Shoppers unexpectedly paused their spending in December from November, closing out the holiday shopping season and the year on a lackluster tone. The report, issued by the Commerce Department on Tuesday, surprised economists who were looking for growth despite mounting concerns about a slowing job growth, uncertainty about President Donald Trump's tariffs and other economic headwinds. And it raised questions about shoppers' ability to spend after they have remained resilient for months despite souring consumer confidence, economists said.

23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and its co-founder and CEO has resigned as the struggling genetic testing company continues its push to cut costs. The company said Sunday that it will look to sell "substantially all of its assets" through a court-approved reorganization plan. The company also said Anne Wojcicki had resigned as CEO but would remain on the company's board. Her resignation comes weeks after a board committee had rejected a nonbinding acquisition proposal from Wojcicki. Shares of 23andMe have shed nearly all their value since last spring and plunged below $1 in early Monday trading.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking court permission to convert his personal bankruptcy reorganization to a liquidation. That would lead to a sell-off of a large portion of the Infowars host's assets to help pay some of the $1.5 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Jones and his media company both filed for bankruptcy reorganization after the Sandy Hook families won lawsuits against him for his repeatedly calling the 2012 shooting that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, a hoax. A bankruptcy judge in Houston is holding a hearing next week on whether Jones and his company's cases should be converted to liquidations.

They are called zombies, companies so laden with debt that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good. An Associated Press analysis found their numbers have soared to 7,000 publicly traded companies around the world, including 2,000 in the United States alone, whiplashed by years of piling up cheap debt followed by stubborn inflation that has pushed borrowing costs to decade highs. And now many could be facing their day of reckoning, with due dates on hundreds of billions of dollars of loans.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned Tuesday that a tentative recovery from the pandemic recession could falter unless…