Meta is putting a lot of virtual eggs — and billions of dollars — into the metaverse basket, and Wall Street is pretty anxious about it. Shares of the company formerly known as Facebook saw a historic plunge Thursday after the social media giant reported a rare profit decline due to a sharp rise in…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last month, U.S. employers might have shed jobs for the first time in about a year, potentially raising alarms about the economy’s trajectory. Yet even if the January employment report coming Friday were to show a deep loss of jobs, there would be little mystery about the likely culprit: A wave of…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pushing back against critics, a key nominee to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors said Thursday before a Senate panel that she would not make it more difficult for any industry to obtain bank loans. President Joe Biden nominated Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Fed governor and deputy Treasury Secretary, to be…
WASHINGTON (AP) — After three consecutive weeks of unemployment claims that appeared to rise in tandem with omicron, fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits for the second week in a row. Jobless claims fell by 23,000 to 238,000 last week, from 261,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average for claims,…
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s energy regulator announced Thursday that a cap on energy prices is going up by a record 54% because of the soaring costs of wholesale natural gas, a change that will significantly burden millions of households already squeezed by rapidly climbing bills. The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, known as Ofgem,…
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Russia-Ukraine crisis entered another day that is expected to be packed with diplomatic efforts to prevent the simmering tensions from boiling over into war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is hosting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Kyiv while Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Argentinian counterpart Alberto…
COPENHAGEN (AP) — The director of the World Health Organization’s Europe office said Thursday the continent is now entering a “plausible endgame” to the pandemic and that the number of coronavirus deaths is starting to plateau. Dr. Hans Kluge said at a media briefing that there is a “singular opportunity” for countries across Europe to…
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s annual inflation came in at nearly 49% on Thursday, hitting a nearly 20-year high and further eroding people’s ability to buy even basic things like food. The Turkish Statistical Institute said the consumer price index increased by just over 11% in January from the previous month. The yearly increase in…
LILLE, France (AP) — European Union interior ministers on Thursday were debating ways to beef up the 27-nation bloc’s borders, including by erecting walls or fences, and examine yet again how to kick-start desperately needed reforms to the EU’s malfunctioning asylum system. The EU has been mired in a deep political crisis since well over…
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden on Thursday joined other European nations in saying it will remove coronavirus restrictions. “It is time to open Sweden again,” said Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, announcing the restrictions would be removed from Feb. 9. Among the measures and recommendations that will be lifted, Sweden will allow people to return to restaurants…
