CNN – Business/Consumer

By Anna Bahney, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — US mortgage rates ticked down this week, ending a five-week stretch of increases, but remained above 7% amid lingering inflation. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.18% in the week ending August 31, down from 7.23% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A

By Joseph Ataman, CNN Paris (CNN) — The number of price-capped products in French supermarkets will double to 5,000, finance minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday, as data revealed another month of double-digit food inflation. Speaking to French broadcaster France2, Le Maire also criticized several multinational companies, including Unilever (UL) and PepsiCo (PEP), for not

CNN By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — UBS expects to shed around 3,000 jobs in Switzerland to help it cut $10 billion in costs as it undertakes a sweeping overhaul following its emergency rescue of Credit Suisse earlier this year. The job cuts amount to around 8% of staff employed by the combined Swiss

By Parija Kavilanz, CNN New York (CNN) — Dollar General slashed its sales and profit outlook for the year on Thursday, blaming headwinds including weaker consumer spending on non-essential purchases and increasing theft. Dollar General shares tumbled about 14%, to about $135 a share, in midday trading Thursday. The discount store’s challenges are yet another

By Alicia Wallace, CNN Minneapolis (CNN) — US inflation may have remained elevated in July, but consumers just wanted to have some fun. New Commerce Department data released Thursday showed that consumer spending jumped 0.8% last month as shoppers shelled out for restaurants, live shows, toys, games and recreational equipment. It’s the strongest monthly spending

By Laura He, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Just a few months ago, Country Garden was the biggest property developer in China, with more than 3,000 developments spanning the country. Now, the company is struggling to survive in a crisis-hit industry, where many others are in the same boat. On Wednesday, Country Garden reported a

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business New York (CNN) — Trader Joe’s has issued another food recall — its sixth since July. Last week, the chain announced that it’s recalling its Texas Tamale Company Gourmet Black Bean Tamales because they might contain milk allergens. However, no illnesses have been reported, and the company said that “all

By Matt Egan, CNN New York (CNN) — Drivers hitting the roads this Labor Day weekend will be greeted by historically high gas prices for this time of the year. The record-high for gas prices during the week leading up to Labor Day was set in 2012 at $3.84 a gallon, according to a CNN

By Alicia Wallace, CNN Minneapolis (CNN) — Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered a jobs report that only Baby Bear could offer: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The US economy added 187,000 jobs in July. While that figure was well below the breakneck pace of job growth over the

By Olesya Dmitracova, CNN London (CNN) — Microsoft will allow business customers in Europe to buy its video and chat app Teams separately from its Office software, it said Thursday, a month after the European Union opened an antitrust investigation into the company’s bundling of the products. The change will take effect from October 1,

By Olesya Dmitracova and Mark Thompson, CNN London (CNN) — Consumer prices in the 20 countries that use the euro rose 5.3% on average this month compared with a year ago, preliminary estimates by Europe’s statistics office showed Thursday. That was unchanged from the annual rate of inflation in July. Core inflation, which excludes volatile

By Laura He, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Factory activity in China contracted for a fifth straight month in August, adding pressure on Beijing to roll out more stimulus measures to bolster the faltering economy. The official manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) — which surveys larger companies and state-owned enterprises — stood at 49.7 in

By Hanna Ziady, CNN London (CNN) — UBS expects to shed around 3,000 jobs in Switzerland to help it cut $10 billion in costs as it undertakes a sweeping overhaul following its emergency rescue of Credit Suisse earlier this year. The job cuts amount to around 8% of staff employed by the combined Swiss operations

By Michelle Toh, CNN Hong Kong (CNN) — Chinese tech firms Baidu and SenseTime launched their ChatGPT-style AI bots to the public on Thursday, marking a new milestone in the global AI race. Baidu has opened public access to its ERNIE Bot, allowing users to conduct AI-powered searches or carry out an array of tasks,

By Clare Duffy, CNN New York (CNN) — Newspaper chain Gannett has paused the use of an artificial intelligence tool to write high school sports dispatches after the technology made several major flubs in articles in at least one of its papers. Several high school sports reports written by an AI service called LedeAI and

By Gregory Wallace (CNN) — The latest aviation employees to vote in favor of a strike are American Airlines flight attendants. The union representing them, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, reported a 99.47% vote in favor of a strike authorization vote with 93% of union membership voting. “We’re pushing back and we’re fighting corporate

By Samantha Delouya, CNN (CNN) — In many ways, San Francisco’s downtown is in dire straits. The city’s once bustling Union Square neighborhood — teeming with shoppers, diners, and tourists — has suffered declining foot traffic and closing stores. Stores in the area, once crowded with shoppers, are now replaced by papered-over windows and “Retail

By Jennifer Korn, CNN New York (CNN) — In an effort to help prevent the spread of misinformation, Google on Tuesday unveiled an invisible, permanent watermark on images that will identify them as computer-generated. The technology, called SynthID, embeds the watermark directly into images created by Imagen, one of Google’s latest text-to-image generators. The AI-generated

By Anna Bahney, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — US pending home sales ticked up in July by 0.9%, rising for the second month in a row despite elevated prices and rising mortgage rates, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Association of Realtors. The stronger-than-expected showing for pending home sales defied a market

By Bryan Mena, CNN Washington, DC (CNN) — The US economy grew more slowly in the second quarter than previously estimated — a good sign for the Federal Reserve, which is attempting to cool demand to bring down price increases. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, rose at an annualized rate of