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US inflation hits its lowest point since early 2021 as prices ease for gas, groceries and used cars
WASHINGTON (AP) — Squeezed by painfully high prices for two years, America’s households have gained some much-needed relief with inflation reaching its lowest point since early 2021 — 3% in June compared with a year earlier — thanks in part to easing prices for gasoline, airline fares, used cars and groceries. Inflation was down sharply from a 4% annual rate in May, though still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate. The Fed is still considered all but sure to boost its benchmark rate when it meets in two weeks. But with price increases slowing — or even falling outright — many economists say they think the Fed might hold off on what had been expected to be another rate hike in September.
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3 tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data about taxpayers with Meta, lawmakers say
Some congressional Democrats say three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over at least two years.
In a cease-and-desist letter earlier this week, Twitter threatened legal action against Instagram parent company Meta over the new text-based app, Threads.
Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads. The offering launched this week as a rival to Elon Musk’s social media platform and has drawn tens of millions of users.
The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries and millions signed up within its first hours.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some congressional Democrats say three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over at least two years. Their Wednesday report urges federal agencies to investigate and potentially go to court over the information H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer shared with Meta. The lawmakers tell the IRS, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the IRS watchdog the findings “reveal a shocking breach of taxpayer privacy.” The tax prep companies say they take the privacy of their customers seriously. Meta says its system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it’s able to detect.
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Inflation drops to 3% and Biden hopes to turn a weakness with voters into a strength
WASHINGTON (AP) — The politics of inflation took a sharp turn with a new report showing consumer prices rose at the slowest pace since the early months of Joe Biden’s presidency. Republicans have hammered Biden over the cost of groceries, gasoline, utilities and more. They say Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package and push for electric vehicles are responsible for pushing inflation to a four-decade high. The GOP argument has resonated with voters. But the report on consumer prices for June suggests that inflation has eased dramatically without any of the job losses that some economists and Republican leaders said would occur.
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Russia’s threat to pull out of Ukraine grain deal raises fears about global food security
LONDON (AP) — Concerns are growing that Russia won’t extend a United Nations-brokered deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to parts of the world struggling with hunger. Ships are no longer heading to the war-torn country’s Black Sea ports, and shipments have dwindled. The deal originally reached last summer to ease a global food crisis is up for renewal Monday, and Russian officials say there are no grounds for extending it. They’ve threatened it before, insisting an agreement to facilitate their food and fertilizer shipments hasn’t been applied. But data shows Moscow has been exporting record amounts of wheat. The U.N. is striving to keep the fragile deal intact, with Ukraine to benefit Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.
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Stock market today: Wall Street returns to highest level in more than a year after inflation cools
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street returned to its highest level in more than a year after a report showed inflation cooled a bit more than expected last month. The S&P 500 rose 0.7% Wednesday. The Dow added 86 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq rose 1.2%. Treasury yields tumbled as the cooler inflation data pushed traders to ratchet back bets for hikes to interest rates by the Federal Reserve later this year. Stocks were up even more earlier in the day on hopes for a coming halt to rate hikes. But analysts say they still expect rates to remain high for a while.
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Sarah Silverman and novelists sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for ingesting their books
Ask ChatGPT about comedian Sarah Silverman’s memoir “The Bedwetter” and the artificial intelligence chatbot can come up with a detailed synopsis of every part of the book. Does that mean it effectively “read” and memorized a pirated copy? Or it scraped so many customer reviews and online chatter about the bestseller or the musical it inspired that it passes for an expert? The U.S. courts may now help sort that out after Silverman sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for copyright infringement this week, joining a growing number of writers who say they unwittingly built the foundation for Silicon Valley’s red-hot AI boom.
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EU fines US firm Illumina $475 million for jumping gun on buying cancer-screening company Grail
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has slapped a $475 million fine on U.S. biotech giant Illumina for buying out cancer-screening company Grail without the approval of the 27-nation bloc’s antitrust watchdog. Illumina had announced an $7.1 billion acquisition of Grail in 2020, but the EU’s executive commission said it broke the bloc’s merger rules by moving ahead to complete the deal without its consent. The fine was announced Wednesday. Concerns over stifled competition already have led the EU to block the merger and U.S. regulators to order Illumina to reverse the deal. Illumina is a major supplier of next-generation sequencing systems for genetic and genomic analysis, while Grail is developing blood tests to try to catch cancer early.
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Music streams for 2023 hit 1 trillion in record time. Latin and K-pop artists are big reasons why
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Is non-English language music the future of the music business? Perhaps. Luminate, a source of music and entertainment industry data, found in their 2023 midyear report that global music streams are up 30.8% from last year. The global music industry surpassed 1 trillion streams in three months in 2023, a full month faster than in 2022. The company also found that two in five U.S. music listeners, enjoy music in a non-English language. Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, German, and Arabic are the most popular non-English languages, with Spanish and Korean leading the group. English-language music’s share of the top 10,000 most streamed songs has dropped 4.2% since 2021.
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Domino’s signs deal with Uber Eats in a bid to make more dough
Domino’s Pizza said Wednesday it’s partnering with Uber Eats to make deliveries in the U.S. and 27 international markets. It’s a major reversal for the world’s largest pizza company, which has long said that working with third-party apps in the U.S. didn’t make economic sense because it employs its own drivers. Under the agreement, Domino’s drivers will still make the deliveries that customers order via Uber Eats. Michigan-based Domino’s wouldn’t say what percentage Uber Eats will take from each order. The partnership will be piloted in four U.S. markets starting this fall and is expected to be available nationwide by the end of 2023.
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Ticketmaster halts Taylor Swift ticket sales in France in another headache for fans
NEW YORK (AP) — Ticketmaster has abruptly postponed ticket sales for six of Taylor Swift’s upcoming shows in France. An explanation wasn’t immediately clear, but in posts on Ticketmaster’s French Twitter several hours after the pause began Tuesday, the ticket seller cited a problem with a third-party provider. Ticketmaster maintained that tickets to the France shows are still available and that the provider was “working to resolve this matter as soon as possible.” The chaos arrives after the spectacular breakdown seen last November during Ticketmaster’s sale of “Eras” tour tickets in the U.S. That’s when Ticketmaster’s site crashed during a presale event for Swift’s stadium tour and thousands of people lost tickets after waiting for hours in an online queue.
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The S&P 500 rose 32.90 points, or 0.7%, to 4,472.16. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 86.01 points, or 0.3%, to 34,347.43. The Nasdaq composite rose 158.26 points, or 1.2%, to 13,918.96. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies rose 20.02 points, or 1%, to 1,933.38.
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