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New York City is poised to get its first Vegas-style casinos, including one next to the home stadium of baseballs New York Mets and another that could see a windfall for President Donald Trump. They were among three casino proposals approved for lucrative gambling licenses on Monday by a key state panel. No casinos will end up coming to Manhattan, however, as several other competing proposals were already scrapped, including one in the heart of Times Square. The state Gaming Commission is expected to formally issue the licenses before the end of the year, as the gambling revenues are already factored into the state budget. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said the casinos promise to unlock billions of dollars in funding for the states transit system. Ballys plan to spend $4 billion building a casino at the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx could mean millions of dollars for Trump. When the company purchased the city-owned golf course’s operating rights from the Trump Organization in 2023, it promised to pony up another $115 million if it won a casino license. Spokespersons for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In nearby Queens, billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen has proposed building an $8.1 billion Hard Rock casino on a parking lot of Citi Field. The complex would include a performance venue, a hotel, and a retail and shopping space. Resorts World, meanwhile, has proposed investing more than $5 billion to expand an existing slots parlor into a full casino at the Aqueduct Race Track, which is also in Queens, near John F. Kennedy International Airport. It, too, would add hotel, dining, and entertainment options. Vicki Been, chair of the New York Gaming Facility Location Board, said the panel believed the New York City market was plenty strong enough to sustain three casinos, despite their proximity. She said the three projects would generate roughly $7 billion in gambling revenues over a 10-year span. The projects would produce more than $5 billion in other tax revenues and other community benefits, including public safety investments and public transit and roadway improvements, Been said. A group of anti-casino protesters chanted Shame on you! Shame on you! as they were escorted out of the meeting at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan. Jack Hu, an anti-casino organizer, said afterward that the proposals would have a disproportionately negative impact on the citys Asian American communities, which are largely concentrated in Queens. Our seniors and working people have long been dehumanized by casino operators, treated as cash cows to milk for money, Hu said, backed by other opponents holding protest signs outside the building. They bus our seniors to casinos, and they give them meal and gambling vouchers in the hopes that theyll stay long enough to lose their entire Social Security check. The commission is authorized to license up to three casinos in the New York City area after voters approved a referendum back in 2013 opening the door to casino gambling statewide. Since then, four full casinos with table games have opened in New York, but all of them are located upstate, miles away from Manhattan. The state also has nine gambling halls offering slot machines and other electronic gambling machines, but no live table games. The closely watched competition for a New York City license began with a crowded field, with some eight proposals in the running as recently as September. But four of the high-profile plans failed to get the stamp of approval from local advisory boards, automatically knocking them out of contention. Among the most notable was a Jay-Z-backed plan to build a Caesars Palace in Times Square, as well as two other resorts proposed in central Manhattan. Then in October, MGM abruptly pulled out of the license sweepstakes, saying the competitive and economic assumptions underpinning their plans had changed. The Las Vegas casino giant had planned a major expansion of the Empire City Casino, a slots parlor located at the Yonkers Raceway north of Manhattan. By Philip Marcelo, Associated Press
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Heres some good news: If you have student loan debt, you could soon qualify for a repayment plan that comes with lower monthly bills. The eligibility requirements for the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan have been updated to allow a broader swath of student loan borrowersincluding higher earnersto enroll in this plan as a result of a provision in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed over the summer. You may be able to switch to this plan, even if you dont have partial financial hardship. The U.S. Department of Education is working to update its system to implement the updates to the IBR Plan and said it anticipates that those changes will be completed this month. In the meantime, servicers will hold IBR applications that would otherwise be denied. servicers will process those applications after the system changes are completed, the Department said in an update from last month. We encourage borrowers who applied for the IBR Plan and were denied due to lack of partial financial hardship before we instructed servicers to hold these applications to reapply. That said, borrowers who are freshly eligible for the IBR Plan may have to wait several more months before they start to receive their new monthly payments. Thats because the Department has pegged July 1, 2026 as the date when borrowers who have eligible loans can access the IBR and the date when there will be no restrictions on enrolling in IBR. The Department of Education didnt immediately respond to a request for comment from Fast Company regarding the timing of when borrowers will begin to receive their new monthly bills. EXPANDED ELIGIBILITY The changes from this past summer mean that more high-income borrowers will now be eligible for this income-driven repayment plan. But the Department of Education is also scrapping three other affordable repayment plans: The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, the Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plan, and the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) plan. Borrowers under these three plans may switch to the IBR plan, though they wont necessarily see their monthly payments go down. Borrowers in PAYE may not see their monthly bill change much under IBR, while theyll be higher for those borrowers currently enrolled in SAVE, Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on student financial aid, told CNBC. But many borrowers enrolled in ICR will have lower monthly payments once they switch to IBR, he added. Though the eligibility for the Income-Based Repayment Plan has been expanded, other aspects remain the same. The monthly payment will continue to be calculated as 10% of a borrowers discretionary income, with a 20-year repayment period, for those borrowers who first took out a loan on or after July 1, 2014. For those borrowers who took out a loan prior to that date, the monthly payment amount is calculated based on 15% of a borrower’s discretionary income, with a 25-year repayment period. Whats more, there are still exclusions to the IBR Plan that include Parent PLUS borrowers whose loans have not been consolidated and recipients of Perkins loans and other loan programs who have not consolidated those loans.
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E-Commerce
If youve recycled a Nespresso capsule recently, your spent coffee grounds could help Los Angeles recover from the devastating January 2025 wildfires. Nespresso is donating 100,000 pounds of compost, made in part from recycled coffee capsules, to City Plants LA, a nonprofit that plants and cares for trees across the city. The Swiss brand will deliver the compost in three batches, and recently sent off its first batch of about 30,000 pounds to the nonprofit. Nearly a year after the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, the soil across Los Angeles county is still impacted. Wildfires contaminate soil with heavy metals, alter its nutrient contents, and increase the risk of erosion. Compost can help restore that soil, adding in nutrients and binding with contaminants. City Plants will use the compost from Nespresso to replant or save trees that survived the wildfires, as well as on new trees it’s planting throughout L.A. It expects to distribute more than 8,500 trees to L.A. residents. (Residents can also pick up compost from the nonprofit.) To create compost, Nespresso’s partners use a mix of organic materials, so coffee grounds can make up between 5 to 20% of the final product. That 100,000 pounds of compost donated to L.A. will be made up of about 5,000 recycling bags of Nespresso capsules, or about 20,000 pounds of coffee grounds. [Photo: Nestlé] How Nespresso recycles This isnt Nespressos first time turning its coffee grounds into compost. The company has long worked with composting company AgChoice as part of a complimentary recycling program. Customers can recycle their used capsules by mailing back bags of spent pods or dropping them off at Nespresso stores. (In New York City and Jersey City only, customers can also toss used capsules into their curbside recycling bins.) From there, its partners extract the coffee grounds from the aluminum, turning the grounds into compost, and the metal into new objects, including Nespresso capsules, pens, or even bikes. [Photo: Nestlé] In the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires, though, the coffee company wanted to do something specifically for Southern California, and so launched this effort, called Grounds to Grow LA. We were trying to figure out, how do we find a project that could provide meaning to us and also our community? says Amy Uong, senior recycling manager at Nespresso USA. [Photo: Nestlé] Making composting relatable Nespresso connected to City Plants, and, throughout the fall, put out a call to action to its California customers, encouraging donations at the 13 Nespresso stores throughout the state. However, since composting takes time, the 100,000 pounds that will be donated to City Plants includes compost processed before the project began, collected from across the country. Still, by appealing to California customers and focusing on wildfire restoration, Nespresso hopes to make the recycling process more tangible to its customersand increase recycling participation. Currently, Nespressos recycling rate is 35%; it aims to reach 60% by 2030. It was really about, how do we influence more consumers? How do we give them meaning to participate in the recycling program? Uong says. Recycling can be abstract to consumers, she admits; they may put something into a bin, but they dont see what it becomes. But with the coffee grounds turning into compost, it’s something they can see. They can see a tree on the street or in their backyard; the residents can go and pick it up. They’re now active in that process.
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