Sales of existing homes dropped to their lowest level in more than a year last month amid rising mortgage rates and housing prices, according to a report released Thursday. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that sales of previously occupied homes fell by 2 percent in August from the previous month to a seasonally… Source link
Get the inside track from Roisin O’Connor with our free weekly music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This Get our free music newsletter Now Hear This British rock group Squeeze were forced to call off a performance in the United States after a venue worker was fatally crushed beneath their tour bus. The band, who are currently on tour in the US, had been scheduled to play at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts in Vienna, VA, with the incident occurring in the venue’s parking lot. Local police told the station FOX 5 DC that the individual, who has not been identified, was working under the bus when a supporting apparatus failed, causing the vehicle to collapse on top of them. They later died from their injuries. Squeeze confirmed the cancellation of the event, which was set to take place on Thursday at 7:30pm local time, in a public statement. Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze performing during day three of Glastonbury Festival 2024 at Worthy …
U.S. Navy sailors work on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington as it transits the Arabian Sea to support U.S. military operations in the war with Iran Aug. 20, 2026. U.S. Navy | Via Reuters Iran has set out its conditions to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying that ending the wars in the Middle East was among them. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Lebanese media outlet Al Manar TV that any understanding on the strait with the U.S. will include an end to wars and military operations in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. He added the conflict in the Gaza Strip has to end, while demanding that Israel withdraw from Lebanon and halt attacks on Syria. Rezaei said that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be separated from the broader regional conflict, adding that the U.S. must “prove its seriousness” in implementing the these commitments “before any new trust could be established.” However, a return to diplomacy does not seem imminent. The Wall Street Journal reported on …
President Donald Trump disclosed just over 1,000 financial transitions for the month of June in what appears to be broad reshuffling of his portfolio. The president rotated in and out of stocks, bonds and exchange-traded funds throughout the month. The transactions totaled between $78.1 million and $263.1 million, according to Trump’s latest filing on Aug. 22, which shows a range for each sale or purchase rather than an exact figure. His securities purchases topped $49 million, while his sales totaled at least $28.5 million. While the filing gives a window into the investment moves made on behalf of Trump, it is not a clear picture of his total portfolio holdings. The amount bought or sold isn’t specific, and there is no indication of how much Trump owns of any particular security. Of the 1,051 transactions, the largest was the $5 million to $25 million sale of Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Index Fund ETF shares on June 22. That same day he bought between $1 million and $5 million of both Fidelity National Information Services and Home …
Richard Donnell, executive director of research at Zoopla, said: “People are renting for longer, which will support demand for rented homes and steady growth in rents, particularly as we come into the busy time of year for the rental market as students and those starting new jobs compete for a still scarce supply of rented homes. Source link
Iran on Saturday issued a list of demands for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which have been characterised as “new” preconditions. Reporting from Washington, FRANCE 24’s Fraser Jackson notes that many of the demands were “already agreed to by the US in the [Islamabad] Memorandum of Understanding that was signed back in June” between Iran and the US. “The difficulty was that the language then was quite broad.” Keywords for this article Source link
Paramount Skydance has agreed to freeze its merger with rival entertainment conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery until next June while a federal judge weighs a lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general challenging the $110 billion deal. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. In an 11-page court filing Friday, Paramount said it would not move forward with the tie-up until June 1, 2027 — unless the judge issues a ruling on the antitrust suit filed by a dozen Democratic state attorneys general before then. The agreement lengthens the temporary pause ordered this week by Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, who is presiding over the case. The combination of the two companies would create a modern media colossus and reshape the entertainment industry. The merger would join together two historic film studios (Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures), two popular streaming platforms (Paramount+ and HBO Max) and two news organizations (CBS News and CNN) under the leadership of …
The final season of The Bear has the restaurant’s crew dealing with, among many other things, flooding in the basement. The show itself also suffered from a deluge in its premiere week. The Bear recorded 587 million minutes of viewing time for the week of June 22-28; the final season premiered June 25. That was down 36 percent from season four’s premiere week (917 million minutes) last year. An unusually busy week of TV for late June, with six other streaming titles topping the billion-minute mark, plus the World Cup dominating linear TV, may be partly to blame for the decline. (There were, however, five billion minute-plus shows in The Bear’s opening week in 2025.) Netflix’s I Will Find You led the overall rankings for the second straight week, growing 35 percent to 2.48 billion minutes. Love Island USA also scored its best weekly total on record with 1.97 billion minutes; the Peacock show’s previous high was 1.93 billion minutes for the week of the 2025 season finale. The other shows that scored more than a …
PARIS: France recorded 5,764 more deaths than usual during a record-breaking heatwave last month, health authorities said on Wednesday (Jul 22), describing the excess mortality among people aged 15 and older as “unprecedented”. It was the highest excess mortality rate during a heatwave in the country since a devastating episode of high temperatures in 2003 that killed around 15,000 people, they added. Three heatwaves have swept across France since May, the latest in increasingly frequent such extreme weather events that scientists have linked to made-made climate change. The soaring temperatures caused havoc in a country where many homes, schools and hospitals are not designed for heat and do not have air conditioning. They have also dried up riverbeds and sparked wildfires, including one that last week ravaged a tenth of the vast UNESCO-listed forest of Fontainebleau outside Paris. The extra deaths between Jun 17 and Jul 2 this year were due to “all causes” – none yet clearly linked to the heat, Sante Public France said, saying final figures would be published in the autumn. …
US Industrial Production rose just 0.1% MoM in June (less than the 0.2% MoM rise expected), after also disappointing in May. That slowed the annual growth in production from 1.6% YoY to +1.1% YoY… The recent blip higher in Capacity Utilization faded last month (76.1% vs 76.2% exp) with the down-trend seemingly still in tact… If ‘soft’ survey data is in any way predictive of reality, then we should be seeing a sizable trend higher in industrial production… …or maybe it’s just another useless sentiment signal. Source link
