Business briefs: Buffalo Wild Wings pulls Rannazzisi ads

NEW YORK – Buffalo Wild Wings will stop airing TV commercials featuring comedian Steve Rannazzisi, who said this week that he lied about being in the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Upon careful review, we have decided to discontinue airing our current television commercials featuring Steve Rannazzisi,” the company said Thursday.

Rannazzisi, who is also a star on the FXX show “The League,” has said in the past he was working as an account manager for Merrill Lynch on the 54th floor of one of the World Trade Center towers when it was hit with a plane.

In an interview with comedian Marc Maron, Rannazzisi also said six of the 10 members on a basketball team he played on died.

This week, Rannazzisi said on Twitter he was in fact working in another part of the city, and not at the World Trade Center.

“I don’t know why I said this,” he wrote. “This was inexcusable.”

Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. said it started airing the most recent ads featuring Rannazzisi in August, after featuring him in ads around March Madness earlier this year.

Wal-Mart plans to hire 60,000 for holidays

NEW YORK – Wal-Mart said it will hire 60,000 employees to meet increased shopping demand over the holiday season.

The world’s largest retailer said Thursday it will have more employees in stores and more registers open during peak hours, and it plans to add department managers at 3,500 stores. Wal-Mart said current employees will have the first choice to pick up additional hours.

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company also hired 60,000 people for holiday season jobs last year, but said it has more employees working more hours in its stores than it did in 2014. The company said most of its holiday-season employees stayed with the company after the holidays ended.

Doritos chips in to help gay, lesbian teenagers

Doritos unveiled bags of rainbow-colored corn chips Thursday in support of the It Gets Better Project, an organization started to encourage gay and lesbian teenagers who’ve been bullied.

Bags of “Doritos Rainbows,” inspired by the LGBT pride flag, will be mailed to people who donate at least $10 to the organization through a special website. Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo based in Plano, Texas, said all of the donations will go to the It Gets Better Project.

Facebook now selling top-to-bottom ads

NEW YORK – Facebook is now selling video ads the target audience is sure to see.

The world’s biggest online social network said Thursday that advertisers can now buy ads that will be seen – from top to bottom – on a user’s screen. Of course, this is still no guarantee the user will choose to watch the entire video. But the option is likely to make advertisers happy.

Facebook, which started showing mobile ads in 2012, views video as the next frontier in advertising.

Jobless applications at lowest level since July

WASHINGTON – The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in two months, suggesting employers remain confident enough in the economy to hold on to their workers.

The Labor Department said weekly applications for unemployment aid dropped 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 264,000. That’s the lowest level since July, when applications plunged to a 41-year low.