Tales of turning water into wine or weaving straw into gold are one thing, but a new study shows that scientists can transform trash into . . . Tylenol?
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh were able to convert plastic waste into paracetamol, aka acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the pain reliever Tylenol. Stranger yet, they pulled off the alchemical feat using the bacteria E. coli.
Were able to transform a prolific environmental and societal waste into such a globally important medication in a way thats completely impossible, using chemistry alone or using biology alone, says study coauthor Stephen Wallace, a chemical biotechnologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The research team began with polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic found in food packaging and polyester clothing. Using established chemical methods, they broke down the PET plastic into a precursor molecule and then added it into a cell culture of E. coli that was genetically modified.
Enzymes in the modified E. coli bacteria were able to convert the plastic precursor into paracetamol 92% of the time. The transformation relies on a chemical process known as a Lossen rearrangement, which can convert one kind of molecule into a different kind of molecule. Scientists have known about the Lossen rearrangement for more than 100 years, but generally observe the phenomenon in a flask or a test tube.
The research group is now working with pharmaceutical makers including AstraZeneca, one of the studys sponsors, to replicate the same chemical transformations on a larger scale.
The new research isnt the first to observe the way that bacteria can be deployed to usefully break down plastic. Researchers have previously studied how wastewater bacteria found in urban waterways use a special enzyme to chew up plastic trash and convert it into carbon-based food.
As we grapple with the cascading environmental and health effects that decades of proliferating plastics have wrought on the planet, bacteria capable of converting plastic into harmless or even useful molecules is a promising area of research.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a lawsuit against Fox News on Friday, accusing the conservative news network of defamation.
The suit, which seeks $787 million in damages, argues that coverage on Fox News misrepresented a phone call between Newsom and President Trump in a way designed to damage Newsoms reputation.
The phone call in question took place after 1 a.m. on June 7, prior to Trumps activation of the National Guard in California. On June 10, when a reporter asked if he and Newsom had spoken, the president claimed that he had called Newsom a day ago to tell him to do a better job handling protests in Los Angeles. National Guard troops arrived in Los Angeles in the early morning hours of June 8.
Newsom disputed Trumps claim that they had spoken the previous day on social media. There was no call, Newsom said. Not even a voicemail. Americans should be alarmed that a president deploying Marines onto our streets doesnt even know who hes talking to.
In a prime-time segment, Fox News host Jesse Watters stated that Newsom lied about receiving a phone call from President Trump. The show included a graphic that read Gavin lied about Trumps call and featured an image of Trumps call history with Newsom, showing the June 7 call. Why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him? Watters asked during the segment.
The lawsuit claims that the mischaracterization of the situation, namely the claim that Newsom lied about having a phone call with Trump, could damage Newsoms political career, which is widely expected to include a run for president.
The $787 million that Newsom seeks in damages is no coincidence. Fox News paid that amount to settle a prior defamation lawsuit from voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems after the network spread debunked conspiracy theories about the companys equipment.
Unfortunately, the past two years have shown that the Dominion settlement did not serve as the deterrent many had predicted, as Fox has continued to launder the stream of false information flowing out of the White House, the lawsuit states.
A study published this week delves into the mystery of how the plastic objects we interact with daily shed tiny particles that creep into our bodies, brains, and guts.
While the scientific focus has long been on how microplastics pollute our environment and impact wildlife, researchers are increasingly raising alarms about how the same contaminants can wreak havoc in the human body.
The new research, published in the journal NPJ Science of Food, wove together data from 100 previous papers that studied microplastics, nanoplastics, and plastic particles. The results were compiled into an open database published by the Food Packaging Forum, a Swiss nonprofit that examines chemicals in food packaging.
Microplastics and nanoplastics are plastic particles in the millimeter-to-nanometer range, with the latter causing even more concern among scientists because their microscopic size makes them able to slip into human cells.
“This is the first systematic evidence map to investigate the role of the normal and intended use of food contact articles in the contamination of foodstuffs with MNPs [microplastics and nanoplastics],” said lead study author Lisa Zimmermann, scientific communication officer at the Food Packaging Forum. “Food contact articles are a relevant source of MNPs in foodstuffs; however, their contribution to human MNP exposure is underappreciated.”
How we interact with plastic matters
The new study looked at a broad range of food contact articles that included water bottles, cutting boards, food processing equipment, and packaging ranging from food wrappers to tea bags. Most food packaging contains plasticeven many items that seem like they dont, such as the paper that wraps around cold cuts and cheese, cardboard takeout containers, and glass bottles and jars, which often have a plastic-coated closure.
The authors focused on how everyday objects used as intended can shed microplastics and how that shedding can worsen over the course of repeated interactions. Across 14 different studies, microplastic shedding was found to increase with repeated uses, including screwing a reusable water bottle lid on and off, washing a melamine dish, or putting plastic tableware into contact with hot foods.
These findings are relevant for reused plastic [food contact articles] and should be considered when assessing the safety of FCAs across use cycles, the authors wrote. Based on their research, and its blind spots, they stressed the need for future studies to delve more deeply into how repeated interactions, heating, and washing affect the amount of microplastics being shed by kitchenware and food packaging that most of the worlds population might come into contact with countless times each day.
The authors also found that the bulk of the research on microplastics focused on only a few kinds of objects that come into contact with food and drinks, like water bottles and tea bags. Similarly, more studies focused on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene over other common plastics, leaving a lot of unknowns about how much plastic is being shed by food packaging made out of other materials.
Food and beverage containers can expose the human body to microplastics every time we interact with them but relatively little is still known about how that process works. That mystery is an ominous one, considering how ubiquitous plastics are globally in food packaging and preparation and how their presence is increasingly linked to reproductive, digestive, and respiratory problems, and potentially even colon and lung cancer.
Plastics appear to have no trouble finding their way into the human body. Another recent study found that the adult brain can contain a plastic spoons worth of microplastics and nanoplastics, an amount thats seven to 30 times higher than what might be found in the liver or kidneys. Those kind of findings show that its imperative for future research to track down how all of that plastic is finding its way into the human body and what exactly it does once it gets there.
This week on The Most Innovative Podcast, Josh and Yaz sit down with Fast Company senior editor Jon Gluck to discuss his powerful memoir that explores the unexpected twists and emotional terrain of his battle with cancer.
The Supreme Court ended its term on Friday with a major decision in the closely watched birthright citizenship case, that is likely to have a profound impact on whether the lower courts can pause or halt President Donald Trump’s executive orderswhich many legal experts say constitute an overreach of presidential power.
What happened?
Ruling along ideological lines 63, the court’s conservative majority decided to curb injunctions from the lower courts that temporarily paused President Donald Trump’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship via Executive Order 14160, which aims to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally, on temporary visas, or not “lawful permanent residents” at the time of the child’s birth.
However, that right is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
To be clear, the Supreme Court justices did not rule on the merits, or constitutionality, of ending birthright citizenship. The Trump administration didn’t ask the court to rule on the issue itself, and instead asked the high court to rule on whether federal judges have the power to issue injunctions that would block Trump’s order nationwide, while litigation continues. The Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions imposed by federal judges, effectively sending back the rulings to lower courts.
For the 28 states that have not challenged the birthright executive order in court, automatic citizenship could end for children born in the U.S. whose parents are undocumented immigrants, and some temporary residents and visitors, according to the New York Times. The court also stopped his executive order from taking effect for 30 days.
Friday’s ruling is a significant victory for Trump, and a major blow to his opponents who have been trying to limit his executive orders.
Trump calls ruling ‘monumental victory’
On Friday, speaking at the White House, Trump called the decision a “monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.”
That’s the opposite of what Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, which argued “the Courts decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the Government to bypass the Constitution. The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution.”
And added, “The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”
In a separate dissent, Jackson called the majority decision an existential threat to the rule of law.
In response, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the majority decision pushed back, and said No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligationin fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so.”
Trump first pledged to end birthright as early as 2015, and again in 2018, before issuing an executive order on the issue in January.
Trump has instituted a crackdown on immigration since taking office that has lead to some immigrants, green card holders, foreigners, and even American citizens being detained by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Justice for Tiny Chef.
A now-viral clip of the stop-motion animated star of The Tiny Chef Show getting laid off directly by the execs at “Mickelflodeon” has tugged at the heartstrings of the internet.
In a YouTube short posted earlier this week, now with 365,000 views, the tiny green chef (Cheffy, as hes known to friends) is minding his business, dusting his room, when he gets a call delivering the terrible news: His show’s been canceled. But we won an Emmy, he lisps into the phone. “What about Rob? And Jen? Kate, Patty, MK, Leahall my friends.
Wiping away tears, he says: I understand. I love you too, bye. He tries to go back to cleaning before breaking down on the bed. Gut-wrenching.
That little attempt to straighten himself out and then get back to what he was doing only to immediately break down . . . thats REAL grief right there, reads one of the YouTube comments. I have no idea who this is but after watching this he means the world to me and something needs to be done about this great injustice, another commenter wrote.
According to the creators of the stop-motion series, which began on Instagram before being picked up by Nickelodeon in 2022 for three successful seasons, the cancellation was “very unexpected.”
Tiny Chefs creators Rachel Larsen and Ozlem Ozi Akturk told The Wrap, We always try to play Chefs life really authentically and this was a big momentthis was his dream show. They added, I think to not show how that would affect him isnt right.
To rub salt in the wound: Bro look at how happy Tiny Chef was back when the show initially got picked up….. one X user posted. In each episode, the tiny herbivore chef created equally tiny dishes, from apple pie to guacamole. Each episode featured a celebrity announcer, with cameos from RuPaul, Alan Cumming, Kristen Bell, and Rebel Wilson.
Bro look at how happy Tiny Chef was back when the show initially got picked up….. https://t.co/vK0TZsHe7a pic.twitter.com/799JWgySKe— Shreeder4092 (@shreeder4092) June 25, 2025
Now Cheffy needs your help. Many of you have said that you would die for Tiny Chef, we dont need all that (!!!) but we do need crowdfunding to keep going, reads a call for donations on the shows website. As soon as the internet found out about Cheffys plight, they sprang into action.
Oh. Nickelodeon BROKE this man. one X user posted, now with over 111.8 million views. How did they make me care about this character despite never seeing a single episode, asked another. (Indeed, it seems many of Tiny Chefs most fervent supporters only learned of his existence this week.)
Oh. Nickelodeon BROKE this man…. pic.twitter.com/OGh0Cz6OCv— Minty (@limooosin) June 24, 2025
Normalize having characters reacting to their shows/films getting cancelled to make people hate CEOs even more, one X user wrote. Another added, This is why animation is so important too. AI slop wont make you feel emotions like this.
This is why animation is so important too. AI slop won't make you feel emotions like this https://t.co/APJ76sRKDV— (@Astr0Papa) June 25, 2025
As for Cheffy, hes over on TikTok feeling his feels.
Microsoft has confirmed that it is killing off its iconic Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The screen is something most Windows users (unfortunately) are all too familiar withthe azure shade that appears on a person’s PC when Windows suffers a total system crash.
Heres what you need to know about the death of the Blue Screen of Death.
An ignominious Windows staple for 40 years
Though Windows has changed pretty radically since version 1.0 came out in 1985, several elements of Microsofts operating system have stuck around in the four decades since, including file folders, scroll bars, resizable windows, and a blue screen that showed when something went wrong.
Yes, the bane of Windows users everywhere has been a built-in part of the operating system in some form since the beginning.
What is now known as the Blue Screen of Death debuted in Windows 1.0 in 1985, and since then, it has appeared on millions of screensmaybe billions around the world.
The Blue Screen of Death has undergone several revisions over the decades, displaying different layouts and other data intended to help users identify the issue with their computer. And as it has sunk into the public consciousness, it’s even been used by Microsofts rivals to poke fun at the company.
For decades, Apples operating system for the Mac, currently known as macOS, has featured the Blue Screen of Death on the system icon representing networked Windows PCs.
But it was last year that the Blue Screen of Death caught worldwide attention. The Blue Screen of Death appeared on Windows PCs around the world for days after the infamous CrowdStrike update that took down Windows machines across the globe.
Black is the new Blue
Unfortunately, Microsoft isnt killing off the Blue Screen of Death because the company has solved the problem of unexpected crashes and restarts. The BSOD screen will still exist on Windows going forwardjust with a new color.
After an update to the Windows operating system later this summer, the Blue Screen of Death will become, well, the Black Screen of Death.
In a blog post announcing several steps that it is taking to enhance the Windows enterprise experience, Microsoft stated that the changes are part of a larger continued effort to reduce disruption in the event of an unexpected restart.
Specifically addressing the BSOD, Microsoft said it was introducing the simplified user interface to go along with a new, shortened recovery experience.
The updated UI improves readability and aligns better with Windows 11 design principles, while preserving the technical information on the screen for when it is needed, the company said.
When does the Windows Black Screen of Death arrive?
In its blog post, Microsoft said that the new Black Screen of Death will replace the Blue Screen of Death in the Windows 11 24H2 update.
The company says that the update will be available on all compatible devices starting later this summer.
RIP, Blue Screen of Death. We knew you too well.
Dating app Bumble continues to lose its footing. After subpar earnings, sluggish user growth, and internal stagnation, the company has laid off 30% of its staff. Meanwhile, its dating app competitor Grindr is soaring.
Among dating apps, Match Groups propertiesmostly Hinge, sometimes Tinderlead the market. The duos ubiquity frame apps like Bumble and Grindr as boutique alternatives, designed for their innovative features or specialty user bases. Thats a difficult market to occupy, especially as dating app fatigue sets in and Gen Z seems to push for more in-person (and sexless) encounters. Those factors are just part of the reason why Bumble and its competitors are falling behind.
But LGBTQ+ hookup app Grindr is flourishingposting solid growth in both user acquisition and revenue. In May, Grindr CEO George Arison spoke with Fast Company about his efforts to build a broader offering on the foundation of its core location-based grid of usersincluding some popular new features and a foray into telemedicine. He isn’t convinced that generational patterns entirely explain the struggles of dating apps.
“This whole ‘Gen Z-avoiding-apps’ thing makes no logical sense. Gen Z loves TikTok and loves Reels and thinks you can read something online and youre an expert in it, but theyre not gonna do dating online?,” he says. “What I do think and what makes logical sense, is that if you dont build a product that Gen Zers want, theyre not going to use it. Thats where I think some of our peers have fallen flat.”
His vision is still in progress, but here’s how the company’s constant efforts to test and scale new ideas could serve as a guide to its competitors.
Comparing Bumble and Grindr
Bumble and Grindr both went public in the early 2020s, when the dating app market was still hot thanks to the pandemics digital boom. Since their IPOs, both Bumble and Grindr have hit rough watersthough Grindr managed to right itself while Bumble continues to, well, bumble.
Bumble’s stock opened at $43 per sharea height it hasnt reached since late 2021. In 2025, Bumble’s share price was hovering around $5 in early June, jumping above $6 only at the news of layoffs earlier this week. Meanwhile, Grindrwhich debuted at $16.90 in 2022, initially dropped to $5, but has been above $15 since November 2024 and exceeded $20 per share since mid-April.
Revenue figures have told a similar story. Founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to Bumble in March on the eve of some sour news: Bumbles Q1 earnings showed an 8% decrease in revenue year-over-year. For the same quarter, Grindrs revenue grew 25% over the prior year.
Arison told Fast Company he sees the company’s performance as a reflection of the contributions that the LGBTQ+ communityhe is gay himselfcan make to the business world. “Part of our mission has to be we do super well as a business and we force everybody to change,” he says.
Neither app releases consistent and specific user counts. Grindr appears to be growing its user base as Bumble’s gains are slow. In its Q1 earnings, Grindr reported more than 14.5 million monthly active users, up from more than 13.5 million the year prior. Bumbles earnings are split by paying users, a focus for former CEO Lidiane Jones. While the company grew its paying app users by 11% in 2024, it has since shed 100,000 of those subscribers in 2025.
What should a dating app look like?
Under Arison’s leadership, Grindr has turned into an innovation powerhouse. In his May interview, Arison emphasized the creation of Albumsbundles of photos sent via chats and not directly displayed on a profilewhich debuted in 2022. In 2024, Grindr users sent over two billion albums. He also pointed toward the apps new Right Now feature, which lets users search specifically for more immediate action. In D.C. and Sydney, two of the features trial markets, Arison said that 25 to 35% of our weekly active users were regularly going into the Right Now experience at least once a week.
Grindr’s new features are available for all users, though paid subscribes receive additional uses. For example, free Grindr users get to post to the Right Now feed three times a week. Down the line, the company plans to make sessions available for purchase. That’s part of Arison’s strategy: Opening new features with limitations as a bridge to paid customer conversion.
I dont want Grindr to end up like some of our competitors, who hollowed out their products focusing only on monetization and building nothing, Arison told Fast Company. “We are doing product-led processesits not just monetize, monetize, monetize. Were saying: Build new things, and those things will lead to revenue.”
In contrast, Bumble has moved slowly with their feature rollouts. The Opening Moves feature debuted in 2024, allowing users to list prompts for new matches to respond to. The feature undercut Bumbles initial mission that women should message first. Since then, theyve also instituted ID verification and date-sharing safety features. Many of the app’s most compelling featureslike backtracking left swipes, Travel Mode, and Incognito Modeare only available to paid users.
With dating app fatigue on the rise, both Bumble and Grindr have also expanded into alternate markets. Both have emphasized the role of friendship and platonic encounters on their apps, with Arison promoting Grindr’s ongoing effort to become the global gayborhood in your pocket,” noting “Our younger, 18-plus cohort wants to be in an environment where there are older pople as well. Friendships between younger and older people are much more common in our community.”
Bumble launched its friend-focused Bumble B.F.F. in 2016, and broke it out into a stand-alone app, Bumble for Friends, in 2023. While Bumble for Friends doesn’t release stand-alone user numbers, its million-plus Google Play downloads is dwarfed by Bumble’s more than 50 million downloads. Grindr’s “gayborhood” model also flows easily with the original app; users have been employing Grindr for non-dating activities since its advent. By spinning their Friends function out into a separate app, Bumble must seek out an entirely separate user base.
In this area, Grindr is making a similarly big bet on how it can show up in different ways for its users. The company recently launched Woodwork, a telemedicine company selling erectile dysfunction pills, in Illinois and Pennsylvania. Arison also predicted that Grindr would expand into haircare, skincare, and other things of that nature.
When I started talking to shareholders, part of the conversation was: What do we want Grindr to be? Just a dating app or something more? Arison told Fast Company. Their view was very strong: We want to be a lot more.
Power plants and industrial facilities that emit carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global warming, are hopeful that Congress will keep tax credits for capturing the gas and storing it deep underground.The process, called carbon capture and sequestration, is seen by many as an important way to reduce pollution during a transition to renewable energy.But it faces criticism from some conservatives, who say it is expensive and unnecessary, and from environmentalists, who say it has consistently failed to capture as much pollution as promised and is simply a way for producers of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to continue their use.Here’s a closer look:
How does the process work?
Carbon dioxide is a gas produced by burning of fossil fuels. It traps heat close to the ground when released to the atmosphere, where it persists for hundreds of years and raises global temperatures.Industries and power plants can install equipment to separate carbon dioxide from other gases before it leaves the smokestack. The carbon then is compressed and shippedusually through a pipelineto a location where it’s injected deep underground for long-term storage.Carbon also can be captured directly from the atmosphere using giant vacuums. Once captured, it is dissolved by chemicals or trapped by solid material.Lauren Read, a senior vice president at BKV Corp., which built a carbon capture facility in Texas, said the company injects carbon at high pressure, forcing it almost two miles below the surface and into geological formations that can hold it for thousands of years.The carbon can be stored in deep saline or basalt formations and unmineable coal seams. But about three-fourths of captured carbon dioxide is pumped back into oil fields to build up pressure that helps extract harder-to-reach reservesmeaning it’s not stored permanently, according to the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
How much carbon dioxide is captured?
The most commonly used technology allows facilities to capture and store around 60% of their carbon dioxide emissions during the production process. Anything above that rate is much more difficult and expensive, according to the IEA.Some companies have forecast carbon capture rates of 90% or more, “in practice, that has never happened,” said Alexandra Shaykevich, research manager at the Environmental Integrity Project’s Oil & Gas Watch.That’s because it’s difficult to capture carbon dioxide from every point where it’s emitted, said Grant Hauber, a strategic adviser on energy and financial markets at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.Environmentalists also cite potential problems keeping it in the ground. For example, last year, agribusiness company Archer-Daniels-Midland discovered a leak about a mile underground at its Illinois carbon capture and storage site, prompting the state legislature this year to ban carbon sequestration above or below the Mahomet Aquifer, an important source of drinking water for about a million people.Carbon capture can be used to help reduce emissions from hard-to-abate industries like cement and steel, but many environmentalists contend it’s less helpful when it extends the use of coal, oil and gas.A 2021 study also found the carbon capture process emits significant amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s shorter-lived than carbon dioxide but traps over 80 times more heat. That happens through leaks when the gas is brought to the surface and transported to plants.About 45 carbon-capture facilities operated on a commercial scale last year, capturing a combined 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxidea tiny fraction of the 37.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector alone, according to the IEA.It’s an even smaller share of all greenhouse gas emissions, which amounted to 53 gigatonnes for 2023, according to the latest report from the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research.The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says one of the world’s largest carbon capture utilization and storage projects, ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek facility in Wyoming, captures only about half its carbon dioxide, and most of that is sold to oil and gas companies to pump back into oil fields.
Future of US tax credits is unclear
Even so, carbon capture is an important tool to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, particularly in heavy industries, said Sangeet Nepal, a technology specialist at the Carbon Capture Coalition.“It’s not a substitution for renewables . . . it’s just a complementary technology,” Nepal said. “It’s one piece of a puzzle in this broad fight against the climate change.”Experts say many projects, including proposed ammonia and hydrogen plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast, likely won’t be built without the tax credits, which Carbon Capture Coalition Executive Director Jessie Stolark says already have driven significant investment and are crucial U.S. global competitiveness.They remain in the Senate Finance Committee’s draft reconciliation bill, after another version passed the House, though the Carbon Capture Coalition said inflation has already slashed their value and could limit projects.
Associated Press reporter Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Tammy Webber, Associated Press
Rite Aid has selected a successful bidder for its Thrifty Payless subsidiary, which includes the beloved Thrifty ice cream brand, according to a bankruptcy court filing on Thursday.
The buyer was identified as Hilrod Holdings, a limited partnership linked to Hilton Schlosberg and Rodney Sacks, top executives at the energy drink company Monster Beverage Corporation. Hilrod is seeking to pay $19.2 million for Thrifty’s assets, the filing revealed. The partnership is mostly known for its real estate investments
Thrifty ice cream is available at scoop counters located inside many Rite Aid locations in addition to being sold by third-party retailers. It was not immediately clear what Hilrod plans to do with Thrifty should the sale be approved by the court. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for June 30.
Fast Company reached out to a lawyer for Hilrod Holdings, and representatives for Monster Beverage and Rite Aid for comment. We will update this story if we hear back.
Schlosberg and Sacks had until recently been co-CEOs of Monster Beverage. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that Sacks planned to retire this month, while Schlosberg would continue to lead the company.
Thrifty Ice Cream caught up in Rite Aid’s bankruptcy
The fate of Thrifty ice cream has been uncertain since Rite Aid announced in early May that it would see Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a second time. The embattled pharmacy chain is winding down its operations, closing or selling its physical stores, and has sold off most of its prescription files to competitors, including CVS and Walgreens.
The Thrifty brand stretches back decades in Los Angeles, where it was sold at soda fountain counters inside the Thrifty Drug Store chain. It became part of Rite Aid through Rite Aid’s purchase of Thrifty Payless in 1996.
This story is developing and could be updated.
