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Mike Gecawicz is a student at the University of Maine, where he studies new media. He spent his summer break in a headphones factory in Dongguan, China — a city of eight million sometimes called "the factory of the world." Gecawicz's father works in headphones and headsets, and helped connect him with a factory owner in Dongguan. He spent a previous summer in the same factory as a camp counselor for the workers' kids. "I'm not entirely sure why they wanted me to come and do this," Gecawicz said in an interview with Business Insider. "Part of it for me...

No one has tested positive for the new coronavirus in Pennsylvania, but the state’s health secretary said Wednesday preparations are underway to deal with the “very serious health issue.” “Since the start of this outbreak, we’ve taken a proactive approach to prepare and carefully monitor the health and safety of Pennsylvanians that were returning from China,” Department of Health Secretary Rachel Levine said at a Capitol press conference. “It is critical now that we be prepared for the possibility of community spread of COVID-19.” There are more than 80,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, according to the World Health Organization....

U.S. stocks plummeted on Thursday in a day of chaotic trading as investors sought shelter from potential economic consequences of coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 4.4 percent, about 1,190 points. The Nasdaq Composite tumbled 4.6 percent. The S&P 500 declined 4.4 percent. It was the biggest one-day point drop in the history of both the Dow and the S&P, although far from the largest decline in percentage terms. As the indexes rise over time, each point up or down represents a smaller movement. All three indexes are down for the year and 10 percent below their recent highs,...

Has any question taken up more airtime at the Democratic debates than how to pay for Medicare for All? The question keeps being asked partly because multiple estimates have found that the single-payer plan, which would eliminate virtually all private health insurance, would require more than $30 trillion in additional government spending over a decade, a historically unprecedented sum. But it has also been a fixture because of the way it has caused candidates to stumble in revealing ways. No primary candidate is more closely associated with Medicare for All than the current front-runner and likely nominee Sen. Bernie Sanders...

Workers say Target is making drastic cuts to their schedules and doubling their workload as it increases minimum wage under its ‘modernization plan’ to increase efficiency Adam Ryan, 31, has worked at Target in Christiansburg, Virginia, for three years. He works additional jobs whenever he’s able to, but is regularly scheduled only 20 hours per week at Target, despite having open availability. ... In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Bonnie Furlong has worked as a cashier at Target for about seven years, but still makes what starting workers make, $13 an hour. “The last time they raised it, they cut our hours, so...

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): The 62 Covid-19 patients who have been discharged here no longer have the virus in them and cannot pass the infection on to others, experts at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) assured. Stories have surfaced in China that one in seven patients who has recovered is still infectious. But they said the situation in Singapore is very different Professor Leo Yee Sin, executive director of NCID, said doctors monitor virus-shedding in patients' respiratory tract - in other words, they check if the patient is still releasing live virus and thus remains contagious. This is...

Former Vice President Joe Biden claims that he was responsible for the Obama administration’s handling of the Ebola outbreak in 2014. But Biden caused panic in 2009 during the swine flu outbreak, telling Americans not to take flights or subways. Biden had to walk back his remarks and the Obama White House had to issue an apology.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is courting Andrew Yang for his support and has raised the prospect of the technology entrepreneur being his vice-presidential running mate, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg has reportedly reached out to Yang, who dropped out of Democrat primary earlier February after poor showings in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, to brainstorm ways for the two work to together. However, one unnamed senior Bloomberg aide sought to pour cold water on the report, telling the Journal that Yang wasn’t being “seriously considered” as a possible running mate for...

Stocks fell sharply in volatile trading Thursday as investors worried the coronavirus may be spreading in the U.S. A slew of corporate and analyst warnings on the virus dragged down the major averages, tipping them into correction territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64. The S&P 500 slid 4.4% to 2,978.76 while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.6% to 8,566.48. The Dow had its worst day since February 2018 while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day loss since August 2011. It was also the Dow’s biggest one-day point decline in...

Markets are reeling again on Thursday, after the U.S. reported its first coronavirus case involving a person who didn’t travel to an infected country, and didn’t knowingly interact with someone who did. Experts are becoming increasingly resigned to a worldwide spread of the disease, even as China’s new infections slow. 4:00 p.m. ET: Dow drops more than 1,100 points after news California is monitoring thousands of possible casesS&P 500 (^GSPC): -4.43% or -137.94 points to 2,978.45 Dow (^DJI): -4.43% or -1,194.98 points to 25,762.61 Nasdaq (^IXIC): -4.61% or -414.29 points to 8,566.48 Crude oil (CL=F): -3.67% or -1.79 to 46.94...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Bernie Sanders presidency could begin modestly with a roughly $300 billion federal jobs guarantee before pushing for trillions of dollars in new spending on health care, the environment and infrastructure, says a key adviser to the U.S. Democratic front-runner. Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont and self-described democratic socialist, has promised a sweeping transformation of the U.S. economy if he wrests the keys to the White House from President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. A jobs guarantee, which would see the federal government ensure employment for anyone who wanted to work, would be a...

CNN spent a good chunk of time doing the math to come up with a bottom-line figure for all of Bernie Sanders' proposals -- not just "Medicare for All" but the Green New Deal, free college, universal pre-K and child care, and so on. The total? An estimated $50 trillion. This week, he released fact sheets explaining how he'd pay for them -- or rather, how he'd raise $44 trillion in taxes to pay for them. Take a look at the Medicare for All portion in the chart below. You'll see that some of the money comes from rolling back...

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania named its next dean and it's a historic choice. Erika H. James will be the first woman and first person of color to lead the prestigious business school. "This is an exciting time to be in business education," James said. "The scope and platform of the Wharton School provides an opportunity to create far reaching impact for students, scholars, and the business community." The announcement was made Wednesday by Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett.

WASHINGTON - Banning hydraulic fracturing and halting new drilling on federal land would cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion in the next decade and kill millions of jobs, the U.S. oil industry’s main lobby group said on Thursday in a report targeting the climate plans of top Democratic presidential candidates. The report from the American Petroleum Institute underscores mounting concern in the U.S. drilling industry over the possibility a candidate in favor of rapidly ending the fossil fuel economy to fight global warming will win the Democratic Party’s nomination to face Republican President Donald Trump in the November election. U.S....

Amazon has opened its first-ever full-size, "cashierless" grocery store, providing shoppers an experience that does not require any human interaction. The project, called Amazon Go Grocery, has been in development for five years. Starting Tuesday, customers can scan a QR code from Amazon's mobile app, walk into the Seattle store, take any item they want to purchase and walk out without paying at a cashier station. Amazon said it is employing technology that senses when a product is taken from or returned to a shelf and keeps track of items in a virtual cart. When a customer leaves, they are...

Strategists at Goldman Sachs just reminded investors why they are dumping stocks hand over fist right now. The coronavirus may wipe out corporate growth in 2020, perhaps completely. Goldman Sachs said Thursday in a note U.S. companies will generate no earnings growth in 2020. Underlying the call is Goldman’s view that the coronavirus is expected to spread around the globe and severely harm economic activity. For 2020, Goldman slashed its S&P 500 earnings estimate by $9 and expects no earnings growth. Looking out into 2021, Goldman now sees $8 less in S&P 500 earnings and a modest 6% growth rate....

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) would sharply curb the tax benefits of executives’ retirement plans and require earlier taxation of stock options in a proposal that could dramatically alter compensation at major U.S. companies. In a plan set to be introduced Thursday, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination cited a forthcoming Government Accountability Office report. That analysis found executive deferred-pay plans at the 500 biggest publicly traded companies totaled about $13 billion in assets in 2017, just considering the top few executives at each company, or about 2,300 people. Chief executives typically had higher account values than other executives,...

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note skidded to a new low Thursday as concerns over the impact of the coronavirus dogged financial markets around the globe. The 10-year Treasury yield dropped five basis points to below 1.25% for the first time ever while the 30-year yield slipped a similar amount to 1.747%. The 10-year rate has fallen 20 basis points since Monday in a reflection of global demand for the relative safety and positive yield U.S. debt offers. Bond yields fall as prices rise. The move lower in yields also reflects traders’ expectations the Federal Reserve will step...

Proximity is all. If they can't get to you, they can't get you. Most of us locate our fears on the far horizon – like the old maps where the known world dribbles away and the cartographer scrawls "Here be dragons". Sometimes, as Lincoln learned, the problem's right there standing next to you. In a globalized economy, the anti-glob mob and the eco-warriors want us to worry about rapacious First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. But globalization cuts both ways, and the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the metropolis -...

Congress is taking aim at short-term loans. The Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act (H.R. 5050) would set a federal cap on loan interest rates. The intention is to protect consumers, but capping interest rates would have the opposite effect, doing the most harm to those with the least financial means. Proponents cite high annual percentage rates (APR) on small-dollar loans to argue that lenders are taking advantage of desperate borrowers. One problem with this argument is that an annual rate is a poor metric by which to judge a loan with a two-week term. For example, the 36 percent...