Small businesses are struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic and some bigger companies like Facebook are stepping in to help.
The social media giant has invested $40 million into small businesses across the country with 50 percent of it earmarked for small businesses owned by people of color, women, and veterans.
Maxine Williams, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Facebook, told Cheddar Friday that the social media giant knows small businesses owned by people from marginalized communities are going to be impacted the worst.
"This is a very, very difficult crisis the world is going through and unfortunately when things get bad for some, they get horrendous for others," she said. "We are a data-driven company. We know that businesses owned by minorities, by women, small businesses are going to suffer the most when things are hard."
Williams said it was important for Facebook to set aside money to directly aid minority business owners because they are the "intersection of a lot of the pain".
"These are going to be the businesses that are going to be most likely industries that are hardest hit. These are going to be industries where those businesses also had a harder time getting access to capital," she said. "We knew that, yes, we needed to give to all, but you needed to particularly look at where the pain would be the most."
"A business like Facebook, we could do things as we have done, like launch these Data For Good projects where we are able. Taking data, working with research units, where they get the data for privacy reasons, aggregating, and making heat maps that show where you might see outbreaks coming," Williams said.
The tech firm also built a COVID-19 center within its app and on Instagram, where users can find reliable information, and Facebook also implemented promotions at the top of user news feeds that will direct them to different resources they can use amid the pandemic.
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
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It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
