A banner depicting missiles and drones flying past a torn Israeli flag, with text in Persian reading ”the next slap will be harder” and in Hebrew ”your next mistake will be the end of your fake state”, hangs on the facade of a building in Palestine Square in Tehran on April 14, 2024.  Atta Kenare | AFP | Getty Images Iran and Israel, regional archfoes, are trading attacks and threats — the latest of which saw Israel launch a ”limited military strike” on Iran in the early hours of Friday morning, a source familiar with the situation told NBC News. ...

Giovanna Gonzalez of Chicago demonstrates outside the U.S. Capitol following a press conference by TikTok creators to voice their opposition to the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” pending crackdown legislation on TikTok in the House of Representatives, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 12, 2024.  Craig Hudson | Reuters TikTok more than doubled its ad spend to over $4.5 million in a campaign to combat a potential U.S. ban as Congress looks to fast-track legislation to push parent company ByteDance to divest the social media app. TikTok has spent over $2.5 million on television ads alone...

Workers at Carl Zeiss ZMT are seen outside giant vacuum chambers where optical systems for ASML’s new High NA EUV tool are tested. ASML Chip stocks fell on Wednesday after ASML, a key developer of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, said that bookings fell by 61% sequentially during the first quarter, a steeper drop than investors had expected. During trading on Wednesday, AMD’s stock fell over 4%, Nvidia shares fell about 3%, Intel shares fell nearly 2% and Qualcomm was off 2%. But the biggest drop affected chip technology firm Arm, which was trading nearly 10% lower on Wednesday. ASML fell over...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following a closed two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2023. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. economy, while otherwise strong, has not seen inflation come back to the central bank’s goal, pointing to the further unlikelihood that interest rate cuts are in the offing anytime soon. Speaking to a policy forum focused on U.S.-Canada economic relations, Powell said that while inflation continues to make its way...

Rising inflation in March didn’t deter consumers, who continued shopping at a more rapid pace than anticipated, the Commerce Department reported Monday. Retail sales increased 0.7% for the month, considerably faster than the Dow Jones consensus forecast for a 0.3% rise though below the upwardly revised 0.9% in February, according to Census Bureau data that is adjusted for seasonality but not for inflation. The consumer price index increased 0.4% in March, the Labor Department reported last week in data that also was higher than the Wall Street outlook. That means consumers more than kept up with the pace of inflation,...

The Miami Herald profiled former Ambassador V. Manuel Rocha in 2003 when he joined the firm of Steel Hector & Davis to help open doors in Latin America. Raul Rubiera | Miami Herald | Getty Images When Carolyn Lamb saw news of Cuban spy Victor Manuel Rocha’s arrest on the news last December, she recognized him immediately. It was the same man who had sat in her Omaha living room 17 years ago, trying to make a deal.  On Friday, Rocha, 73, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Cuban...

Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Valentyn Ogirenko | Reuters Ukraine’s top military general warned Saturday that the battlefield situation in the east of the country, which continues to be the epicenter of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine, has deteriorated sharply. ”The situation on the eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days,” Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said on Telegram. ”This is primarily due to the significant intensification of enemy offensive actions following the presidential elections in the Russian Federation,” he added, in comments translated by NBC News. Syrskyi said warm, dry weather had...

If you’re a digital nomad or a remote worker looking for your next home away from home, consider Italy. The country’s new digital nomad visa went into effect his month, according to Euronews. Italy’s government defines digital nomads as a citizen of non-EU states who carry out ”a highly qualified work activity with the use of technological tools capable of allowing them to work remotely,” Euronews states. The worker should either be self-employed, in collaboration with, or as an employee of a company. The visa is good for one year and can be renewed Armando Oliveira | Istock | Getty...

RobertCrum | Getty Images DETROIT – Skyrocketing auto insurance costs helped contribute to inflation accelerating at a faster-than-expected pace in March and are adding to the ever more expensive costs for U.S. vehicle owners. On a monthly basis, car insurance prices as part of the consumer price index rose by an unadjusted 2.7%, while the year-over-year increased by 22.2%, according to data released Wednesday. The index is a key inflation gauge and a broad measure of the cost of goods and services across the economy. Auto insurance costs have been on the rise for some time, growing every month as...

The consumer price index accelerated at a faster-than-expected pace in March, pushing inflation higher and likely dashing hopes that the Federal Reserve will be able to cut interest rates anytime soon. The CPI, a broad measure of goods and services costs across the economy, rose 0.4% for the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 3.5%, or 0.3 percentage point higher than in February, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a 0.3% gain and a 3.4% year-over-year level. Excluding volatile food and energy components, the core CPI also...