‘The Last of Us’ boosts Spotify streams of Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Long Long Time’
Love will abide — and so does a ballad about unrequited love and longing when it’s given the perfect needle drop on one of the hottest shows of the season. A recent episode of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” an adaption of the hit Sony SONY, -0.71% PlayStation game following the survivors of a fungus-fueled […]
Lawrence Summers and IMF director both say odds of soft landing for U.S. are improving
““It looks more possible that we’ll have a soft landing than it did a few months ago.”” Those were the words of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on Sunday, offering hope that the U.S. economy can avoid recession, but warning that inflation is still far too high. In an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” […]
Grammys win gives Viola Davis EGOT status at last: ‘I just EGOT!’
“‘It has just been such a journey. I just EGOT!’ ” That was acting legend Viola Davis accepting her first Grammy Award on Sunday — in the audio book, narration and storytelling recording category — for narrating the audio versions of her 2022 memoir “Finding Me.” This Grammy was the final award that Davis, 57, needed to […]
Amazon cut 67,000 jobs in 2022, the first yearly decline in 20 years
Amazon.com Inc. had a pretty bad year in 2022, with the e-commerce and cloud giant recording its biggest loss ever, and with its stock suffering a yearly record loss. Its employees had a bad year, too: For the first time in 20 years, the company shrank its workforce. According to Amazon’s 2022 annual report, released […]
Why the 2023 stock market rally may depend on further U.S. dollar weakness
The U.S. dollar may be losing its appeal as one of the few reliable safe-haven assets in times of economic and geopolitical uncertainty after an 18 month rally, but a further fall by the currency could fuel a 2023 stock-market rally, market analysts said.The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +1.22% fell to a nine-month low […]
What happens to my youngest daughter’s share of my estate if I die before she’s 18?
Dear Harry, I’m a divorced single mother with three daughters. The older two are married and live separately from me. The youngest is under 18 and lives with both myself and her father (my ex-husband). I currently do not yet have a will. If I died, would any of my assets go to my ex-husband […]
Why NFTs saw $946 million in trading volume in January – the highest since June 2022
Non-fungible tokens registered $946 million in trading volume in January 2023, up 38% from December, and the highest on record since June 2022, according to an updated Feb. 2 report by DappRadar, which tracks and analyzes the activity of NFT marketplaces. Non-fungible tokens, which provide proof of ownership of a digital asset like online artwork, […]
Wall Street wants to know when ‘GTA VI’ is going to drop, too.
The biggest question for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. executives would be the same for gamers and Wall Street analysts: When is the next “Grand Theft Auto” going to drop? Take-Two’s TTWO, -4.74% blockbuster game is due for its first new iteration in nearly a decade, and Wall Street analysts have definitely taken note, even diving […]
Chinese moviegoers — starved for entertainment and craving normalcy — are set to put the country’s film industry back on top
While global and domestic businesses eagerly await the return of Chinese consumer spending, one industry in particular is already doing gangbusters. China’s box-office receipts this year have hit the 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) mark — the earliest in any year that it has ever done so. The explosion of moviegoing comes as authorities in […]
Wall Street to Jerome Powell: We don’t believe you
Do you want the good news about the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell; the other good news; or the bad news? Let’s start with the first bit of good news. Powell and his fellow monetary-policy-committee members just lifted short-term interest rates another quarter of a percentage point to 4.75%, which means retirees and […]