Money

By Tami Luhby, CNN (CNN) — The richest people on the planet are far more likely to be in power politically than everyone else, Oxfam’s annual inequality report found. Some 74 of the world’s 2,027 billionaires held either executive or legislative government positions in 2023, giving them a 3.6% chance of holding office, according to

By Auzinea Bacon, CNN (CNN) — Tech giants are in a heated race to build data centers and dominate the AI landscape. But America might not be ready for the energy demand. The country’s aging electrical grid could struggle to keep up with the surge in energy needs. And US households are largely footing the

By Auzinea Bacon, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump purchased up to $2 million in Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery investments days after the announcement of a megadeal between the two media giants, among other purchases, according to a financial disclosure from the White House, renewing questions from ethics experts around potential conflicts of interest.

By Clare Duffy, CNN New York (CNN) — ChatGPT may soon serve up ads for products it thinks you’d like to buy. OpenAI announced on Friday that it will be testing ads in its free version for logged-in, adult US users. It’s also rolling out an $8-per-month “Go” subscription tier that includes some upgraded capabilities,

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN New York (CNN) — Dos Equis is reviving its famous “The Most Interesting Man” advertising campaign after a decade in an effort to turn around the beleaguered brand. Sales of the Heineken-owned Mexican lager dropped last year, mirroring a broader industry decline as drinkers consume less beer. Executives hope the once-popular

By Ramishah Maruf, Kit Maher, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration and a consortium of governors from northeastern states are asking PJM, the country’s largest electrical grid operator, to hold an emergency power auction as part of an effort to make technology giants pay for surging power costs from new data centers. In the auction,

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN (CNN) — A background check can sink a job offer if prospective employers don’t like what they see. While they can request to have a lot of information about a job candidate’s past included in such a report, increasingly they are no longer allowed to request people’s credit history. New York

By John Towfighi, CNN New York (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s proposal for a one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates has struck a chord in debates about affordability — and set up a potential clash with Wall Street. A rate cap could offer short-term relief, though it’s unclear if it would meaningfully address

By Auzinea Bacon, CNN (CNN) — In 2024, US buyers had a choice of three cars priced under $20,000. Now, there are none. Data on car-buying costs released Monday show how much the loss of cheaper models can hurt customers: New car buyers paid $50,326 on average in December, a record high, according to estimates

By Brian Stelter, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration is exerting political pressure on Stars & Stripes, the independent military newspaper that informs US servicemembers worldwide. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced Thursday that the Department of Defense will “modernize” the outlet and “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it

By Samantha Delouya, Hadas Gold, CNN (CNN) — Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, sued Musk’s xAI on Wednesday, alleging that the company’s AI chatbot Grok generated sexually explicit deepfake images of her without her consent. “xAI’s product Grok, a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) chatbot, uses AI to undress, humiliate,

By Chris Isidore, Adam Cancryn, CNN (CNN) — Hundreds of millions of dollars that the United States is raising from the sale of Venezuelan oil is being sequestered in Qatar. It’s an indirect path that could speed the flow of much-needed money to Venezuela, but it also raises questions about the transparency surrounding those funds.

By Samantha Delouya, CNN (CNN) — The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.06% for the week ending January 15, according to Freddie Mac. The last time home borrowing rates were this low was September 2022. Experts hope the drop could help ease the stalemate in the housing market. “The impacts are noticeable, as weekly

By Brian Stelter, CNN (CNN) — Early on in her tenure as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi scrapped a Biden-era policy that banned the Justice Department from pursuing reporters’ phone records and notes while investigating leakers. The message was unmistakable: Trump-era investigators would welcome a confrontation. And now they have one. This week, the

By David Goldman, CNN (CNN) — The United States is considering whether to strike Iran as turmoil intensifies for the country’s authoritarian regime. The Iranian government is at its weakest point in years, destabilizing yet another OPEC nation less than two weeks after the United States toppled the government of Venezuela. Protests have erupted in

By Samantha Delouya, CNN (CNN) — The United States has completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil, valued at $500 million, according to an administration official. Additional sales of oil are expected in the coming days and weeks, the official added. In the days since the United States attacked Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás

By Elisabeth Buchwald, Lisa Eadicicco, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump enacted a new 25% tariff on “certain advanced computing chips” on Wednesday, according to a White House fact sheet. That includes Nvidia’s H200 chip and AMD’s MI325X. However, chips imported to support building up the US technological supply chain would be exempt. It’s unclear,

By Hadas Gold, CNN (CNN) — Elon Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence chatbot will no longer edit “images of real people in revealing clothing” on the X platform, the company confirmed Wednesday evening, following global outrage after Grok was found to be complying with user requests to digitally undress images of adults and in some cases

By Lisa Eadicicco, CNN (CNN) — Verizon said it has resolved an hours-long outage that is believed to have left tens of thousands of US customers without access to voice and data services for much of Wednesday. “Today, we let many of our customers down and for that, we are trulysorry,” a Verizon spokesperson said

By Clare Duffy, CNN New York (CNN) — YouTube will now let parents limit the amount of time their teens can spend scrolling through its short-form video feature, Shorts, or block them all together. The option is part of a group of new parental controls the popular video platform announced on Wednesday. YouTube, like many