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When Americans think of pizza, they might not think of Costco.

However, the bulk retail giant is one of the biggest pizza chains in the US, thanks to its food court business that sells slices for only $1.99. With 482 domestic locations, the vast majority of which have food courts, the retailer is the 14th largest pizza chain in the country.

Number 14 may not sound like much to brag about. However, when looking at Pizza Today’s list of the top 50 pizza chains in America, it becomes clear that nearly 500 locations is nothing to scoff at.

Pizza Hut and Domino’s may have more than 10,000 locations, but these mega-chains are the exception, not the rule. Only six pizza chains have more than 1,000 locations in the US.

Ultimately, Costco is a bigger pizza chain than California Pizza Kitchen and nearly as big as CiCi’s Pizza — at least when it comes to sheer size.

This isn’t the only part of the food industry where Costco has a huge impact. The chain serves more than four times as many hot dogs a year than all the Major League Baseball ballparks combined.

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NOW WATCH: Costco Versus Amazon: We Figured Out Who Has Cheaper Prices Online

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On Tuesday. Volkswagen reported a nearly 25% decline in November sales in the US compared with the same month last year.

Automakers are reporting sales throughout the day. So far, the numbers are coming in below expectations, but VW by far turned in the biggest decline.

The massive dip can be blamed on the emissions-cheating scandal that has shaken the car maker.

In the US, VW halted sales of vehicles that have the types of diesel engines that were found to have cheating software installed.

In total, VW sold about 24,000 vehicles in November. Last year, it sold about 32,000.

For the full year, the pain wasn’t as sever for the German automaker. Sales were down only 4.3%.

The hit from the scandal couldn’t be coming at a worse time for VW. Its efforts to establish a stronger presence in the US market were failing before the crisis, leading to an unimpressive share of around 2% (General Motors, by contrast, has 18%). 

The US auto market has also been surging, with an annual sales pace that’s been running at about 18 million for several months. If the year wraps up with an 18 million total, it will beat the best year on record, 2000, by half a million cars and trucks. In 2000, 17.4 million vehicles rolled off dealer lots.

VW has largely missed out on that boom.

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If you’ve ever seen one of these thick, chunky wool blankets on Etsy or Pinterest, chances are it was made by 27-year-old Anna Marinenko.

Her Ohhio store on Etsy is extremely popular with 34,000 “admirers” — people who have favorited her shop. The store also has over 27,600 followers on Instagram and 12,600 followers on Facebook with fans all around the world.

Marinenko is from Kyiv, Ukraine and started knitting the blankets a year ago with her hands instead of knitting needles after she found a huge spool of merino wool. 

“One day [I saw] an unusual material that awakened my imagination,” she said. “I did not have any knitting needles, so I just started to knit with my hands.”

The blanket she made had gigantic magnified stitches.

Marinenko loved the aesthetic — a soft, light-weight blanket that made the knitting the focal point — and decided to order more of the yarn.

“It’s not a new technique,” she told Tech Insider, but it was the foundation of her successful Etsy shop where she now charges as much as $900 for one of her deluxe large blankets.

Though she declined to tell Tech Insider where she gets her spools or how much they cost, she did say each blanket costs her a pretty good amount of money to make.

On her Etsy shop, Marinenko sells the yarn for $110 for two 17.5-ounce balls that can make a 25-inch by 40-inch blanket; slightly tinier than Marinenko’s small blanket ($200).

Her largest blanket measures over five feet long and nearly seven feet wide.

In addition to selling yarn, Marinenko designed a pair of knitting needles for customers who want to knit their own blanket with the 23-micron wool. A friend makes the needles in his wood workshop and Marinenko sells a version of them for $65, or $145 if customers buy both the wool as well as the needles as a blanket-making set.

Ohhio isn’t the only chunky knit blanket store on Etsy, but it is one of the most popular. With over 200 reviews, Marinenko’s store has a high 4.8 rating and customers rave about her blankets.

“Wow this thing is amazing and even my husband, who started joking about its bulk, won’t get off of it,” one reviewer wrote. “It’s just the best blanket to cozy up in.”

“I bought this as a gift for my wife and she loves it,” another said. “It’s luxurious, wonderfully tactile, and looks amazing.”

Because of her Etsy success, Marinenko has launched a Kickstarter to help raise money for Ohhio and try to expand her distribution. So far, she’s raised $58,000, or nearly triple her $20,000 goal, with 18 days left to go.

“I wanted to share my design vision with other people,” she told TI. “Kickstarter it is a great opportunity to expand production and to get known in all the world.”

She hopes someday to have stores in major US and European cities. If her popularity on Easy is any indication, Marinenko is on her way to achieving that level of success.

You can find out more and see Ohhio’s Kickstarter page here.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan investigation by U.S. senators finds that the makers of a breakthrough drug for hepatitis C infection put profits before patients in pricing the $1,000-per-pill cure.

The report released Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee concludes that California-based Gilead Sciences was focused on maximizing revenue even as its own analysis showed a lower price would allow more patients to be treated for the liver-wasting disease.

Gilead’s first breakthrough pill was called Sovaldi. The company now has a more expensive next-generation pill called Harvoni.

Sens. Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said their 18-month investigation found that the high price tag significantly limited patient access and heaped huge costs on federal and state health care programs.

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If Syrians could pack up and leave, almost half of the population would ditch the country.

About half (46%) of Syrians say they want to leave their country, according to a 2015 Gallup survey.  Nearly as many (43%) say they will likely leave their community within the next year.

Gallup’s research on other countries has shown that younger, wealthier, and highly educated people are more likely to want to move. This is not true in Syria, where age, economic status, and education level didn’t affect responses to the survey.

These percentages have barely budged since the Syrian conflict started in 2011. More than four million Syrian refugees have already fled to neighboring countries, like Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Millions more have been displaced inside their own borders. The desire to leave is more than twice as high than before the war began.

The conflict has also greatly affected happiness in Syria. Syrians rate their happiness at 36 out of 100, the lowest score of any country.

The majority of the Syrians surveyed (39%) say they wish to go to Europe — although no specific country stands out. About one-third (35%) mention countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Other Gallup surveys have shown the US and Canada are top destinations for refugees worldwide, but only 6% of potential Syrian refugees say they want to move to North America.

Inside Syria, the war continues to worsen. For many Syrians, simply finding an escape route may be more important than where they end up.

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan activist says police have tear-gassed a peaceful demonstration in support of government action against corruption.

Boniface Mwangi said about 200 demonstrators held a peaceful march Tuesday to the Supreme Court and parliament where they delivered a petition asking those institutions to do more to tackle corruption in the East African country.

Police blocked the protesters’ attempts to proceed to State House, the official residence of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Mwangi, who organized the protests, said that he is among 26 people arrested. Mwangi said he is surprised by the police action because the demonstration was peaceful and in support of government action against those implicated in corruption.

Kenya was ranked 145 out 174 countries in Transparency International’s 2014 index of perception of graft.

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BERLIN (AP) — A German appeals court has reversed a lower court’s decision that a 95-year-old former SS sergeant who served as a medic in the Auschwitz death camp isn’t fit for trial.

The Rostock state court said Tuesday it concluded after hearing more expert testimony that Hubert Z. could stand trial, though possibly with shortened sessions and other safeguards for his health.

The suspect is accused of having served as a medic in an SS hospital at Auschwitz in 1944.

Schwerin prosecutors charged him with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder earlier this year, arguing that by serving as a medic he helped the extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland function.

A lower court in Neubrandenburg ruled in June he was unfit for trial, but prosecutors appealed. No trial dates have been set.

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Cybercrime costs the global economy around $445 billion every year, and with attackers hitting targets everywhere from major movie studios to children’s toy companies, the problem seems like it’s getting worse.

That view is backed up at least in part by information security firm Trend Micro, which released a report in November spotlighting cybercrime coming out of China. 

“Today, the Chinese underground is thriving more than ever,” writes Trend Micro in the introduction to its paper, while noting that cybercriminals have quickly adapted to technological advances.

China is not alone, of course. Plenty of major data breaches and website shutdowns can be linked back to Russia, Brazil, Vietnam, and even the United States. But China is unique in that its government is often pulling the strings, according to the report.

“This isn’t a mild irritation,” US National Security Advisor Susan Rice said of Chinese government hackers in September. “It is an economic and national security concern to the United States.”

The problem has led to high-level talks between the US and China to develop a “cybercrime truce.” But the truce didn’t seem to last long.

Just weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Barack Obama to work out a deal, at least seven American companies detected attacks from hackers associated with the Chinese government, according to South China Morning Post.

So what are cybercriminals doing in 2015? According to the report, it boils down to trading stolen data for cash, using sophisticated tools to fool unsuspecting internet users into giving away information, and “skimming” credit card data as soon as a person makes a purchase.

If a major data breach occurs, like the 2013 dump of customer of data from Target for instance, chances are it’ll show up for sale on forum websites like CnSeu or SheYun. The database on SheYun hosts everything from bank credentials to account information of online poker players, and it’s all easily searchable.

Then there is software like Social Engineering Master, which gives cybercriminals fake identities and templates that make it easy to send out phishing emails for user data, like passwords and personal information.

But perhaps the scariest detail from the report comes from a section on point-of-sale “skimmers” — devices that look like or attach to a credit card terminal. The devices often look just like the real thing and work the same, but they also contain chips that upload the stolen credit card data straight back to criminals.

Interestingly, they are often installed at retail outlets not by criminals, but by the businesses themselves. “Such was the case that made the news this August,” the report says. “A company reportedly sold the modified devices to a number of small restaurants and hotels. Investigators found 1,100 sets of stolen card information stored in the company’s servers.”

Still, the Chinese government claims it has been cracking down on cybercriminals. In August, police arrested roughly 15,000 people for crimes that “jeopardized internet security” and investigated 66,000 websites, The Guardian reported.

But with much of the internet underground residing on the anonymous “dark web,” shutting them down is much easier said than done.

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Hotel rooms have a ton of free amenities that are just waiting for the travelers who are savvy enough to ask for them. 

Since many of these items aren’t found in the rooms themselves, guests often don’t even realize they’re available free of charge. 

We spoke to representatives from Hilton Worldwide and Starwood Hotels and Resorts, who helped us put together a list of free amenities you should snag during your next trip.

It turns out you can often get everything from free GoPro camera rentals to curling irons sent straight to your room.

SEE ALSO: 8 things you should ask for on your next flight

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Phone chargers and adapters

If you forgot your phone charger or just don’t have the proper adapter, check with the hotel’s front desk, as they will often lend out their extras.

Participating hotels include the Sheraton Puerto Rico — which just launched its Energizer Butler program that provides complimentary chargers for a variety of mobile devices — and the Kimpton and Hyatt hotels. 

Better pillows

Some hotels have been trying out pillow menus that allow guests to select their preferred pillows based on different levels of firmness, shapes, and suitability for sleeping habits.

Some pillows help decrease snoring, while others were basically made for a lazy morning in bed. Conrad Hotels offer guests the option to select from their pillow menu or even pre-book their favorites though the mobile concierge app. Acqualina Resort & Spa also offers the service free of charge.

Curling irons and straightening irons

For ladies who forgot to pack a straightening iron or curling iron, several hotels will have them on hand.

Hyatt hotels, Kimpton hotels, and the W Paris-Opéra include these items in their list of complimentary amenities upon request.

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CLEVELAND (AP) — A man accused of taking his 5-year-old son from Alabama in 2002 and creating a life for them in Ohio under new identities pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and other charges Tuesday in Cleveland.

Bobby Hernandez was indicted on 32 counts, including charges of forgery, records tampering and interference with custody. A Cuyahoga County judge on Tuesday continued his $250,000 bond, which defense attorney Ralph DeFranco said he would try to get lowered.

Authorities allege Hernandez took his son from the boy’s mother’s home in the Birmingham area in 2002 and left a note saying so. Hernandez moved to Cleveland and built a new life for himself and his son and began calling himself Jonathan Mangina. The ruse fell apart this fall when discrepancies with the boy’s Social Security number were discovered as the 18-year-old began the college application process.

Hernandez, 54, was arrested in early November and was initially held on the $250,000 bond after being charged with tampering with records to obtain an Ohio driver’s license.

He and his son have talked on the phone and have seen each other since the arrest, DeFranco said.

DeFranco has said his client knew he’d be found someday, he “just didn’t know when.”

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