If you missed it ...
In a week when Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up his paternity leave and was Russian back to work, this also happened:
KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger got a pay cut and a warning from the company board after he was caught ranting at comedian Kathy Griffin, his neighbor in Los Angeles. Mezger’s bonus for 2017, which has not yet been set, will be cut by 25 percent, and he’ll be fired if he makes another similar misstep, the company said in a regulatory filing. HuffPost first reported Mezger’s rant, which included sexist and homophobic slurs, on Tuesday.
Harvard University reported that its $37.1 billion endowment earned an 8.1 percent return for its most recent fiscal year. The endowment’s new chief, N.P. Narvekar, said that problems in the endowment would “require time to overcome.” Its Cambridge neighbor, MIT, posted a 14.3 percent return for its $14.8 billion endowment.
Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened” had a big debut. Clinton’s book about her stunning loss in 2016 to Donald Trump sold more than 300,000 copies in the combined formats of hardcover, e-book and audio, Simon & Schuster told the Associated Press. The book’s hardcover sales of 168,000 were the highest opening for any nonfiction release in five years, according to NPD BookScan. After emergency room nurse Maria Striemer witnessed a child nearly die in her care after being left in a hot car, she set out find a way to make sure routine car trips don’t end at the ER. Working with her husband, Grant Striemer, she invented and patented the result: The Backseet Buddy. The Ohio couple got a patent in February. They now hope to license the product, which uses Bluetooth to detect a child left in a car and alert a parent’s phone when they go out of range, to an investor or manufacturer.
SpaceX is seeking to trademark the name “Starlink,” potentially for a satellite broadband service, GeekWire reported, after documents surfaced on Reddit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also runs Tesla, said in 2015 that a company satellite network might cost $10 billion and take five years to launch.