Increasing prices on household staples, increases in domestic steelmaking, retreating glaciers in Switzerland, and the end of a Mars rover’s mission.

Here are the top newsworthy items from this past week as shared on our Facebook page.

Prepare to pay more for household staples. Makers of products from diapers to toilet paper are set to raise prices again this year after already doing so last year, hoping to offset higher commodity costs and boost profits.

From The Wall Street Journal

Credit-card companies are raising a range of fees that U.S. merchants will pay to process transactions. The move is likely to worsen already fractious relationships between many businesses and card networks. Visa and Mastercard are preparing increases to certain existing fees that will kick in this April.

From The Wall Street Journal

Apple has a plan for a subscription news service—but publishers are concerned. The service is part of the company’s efforts to offset slowing iPhone sales. In a pitch to some news organizations, Apple has said it would keep about half of the subscription revenue.

From The Wall Street Journal

Amazon abandons plans to build a new headquarters in New York.
The company had faced stiff resistance from some local politicians who objected to giving one of the world’s richest companies billions of dollars in tax incentives.

From The Wall Street Journal

U.S. Steel said it plans to add 1.6 million tons of steelmaking capacity next year by resuming the construction of a new furnace in Alabama. Tariffs on foreign metal are raising profits on domestic steel.

From The Wall Street Journal

Federal tax revenue declined 0.4% in 2018, the first full calendar year under the new tax law. The U.S. budget gap increased by 28%.

From The Wall Street Journal

Thieves are mining catalytic converters—the exhaust-control devices common in most cars—for palladium, which is now more expensive than gold.

From The Wall Street Journal

In Switzerland, where the Alps are warming faster than the global average, most of the country’s 1,500 glaciers have retreated every year since 2001; many are expected to all but vanish by 2090.

From The New York Times

NASA has ended the Opportunity rover’s 15-year mission on Mars.
Designed for 90 days of operations, it had outlasted computer malfunctions, wind storms and agency budget battles to survive on Mars for more than 14 years. It lasted longer than any other robot sent from Earth to another planet.

From The Wall Street Journal

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