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Boston Globe

Imports plummet in April as tariffs weigh on trade

Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up REAL ESTATE Advertisement Healey administration sets aside more than $7 million for office-to-residential conversions The Healey administration this week announced it had awarded more than $7 million to help spur two office-to-residential conversion projects in downtown Boston. Woburn-based KS Partners won $3.4 million to convert 15 Court Square. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff The Healey administration this week announced it had awarded more than $7 million to help spur two office-to-residential conversion projects in downtown Boston. A proposal to convert 31 Milk St. from Dinosaur Capital Partners of Newton was awarded $4 million, while Woburn-based KS Partners won $3.4 million to convert 15 Court Square. The Milk Street conversion is due to carve out 110 new rental units on the building's office floors, including 22 income-restricted apartments, while 80 apartments are planned for 15 Court Square, including 16 affordable ones. The state money is coming from $15 million that Governor Maura Healey set aside last year from the state's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, to help developers planning larger office conversions in downtown Boston finance their projects. So far, at least 15 applications have been filed in Boston to take advantage of the city's own program for office-to-residential conversions, which offers as much as 75 percent off property tax bills for up to 29 years. But construction has so far begun on only one project, building 15 apartments at 281 Franklin St. The Wu administration said on Wednesday that construction on the Milk Street and Court Square projects should begin by the end of the year. — JON CHESTO Advertisement LAYOFFS Pampers maker Procter & Gamble to cut up to 7,000 jobs as companies are buffeted by higher costs The Proctor & Gamble headquarters complex is seen in downtown Cincinnati in 2015. John Minchillo/Associated Press Procter & Gamble will cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years as the maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers implements a restructuring program at a time when tariffs are raising costs for American companies and consumers are growing anxious about the economy. The job cuts, announced at the Deutsche Bank Consumer Conference in Paris on Thursday, make up approximately 6 percent of the company's global workforce, or about 15 percent of its nonmanufacturing positions, said chief financial officer Andre Schulten. Procter & Gamble, based in Cincinnati, had approximately 108,000 employees worldwide in June 2024. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring program. Procter & Gamble will also end sales of some of its products in certain markets. Procter & Gamble said it will provide more details about that in July. — ASSOCIATED PRESS ECONOMY The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits last week rises to highest level in eight months Filings for US unemployment benefits rose to their highest level in eight months last week but remain historically low despite growing uncertainty about how tariffs could impact the broader economy. New applications for jobless benefits rose by 8,000 to 247,000 for the week ending May 31, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the most since early October. Analysts had forecast 237,000 new applications. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of US layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy five years ago, wiping out millions of jobs. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement BANKRUPTCY 23andMe's DNA data soars in value with new $305 million bid Signage at 23andMe headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., in 2021. David Paul Morris/Photographer: David Paul Morris/ Bankrupt genetic analysis company 23andMe will hold a second auction for its cache of DNA data with an opening bid of $305 million from a group led by the company's former chief executive, Anne Wojcicki. The offer is nearly $50 million more than the last bid from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which had been declared the winner of the first auction last month, only to have the outcome challenged in court by Wojcicki. The new auction is a compromise between Wojcicki, Regeneron, and 23andMe, all of whom had come to federal court in St. Louis on Wednesday prepared to fight over the best way to set up a new round of bidding. 23andMe had initially proposed limits on the new auction that were questioned by US Bankruptcy Judge Brian Walsh. At the start of the hearing on Wednesday, Walsh asked lawyers for Regeneron and 23andMe to justify the proposed auction rules, including a $10 million breakup fee and a limit to the bidding, which he said may be 'inefficient.' Under the new rules, Wojcicki, who is partnering with a California-based research institute, would make a bid of $305 million, which Regeneron can counter with an offer that must be at least $315 million, company attorney Christopher Hopkins told Walsh. After that, Wojcicki and the research institute can make their final bid. If they do, Regeneron gets the chance to make the last offer of the auction. — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement LEGAL Mattel settles baby sleeper death suits before start of a trial Mattel headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. Bing Guan/Bloomberg Mattel Inc. and its Fisher-Price unit have settled lawsuits alleging their recalled Rock 'n Play baby sleeper was so defectively designed that it led to the deaths of infants. The agreement, disclosed in a Delaware court filing last week, resolves lawsuits over six death cases and four allegations the faulty design of the Rock 'n Play product led to babies suffering flattened heads when they rolled against the product's side, said Michael Trunk, an attorney representing victims who settled their cases. He declined to provide financial terms. Among the cases settled was a suit filed by Ameena Brown over the death of her son, identified in court filings only as AB. Jury selection in her case was slated to start Thursday in Delaware. There are at least four other such cases pending in Delaware Superior Court. A representative of Mattel declined to comment. Mattel acquired Fisher-Price in 1993 in a deal valued at $1 billion. — BLOOMBERG NEWS GAMING Eager fans endure long lines for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch A Nintendo Switch 2 is sold at the Nintendo store in New York's Rockefeller Center on June 5. Richard Drew/Associated Press Eager customers lined up outside electronics stores in Tokyo hours in advance to collect their pre-ordered Nintendo Switch 2 video game consoles. The much anticipated Switch 2, being released around the world Thursday, is an upgrade to its eight-year-old predecessor with new social features meant to draw players into online gaming. Nintendo is counting on the Switch 2 to boost sagging sales. In the United States, a chaotic pre-order process in April left some fans frustrated after the consoles quickly sold out. Still, some eager fans lined up early Thursday at retailers such as Target in hopes of purchasing a unit. 'I'm just rolling the dice here,' said Edgar Huo, who was in a line of about 25 outside of a Target in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement TOURISM Where Canadians are traveling this summer now that they're avoiding the US Canadians are traveling more this summer than they did last year — just not to the United States. According to data from Statistics Canada, the government's data-crunching agency, they have logged 10 percent more flights to overseas countries in the first five months of 2025 than they did in 2024. In that same period, they also curbed their flights to the United States by 20 percent. Car trips across the border have declined by 35 percent, leaving US border towns ravaged. The dominant winner in this behavioral shift are Caribbean countries. According to a May 2025 report from flight and ticketing analytics firm ForwardKeys, summer flight searches to the region have increased by 22 percent from last year, more than to anywhere else. Data shared with Bloomberg by the Caribbean Tourism Organization also shows that at least a half-dozen island nations have so far documented gains in Canadian arrivals, with Bermuda taking the lion's share. Although its weather is more consistent with the mid-Atlantic — with optimal temperatures in the summer — it already saw Canadian visits grow by 34 percent in the first quarter of the year. — BLOOMBERG NEWS