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Sam Bankman-Fried has been in a Brooklyn jail since August, before he was convicted of fraud following the collapse of FTX. ⁠ ⁠ Reporters Caitlin Ostroff and Rachel Humphreys share their insights into what Bankman-Fried’s life has been like behind bars, from trading fish for haircuts to tutoring inmates.⁠ ⁠ Listen to the full podcast at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photo: John Lamparski/ZUMA Press
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14 hours ago
The crew of workers from Mexico and Central America were well into their night shift, pouring concrete to fix the potholes that dotted Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. The job could be dangerous in the daytime, let alone at night. The bridge, suspended up to 185 feet above the Patapsco River, would sway with passing tractor-trailers. But the men needed to work.⁠ ⁠ After a nearby 1,000-foot container cargo ship lost power, according to an officer onboard, officials stopped vehicles from driving onto the bridge. But they weren’t able to evacuate the maintenance workers before the ship plowed headlong into a pillar near where the repair crew was stationed. Almost instantly the bridge crumpled. Eight men fell into the Patapsco.⁠ ⁠ Two were rescued. The other six are presumed dead, the Coast Guard said Tuesday night. Some 50 divers—who spent the day frantically trying to find them in murky water as deep as 100 feet, amid sunken masses of unstable steel from the bridge—called off their search. The search continued Wednesday, state and local officials said on CNN.⁠ ⁠ Among those presumed dead was Maynor Suazo, 37, the youngest of eight children from a family in Honduras who came to the U.S. around 2003. “For my mom, I think this is the worst information she has ever received,” his brother, Carlos Suazo, said. “Maynor was her baby, the spoiled one.”⁠ ⁠ By Tuesday night, not everyone affected had begun to feel the pain. Carlos said Maynor’s 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, didn’t yet know what had happened to her father. “She was glued to her dad. Her dad was everything to her,” Carlos said. “They haven’t told her anything. Just that her dad hasn’t arrived.”⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photos: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images, Tristen Rouse for @wsjphotos
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18 hours ago
One year ago on Friday, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia during a reporting trip.⁠ ⁠ He is confined to a cell 23 hours a day, in a prison 4,700 miles from home—for doing nothing more than his job.⁠ ⁠ At the link in our bio, we’re offering resources for those who want to show their support for Evan.⁠ #IStandWithEvan⁠ ⁠ Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images
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20 hours ago
The new boss of Warner Bros. sees his mission as salvaging a rocky relationship with “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling. ⁠ ⁠ WSJ reporter Erich Schwartzel explains how David Zaslav managed to patch things up with the author who controlled his company’s most valuable property.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.
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1 day ago
Ice cream. Popcorn. Eggs. Hidden Valley Ranch is coming for every meal you eat.⁠ ⁠ “We want there to be ranch occasions at every hour of the day,” says Nick Higgins, the general manager of food business for Clorox, which owns the brand. “Breakfast is one of our new ways in.”⁠ ⁠ Hidden Valley helped ranch flow past ketchup and barbecue sauce by store sales. Now, it wants to double sales of ranch products other than its traditional dressing.⁠ ⁠ On the agenda: Hidden Valley is rolling out more flavors in its “Ranch with” line: think garlic ranch to drizzle on your pizza, pickle ranch to pair with hot dogs, and cheese ranch for fries, nachos or pretzels in collaboration with Cheez-It. The company is putting more dollars toward marketing and product development to convince customers ranch should go with every meal. ⁠ ⁠ Clorox has owned Hidden Valley since 1972, making it into the biggest ranch brand in the country. Sales of bottled ranch in the U.S. totaled $1.3 billion in the year ended Jan. 28, according to Clorox, citing market data.⁠ ⁠ How omnipresent is ranch? A survey the company conducted last year showed nearly all millennial and Gen Z respondents reported having dipped their pizza in ranch dressing. ⁠ ⁠ Not every iteration of ranch, however, makes a splash. Hidden Valley once tried a whipped ranch mousse, but after test-marketing the product at certain Kroger stores for 12 months, decided against it. ⁠ ⁠ The brand’s ranch push reflects how Clorox is expanding its food business at a time when consumers remain worried about inflation in grocery aisles. It is competing in an increasingly crowded market where American condiment makers are bringing out all kinds of specialized sauces, dressings and dips.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: @rogerkisby for @wsjphotos
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2 days ago
Four suspects detained in connection with a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall appeared before a Russian court.⁠ ⁠ The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Friday assault that killed more than 130 people.⁠ ⁠ Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
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2 days ago
Austin, Texas, the Sunbelt city that came to symbolize the pandemic housing boom, is now leading a national property cool-down. ⁠ Home prices and apartment rents in Austin have fallen more than anywhere else in the country, after a period of overbuilding and a slowdown in job and population growth. ⁠ ⁠ That marks a sharp reversal from previous years when Austin’s real-estate market was sizzling. The city attracted waves of remote workers on six-figure tech salaries. Others arrived after companies such as Tesla and Oracle moved offices there, taking advantage of lower taxes and less business regulation. Austin’s economy grew at nearly double the national rate, and it became the country’s 10th-largest city. ⁠ ⁠ Now, it is contending with a glut of luxury apartment buildings. Landlords are offering weeks of free rent and other concessions to fill empty units. More single-family homes are selling at a loss. Empty office space is also piling up downtown, and hundreds of Google employees who were meant to occupy an entire 35-story office tower built almost two years ago still have no move-in date. ⁠ ⁠ Austin’s recent downswing is a sign that migration patterns that were turbocharged by the pandemic continue to fade. Housing markets in other Sunbelt cities, including Phoenix and Nashville, Tenn., that swelled with new residents in recent years, have also softened from overbuilding, slowing population growth and a lack of affordability.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: @tylerdanehansen for @wsjphotos
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3 days ago
China’s property crisis is expected to worsen as new home sales plummet and indebted developers struggle to find funds to complete projects.⁠ ⁠ WSJ’s Jonathan Cheng traveled to an abandoned “ghost town” to see the challenge China’s real-estate slump poses for the government.⁠ ⁠ Watch the full video at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: Antoine Morel for @wsjphotos
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3 days ago
In January Applebee’s announced an inaugural run of date-night passes: gold cards that cover up to $30 of food and nonalcoholic beverages across 52 weekly visits to the chain through early next year. ⁠ ⁠ The $200 subscription, worth $1,500 in weekly meals, sold out in less than a minute earlier this year, the company says, as couples look to spice up their relationships and save money. ⁠ ⁠ Consumers from more than 40 states scooped up the passes, the company says. Daters who missed out were livid, including some who said they had placed a pass in their online basket but couldn’t complete the transaction. ⁠ ⁠ Emily and William Brooks, of Fargo, N.D., plan to use the subscription for weekly meals, so far ordering Three Cheese Chicken Penne and burgers several times at their local Applebee’s, and at more distant locations. This month, on a visit to New York City, the couple dined at the world’s largest Applebee’s. “This year is going to be a lot of Applebee’s,” she said.⁠ ⁠ Applebee’s, Starbucks, McDonald’s and other restaurant chains are turning to promotions to try to keep inflation-fatigued consumers coming in. Prices to eat out in February were 29% higher than the same period in 2019, Labor Department data released this month showed. ⁠ ⁠ Dining out last year consumed the highest percentage of Americans’ disposable income since 2005, federal figures show. Restaurants have been raising menu prices, saying they need to compensate for rapidly rising wages, pricier food and other escalating costs. ⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: Thalía Juárez for @wsjphotos
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4 days ago
The Omakase Berry is heart-shaped and marshmallow tender, with a scent that calls to mind strawberry scratch-and-sniff stickers and hard candies more than actual fruit. When Hiroki Koga, co-founder of the vertical farming company Oishii, started knocking on kitchen doors at Michelin-star restaurants with samples in 2018, he was charging over $6 per strawberry. And he sold out.⁠ ⁠ Oishii’s strawberries represent a new pinnacle in a trend that has been steadily building for years now in produce departments across America: fruits and vegetables that offer unprecedented flavor, and often command prices to match.⁠ ⁠ From Jumboz blueberries and Flavor Bombs tomatoes to Cosmic Crisp apples and Badger Flame beets, what these specialty items tend to have in common is a combination of unique genetics, meticulous farming practices and slick branding that help them stand out in the crowded produce aisle.⁠ ⁠ Setting out to grow great-tasting fruit might seem like an obvious strategy, but flavor has not always been a key consideration driving supermarket produce assortments. When chain grocers started taking hold across America, in the first half of the 20th century, produce buyers sought out varieties that minimized cost and maximized shelf-life, durability and visual appeal. Attitudes first began to shift in the mid-1990s, when high-flavor apples hit the market: most notably, the Pink Lady from Australia, and the Minnesota-bred Honeycrisp.⁠ ⁠ Consumer spending on fruits and vegetables has shot up 31% since 2018, according to the market research firm IRI. Shoppers trading up for premium specialty items account for some of that increase, as does overall inflation. The availability of high-flavor items also appears to be boosting produce purchasing overall: American shoppers bought 4.5 billion more pounds of fruits and vegetables in 2023 than they did five years earlier, an 11% bump.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: @fmrphoto for @wsjphotos
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4 days ago
Over nearly 20 years, our What’s Your Workout column featured some truly extraordinary and inspiring routines—Olympic track champion Carl Lewis’s trapeze workout, an ad exec’s joyful breakdancing, a 100-year-old’s record-breaking swims.⁠ ⁠ For the debut column in 2004, our writer shared her own routine. The headline sums it up: “Sleeping in Shorts the Secret to Journalist’s Rigorous Routine.” She’d roll out of bed, put on her shoes and go for a run nearly every morning, typically after no more than five hours of sleep.⁠ ⁠ The first subject she profiled, who was then an executive with Whole Foods, was also a runner and gave her some sage advice: Evaluate your week and decide when another workout might be counterproductive.⁠ ⁠ Her column on the midnight running routine of Sarah Palin was an early national feature on the vice-presidential candidate. Other high-profile names from the archives: tennis star Rafael Nadal, Rev. Al Sharpton, weather anchor Al Roker and a triumvirate of U.S. ski legends: Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso, and Mikaela Shiffrin.⁠ ⁠ Some of her top takeaways: Early risers stick to their routines. Older doesn’t have to mean slower. It’s never too late to get competitive.⁠ ⁠ Read more insights at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photos: Scott Flathouse, Clive Brunskill/Getty Images, Julie Soefer for @wsjphotos
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5 days ago
Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, announced that she is undergoing treatment for cancer, which was discovered after abdominal surgery in January.⁠ ⁠ She underwent the surgery for what the British monarchy said was a non-cancerous condition. She hasn’t attended any royal events since her operation, fueling fears and rampant online speculation about her health.⁠ ⁠ The 42-year-old did not reveal what type of cancer she had, but said she was in the early stages of preventive chemotherapy.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photo: Chris Jackson/AP
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5 days ago