Browsing: Business

CryptoWire, NEW YORK: Bitcoin fell back toward $73,000 this week, giving up gains built after the November 2024 U.S. presidential election and marking one of its sharpest pullbacks since last year’s peak. The largest cryptocurrency briefly dipped below $73,000 on Tuesday, February 3, and later rebounded above $76,000 by the end of U.S. trading, after sliding to levels last seen in November 2024, according to market and crypto data services. The move left bitcoin trading around the same range seen shortly after election night in 2024, effectively unwinding the post vote rally that helped push the token to new highs in 2025. Bitcoin had reached…

MENA Newswire, TEXAS: Oracle has announced plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in gross proceeds during calendar year 2026 to expand cloud infrastructure capacity for artificial intelligence workloads, as questions swirl in markets about the cost of building data centers at scale. Separately, an investment bank research report has said Oracle is considering workforce reductions of 20,000 to 30,000 roles, a figure the company has not confirmed. Oracle said the financing plan is designed to fund additional capacity to meet contracted demand from its largest cloud infrastructure customers. The company said it aims to use a balanced mix of debt and equity…

MENA Newswire, OTTAWA: Canada’s exporters are expanding shipments to markets outside the United States as new and expanded U.S. tariffs reshape trade flows and push up costs for some cross border sales. Official trade data show exports to countries other than the United States reached a record high in October, led by gold to the United Kingdom and crude oil to China, before easing in November as gold shipments fell and motor vehicle exports weakened. The shift has unfolded alongside a series of U.S. tariff actions on major Canadian sectors. The United States imposed global Section 232 tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum imports…

MENA Newswire, NEW YORK: Gold and silver prices tumbled in a sharp, disorderly selloff that erased an estimated $7 trillion in notional value across precious metals, after a record-setting rally gave way to forced liquidations, margin pressures, and a stronger U.S. dollar. The drop reverberated across commodities and global equities, underscoring how quickly leveraged positioning can unwind even in markets often used as defensive holdings. Gold posted its biggest daily fall since 1983 on Friday, January 30, sliding about 9% after touching a record high the prior day. The selling extended into Monday, February 2, with spot gold down another roughly 3% to about…

MENA Newswire, SAN FRANCISCO: Shares of several video game and game technology companies fell sharply on Friday after Google opened access to an artificial intelligence model that can generate interactive, game like worlds from a text or image prompt, a launch that drew investor attention to how generative tools could alter parts of the game creation pipeline. Google said the new capability is available as an experimental prototype called Project Genie, which lets users create, explore and remix interactive worlds. The company described the system as producing environments that respond in real time as a user moves and interacts, rather than only generating static images…

MENA Newswire, SEATTLE: Starbucks said first quarter fiscal 2026 revenue rose 6% to $9.9 billion as global comparable store sales increased 4%, led by higher transactions, and the company posted U.S. comparable transaction growth for the first time in eight quarters. For the 13 weeks ended Dec. 28, 2025, global comparable transactions increased 3% and average ticket rose 1%. In North America and the U.S., comparable store sales also increased 4%, driven by a 3% increase in comparable transactions and a 1% increase in average ticket. International comparable store sales rose 5%, including 7% growth in China, where comparable transactions increased 5%.…

MENA Newswire, SEATTLE: Amazon is cutting about 16,000 corporate roles worldwide, marking its largest round of layoffs since 2023 and extending a broader reduction in office based headcount that began late last year. The company said the cuts affect corporate positions across Amazon and are separate from its large hourly workforce in fulfillment and delivery operations. Amazon announced the reductions in an internal message shared publicly by senior human resources executive Beth Galetti. The company said it is working to support employees whose roles are eliminated, including providing most U.S. based corporate employees a 90 day period to apply for other positions inside Amazon, with…

MENA Newswire, NEW YORK: The U.S. dollar weakened broadly in late January trading as the Japanese yen climbed sharply, with investors focused on signs that officials in Tokyo and Washington were monitoring rapid currency moves. The yen’s surge helped pull the dollar lower against other major currencies, leaving the greenback near a four month low on widely followed measures of overall strength. The yen rallied nearly 3% across two sessions and was last trading around 154.6 per dollar after sliding as far as 159.23 on January 23. In New York trading on January 26, the dollar fell to 153.30 yen, its weakest level since mid November,…

MENA Newswire, NEW YORK: Elon Musk’s estimated net worth reached about $788 billion on Jan. 22, 2026, a record level on a widely followed real time wealth ranking after a rally in Tesla shares increased the value of his largest public stake. The estimate reflected end of day market prices and updated valuations used by the ranking, which tracks the paper value of founders’ holdings across public companies and private ventures. Tesla shares rose about 4% on Jan. 22 after Musk posted on X that Tesla had begun operating some robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a safety monitor in the vehicle. A video circulating…

NEW YORK: New Federal Reserve data show the wealth gap in the United States widened to its largest level in more than three decades as rising stock and home values lifted the richest households far more than everyone else. In the third quarter of 2025, total U.S. household net worth climbed to a record $181.6 trillion, supported by a strong equities market and continued gains in real estate values. The increase added to a long-running trend in which assets that appreciate fastest are held disproportionately by households at the top of the wealth ladder. The Fed’s Distributional Financial Accounts show the top 1% of households…