Year: 2020

Walmart’s New Beauty VP Musab Balbale Wants to Redefine E-commerce

By Gertrude Aziz 1 hour ago

Musab Balbale is the new guy on the block, in more ways than one.

Like many New Yorkers seeking relief from the stressors of a pandemic-stricken city, he and his family recently decamped from the Upper West Side to greener pastures in Westchester County. It was a previously planned move accelerated by the pandemic, he says, and he feels bad leaving the city behind, though office space and room for kids to roam prevailed.

Then there’s the new job. The Yale and Harvard Business School-educated Walmart exec this month transitioned into his new role as vice president of omnichannel beauty for the retail giant. He takes over from Jody Pinson, the former vp of merchandising credited with bringing Walmart’s beauty department into the modern era.

Balbale is a different kind of executive than Pinson, a Walmart lifer who got her start on the sales floor and worked her way up

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Raiders’ Darren Waller overcomes addiction

By Gertrude Aziz 2 hours ago

Darren Waller could sense his star beginning to rise last August, when his journey from drug and alcohol addiction to sobriety, and ultimately the NFL’s Raiders, was chronicled on HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”

Selected by Baltimore in the sixth round of the 2015 draft, Waller was suspended from the Ravens due to the substance abuse that has plagued him since his teens. After a near-death experience with Baltimore where he overdosed in his car, he underwent intense therapy, returned to the NFL in 2018 and worked hard to carve out a role to keep the comeback alive, which fans of “Hard Knocks” caught a glimpse of.

Yet, it’s when Waller made the team and started thriving for the Raiders that he began to see the impact his personal journey was having on people.

“People would DM me and they would be like, ‘I got clean because of you’ or ‘What can

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JD.com Opens Omnichannel Solutions to Luxury Brand Partners

By Gertrude Aziz 2 hours ago

LONDON — The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged JD.com, China’s largest retailer and second-largest e-commerce player, to be ambitious about selling luxury online in China.

Since the pandemic subsided in China, JD.com has seen promising growth in this category. In the first hour of the 618 shopping festival, which began June 1, sales of luxury products increased more than 400 percent year-over-year. During that day, sales of 60 brands jumped over 500 percent, and 139 brands grew more than 200 percent compared to the same period last year.

More than 1,000 fashion and luxury brands are selling via JD.com and a small number of them, including Prada and Miu Miu as discovered by WWD, began integrating JD.com’s omnichannel solutions with their internal inventories moments after the pandemic subsided in China to bring a wider range of full-price products to the e-tailer’s 400 million users.

Now the platform is ready to open

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Cash-strapped Trump campaign awaits a bailout from big donors

By Gertrude Aziz 3 hours ago

Republican Party megadonors are racing to bail out President Donald Trump’s cash-strapped reelection campaign, with a newly formed super PAC pouring a further$25 million into battleground states.

Preserve America is set to begin running a trio of TV commercials savaging Democrat Joe Biden as Republicans express growing alarm over the president’s absence from the airwaves. Trump — who went dark for part of August and has since cancelled advertising in key states — is being outspent more than 2-to-1 by Biden this week, according to the media tracking firm Advertising Analytics.

The outside group, which is expected to draw funding from prolific GOP givers including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, is rushing to fill the void. Starting late this week, the super PAC will begin airing ads in seven states, including some where Trump is being badly outspent.

With Trump’s once-formidable cash advantage

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Apple is launching its online store in India on September 23

By Gertrude Aziz 3 hours ago

Apple today announced that it’s launching its online store in India on Septemeber 23. The store will sell iPhone, iPad, and Macs in the country.

Apart from selling its products, the company will also provide support for its devices on call on the chat. The store will enable customers to trade-in their older iPhone and get an additional discount towards the new purchase.

Apple is also bringing its AppleCare+ device insurance program, which provides two years of technical support and accidental damage cover, to India. People will be able to chat will support executives in Hindi and English.

Customers in the country will be able to make payments through credit cards, debit cards, UPI (Unified Payments Interface), and card on delivery as well.

CEO Tim Cook tweeted about the store launch after promising to launch it earlier this year.

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Pastor Who Told Congregation They Didn’t Have to Wear Masks Hospitalized in ICU with COVID-19

By Gertrude Aziz 3 hours ago

youtube Paul Van Noy

A pastor in Idaho has been hospitalized with the novel coronavirus after telling members of his congregation that they are not required to wear face masks while attending church services.

Paul Van Noy, the senior pastor at Candlelight Christian Fellowship, was admitted to the intensive care unit after he and his wife Brenda contracted COVID-19, according to an update posted to his church’s website on Monday.

“Having been in the ICU now for 11 days…and counting, I am really starting to turn the corner—for the better,” Van Noy said in a statement shared by his wife and church staff. “They tell me it will be a few more days in ICU and then I will move back to a regular room for a couple of days and then to recover at home. At present I feel ok but still need quite a bit of oxygen support—especially

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30 Amazing Jobs That Didn’t Exist a Decade Ago

By Gertrude Aziz 4 hours ago

More than 55 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and even though the number of people filing has been decreasing since it peaked in April, people are still losing their jobs.

If you’re out of work, you might be considering a career change. There are a number of nontraditional jobs you might not even know about because they are so new — many of which you can do from home.

These jobs have cropped up over the past decade thanks to the founding of now-popular companies that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, like Bird scooters (founded in 2017), Instagram (launched in 2010) and Lyft (launched in 2012). See the new roles companies are hiring for.

Last updated: Sept. 17, 2020

Virtual Assistant

Virtual assistants perform the typical duties and services of an assistant, except instead of going into the office every day,

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Nike never said it ‘can afford’ to lose the business of Trump supporters

By Gertrude Aziz 6 hours ago

The claim: Nike stated the company can afford to lose customers who support Trump

Misinformation about the political stances of major corporations — like Pepsi and Wendy’s — has spread online this summer, along with calls to boycott the companies.

Recent posts on Facebook have focused on athletic apparel giant Nike.

Users claim that the company stated that it “can afford” to lose the business of customers who support President Donald Trump.

“NIKE has stated, ‘We’re a $76 Billion dollar company that can afford to let go of all ‘Make America Great Again’ customers,” one post reads, accompanied by the hashtag #bye.

The user behind the post did not respond to request from USA TODAY for comment.

Fact check: There’s no evidence Donald Trump helped with 9/11 response

Statement is not from Nike

Though Nike has voiced support for Black Lives Matter, it has not endorsed a presidential candidate or

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Big GOP donors rush to rescue Trump

By Gertrude Aziz 6 hours ago

Republican Party megadonors are racing to bail out President Donald Trump’s cash-strapped reelection campaign, with a newly formed super PAC pouring another $25 million into battleground states.

Preserve America is set to begin running a trio of TV commercials savaging Democrat Joe Biden as Republicans express growing alarm over the president’s absence on the airwaves. Trump — who went dark for part of August and has since cancelled advertising in key states — is being outspent more than 2-to-1 by Biden this week, according to the media tracking firm Advertising Analytics.

The outside group, which is expected to draw funding from prolific GOP givers including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, is rushing to fill the void. Starting late this week, the super PAC will begin airing ads in seven states, including some where Trump is getting badly outspent.

With Trump’s once-formidable cash advantage

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Global cases surpass 30M; Moderna targets November for candidate vaccine; 790K more Americans file for unemployment

By Gertrude Aziz 6 hours ago

The worldwide total of known COVID-19 cases surpassed 30 million on Thursday and global fatalities crept closer to one million, both signs of the virus’ continuing global impact.

The World Health Organization said cases are surging again in Europe, with more than half of European countries seeing a 10% or greater spike in cases in the past two weeks. COVID-19 is also disproportionately affecting healthcare workers, according to WHO data. 

Health workers make up 2-3% of the global population but account for about 14% of reported COVID-19 cases. “Thousands of health workers infected with COVID-19 have lost their lives worldwide,” the organization said.

Meanwhile, progress toward a vaccine continued Thursday: Moderna said it was moving up its trial results timeline. The company said it could have enough clinical trial results for its candidate vaccine as soon as November.

That news followed cautions from Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers

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