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While most laypeople’s experience with aviation starts and ends with commercial airlines, cargo transportation involves an even larger network of flights that take place throughout the world.

Mail transportation is typically handled by the national postal service of a given country; in the Scandinavian nation of Norway, it’s the Posten Norge. Its airmail branch was established in 1920 to serve the needs of a country spanning more than 385,207 square kilometers (148,729 square miles), including many remote regions in the north.

The first mail flight operated by the Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service ran from Horten on the western shore of the Oslofjord to Kristiania, the former name for the capital of Oslo.

Norway’s Posten Norge quietly transfers all air mail deliveries to trucks, trains

After 106 years of continuous operations, the airmail service branch of Posten Norge is quietly shutting down, as the agency reallocates all domestic mail transportation to road services through trucks and its rail network.

Mail coming in from other parts of the country, meanwhile, will be delivered in partnership with the postal services of other countries and through private shipping companies.

Related: A remote part of Norway is becoming a key summer travel destination

As reported by Norwegian business newspaper E24, the decision was made due to the high cost of aviation. In addition, ch-aviation noted, the vast majority of mail to all parts of the country can be delivered within one to three days via ground transportation, with special express options also available by road.

The drastic drop in the number of physical letters sent over the last few decades amid the rise of technology and online messaging have also made ground transportation the more efficient option.

Amid the skyrocketing price of jet fuel, air-mail deliveries within Norway have also been plagued by cancellations and disruptions throughout 2026.

SprintAir is a Polish charter airline that operated air mail services for Posten Norge.Getty

What happens when entire country lacks air mail service (apparently, not much)

At the start of 2026, in a decision that may appear drastic to many other countries, the national postal service of the fellow Nordic nation of Denmark made a similar move to stop delivering letters entirely, FOX 5 reported.

As a result of Posten Norge’s decision, air carrier SprintAir exited the country at the end of June 2026. The Polish charter airline operates cargo flights in many European countries and was already facing challenges in Norway due to the cost of running flights amid declining demand.

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Norwegian regulators had also previously found the airline in violation of the country’s environmental standards and put it on a timeline to make changes.

The airline informed the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority of its exit from the country in a letter dated July 1. SprintAir continues to run cargo operations in multiple countries in Europe and North Africa, as well as running charter flights connecting multiple cities in Poland to Germany and Czechia.

The cessation of the Norwegian air mail program was done quietly and was only made public when several local outlets reported on it.

Related: Low-cost airline exits entire market, leaves city after 12 years

Traditionally, when you talk about McDonald’s and gas, you’re not referencing filling up at the pump.

The fast-food giant, however, has made a deal to give consumers discounted gas in partnership with Shell. That move is part of the chain’s efforts to deliver broader value to customers without necessarily having the lowest prices.

“We’ve listened to customers and adjusted along the way with a relentless focus on delivering leadership in value and affordability, and our efforts are working. In the U.S., we launched McValue at the start of the year, which drove immediate incrementality, and then we relaunched Extra Value Meals in September,” CEO Christopher Kempczinski said during the chain’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

Now, the chain has decided to leverage its loyalty promotion to offer members a meaningful discount on gas. That partnership could allow the franchise to grow its business without further lowering prices while driving customers to fill up at Shell stations.

How the McDonald’s gas deal works

Shell, which has more than 12,000 U.S. gas stations, according to ScrapeHero, shared the news of the partnership on its LinkedIn page.

“Eligible MyMcDonald’s Rewards members can redeem 1,500 points for 50¢/gal off at participating Shell stations. Running August 12 through September 12, this limited-time national offer is designed to attract new Shell Fuel Rewards members, drive site visits, and generate incremental gallons,” the company shared.

The offer, however, is only available to new Shell loyalty program members who enroll through the company’s app.

“This promotion brings together two iconic brands with a shared goal: delivering more value to customers while fueling growth for our business. We’re excited to welcome new customers to the Shell Fuel Rewards program and drive more members, more visits, and more gallons,” the gas giant added.

C-Store Dive sees this partnership as a smart way for Shell to add new customers.

“With consumer sentiment continuing to fall and plague convenience retailers, this promotion offers Shell a direct connection to McDonald’s nearly 210 million 90-day loyalty members, creating an opportunity for more sign-ups and repeat visits to its fuel pumps and c-stores,” the website reported.

McDonald’s has one of the largest loyalty programs in the world. Shutterstock

How the McDonald’s loyalty program works

To use the McDonald’s loyalty program, called MyMcDonald’s Rewards, you need to download the company’s app.

“Earning rewards points is very easy, simply download our app and agree to participate in MyMcDonald’s Rewards. Present the 4-digit code before ordering, or get points automatically when you order in the app,” the company shared on its rewards program FAQ page.

Earning and redeeming points is fairly simple once you do that.

“For every dollar you spend on eligible products, you will receive 100 points. You can start redeeming your MyMcDonald’s Rewards when you have 1500 points,” the company added.

The new gas offer, while it’s only a one-time-use program, could keep customers away from Costco, at least for one fillup.

“When low on gas, consumers choose gas stations based on cheap gas (56%), location (52%), ease of entering and exiting (37%), cleanliness (25%), and high-quality gas (25%),” according to a Bludot survey.

Gas prices top $4 a gallon nationwide

After a week where prices dropped, the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is back on the rise.

“Today’s (August 13) national average is back up to $4.07 after dropping to $4 on Monday (August 10). Crude oil prices are once again in the $80 per barrel range amid continued uncertainty along the Strait of Hormuz,” according to AAA. 

Slowing sales were not enough to keep prices down.

“While gasoline demand is down, crude oil prices are keeping pump prices higher than normal for this time of year. So far, this is the highest August on record when it comes to the national gasoline average,” added AAA.

National average gas prices:

August 13 National Average: $4.07 

One Week Ago: $4.06 

One Month Ago: $3.87

One Year Ago: $3.15 

McDonald’s sees loyalty as a key sales driver

“In digital, we’ve built the industry’s largest customer platform with nearly 220 million active loyalty users, and we’re now among the largest loyalty programs in the world,” Kempczinski said during its second-quarter earnings call.

He talked extensively about the loyalty program driving increased visits during the Q2 2025 call.

“In the U.S. alone, on average, the same customer visits 10.5 times in the year before joining the loyalty program and then 26 times in the year after joining,” he said.

The Shell deal is not the first time the chain has offered rewards that go beyond its own menu.

“They are earning points in the app and using them to unlock exclusive deals. And thanks to our recent partnership in the U.S., customers were able to extend rewards to new experiences like the Snapchat+ subscription with premium features,” he added.

Related: Major retail meat company closes plants, lays off over 3,200

Only a handful of companies can make millions of people stop in their tracks and look up to the sky.

A Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX) rocket launch is part engineering, part business, and part spectacle. A Falcon booster descending back toward Earth still looks like science fiction. Starlink satellites have turned space into infrastructure people use from their homes.

And SpaceX’s longer-term ambitions raise an even wilder possibility: humans living and working beyond Earth.

Today it is a public corporation, with a massive valuation attached to all that amazement, and Elon Musk controls almost half of it.

A new regulatory filing shows Musk held beneficial ownership of 48.4%, or around 6.42 billion shares, of SpaceX as of June 30, Reuters noted. That stake is worth more than $900 billion at current market values.

But the dollar figure doesn’t tell the whole story.

The larger concern for investors is how a corporation that is known for launching rockets can turn humanity’s passion for space into a viable business.

The answer is increasingly something a lot less exotic than Mars: monthly internet expenses.

SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, up 33%, according to company IPO materials. Starlink has emerged as its largest business, alongside launch services and a growing push into artificial intelligence.

It’s this mix that makes Musk’s newly revealed shareholding so significant. Investors aren’t just investing in rockets.

They’re betting that space is becoming an economy.

SpaceX makes money before anyone gets to Mars

SpaceX’s most public business is also easy to grasp. Customers pay the company to put stuff into space.

SpaceX designs, builds, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. Governments and commercial clients can buy launch services to put satellites, cargo, and other objects into space.

But launches aren’t the company’s biggest revenue driver anymore. That’s the job of Starlink.

Starlink generated approximately $11.4 billion in 2025 revenue, according to financial information reported around SpaceX’s IPO, MarketWatch confirmed. SpaceX’s rocket-launch operation generated roughly $4 billion.

That is a big difference for investors.

Launching a satellite is basically a transaction. Starlink introduces the possibility of a recurrent relationship: Users pay for internet supplied over SpaceX’s satellite network.

The service can reach clients in areas where it is difficult to build fiber or other traditional infrastructure. This expands the target market from regular households to enterprises and individuals in faraway places.

Thus, rockets put SpaceX’s infrastructure into orbit. Once it’s there, Starlink tries to make money from it.

Related: Is SpaceX Worth More Than Earth? 

And SpaceX is not stopping at connectivity.

The corporation now says it operates across space, connectivity, and AI. Its IPO filing emphasized what SpaceX sees as a $26.5 trillion opportunity tied to its broader AI ambitions.

That makes the company’s business model all the more unusual. Rockets are the gateway to space, satellites are the gateway to recurring connectivity, and AI is yet another potential huge — but capital-intensive and uncertain — growth engine.

SpaceX’s biggest money machine is not the rocket launch.picture alliance / Getty Images

Musk controls more of SpaceX than his 48.4% stake suggests

Musk’s newly revealed shareholding is yet another number for investors to chew on.

His pecuniary interest is less than 50%, but his influence over SpaceX is much bigger due to the company’s share structure.

Musk owned approximately 6.42 billion shares as of June 30, GuruFocus noted. He holds shares through trusts, restricted stock, and options.

Based on his share structure and analysis of the filing, he has more than 80% voting power. That effectively puts the company in the hands of the individual who created it in 2002, even after one of the biggest-ever IPOs.

SpaceX priced 555.6 million shares at $135 each in June. After underwriters exercised their option for additional stock, SpaceX ultimately sold about 638.9 million shares and collected approximately $85.7 billion in gross proceeds.

The corporation then turned to another source of funding. Just days after its IPO, SpaceX marketed $25 billion of senior notes, from debt due in 2031 with a 5.35% coupon to bonds due in 2056 paying 6.65%.

The revenues will be used mostly to repay its bridge-loan agreement, with the rest going to general business purposes, SpaceX said. That’s an incredible amount of capital.

It’s also a reminder of just how pricey SpaceX’s objectives are.

SpaceX is asking investors to put a price on the future

Developing rockets isn’t cheap. Nor are satellite constellations, AI data centers, or spacecraft planned for missions that don’t even exist at commercial scale.

The tension is illustrated by SpaceX’s own figures.

The company’s Space segment produced $700 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025, down from $1.2 billion in 2024, according to IPO materials. SpaceX attributed the decline partly to $3 billion of research and development spending on Starship.

That’s the core of the investing case.

SpaceX is spending money today to build systems it believes could generate much larger businesses tomorrow.

Starship could ultimately change the economics of moving cargo into orbit if SpaceX succeeds in making the enormous vehicle rapidly reusable. Longer term, SpaceX’s ambitions extend to human exploration beyond Earth.

For the person witnessing a rocket launch, it’s those ambitions that make SpaceX captivating. For a shareholder, they represent both danger and opportunity.

SpaceX numbers investors should know

48.4%: Musk’s disclosed beneficial ownership as of June 30

6.42 billion: Shares covered by Musk’s ownership disclosure

$900 billion+: Approximate recent value of Musk’s stake

$18.7 billion: SpaceX’s 2025 revenue

33%: SpaceX’s 2025 revenue growth

$11.4 billion: Starlink’s reported 2025 revenue

$85.7 billion: Gross proceeds from SpaceX’s IPO after the underwriters’ option was exercised

$25 billion: Size of SpaceX’s subsequent bond offering

SpaceX investors are buying a business and a human obsession

Space has long captured people’s imaginations, even before anyone could buy stock in a corporation aiming to make money from it.

That’s part of what makes SpaceX unique.

Starlink already proves that space needn’t be an abstract frontier. Satellites hundreds of miles overhead can deliver something as mundane and monetizable as an internet connection.

Rocket launches can make money from those consumers, and customers want access to orbit. The cash flow from those companies can be used to fund projectslike Starship that are intended for a much bigger future.

That creates an intriguing loop.

SpaceX builds space infrastructure using rockets. That infrastructure can make money on Earth. They can then use the money and resources they obtain from investors to help fund the next generation of rockets and technology.

But investors should not confuse an inspirational objective with a guaranteed return on investment.

SpaceX’s valuation is based on the corporation translating incredibly expensive technology into businesses that can generate equally remarkable cash flows. Its venture into AI offers another potential growth engine but also another reason to spend big on capital.

The success (or lack thereof) of that experiment leaves Musk extremely exposed with his $900 billion-plus position. For the rest, SpaceX poses a question that investors don’t often get to ask.

It’s not just that a corporation can sell more merchandise next quarter.

It’s whether one company can take something humans have looked at for thousands of years, the possibility of what lies beyond Earth, and make it one of the biggest businesses on the planet.

Related: Nvidia just took a very serious step on SpaceX stock

Costco has a way of making shoppers fall in love with products they can’t find elsewhere. That’s a big reason the company boasts a worldwide membership renewal rate of almost 90%.

The downside, though, is that Costco has a habit of killing products that have been on the shelves for a long time. And that can make for a frustrating experience for members.

But there’s a reason why Costco is constantly rotating products in and out of its lineup. 

And sometimes, Costco’s willingness to kill a popular product is actually part of what makes its business model work.

Costco doesn’t want a supermarket-sized selection

Costco typically carries about 4,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) in its warehouse club stores, compared to the 30,000 found at most supermarkets. But there’s a reason for that.

As Costco says itself, “By carefully choosing products based on quality, price, brand, and features, the company can offer the best value to members.”

Being choosy with inventory allows Costco to buy enormous quantities of the products it does carry, negotiate aggressively with suppliers, and move merchandise quickly.

Related: Costco won’t carry these popular items

It also creates Costco’s famous “treasure hunt” shopping experience. New products arrive, older ones disappear, and members have a reason to keep checking the aisles.

Costco has also made clear that price matters more than preserving a particular product.

“We evaluate the potential for new high-quality Kirkland Signature items with a goal of providing at least 20% value versus what we would sell the national brand item as,” CFO Gary Millerchip said during the company’s third-quarter 2024 earnings call.

That explains why a product can be popular and still disappear. 

If Costco can’t source the ingredients cheaply enough, can’t maintain its quality standards, or no longer believes the product delivers enough value, it has little reason to keep selling it.

Costco has made it clear that price matters more than preserving a particular product.Shutterstock

Costco has killed some big favorites

Costco’s famous Kirkland Signature Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips are a prime example of a beloved product the company pulled from its shelves. The 4.5-pound bags disappeared in 2024 after cocoa prices surged. 

The good news for disappointed bakers is that Kirkland Signature Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips have recently begun appearing again at some warehouses after roughly a two-year absence. But the reality is that they could disappear again.

Then there’s Kirkland Signature soy milk, which Costco discontinued in 2025 because of slow sales, despite the fact that some members considered it a household staple.

Costco has also eliminated plenty of beloved food-court items.

The combo pizza disappeared during the pandemic and became one of the company’s most complained-about menu changes. 

The classic churro met a similar fate when Costco removed it and replaced it with a Double Chocolate Chunk Cookie. 

The real lesson for Costco shoppers

There’s a reasonable argument that Costco’s product-killing strategy is good business.

Costco doesn’t need to preserve every popular item forever. Rather, it needs to keep warehouses productive, prices competitive, and members interested in returning.

That can mean saying goodbye to products shoppers love.

For members, the lesson is simple: If you find something at Costco that you absolutely love, don’t assume it will be there next year — or even next month.

That may be frustrating. But for Costco, the willingness to kill yesterday’s favorite can be precisely what keeps tomorrow’s treasure hunt interesting.

Maurie Backman owns shares of Costco.

Related: Costco makes big food court change

Smaller hardware and home improvement chain stores, which face retail challenges from big-box chains, are choosing to close their stores when faced with extreme financial hardship.

West Ashley Hardware, an independently owned affiliate of the True Value Hardware cooperative, permanently closed its business in Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 15, 2026, after its landlord increased its rent by $3,000 a month.

The 10-year-old hardware store’s owner Waylon Cain said the landlord of the Ashley Oaks shopping center in the West Ashley neighborhood of Charleston, S.C., raised the rent because of property tax increases, according to The Post and Courier.

West Ashley Hardware closes down its business after its rent increases by $3,000.kadmy / Getty Images

Rising costs force store closure

“When the new owners bought the building, they increased my monthly rent by $3,000 because of property tax increases. When I called them, they said that’s the business as usual,” Cain said.

West Ashley Hardware’s property insurance costs tripled over the last six years, according to Cain, and the retailer’s credit card fees also increased significantly.

The hardware store owner opened his store in 2016, shortly after Charleston Hardware closed at a nearby location, WCIV-TV4 reported at the time.

Cain was not immediately available for comment.

Despite the closure, the West Ashley Hardware store was still listed on the TrueValue.com website on Aug. 18.

Property taxes increased

The shopping center’s owner Ziff Davis Real Estate Partners paid $12.75 million for Ashley Oaks in 2022, which was more than twice the $5.49 million that the seller paid to purchase the property in 2015, according to county records, which led to a significant increase in the property value and property tax.

Ashley Oaks is co-anchored by a Crunch Fitness location.

Ziff Davis Real Estate Partners operates a portfolio of 49 properties in 16 states, consisting of shopping centers and self-storage facilities, according to its website. The commercial real estate investor in March 2026 acquired another Charleston shopping center property, West Ashley Shoppes, for $22 million, according to The Post and Courier.

West Ashley Shoppes is anchored by World Market and Dollar Tree retail stores.

Home Depot and Lowe’s located nearby

Aside from the rising costs of doing business, West Ashley Hardware also faced fierce competition from a nearby Home Depot store that was 2 miles from the shop and a Lowe’s store that was 3 miles away, according to Google Maps.

True Value Hardware Stores have faced extreme competition from leading brick-and-mortar home improvement and hardware retailers, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Harbor Freight.

Home Depot captured about 29.5% of the home improvement market share, or portion of sales, in the first quarter of 2026, according to London data firm Passby Technologies Ltd., while the No. 2 home improvement retailer, Lowe’s, claimed about 23.2% of the market. Harbor Freight rolled into third place with about 14.7% of market share.

Amazon was not listed in Passby’s survey.

Smaller hardware store competitors Ace Hardware, Do It Best, and True Value are battling the big-box retailers for market share of the home improvement market, capturing a much smaller percentages of the market.

Smaller retailers fight for market share

Ace Hardware held about 11.4% of the market, Do It Best grabbed about 10.7% of the industry’s business, while the True Value cooperative captured only 7.1% of the market.

West Ashley Hardware’s closure follows on the heels of an iconic True Value Hardware store’s closing, as Vernon Hardware & Auto Parts, an 87-year-old retailer affiliated with True Value Hardware and Napa Auto Parts, closed its doors permanently on July 24.

The Vernon, Mich., hardware and auto parts store’s owners did not say whether they were experiencing any financial or competitive challenges. A Home Depot store operates about nine miles away in Owosso, Mich.

Related: Major retail meat company closes plants, lays off over 3,200