup Karta unveiled a $300-annual-fee premium card for affluent non-residents with U.S. assetsno Social Security number required. Perks mirror marquee travel cards (lounges, events, protections), and the product is managed via WhatsApp with AI-assisted service. Backed by $5.4 million in seed funding and 22 banking partners, Karta is targeting customers hit by steep foreign card fees and the wind-down of AmExs International Dollar Card. IBR student-loan forgiveness resumes for eligible borrowers Notices are landing in inboxes for borrowers on the Income-Based Repayment student loan plans whove hit 20- or 25-year payment thresholds. The move restarts discharges paused in July amid systems updates and litigation fallout. Its not a new programjust the promised IBR relief catching upso borrowers should keep paying until they receive official confirmation. Scouting America adds AI and cybersecurity merit badges Scouting America introduced new badges covering machine learning basics, prompt communication, deepfake awareness, and cybersecurity concepts this week. The goal is to marry traditional be prepared ethos with digital-age fluency. Its also a retention play as membership has fallen from historic peaks, with newer badges designed to meet kids where they liveonline. Flight delays mount as shutdown enters week three A mix of bad weather and shutdown-related staffing strain produced tens of thousands of flight delays across the long weekend. Trade groups say flying remains safe, but chokepoints at Northeast hubs added to traveler frustration. With Congress still gridlocked, operational unpredictability remains the near-term baseline. Bitcoin swoons while gold shines After notching an all-time high earlier this month, Bitcoin slid to a four-month low this week as investors rotated toward gold. Macro jittersfrom tariffs talk to the federal shutdownpressed risk appetite. The move highlights cryptos evolving safe-haven narrative: sometimes it benefits from stress, sometimes the old haven still wins. Zillow: Unrealistic rate cuts needed for affordability Back-of-the-envelope modeling suggests the average 30-year mortgage would need to drop to ~4.43% to make a median home affordable to a median-income buyer (assuming 20% down). In several coastal markets, even 0% rates wouldnt fix the math given taxes, insurance, and upkeep. Zillows takeaway: dont bank on ratesor pricesbailing out budgets soon. Walmart to enable ChatGPT checkout with OpenAI Walmart announced an agentic commerce tie-up so shoppers can purchase via natural language directly in ChatGPT. The integration leans on OpenAIs Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce Protocol, pitching fewer clicks and more personalization. Investors liked the direction of travel, framing it as an on-ramp to AI-assisted shopping at mass scale. Major outlets reject Pentagon press rules Major news outlets including The New York Times, AP, and Fox News have said they wont sign the Defense Departments new required policy governing access and information requests, leading them to leave the Penagon this week. Newsrooms argue the rules impact routine reporting and set a troubling precedent; the government says theyre common-sense procedures. The standoff raises practical questions about credentialing and transparency. Walmart rolls out ambient IoT sensors across supply chain In a parallel modernization push, Walmart plans millions of battery-free sensors on pallets to track inventory across 4,600 stores and 40+ distribution centers, expanding nationwide in 2026. The data will feed Walmarts AI systems to improve accuracy, cold-chain compliance, and on-shelf availability. Its a scale bet that visibility equals veloctyand profit.
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E-Commerce
Youve probably heard of House of Highlightseven if youre not a sports fan, its hard to miss, whether on YouTube or scrolling through your social feeds. What started as a college dorm Instagram account has grown over 11 years into the #1 sports media brand on the platform, boasting 100 million followers and billions of monthly views. Today, House of Highlights is a multi-platform sports media powerhouse, producing creator-led content and original series that rival traditional TV. Drew Muller, vice president and general manager at House of Highlights, spoke with Yasmin Gagne and Joshua Christensen on the Most Innovative Companies podcast about growth strategies, creator partnerships, and how the company balances viral moments with long-form storytelling. How did House of Highlights start? [The genesis of the project came from] a guy named Omar Raja in his college dorm room. The idea was: “I’m not seeing the highlights that I want on the platforms where I’m spending time.” Seems like kind of table stakes now that you see the proliferation of highlights basically everywhere you look on social media. But back then it really was a novel idea. And the Bleacher Report leadership at the time [. . .] led the acquisition of bringing in this Instagram account into the sports world and saying, “this account is doing something interestingit’s speaking with young people, it’s overperforming in ways that seem to not map to what typical sports companies are doing.” [It was ultimately a credit to Bleacher Report] who let House of Highlights incubate as a startup within the larger company, allowing it space to grow and preserve its unique voice. From there, the idea was: let’s figure out if we can make this into a multi-platform media company that can stand on its own and be incremental to what Bleacher Report was already doing. So how do we make this differentiated and give fans a reason to want to follow both accounts? How do you make sure House of Highlights keeps its own voice and identity? A lot of it maps down to a steadfast commitment to voice and clarity of who we are and who we’re not. A lot of it is due to the organizational structure where House of Highlights is able to maintain operational and strategy independence. We have our own go-to-market strategy, we have our own assets and content strategy and logos and identities and even fonts. But it does take a day-in and day-out focus to balance the two, because we do eat from the same pool of sports rights and sometimes resources. You moved from Instagram highlights to hour-long programming. What were the conversations like around developing long-form content? When we first started to make original content, it was almost out of necessity creator-led. We were a small scrappy team, and in many instances we couldn’t afford to pay huge athletes. There were creators that were starting to blow up on Instagram and YouTube, but were nowhere near the scale we’re talking about today. We were able to form big partnerships with creators that are now household names [like] Supreme Dreams, and Mark Phillips. All of it tied back to sports, youth culture, and putting an entertaining lens on what it is to be a sports fan or to experience sports with your friends in a group chat. The most value that we’ve gotten from building habitual long-form viewership is making sure that an hour or two-hour-long video has a clear path to short form [because] we have massive amounts of short-form expertise and scale, and people are expecting that from us. How has House of Highlights approach to creator deals evolved? [When looking at the creators growth chart, we want to be] where they’re starting to take off, but before they get to the point where they’re a household name and they’re the cream of the crop, not to say we don’t still want to work with them at that point, but typically that’s when they’re getting overpaid by some of the legacy companies. [We] built a lot of the formats that have been replicated by many of the big leagues and some of the big media companies. [Creators] know they’re not just showing up for an appearance fee or to check a box. We’re trying to build special content together and special franchises and IP that can scale. House of Highlights, as weve discussed, is publishing across multiple platforms. How do you approach content programming across those platforms that all reward different types of content and cadence? [On YouTube], you’re going to see full game recaps for folks that maybe aren’t in the cable bundle and aren’t watching two- to three-hour gamesthey typically come to House of Highlights YouTube for a 10- to 15-minute recap of that game. On TikTok, because of how the For You Page operates, you can publish more, and those videos will find their homes without taking up all of someone’s feed. On Instagram, if someone follows House of Highlights and we’re publishing a hundred times a day, it will feel like that in your feed. Under-34 sports fans are watching less and less live cable sports events[so how] can we build an appointment viewing experience for that fandom? From an advertising perspective, obviously that is super valuable, and it’s increasingly hard to reach that audience at scale. Whats next for House of Highlights? We’ve got three events left in our Creator League season. We’ve got a basketball knockout five on five, and then a championship series. That’ll carry us through the end of November. Based on the numbers that we’re seeing, we’re excited about what the championship could look like. And then honestly, the growth of our Fans versus Haters series and where that overarching brand can go in terms of debate style content for a younger audience. [At the end of the day, a lot of it] comes down to our focus on YouTube and how we’re making House of Highlights a broadcast channel.
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E-Commerce
Its human nature to wait until the last minute rather than plan aheadperhaps especially when it comes to retirement planning. Theres always plenty of other excellent uses for your money, until suddenly youre staring at an underfunded 401(k) with only a few years left before you’ll need it. This is why president George W. Bush passed legislation in 2001 that (among other things) allowed for catch-up contributions among workers who were 50 or older. This gave older workers a chance to beef up their 401(k) accounts while they were typically at the peak of their earning years and let them continue to take advantage of making pre-tax contributions. Other than increasing the amount of money 50+ workers can contribute, the basics of catch-up contributions have remained virtually the same for the past two decadesuntil now. As of calendar year 2027, the SECURE 2.0 Act eliminates the catch-up contribution tax break for 50+ workers earning $145,000 or more. Heres what you need to know about how this change may affect your retirement planning. Current contribution and catch-up limits As of 2025, workers may contribute up to $23,500 pre-tax to their 401(k) or other defined contribution workplace retirement plan. Workers over the age of 50 may put aside an additional $7,500 in catch-up contributions, for a total of $31,000, pre-tax. And any workers between the ages of 60 and 63 may make an $11,250 super catch-up contribution, for a total contribution limit of $34,750 in pre-tax dollars. The ability to make these contributions pre-tax means 50+ workers get to reduce their tax burden for the current year by over $30,000, a huge tax benefit. Same catch-up contributions, different tax breaks But after December 31, 2026, the IRS will require you to make catch-up contributions with after-tax money if you earned $145,000 or more from your current employer in the previous year. In other words, if you’re over 50 and earn more than $145k in 2026, youll have to put in any 2027 catch-up contributions as after-tax Roth contributions. This change does not affect regular contributions at all. Even if you are a high earning 50-something, every dollar of your regular contributions will be pre-tax (unless you choose otherwise). It is only the catch-up contributions that must be categorized as Roth contributions for high earning individuals. Roth aint so bad, once you get used to it Theres a very good reason why Uncle Sam made 401(k) plans tax-deferred: were much more likely to contribute money to our futures if we can get a tax break today. But the thing about this kind of upfront tax-break is that taxes will come due eventually. You will have to pay regular income taxes on 401(k) withdrawals in retirement. Roth contributions, on the other hand, are made with money that has already been taxed. While that makes things a bit more expensive today, it can be a boon for your future self because the money grows and can be withdrawn tax-free in retirement. (This is why I personally recommend having at least some money set aside in a Roth account. Investing in a Roth retirement account means you have a tax-free source of cash that wont affect your Social Security benefits or other taxable income if you need access to a big chunk of money. For example, if you have a health issue in retirement, you can pull money from your Roth account without affecting the tax-balanced fixed income youre living on.) In addition, Roth 401(k) plans dont require you to take required minimum distributions (RMDs) as of age 73, unlike traditional 401(k)s. That means you can let your money continue to grow in your Roth 401(k) past your 73rd birthday. While potentially losing the tax break on catch-up contributions is not ideal, especially if youve been counting on it, there are some real benefits to having money in a Roth account for retirement. How many workers will this really affect? There is still time before the new rules go into effect, but it does raise an interesting question: just how widespread an issue will this be? To start, only about 8.37% of individual workers earned $145,000 or more in 2024. As of 2025, there are an estimated 124.37 million Americans over the age of 50. If we assume 8.37% of 124.37 million 50+ Americans are earning $145k or more, that leaves us with 10,410,154 affected workers. However, not everyone contributes to a 401(k) plan or other defined contribution plan. According to 2025 research by Gallup, only 66% of Americans over age 50 have money invested in a 401(k) plan, 403(b) plan, or IRA, either on their own, or jointly with a spouse. If we assume that only 66% of workers earning over $145,000 are investing in a defined benefit plan, that leaves us with 6,870,701 potentially affected individuals. That said, even if youre not among the 6.8 million workers who might face this problem, you still may want to consider making Roth contributions. If your 401(k) plan doesnt offer Roth contributions as an option, you can always open a Roth IRA on your own to take advantage of the same benefits. Whether youre under the age of 50 or earning less than $145,000, or both, you can still benefit from the upsides of a Roth. Preparing for good problems The upcoming changes to catch-up contribution rules can feel like having the rug pulled out from under you, but theres still time to get ready for the shift. Its also a good idea to remember that if youre required to make Roth 401(k) catch-up contributions, its because youre otherwise in pretty great financial shape. Thats because you: Could afford to max out your 401(k) annual contribution that was more than $23,500 for the year Earned at least $145,000 in 2026 And still had money left over that you could contribute to your retirement account. Though it may affect your tax strategy now, the new rules will also give you access to a Roth account that will grow tax-free and will be available for tax-fre withdrawals without any RMDs. The change also brings the benefits of Roth 401(k) plans into the spotlight, and may encourage more plan participants to make Roth contributions, even if the new rules dont affect them. All in all, the new rules may be a pain in the neck to plan for, but theyre mostly a net benefit.
Category:
E-Commerce
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