Author: News Room
Google has pulled an Olympics ad for its chatbot Gemini from airwaves following backlash for the way it depicts a little girl using artificial intelligence to write a fan letter.The ad, titled “Dear Sydney,” showed a girl’s dad prompting the AI chatbot to help write a letter to her favorite athlete, U.S. hurdler and sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Google launched Gemini, formerly known as Bard, last year following the surge in popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.”Gemini, help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is,” the father said in the ad, prompting Gemini. The commercial then briefly shows the…
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage dropped 22 basis points to 6.4% Friday, according to Mortgage News Daily. That is the lowest rate since April 2023. The 15-year fixed rate fell to 5.89%, its lowest level since early May 2023.The drop followed a weaker-than-expected monthly employment report, which sent bond yields falling fast. Mortgage rates loosely follow the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury.”Between [Federal Reserve Chair Jerome] Powell’s equivocal openness to ‘multiple cuts’ in 2024 on Wednesday and this morning’s sharply weaker jobs report (something Powell didn’t even know about on Wednesday), the more aggressive rate…
Mortgage rates fell again this week but remain uncomfortably high for many would-be buyers. Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released Thursday, showed that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage declined to 6.77% this week from 6.89% last week. The average rate on a 30-year loan was 6.78% a year ago. The average rate on the 15-year fixed mortgage also dropped to 6.05% from 6.17% last week. One year ago, the rate on the 15-year fixed note averaged 6.06%. Read the full article here
Just about any Medicare beneficiary who takes prescription medications has heard about the donut hole. It has had quite an interesting history. When Part D prescription drug coverage began in 2006, those who landed in the donut hole had to pay 100% of the cost for every drug. That’s likely the reason that the official name of this Part D drug payment stage is the Coverage Gap. Insurance companies didn’t pay anything in this stage. Some beneficiaries could not afford this, so they quit taking their medications. Beginning in 2012, once in the donut hole, there were discounts for drugs.…
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday defended Donald Trump’s false comments about Kamala Harris’ racial identity, saying that it was “totally reasonable” for his ticket mate to describe the vice president as someone who “pretends to be somebody different, depending on the audience she’s talking to.” The Ohio senator’s comments, in an interview with CNN’s Steve Contorno, came the day after Trump said at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention that Harris – the biracial daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father who both immigrated to the United States — “happened to turn Black” in recent years. Vance,…
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Amazon beat Wall Street forecasts for artificial intelligence-fuelled cloud computing growth on Thursday, though margins at the company’s closely watched segment narrowed as it reported a jump in capital spending.Sales at the Seattle-based company’s cloud division, Amazon Web Services, rose 19 per cent in the three months to June 30 to $26.3bn, compared with analysts’ forecasts for sales of $26bn. However, margins at the unit, which is a core driver of the ecommerce group’s profits, narrowed 2 percentage points to 36 per…
Things have been going quite well for shareholders of tobacco giant Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO). Since I last rated the company a “hold” back in late April of this year, shares have skyrocketed by 15.3%. That’s almost double the 8.6% increase seen by the S&P 500 (SP500) over the same window of time. This upside is also even though, on July 31st, shares declined by 3.1%. This was in response to management reporting financial results for the second quarter of the 2024 fiscal year. Revenue and adjusted earnings per share both came in lower than anticipated. This was disappointing, as…
The narrative on Wall Street is shifting. Traders have long placed their bets on the Federal Reserve cutting rates in September, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell basically confirmed as much Wednesday. That rate cut, expected in six weeks, was priced in to stocks, which have been rising over the past few months in hopes of a cut. Rate cuts tend to juice stocks, because they lower borrowing costs for businesses and can help boost profits. But now, fear is starting to take hold, as concerns mount that the Fed may not be acting quickly enough to keep America’s job market in good shape. Powell warned Wednesday that cracks are…
Snap shares fell more than 20% in extended trading on Thursday after the company reported guidance for the third quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates.Here is how the company did:Earnings per share: $0.02 adjusted vs. $0.02 per share expected, according to LSEGRevenue: $1.24 billion vs. $1.25 billion expected, according to LSEG Global daily active users: 432 million vs. 431.1 million expected, according to StreetAccountGlobal average revenue per users: $2.86 vs. $2.91 expected, according to StreetAccountSnap said third-quarter revenue will be between $1.335 billion and $1.375 billion, or $1.355 billion in the middle of the range. Analysts were expecting $1.36 billion. The company expects adjusted…
Intel shares slid as much as 19% in extended trading on Thursday after the chipmaker said it would lay off over 15% of its employees as part of a $10 billion cost-reduction plan and reported lighter results than analysts had envisioned. The company also said that it would not pay its dividend in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2024 and that it will lower full-year capital expenditures by over 20%. Here’s how the company did, compared to LSEG analyst expectations:Earnings per share: 2 cents adjusted vs. 10 cents expectedRevenue: $12.83 billion vs. $12.94 billion expectedIntel’s revenue declined 1% year over…
