Economy

Publicis Groupe, the French advertising conglomerate that led the 2018 seed round for news blacklist organization NewsGuard, has signed a $2.2 billion deal to acquire LiveRamp, an ad-tech company whose former head of products argued in Forbes that ad-blocking technology was part of the tech industry’s fight against racism. The deal would bring together two companies with a history of support for online censorship.

On on July 31 of 1790, the United States issued its first patent to a Maryland-born Philadelphia Quaker named Samuel Hopkins for a process of making potash and pearl ash.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said seven million children have enrolled in Trump Accounts since the program launched July 4, describing the investment accounts as a way to expand financial literacy by giving young Americans real-time experience with saving and investing.

The Trump administration moved Friday to curb the ability of leftwing activists to use an anti-redlining law to shakedown banks for donations.

The federal government issued a cybersecurity alert Thursday after 30 water utilities in Minnesota were targeted in cyberattacks that officials suspect may be linked to Iran.

American citizens are “other people,” according to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who used a CBS interview to praise Haitian migrants for revitalizing Springfield, Ohio.

AI startup Anthropic claims that its Claude AI models hacked the systems of three separate organizations during cybersecurity evaluations.

Consumer sentiment rallied in July as gasoline prices tumbled and inflation indexes turned negative.

The leftist-seperatist Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh appears to have fallen afoul of the Laffer Curve, with revenues to the Treasury declining by £22 million after the imposition of a tax hike.

The high tax regime in Britain has contributed to the number of millionaires in the country falling to its lowest level since the 2008 financial crash, a think tank has found.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh wants the Federal Reserve to abdicate its role as king of the markets. No wonder the monetary monarchists on Wall Street and beyond are horrified.

The FTC has filed a lawsuit against telehealth company Hims & Hers Health, accusing the company of sharing user information with advertising platforms like Meta and Snap while simultaneously promising to protect patient privacy.

Major AI companies are buying millions of used books through intermediaries and destroying them after digitization to obtain high-quality training data while avoiding public scrutiny, according to a recent investigative report.

The Trump administration has banned imports of foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters, citing national security concerns. The move is seen as action against China.

The U.S. economy grew at a slower rate in the second quarter as surging imports masked strong underlying demand. The Commerce Department said Thursday that gross domestic product—the broad measure of goods and services produced in the U.S.—grew at an

The UK is seeking to build “at least six new munitions and energetics factories” after Ukraine showed how fast ammunition is used.

On Wednesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) discussed the Federal Reserve’s decision on rates earlier in the day and said that “The labor market’s okay, it’s not great” and tariffs are one cause of inflation.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) postponed a Thursday committee vote on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, his office said Wednesday, after two Republican senators withheld support pending written assurances from the Justice Department on a fund tied to President Donald Trump’s IRS settlement.

This week’s consumer confidence report shows that younger Americans are the most positive and optimistic cohort in the country.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held its benchmark interest rate steady, in a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent. Nine voting members of the Fed’s monetary policy unit, the Federal Open Market Committee, voted to keep rates unchanged. Three

International experts estimate a 20 percent probability that AI systems could acquire dangerous weapons capabilities or inflict mass harm resulting in millions of deaths over the next five years, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at MIT and the University of Queensland.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has published an opinion piece arguing that AI capabilities should be distributed broadly rather than concentrated among a few powerful institutions. According to Zuckerberg, “In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express our ideas, learn new concepts, and improve our lives, health, relationships and careers.”

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has filed a federal lawsuit against Minnesota, challenging a pioneering state law that prohibits “nudify” apps capable of creating AI-powered fake, sexualized images of individuals.

Oman has reportedly devised a plan, endorsed by other Persian Gulf states, to “manage” traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in partnership with Iran — and for both nations to collect “voluntary fees” from ships that use the vital waterway.

Retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon says “hate” and ‘stupidity” are motivating the citizens who oppose his support of a cheap-labor bill for the rural economy– even as multiple other GOP representatives are quietly quitting the amnesty push.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open a slate of government-owned grocery stores has begun to take shape.

Brazil’s socialist government on Monday announced that it requested consultations with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the new tariffs recently imposed by the U.S. on the South American nation.

Open source AI platform Hugging Face is under fire after new research revealed widespread use of its tools to create nonconsensual deepfake pornography despite ongoing global efforts to crack down on such technology. Deepfake porn of women and even children previously got Elon Musk’s Grok AI in legal trouble in multiple countries.

Elon Musk’s social media platform X officially launched “X Money” on Monday, a new banking and financial services feature that brings the billionaire entrepreneur closer to his long-stated goal of creating an “everything app.”

Shared conversation links from Anthropic’s Claude AI assistant were discoverable through Google search results over the weekend, exposing potentially sensitive user discussions to public view.

The Conference Board’s index of confidence slid 1.4 points to 90.8 after an upward revision to the prior month, data released Tuesday showed. This was below the consensus forecast.