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Cracker Barrel CEO to step down after overseeing logo backlash last year

Julie Felss Masino, president and CEO of Cracker Barrel, speaks during 13D Monitor’s Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York City on 21 October 2025. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/ReutersView image in fullscreenJulie Felss Masino, president and CEO of Cracker Barrel, speaks during 13D Monitor’s Active-Passive Investor Summit in New York City on 21 October 2025. Photograph: Jeenah Moon/ReutersBusinessCracker Barrel CEO to step down after overseeing logo backlash last yearJulie Masino faced criticism as restaurant chain was called ‘woke’ and ‘soulless’ after unveiling modernized logo Cracker Barrel’s CEO, Julie Masino, is stepping down, the restaurant announced on Monday, nearly a year after the company was swept into a political maelstrom over proposed modernizations to its branding. Critics on social media denounced the Tennessee-based rustic restaurant chain as “woke” as well as “sterile and soulless” after it unveiled an updated logo that removed Uncle Herschel, the overall-clad man leaning against a barrel in the restaurant’s original logo, last August. Donald Trump weighed in on the updates soon after, posting: “WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!” and demanding on social media that the company “admit a mistake”. The company announced that it would revert back to its old logo soon after the social media reaction exploded. Masino, who has served as the chain’s CEO since 2023, told the rightwing commentator Glenn Beck in December that she felt “fired by America” after the controversy. Cracker Barrel’s stock dropped nearly 3% after the announcement of Masino’s departure. The chain’s new CEO, David Deno, will take over on 10 August, and Masino will remain until October to help with the transition. “Cracker Barrel is a truly iconic American brand, defined by its unique combination of warm country hospitality, timeless appeal, and deep connection with guests across generations,” Deno said in a statement. Masino’s departure the latest fallout from social media-fueled backlash against brands accused of appealing to certain political ideals. The Harris Poll found last year that a quarter of Americans have changed their shopping habits to align with their morals, with 50% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans responding that they stopped shopping at stores opposing their political views. Some companies have quickly felt the financial strain of these calls to action. In 2023, after Target announced a pride month collection and Bud Light aired an advertisement with a transgender influencer, both companies announced declines in sales. On the other side of the political aisle, Target was pulled as a sponsor from Minneapolis’s annual pride festival last year after it announced it was ending its diversity, equality and inclusion policies. Not all of these boycotts have been successful, though – Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey saw great success at its global box office debut, despite Elon Musk and other critics castigating the movie’s cast as part of a “woke” agenda. Cracker Barrel has had a history of discriminatory treatment against diners and staff. In 1991, the chain blocked the hiring of LGBTQ+ workers and dismissed 11 staff members, though it later backed down from that policy. In 2004, Cracker Barrel paid $8.7m to settle discrimination allegations from Black customers who said they were denied service and Black employees who said they received more “back of house” assignments compared with their white counterparts.

Cracker Barrel CEO to step down after overseeing logo backlash last year
Europe
BBC Business

Johnson & Johnson offers up to $5.5bn to settle baby powder lawsuits

Image source, Getty ImagesByOsmond ChiaBusiness reporterPublished28 July 2026, 02:24 BSTUpdated 2 hours agoJohnson & Johnson (J&J) has offered to pay as much as $5.5bn (£4.14bn) to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits in the US alleging that its baby powder and other products containing talcum cause ovarian cancer. The proposed landmark settlement aims to close a long-running legal battle that has weighed on the New Jersey-based healthcare giant for years. J&J has denied that its talc-based products caused cancer and has changed the formula of its widely used baby powder. Erik Haas, the firm's vice president of litigation said on Monday, external that the allegations are "meritless" and that J&J was willing to settle in order to finally resolve the matter. J&J said the settlement would cover about 69,000 cases, totalling most of the remaining talc-related claims. The firm will offer up to $3bn next year, with no additional payments due before 2028, it said. The proposal must be accepted by legal firms representing 95% of the ovarian cancer claims in state and federal courts before it can be finalised, the J&J said. Haas said in a statement that the company is confident that it would have "ultimately prevailed with further litigation" just as it has in the majority of cases heard in court to date. He added that the proposed resolution "allows the company to put this matter behind it" and enable J&J to "remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives". J&J's former consumer health business, Kenvue, holds liability for Johnson's baby powder outside North America. Kenvue - which owns well-known brands including Band-Aid, Listerine, and Calpol - was spun off from J&J in 2022. Earlier in July, a federal court handed the firm a victory by questioning individual plaintiffs' ability to show that talc was the direct cause of their ovarian cancer. Talc is a natural mineral made of magnesium, silicon, oxygen and hydrogen, known for its soapy feel and is often used in baby powder.

Johnson & Johnson offers up to $5.5bn to settle baby powder lawsuits
Europe
BBC Business

Faisal Islam: The UK's Trump trade deal no longer looks world-beating

Image source, Getty ImagesByFaisal IslamEconomics editorPublished24 July 2026It has been a long road for President Donald Trump as he looks for a justification to erect a tariff wall around the US, including against key allies. From the opioid crisis to illegal migration, then the need to bring manufacturing back to America's shores, the list goes on. Through Trump's second term, there has been a new justification almost every month for the trade levies he is seeking to place on allies. Some have been overturned by the courts, others by economics and some even by their own logic. And so, Trump has now turned to effectively accusing dozens of trade partners of trading in goods that have been produced using forced labour. These are "tariffs in search of an authority", as one industry figure put it. The forced labour line shores up President Trump's tariffs against a challenge from Congress or the courts. In practice, the levies are curiously similar by country to a previous round of tariffs imposed supposedly for completely different reasons. The good news for the UK is that the regime effectively remains the same as before. What has changed is that our nearest neighbours in the European Union now have a much better deal than before, and in turn are in a better situation than the UK. While the UK and the EU each appear to have a 10% rate, the EU's is a flat rate, while the UK's will apply alongside other tariffs, in a range of goods including footwear and textiles. The government has struck effective side deals on medicines, steel, aluminium, cars and, with the help of King Charles, whisky. At the end of this process however the overall trade-weighted effective tariff rate for the EU (8.5%) could end up a bit lower than the UK's (6.8%). It should not matter that much, but the help given by doing the first deal, and by post-Brexit trade freedoms, looks to have been short-lived.

Faisal Islam: The UK's Trump trade deal no longer looks world-beating
North America
CNBC Finance

EU antitrust regulators clear Paramount-WBD merger as it faces challenge by U.S. states

European Union antitrust regulators said on Wednesday they had signed off on Paramount Skydance's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The approval, which included concessions made by Paramount, comes as the deal has been delayed in the U.S. due to concerns raised by state attorneys general. In order to garner the approval, the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, said Paramount agreed to divest its stake in a film distribution joint venture with United International Pictures in Europe, and said it would not enter into any film distribution deal with Universal for the next 10 years in Europe. "These commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission by ensuring that the films of the merged entity will not be distributed jointly with those Universal or Disney," according to the EU's release. The EU's approval marks a major regulatory milestone for the $110 billion proposed merger. The deal earlier won approval from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Various other global jurisdictions have also signed off on the deal. "With the clearance from the European Commission, bodies and governments representing 65 jurisdictions have either cleared the transaction or chosen not to challenge it on competition and/or foreign direct investment grounds," Paramount said in a release on Wednesday. "These clearances recognize that the combination of Paramount and WBD will enhance consumer choice and enable a creative-first company to invest in more projects and bring stories to audiences worldwide," Paramount said in its statement. "It will create a scaled media and entertainment company capable of competing with the tech companies that have come to dominate the industry, strengthening the media ecosystem and creating more opportunities for creatives both in front of and behind the camera." The clearance comes as a lawsuit brought forward by a group of U.S. state attorneys general last week has become a potential holdup in this deal moving forward. The coalition led by California's Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit seeking to block the merger due to antitrust concerns. The tie-up is set to combine two major film studios, Paramount and Warner Bros., a massive portfolio of pay TV networks, and streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+. Earlier this week a California district judge granted a temporary restraining order that puts a 14-day pause on anything moving forward with the merger. "The conclusions reached by the European Commission directly refute key assumptions that underpin the state AGs' complaint seeking to block the transaction," Paramount said in its release.

EU antitrust regulators clear Paramount-WBD merger as it faces challenge by U.S. states
North America
Yahoo Finance

The Average Social Security Check Is $2,082. Your Bills Didn’t Get the Memo. These 4 ETFs Step In

A $2,082 monthly benefit works out to roughly $25,000 a year. The average household spends more than three times that. Even a 1.68% national average 12-month CD barely covers the rounding error on your grocery bill. You need cash flowing every month, and you need at least one holding that grows faster than inflation so your future self is not stuck in the same corner. These four funds attack that problem from four different angles. SPYI owns the S&P 500 and layers a call-option strategy on top to generate premium income. The fund has grown to roughly $6.9 billion in net assets and carries an expense ratio of 0.68%, meaning you keep about $9,932 of every $10,000 working for you each year. It pays monthly. The July 2026 distribution was $0.53 per share, and the fund has paid out $6.31 per share over the trailing 12 months, with a forward annualized rate of $6.36. On a recent price of $52.26, that is a high-single-digit yield that lands in your account every month. The tradeoff is participation. Covered calls cap upside, so SPYI gained 15.71% over the past year while SPY returned 16.41%. You are trading a slice of appreciation for a fatter monthly check. For a retiree, that is often the right trade. HDV holds $13.57 billion in older, cash-generating names. The top of the book reads like a retiree’s shopping list: Exxon Mobil at 8.42%, Chevron at 6.43%, Johnson & Johnson at 5.68%, AbbVie at 5.44%, and Procter & Gamble at 4.46%. Energy, healthcare, consumer staples, and utilities dominate. Those sectors sell things people buy in every economic weather. The fund is also pulling its weight on total return, up 22.41% over the past year and 18.70% year to date. Concentration is real: the top 10 holdings represent roughly 51.8% of assets, so a bad quarter for Big Oil can sting. PFFD holds more than 200 preferred stock positions across roughly $2.25 billion in assets. Preferreds sit above common stock in the capital stack and typically pay fixed distributions. Translation: less growth, more predictable income. PFFD has paid $0.10 per share every month in 2026, for a $1.20 annualized rate on a share price of $18.39. That is a mid-single-digit yield delivered like clockwork. Top exposures include Boeing at 4.64%, Albemarle at 3.00%, and heavy positions across Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan, and NextEra Energy. Preferreds move with interest rates, which is why PFFD is up just 0.38% year to date. You are buying it for the coupon. DGRW screens U.S. companies for return on equity, return on assets, and expected dividend growth. Its monthly distributions have compounded into real numbers: a trailing 12-month payout of $1.22 per share and a $1.92 forward annualized rate. The share price sits at $95, and total return has been the point: up 12.20% over one year, 69.02% over five years, and 252.88% over 10 years. That is the fund whose job is to keep your purchasing power ahead of the CPI. None of these funds are riskless. SPYI’s covered calls will lag in a raging bull market. HDV concentrates in a handful of mega-caps. PFFD moves with interest rates and can drift sideways for years. DGRW pays the smallest current yield of the four. Owned together, though, they cover the bases a Social Security check cannot: monthly cash flow, defensive dividends, fixed-rate income, and long-term growth. For a retiree watching bills outrun a 2.8% COLA, that combination is worth the homework.

The Average Social Security Check Is $2,082. Your Bills Didn’t Get the Memo. These 4 ETFs Step In
Europe
BBC Business

Some people's chats with Claude AI found publicly available online

Image source, ReutersImage caption, Anthropic's Claude chatbot is among the most popular, rivaling ChatGPT and Gemini. Hundreds of user conversations with Anthropic's popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude were found to have been available to essentially anyone using Google or other web browsers. Links to the chats, some of which included personal and work information, would show up if a user of a search engine like Google used a site-specific search term. The searches showed Claude chats for which a user had decided to "share" a link had been saved by search engines like Google, leaving them accessible to the broader public. The search availability of the chat logs was removed over the weekend, but many were saved and shared widely online. A spokeswoman for Anthropic said that Claude users maintained control over if and when to share conversations they had with the chatbot. She said links to conversations were "not guessable or discoverable unless people choose to share them themselves". "When someone shares a conversation, they are making that content publicly accessible, and like other public web content, it may be archived by third-party services," the spokeswoman added. The share option within Claude tells a user that "anyone with the link" may view the contents of that link, but does not explicitly state that the link may end up in Google and search results. Users on Reddit initially discovered, external the publicly available chats, which covered more than 200 conversations with Claude across at least 25 pages of search results - some taking place just weeks ago. In the conversations, users prompted the chatbot to respond to a wide array of topics. Chat logs include a user asking Claude last year whether it wanted "to help me or do you want to help anthropic more?". The chatbot responded in part, saying "I experience something like wanting to help you".

Some people's chats with Claude AI found publicly available online
North America
CNBC Finance

Southwest Airlines put Texas jet fuel on a boat to LA for the first time amid supply worries

Southwest Airlines hired a ship this spring to send jet fuel from Texas to California, where prices are much higher and concerns had grown about supply, Chief Financial Officer Tom Doxey told CNBC. It was a first for the Dallas airline. "It brought like a week's supply to the West Coast at a time when when supply was most constricted ... when it was most at risk," Doxey said. The ship, which left from Houston and went through the Panama Canal, arrived May 28 in Los Angeles and had about 12.6 million gallons aboard, Southwest said. For context, Southwest used 564 million gallons of jet fuel in the last quarter. The West Coast is much more reliant on imports than other parts of the country. Jet fuel prices spiked and have been volatile since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran in February. Southwest said Thursday that its fuel expenses were up nearly $900 million in the second quarter from last year. For the shipment to California, the airline said it used a waiver of the Jones Act, a law from 1920 that requires shipments between U.S. ports to be carried on a U.S. ship. President Donald Trump waived that requirement in March as fuel prices were soaring in the weeks following the start of the Iran war and subsequent shipping snarls erupted in the Strait of Hormuz, a key channel. Worries about supplies intensified as countries restricted exports this year, fearful of running low on fuel. Those concerns have since eased, a Southwest spokesman said. Jet fuel is airlines' biggest expense after labor. Prices eased in late spring and early summer but rose again as tensions reignited with Iran this month. Last week, United Airlines, which flies more internationally than any other U.S. carrier, said it is using the latest available fuel prices for its quarterly estimates because prices have been so volatile. In its July 15 report, it said jet fuel increased $575 million, or a $1.12 hit to adjusted earnings per share, for the third quarter alone. U.S. airlines have abandoned fuel hedges, which help them lock in costs through futures contracts, over the past decade or so as the U.S. was awash in supply, keeping a lid on prices. This time around, carriers have scaled back their capacity growth plans, which is also helping boost fares. Airline executives this month said demand remains strong despite higher fares, which they say are likely to stick.

Southwest Airlines put Texas jet fuel on a boat to LA for the first time amid supply worries
North America
CNBC Finance

Jamie Dimon says markets underestimate risks and he wouldn't buy stocks or Treasurys at current prices

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said investors are underestimating the risks facing the global economy and that he wouldn't buy either equities or long-dated U.S. Treasurys at their current prices. In an hourlong interview with Wilfred Frost released late Monday, Dimon said markets aren't fully accounting for a growing list of geopolitical and fiscal threats. "I do think those risks are probably bigger than other people think," Dimon said, pointing to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, tensions between the U.S. and China, and rising military spending in a time of mounting government deficits. Asked whether markets are underpricing the chance of a major shock, Dimon said it's difficult to know exactly what risks are already reflected in asset prices. "It's possible something's baked in, but what's not baked in is what actually happens," he said. Dimon, who leads the world's largest bank by market cap, often warns the public about the economic risks he sees. His latest comments contrast with investors' recent willingness to look past wars, tariffs and other shocks. The S&P 500 has returned nearly 10% this year as consumers continue to spend, inflation has moderated and investors have embraced the artificial intelligence trade. Last week, JPMorgan Chase and its peers posted blockbuster quarterly results powered by surging trading and investment banking revenue, reinforcing the view that the U.S. economy has weathered recent geopolitical turmoil better than many expected. Dimon acknowledged in the interview with "The Master Investor Podcast" that the global economy has become more resilient because of a lower energy dependence than in previous decades, but warned that doesn't eliminate the possibility of a sudden inflection point. "You may need more straws in the camel's back to cause that tipping point," he said. "Even this current war starting up again, maybe that's not enough to do it." Persistent U.S. budget deficits will eventually force a reckoning, potentially driving interest rates higher, Dimon said. "My view is it will become a problem," he said, predicting higher interest rates as so-called bond vigilantes demand greater compensation to finance the government's debt.

Jamie Dimon says markets underestimate risks and he wouldn't buy stocks or Treasurys at current prices
North America
CNBC Finance

'The Odyssey' is cleaning up for Imax. Expect the momentum to continue

Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" is racking up box office dollars for Imax and fueling investor confidence that the company will reach record ticket sales in 2026. Shares of Imax jumped more than 8% on Thursday after the company reported it was still on track to deliver a record $1.4 billion in global box office this year. Wall Street had worried that when Netflix and Greta Gerwig's "Narnia: The Magician's Nephew" was pushed from its November release date to February 2027, that Imax would not be able to reach that guidance. Universal's "The Odyssey" is easing those fears. Over its opening weekend, the film generated $52 million in global box office for Imax. The company's locations represented less than 1% of total screens but a whopping 20% of the film's worldwide debut. "The Odyssey" opening was 47% higher than Nolan's previous film, "Oppenheimer." The biopic hauled in more than $190 million via Imax throughout its run in 2023. And momentum for "The Odyssey" has showed few signs of slowing. The film secured another $11 million on Monday and $10.6 million on Tuesday — the best Tuesday performance of all time for the company, according to Imax CEO Rich Gelfond, who spoke to investors on an earnings call Thursday. "Our presales for the second weekend would qualify on its own as one of our biggest opening weekends ever," he said. "These numbers help prove that we're just getting warmed up." Still to come to global Imax screens this year is Sony and Marvel's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day;" Zach Cregger's take on "Resident Evil;" Tom Cruise's newest feature, "Digger;" "Godzilla Minus Zero;" David Fincher's "The Adventures of Cliff Booth," which stars Brad Pitt and is based on Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood;" and Paramount's "Street Fighter." Then Warner Bros. and Denis Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Three" will cap off the year. The first Dune film generated $61 million in Imax theaters during the tail end of the pandemic and "Dune: Part Two" secured $147 million globally. "Our momentum continues to translate into demand from our exhibition partners," Gelfond said. The company installed 38 Imax systems globally during the second quarter, up from 36 during the same period a year prior. This is the highest number of installations in the second quarter in a decade, Natasha Fernandes, Imax's chief financial officer, told investors during Thursday's earnings call. Nineteen systems were installed in the first quarter, and the company is on pace to have 160 to 175 installations by the end of 2026. "We continue to see tremendous runway for our global expansion, and we continue to innovate in ways that make Imax even more valuable to creators, studios, exhibitors and audiences alike," Gelfond said. "This is an incredibly exciting time for our business." Correction: This story has been revised to reflect that "Godzilla Minus Zero" is among the films coming to Imax screens this year. A previous version misstated the name of the movie.

'The Odyssey' is cleaning up for Imax. Expect the momentum to continue