Author: News Room

Expert debunks Trump campaign’s tweet about ‘foreign-born’ Americans CNN Economics and Political Commentator Catherine Rampell debunks a tweet posted by former President Donald Trump’s campaign regarding immigrant unemployment numbers in the US. Read the full article here

A global stock sell-off deepened on Friday, with the Nasdaq falling into a correction, as a sharp slowdown in US hiring piled pressure on an equity market already reeling from a steep downturn in semiconductor shares.A sharp slowdown in US hiring sparked fears the Federal Reserve risked falling behind the curve in combating a slowing economy, Data showed the world’s biggest economy added 114,000 jobs in July, far fewer than the 175,000 that were expected.The Nasdaq Composite index closed 2.4 per cent lower, down 3.4 per cent for the week. Since its all-time high on July 11, the Nasdaq has…

WBA stock: my worst investment in 20+ years If you have been following my writing, you would know that I have made a pretty bad call on Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBA). I have been betting on its turnaround in the past 1~2 years, as you can see from my rating history shown in the chart below. Take my most recent article as an example. That article was published on March 15, 2024, and titled “Walgreens Q2, Dow Exit, And Bet Against Wall Street.” In that article, I argued that: Sentiment surrounding Walgreens Boots Alliance has reached a negative extreme…

Google has pulled its controversial Olympics ad after critics blasted it for portraying what they called a bleak application of artificial intelligence. The ad showed a father using Google’s Gemini AI chatbot to help his daughter write a fan letter to US Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. But many online questioned why Google would want to replace a child’s creativity with words written by a computer. Google initially defended the ad, which ran during breaks from the Olympics, saying it showed how Gemini could provide a “starting point” for a piece of writing. But on Friday, the company reversed course.…

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…