Checking businesses

Checking businesses

COLUMBUS

The attorney general’s office launched a new online tool to help Ohioans gauge the reputations of businesses and steer clear of those with problematic pasts.

The Consumer Protection Lawsuit Search – lawsuitsearch.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/ – lets consumers check if businesses and individuals have been sued by Ohio for violating the state’s consumer protection laws. The searchable database houses civil lawsuits and criminal indictments filed by the AG’s consumer protection section and its economic crimes unit since 2013.

Is print dead? Well, it is at Starbucks

NEW YORK

Newspapers at Starbucks are yesterday’s news.

Starbucks will quit selling The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Gannett papers such as USA Today in more than 8,600 U.S. stores in September, citing “changing customer behavior.” Starbucks has sold The Times since 2000 and other papers since 2010.

The Times says it is “disappointed” and the Journal confirmed that Starbucks is stopping print sales. Gannett did not immediately respond to questions.

The New York Post first reported Starbucks’ decision to drop newspapers.

Report: FTC OKs $5B fine for Facebook

The FTC has voted to approve a fine of about $5 billion for Facebook over privacy violations, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The report cited an unidentified person familiar with the matter.

Facebook and the FTC declined to comment. The Journal said the 3-2 vote broke along party lines, with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition to the settlement.

The fine would be the largest the FTC has levied on a tech company. But it won’t make much of a dent for Facebook, which had nearly $56 billion in revenue last year. Facebook has earmarked $3 billion for a potential fine and said in April it was anticipating having to pay up to $5 billion.

EPA restores broad use of pesticide beekeepers oppose

WASHINGTON

The Environmental Protection Agency will allow farmers to resume broad use of a pesticide over objections from beekeepers, citing private chemical industry studies that the agency says show the product does only lower-level harm to bees and wildlife.

Friday’s EPA announcement – coming after the agriculture industry accused the agency of unduly favoring honeybees – makes sulfoxaflor the latest bug- and weed-killer allowed by the Trump administration despite lawsuits alleging environmental or human harm. The pesticide is made by Corteva Agriscience, a spinoff created last month out of the DowDuPont merger and restructuring.

Honeybees pollinate billions of dollars of food crops annually in the United States, but agriculture and other land uses that cut into their supply of pollen, as well as pesticides, parasites and other threats, have them on a sharp decline.

The University of Maryland said U.S. beekeepers lost 38 percent of their bee colonies last winter alone, the highest one-winter loss in the 13-year history of their survey.

Wire reports