Business

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sharply escalated his criticisms of the Federal Reserve on Monday, publicly urging a comprehensive investigation into the central bank’s operations and effectiveness. In a news-making interview with CNBC, Bessent questioned whether the Federal Reserve has fulfilled its mandate, issuing a rare public critique from the nation’s top economic official on its own central bank at a…

U.S. stocks powered higher on Monday as strong earnings overshadowed continued uncertainty on tariffs and the White House’s pressure on the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 closed up 0.14%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.38%, paring gains after touching new all-time intraday highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reversed lower, slipping 19 points, or 0.04%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped 4.7 basis points…

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is expected to move quickly now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue unwinding her department. The justices on Monday paused a lower court order that had halted nearly 1,400 layoffs and had called into question the legality of President Donald Trump’s plan to outsource the department’s operations to other agencies. Now, Trump and McMahon are free…

Every year, Amazon holds a “record” Prime Day, and every year the company boasts about the performance of the annual sales event in a press release. The self-congratulatory announcement isn’t exactly absurd—given its size, any year-over-year growth is noteworthy. Last year, while Amazon didn’t disclose the total number of items sold, it did note that independent sellers “sold more than…

Apple Inc.’s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., another setback in the iPhone maker’s struggling AI efforts. Ruoming Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company’s Apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, who joined Apple from Alphabet Inc. in 2021,…

Richard “Dick” Eastland, the owner and director of Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas, died during the flash floods that struck Central Texas on Friday, his nephew confirmed on Facebook. Eastland was 74. The Eastland family has owned and operated Camp Mystic, the Christian girls’ summer camp, since 1939. The camp was founded back in 1926. Dick was the third generation to manage Mystic after he…

Mark Zuckerberg is stacking the deck in the AI race, betting that unlimited capital, top talent, and raw computing power will ensure victory. If the winning hand Zuckerberg is chasing—AI “superintelligence”— is still very much a vague and theoretical concept, the Meta CEO’s remarkable series of moves unveiled Monday instantly changed the reality for everyone else in the game, particularly…

The Justice Department on Monday announced a significant crackdown on the North Korean IT workers fraud scheme, with two new indictments naming more than a dozen alleged conspirators accused of stealing millions from at least 100 companies in the past four years.  According to the first major indictment from the District of Massachusetts, a crew of North Korean IT workers…

President Donald Trump on Monday declared the “12 day war” between Israel and Iran as likely ending in a ceasefire, validating the strategic gamble of a devastating U.S. airstrike this weekend on three Iranian nuclear sites. “It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE,” Trump posted on social media, although there was…

A tentative ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump this evening—but not yet verified by Israel or Iran—may have shifted the course of world markets that were staring down a potential oil shock and elevated inflation just hours ago. Iran’s parliament voted on Sunday to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway to the global oil trade. The surprise vote,…