When Ritu Narayan was building her career in Silicon Valley, she found herself trying to juggle getting her kids around town. Companies like Uber and Lyft legally can't transport unaccompanied minors, so she created her own solution.
Zūm is a rideshare service that caters specifically to busy parents. They hire drivers with experience in childcare. Parents can send their kids from point A to point B with well-vetted drivers, who can also act as nannies.
Rides start at $16, and go up from there, depending on the length of the trip and the length of childcare needed. Currently, Zūm is only available in the San Francisco Bay Area. Co-Founder and CEO Narayan says the company plans to expand to Southern California and other major markets, like Chicago, in the next year or two.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
