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A survey by pet care site Rover found that to adjust for increasing prices, pet parents are trading down on things like food, treats and accessories for their dogs. 
In some cases, owners have been forced to say goodbye to their four-legged best friends.
Shelters across the country are hearing from more pet owners that they’ve been forced to surrender their animals due to housing or financial constraints.

Lisa Spillman can’t imagine life without her dog, an 8-year-old chihuahua mix named Rosebud. But she says her household expenses were getting tough to handle.
“Everything – rent, groceries, dog food… it’s all going really high,” Spillman, 52, told CNBC.

And she’s not alone.
According to a new survey conducted by pet care site Rover, the majority of pet parents say they are spending more on their animals than they were six months ago. More than 90% of pet parents in the U.S. say they have noticed an increase in pet-related costs due to inflation, up from 71% who said the same in January, according to the survey.
Rover also found that to adjust for increasing prices, pet parents are trading down on things like food, treats and accessories for their dogs. 
In some cases, owners have been forced to say goodbye to their furry best friends.
Spillman, who lives in Tucson, was forced to move after rent skyrocketed nearly 40%. Her only option was a place that wouldn’t take dogs.

“Losing my baby, who loves me so much, hurt very much,” Spillman said.
Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson is hearing more often from pet owners that they’ve been forced to surrender their animals because of housing concerns, such as eviction or lack of affordable housing, according to shelter Director Monica Dangler. A year ago, housing-related surrenders made up 6% of the shelter’s surrenders — now, they make up 18%.

Dogs waiting to be adopted inside Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona.

“It’s staggering. And it’s, you know, sad that people are having to surrender due to things outside of their control due to inflation and the rising market costs for housing,” Dangler said.
While the number of animals entering shelters has decreased more than 14% since before the pandemic, shelters across the U.S. are still overwhelmed with animals, according to Shelter Animals Count, which tracks animal sheltering across the country. So far this year, 6% more animals have entered shelters than have left, according to the organization.   
“Many shelters report in recent months that the reasons people are needing to give up their animals has changed,” the organization’s Executive Director, Stephanie Filer, told CNBC. “They’re now more commonly seeing issues related to housing or finances as why families – often tearfully – are forced to say goodbye to their family’s pet.”

Dog owner Lisa Spillman, 52, hugs her 8-year-old dog, Rosebud.

In Kansas City, Missouri, KC Pet Project expects to take in a historic number of pets this year – 15,000 – compared with roughly 10,000 on average in recent years, according to Chief Communications Officer Tori Fugate.
“We need the community to help us get through this – through adoptions, fostering and just helping us save lives,” Fugate said. “I highly encourage you to reach out and get involved with your local shelter.”
So far in 2022, 40% of the dogs that have come into the shelter have been relinquished by their owners as a result of housing or financial constraints.
“[Families] don’t want to give up their pets, but they are coming to us as a last resort because they have no other options,” Fugate said.

Exterior of KC Pet Project in Kansas City, Missouri

A few months ago, Veronica Gurrola had to say goodbye her two miniature schnauzers, Oreo and Cookie.
“It came to where I had to choose, you know, my kids, you know, over our pets,” Gurrola told CNBC. “Having a mortgage to pay… all of that stuff… it adds up. And it seems like everything is going up – except for, you know, pay.”
One shelter in New York City, Animal Care Centers of NYC, reported 4,567 animals were surrendered so far this year – up 22% from the same time last year.
“Due to the economy, a lot of people are needing to move to different places,” shelter Director of Marketing and Communications Katy Hansen said. “They’ve lost their job or they can no longer afford the 30% rent increase – that is one of the biggest reasons that people are having to surrender their animal.”
For some, the separation is temporary. Both Spillman and Gurrola were able to get their dogs back. 
Their local shelters have foster care programs that place dogs on a short-term basis while owners get back on their feet.
“I’m really grateful for that,” Spillman said, who now lives in a pet-friendly home in Tucson with a backyard for Rosebud. “She’s very active. She missed us a lot – as much as I missed her.”

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Sustainable Energy

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According to the International Energy Agency, nuclear power is responsible for roughly 10% of global electricity generation.
In advanced economies, the IEA says it accounts for nearly 20% of the generation.
“We don’t think it’s one of the transformational technologies for the future,” Goldman Sachs’ Michele Della Vigna tells CNBC.

A nuclear power plant photographed in Germany, on August 4, 2022. Discussions about nuclear’s role in Europe’s biggest economy have been thrown into sharp relief following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February.
Lennart Preiss | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Nuclear has a role to play in the years ahead but it should not be seen as a “transformational” technology, according to Goldman Sachs.
The comments from Michele Della Vigna come after a recent report from Goldman Sachs Research looked at whether Europe could bolster its energy independence following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, without compromising on goals related to climate change.

Among other things, the report said 10 trillion euros (around $10.23 trillion) of investment would be required by 2050 for what it called “Europe’s energy transformation.” This would be offset by a 10 trillion euro cut in net energy imports.
The report said natural gas — a fossil fuel — would remain “key” when it comes to Europe’s energy supply over the next two decades.

Read more about energy from CNBC Pro

“Nuclear is not in the headlines of our report because we don’t think it’s one of the transformational technologies for the future,” Goldman’s Della Vigna told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.
“We think wind, solar [and] hydrogen are, but not nuclear,” Della Vigna, who is the bank’s commodity equity business unit leader for the EMEA region, added.
“But at the same time, we do assume that nuclear will maintain its market share in the long-term energy mix in Europe,” he said.

This would mean “less retirement and some new builds,” including modular reactors.
“So we do believe that investment in nuclear should be ongoing, but it’s not one of the transformational technologies that we envisage for the future.”

More from CNBC Climate:

Nuclear’s role

According to the International Energy Agency, nuclear power is responsible for roughly 10% of global electricity generation. In advanced economies, the IEA says it accounts for nearly 20% of the generation.
Noting that nuclear power has big upfront costs and long lead times, the Paris-based organization says it “has trouble in some jurisdictions competing against more economic and faster-to-install alternatives, such as natural gas or modern renewables.”
The development of “next generation installations” like modular plants could help redress this balance, it adds.
In addition, the IEA describes nuclear power plants as helping “contribute to electricity security by keeping power grids stable and complementing decarbonisation strategies since, to a certain extent, they can adjust their output to accompany demand and supply shifts.”
The need for this will only grow as more renewable sources like wind and solar — which are intermittent — come online in the years ahead, it says.
— CNBC’s Silvia Amaro contributed to this report. More

Airlines made plans to mitigate summer travel chaos, including schedule changes and cancellations.
Emirates and Ryanair are running operations as usual.
KLM and easyJet made changes to their schedules.

American Airlines made “short notice” cancellations in July while easyJet changed its schedule when airports announced passenger capacity caps.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

The aviation industry has been in disarray since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, a perfect storm of strikes and staff shortages is forcing airlines to shore up their battle plans to offset a summer of travel chaos.
Around 90,000 jobs were cut across U.S. airlines as worldwide mobility was brought to a standstill in 2020, while easyJet and Airbus were among the European companies shedding staff.

Passenger numbers for leisure and business flights have since rebounded to exceed pre-pandemic numbers. However, those money-saving cuts have turned into havoc-causing shortages.
British Airways on Tuesday suspended short-haul flight sales from London’s Heathrow after the airport asked airlines to cut down passenger numbers.
So, what are other airlines doing this summer?
Ticket caps
Dutch airline KLM will limit the sale of tickets flying from Amsterdam in September and October after Schiphol Airport put a cap on the number of departing passengers.
The airline “does not expect cancellations to be necessary” to meet the limits imposed by the airport, but warns that “fewer seats than usual will be available in the Dutch market.”

Qantas hasn’t canceled flights, but it has capped sales on its Australia to London services until mid-September.
Schedule adjustments
German carrier Lufthansa made adjustments to its schedule at the start of summer and canceled 3,000 flights from Frankfurt and Munich. The early changes were made with the aim to “relieve the overall system and offer a stable flight schedule,” according to the airline.
The airline also canceled over 1,000 flights due to a ground staff walkout in July. There is currently no capacity restriction on passenger numbers.
Low-cost carrier easyJet made changes to its schedule in June after Amsterdam’s Schiphol and London’s Gatwick Airport announced passenger capacity caps. Since then “operations have normalised”, according to easyJet, and performance is “now at 2019 levels.”
American Airlines made some “short notice” cancellations because of Heathrow’s passenger cap, according to the company, but made no mention of future disruption when asked for comment by CNBC.
Swiss International in July canceled some upcoming flights scheduled between July and October. The airline said the alterations had “become necessary due to known constraints in air traffic control in Europe, constraints at ground and airport service providers worldwide and also at SWISS.”
Business as usual
Dubai’s Emirates airline hasn’t made any alterations to its schedules or passenger numbers after it refused to comply with Heathrow’s capacity restriction requests in July.
Austrian Airlines is operating its summer flight schedule “as planned.”

Meanwhile, Irish airline Ryanair says it has “no plans to cap passenger numbers” and that capacity is currently at 115% of its pre-Covid numbers.
Recovery does remain “fragile” however, according to Chief Executive Michael O’Leary.

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It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Ammo Inc: “I know it’s a little bit of a far field in terms of where you are versus what it is, but Dick’s is my favorite in that group.”

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Inmode Ltd: “It’s a good company, but the people hate the medical device companies. … I think they’re overly hated. That’s why I like [Johnson & Johnson].”

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Coty Inc: “When we’re in that area, you know we go with E.L.F. … That’s the stock to be in.”

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Silvergate Capital Corp: “I am no longer a huge crypto guy. I was in it as long as it was right. Now that it’s wrong, I’m not there.
Disclosure: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Johnson & Johnson.

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Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has embraced the strategic misalignment of spending on streaming while also trying to maximize the lifetime value of box office and cable TV.
Warner Bros. Discovery set a 130 million global subscriber target for its combined HBO Max/Discovery+ streaming service by 2025.
Zaslav said live news is critical to the success of linear TV, suggesting live CNN news won’t be on the HBO Max/Discovery+ service.

David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery talks to the media as he arrives at the Sun Valley Resort for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 05, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

The biggest decision for any big media chief executive officer is how much to lean in to the future.
Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav has chosen strategic limbo.

Unlike previous WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who centered the company around HBO Max, Zaslav is pulling back from a streaming-first mindset to keep his company’s theatrical and traditional pay-TV businesses going as long as possible.
Zaslav on Thursday reiterated his stance that Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t going to approach the streaming wars as a race to win the most subscribers. His comments come as Netflix has lost more than 60% of its value in the past year after subscriber growth stopped for the first time in a decade, causing media and entertainment companies to rethink their streaming strategies.
Warner Bros. Discovery formally announced it will release a combined HBO Max-Discovery+ product in the U.S. by mid-2023, and develop a free, ad-supported option for the service. The company set a target of 130 million global subscribers by 2025. That’s about 40 million more customers than subscribe to HBO Max and Discovery+ today, but still a far cry from the 221 million subscribers that pay for Netflix worldwide.
Zaslav made a point to say he is a believer in both movie theater releases and the longevity of traditional TV as “a cash generator and a great business for us for many years to come” during his company’s second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday.
But he’s also committed to spending “significantly more” on HBO Max and adding Discovery programming to the streaming service.

Kilar made waves during the pandemic by deciding to put his entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max at the same time movies hit theaters. While that turned out to be a temporary move, Kilar later stood by the decision as simply the first to shift.
“History is already looking at it quite favorably,” Kilar said in an April interview with Deadline. “It worked. We were the first over the wall.”
Zaslav on Thursday, in stark contrast, made a point to emphasize the importance of theatrical release for big-budget movies by scrapping “Batgirl” this week, which Kilar had ticketed to launch directly on HBO Max. Launching expensive movies directly to streaming doesn’t make economic sense, Zaslav said. “Batgirl” cost $90 million to make.
“Our conclusion is expensive direct-to-streaming movies, in terms of how people are consuming them on the platform, how often people buy a service for them, how they get nourished over time, is no comparison to what happens when you launch a film in the theaters,” Zaslav said. “This idea of expensive films going direct to streaming, we can’t find an economic value for it, and so we’re making a strategic shift.”
It’s not Zaslav’s first reset during his tenure.
Kilar also pushed the launch of CNN+, a $300 million effort to give CNN a digital streaming strategy. Similar to “Batgirl,” Zaslav decided to kill the streaming service before it got a chance to prove itself as successful.
Zaslav said Thursday he believed the strength of live news is on traditional pay-TV rather than streaming. That suggests CNN live programming won’t be going to the HBO Max/Discovery+ product when it launches, or any time soon.
“We see live news as critical to the linear pay-TV service,” Zaslav said.
Choosing to push HBO Max while also trying to slow the decline of box office and linear pay-TV is a juggling act. But it’s also the plight of the modern media CEO. Moving too far into the future cannibalizes cash-flow positive businesses.
It may not be strategically clean. But it’s the hand Zaslav is choosing to play.
“I’ve been around a long time,” Zaslav said, adding that he “hung around” with former General Electric CEO Jack Welch when he ran NBCUniversal, where Zaslav worked. “Broadcast was dead in the ’90s, or that’s what people said. But in the end, that reach and the ability to drive advertising product was what kept it alive. We’re big believers [in overall reach] and we think that’s going to help us.”
WATCH: Paramount Global shares sink, Warner Bros. Discovery shelves ‘Batgirl’

Disclosure: CNBC is part of NBCUniversal.

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XPO Logistics announced Thursday that Mario Harik will be taking over the role of chief executive from Brad Jacobs after the company’s spin-off of its high-tech truck brokerage business in the fiscal fourth quarter. 
Jacobs will remain as executive chairman at XPO and non-executive chairman at the spun-off company.

XPO Logistics announced Thursday that Mario Harik will be taking over the role of chief executive from Brad Jacobs after the company’s spin-off of its high-tech truck brokerage business in the fiscal fourth quarter. 
Harik was also named president of XPO’s less-than-truckload business. He had served as acting president since last October.

Jacobs will remain as executive chairman at XPO and non-executive chairman at the spun-off company.
“There’s no better person to do it than Mario,” he said of his successor. “Mario is the third person I hired back in 2011. It was love at first sight.”
The company also reiterated its plan to sell off its Europe business and become a company focused only on LTL trucking, which lets multiple customers transport goods in the same truck. 
When Cramer asked Harik how customers’ concerns about the Federal Reserve’s inflation policy and a possible economic recession has impacted business, the incoming CEO said that the feedback has been mixed.
“We’re seeing slightly softer demand than what we saw last year,” Harik said.

He added that demand from industrial customers has been stronger, since they’re dealing with pent-up demand from their own customers as supply shortages ease. Industrial companies make up two-thirds of XPO’s customers, according to Harik.
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CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday advised investors to take advantage of falling commodity prices by adding to their portfolios.
“Oil’s down big, gasoline’s down big and you can now buy all sorts of stocks that benefit from cheaper fuel, especially the travel and leisure plays,” he said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday advised investors to take advantage of falling commodity prices by adding to their portfolios.
“Oil’s down big, gasoline’s down big and you can now buy all sorts of stocks that benefit from cheaper fuel, especially the travel and leisure plays,” he said.

The “Mad Money” host earlier this week criticized Federal Reserve leaders for their aggressive inflation statements that he warned could drag down the market. He also called out Congress for its two spending bills, warning that they could cause wage inflation to stay elevated.
Cramer reiterated those sentiments on Thursday: Fed officials and Congress are “the ones behind the bear market of 2022, not the companies and certainly not you,” he said.
He added that while it’s usually apt to sell industrial stocks during an economic slowdown, declining prices of commodities such as oil, grains and metals means investors can consider purchasing shares of companies that have reported great quarters recently. However, investors should remain disciplined in their buying, he warned.
Here is Cramer’s list of stocks:

Toll Brothers
Lennar
Disney
Waste Management
Honeywell
Ford
DoorDash
Expedia

Disclosure: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Disney and Honeywell.

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Virgin Galactic postponed the start of its space tourism flights, citing delays in work refurbishing its carrier aircraft.
The company announced that commercial service was pushing back to second quarter 2023, in its latest setback.
It reported a second-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $93 million, up from a loss of $77 million in the previous quarter.

Carrier aircraft VMS Eve takes off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, carrying spacecraft VSS Unity on July 11, 2021.
Virgin Galactic

Space tourism company Virgin Galactic on Thursday postponed the beginning of its commercial flights by another three months, citing delays in work refurbishing its carrier aircraft.
Virgin Galactic announced that commercial service is being pushed back to the second quarter of 2023, the latest setback for the debut of its space tourism business. The company had previously pushed back the date from the fourth quarter of this year to the first quarter of next year.

Its stock dropped more than 10% in after-hours trading from its close of $8.19 a share. The stock is down more than 70% over the past 12 months.
The company currently has one carrier aircraft, or “mothership,” called VMS Eve, which is about 14 years old and is undergoing a lengthy refurbishment. The jet-powered mothership plays a key role in Virgin Galactic’s flights by carrying the company’s spacecraft up to about 50,000 feet altitude for launch.
Virgin Galactic reported a second-quarter adjusted EBITDA loss of $93 million, wider than the loss of $77 million in the previous quarter. The company has $1.1 billion in cash on hand. It also said it plans to sell up to $300 million in common stock, which the company said is intended to add “financial flexibility going forward.”

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