Business

In Keon Zhang's household, it started with a rite of passage: his eight-year-old discovering a pimple. "She was like, 'Daddy, I need to get rid of them ... I need a skin care routine,'" said the chief executive of beauty brand Back to Earth Skin. "And then, here my son comes up and he's like, 'Do I need it?'" For others, the impulse to dive into a beauty regimen has come from the endless scroll of social media posts showing influencers slathering on Drunk Elephant skin care products, reaching for Dior's lip oil and swearing by Sol de Janeiro's Brazilian Bum Bum cream. The flurry of purchases they have inspired in the middle of an economic downturn has confirmed what the industry has long known: beauty is hot, even when the propensity to spend is not. ...

Breadcrumb Trail LinksEconomyLink between personal financial strain and powerlessness depends on people’ perceptions of economyPublished Feb 18, 2024  •  Last updated 3 hours ago  •  4 minute read Pedestrians walk across Front Street at Bay Street in Toronto's financial district. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post filesArticle contentThe debate about perceptions of the economy has reached a fever pitch lately.Some argue that perceptions don’t align with reality, that pessimism about the economy is disconnected from objective conditions. United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen labelled these negative sentiments “unwarranted.” Likewise, Claudia Sahm, a former U.S. Federal Reserve economist, described “a toxic brew of bad events” that has fuelled “amped-up pessimism.”Article con...

Robert Lanter lives in a 600-square-foot house that can be traversed in five seconds and vacuumed from a single outlet. He doesn’t have a coffee table in the living room because it would obstruct the front door. When relatives come to visit, Mr. Lanter says jokingly, but only partly, they have to tour one at time.Each of these details amounts to something bigger, for Mr. Lanter’s life and the U.S. housing market: a house under $300,000, something increasingly hard to find. That price allowed Mr. Lanter, a 63-year-old retired nurse, to buy a new single-family home in a subdivision in Redmond, Ore., about 30 minutes outside Bend, where he is from and which is, along with its surrounding area, one of Oregon’s most expensive housing markets.Mr. Lanter’s house could easily fit on a flatbed truc...

Cost of Living4:46Points takenWhen April Canavan's inbox was suddenly flooded with emails in December, she knew something had gone wrong.The Vancouver woman found herself subscribed to mailing lists she'd never signed up for, along with emails saying she'd just redeemed PC Optimum points at a grocery store halfway across the country.Within about 25 minutes, Canavan says fraudsters drained around $1,000 worth of points from her account, and the mailing-list tactic aimed to distract her from the theft.But panic had already set in because, as she told Cost of Living, she'd been saving her points to pay for Christmas."So then it was like, 'OK, so how am I going to afford Christmas now?' "Canavan got her points reinstated in early January, but not before using a credit card to pay for her daugh...

The South Korean government unleashed a wave of panic across the internet industry: The country’s antitrust regulator said it would enact the toughest competition law outside Europe, curbing the influence of major technology companies.The Korea Fair Trade Commission, with the backing of President Yoon Suk Yeol, said in December that it planned to make a proposal modeled after the 2022 Digital Markets Act, the European Union’s landmark law to rein in American tech giants. This bill also seemed to target South Korea’s own internet conglomerates just as much as the Alphabets, Apples and Metas of the world.The commission said the law would designate certain companies as dominant platforms and limit their ability to use strongholds in one online business to expand into new areas.Then last week,...

TORONTO, Feb. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Class 1 Nickel and Technologies Limited (CSE: NICO/ OTCQB: NICLF) (the “Company” or “Class 1 Nickel”) announces that it has cancelled an aggregate of 11,765,502 stock options of the Company. Of these stock options cancelled, an aggregate of 11,165,502 stock options were exercisable to acquire common shares of the Company at an exercise price of $0.60 until June 11, 2024, and the balance of 600,000 stock options were exercisable at an exercise price of $0.50 until August 11, 2025. About Class 1 Nickel Class 1 Nickel and Technologies Limited (CSE: NICO/OTCQB: NICLF) is a Mineral Resource Company focused on the development of its 100% owned Alexo-Dundonald Property, a portfolio of komatiite hosted magmatic nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide Mineral Resourc...

MONTREAL, Feb. 16, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) filed for a notice of dispute in its negotiations with the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) to support the parties in achieving a negotiated settlement. The TCRC represents approximately 6,000 conductors, conductor trainees, yard coordinators and locomotive engineers across CN’s network in Canada. CN strongly believes that an agreement can be achieved through the collective bargaining process and remains committed to working with the TCRC to reach an agreement that is good for the employees, for CN and for Canada’s supply chain. “CN continues its efforts to modernize its railway in a manner that will deliver the best possible service to our customers, while providing our employees with better work conditions...