Bayer, the German parent company of Monsanto, will pay more than $10 billion to resolve “tens of thousands of claims in the United States that its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.” The settlement covers an estimated 95,000 cases and includes some $1.25 billion “to deal with future claims from people who used Roundup and may develop the form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the years to come” – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360
The IMF warned on Wednesday that “the global economy faces an even deeper downturn that it previously projected” thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and related uncertainty it’s brought to businesses around the world – NYTimes and Marketplace
That reality and rising infection numbers in the U.S. helped usher in Wall Street’s worst close in nearly two weeks – MarketWatch
Meanwhile, another Thursday brings an anticipated million-plus new jobless claims – WSJ and NYTimes and MarketWatch
Your by-the-numbers examination of how coronavirus threw a wrench on a years-long, trillion-dollar corporate borrowing binge that saw companies “load[ ] up on debt” thanks to “years of low interest rate, buyouts and increasingly lax lending standards”—a trend that’s at least partly responsible for the rash of bankruptcies in recent months – WSJ
Amazon workers are banding together in an effort to push CEO Jeff Bezos and his largely white senior leadership team to “do much more to address racial inequality within [Amazon’s] own walls”—from “diversifying its top ranks [to] addressing racism in its warehouses” – NYTimes
A recently filed New Jersey class action suit accuses TD Bank NA of engaging in its own Wells-Fargo-like scheme of “opening accounts without customers’ permission in order to generate bogus fees” – Law360
After 15 years as a mainstay, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is making a surprise departure from Alibaba’s board of directors – Bloomberg
We reported the news a few weeks ago of the crazy efforts by now-former eBay employees charged with harassing a couple in the Boston burbs. Now the Journal’s got the inside scoop for us on the months-long campaign of harassment and intimidation directed at David and Ina Steiner based on postings they made on their e-commerce blog – WSJ
Plagued by a backlash of his own doing after making inflammatory comments about the murder of George Floyd, CrossFit founder Greg Glassman is selling the company to a tech entrepreneur (and former Oracle exec) for an undisclosed sum – WSJ and Bloomberg
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison has accused Exxon Mobil and other oil producers of fraud for allegedly “deceiving consumers about climate change-related risks” – Law360 and StarTribune and HuffPost
A timely installment on parental burnout, a summer without camps, and surviving the next couple of months – NYTimes [So . . . virtual hiking, anyone?]
Stay safe.
