The S&P 500 fell for a second day on Friday as oil prices rose and technology megacaps treaded water after Thursday’s selloff. Chips stocks offered some relief, as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, or the SOX, ended the day higher.

For much of this year, Treasuries offered investors little of their traditional protection when technology stocks stumbled. This week, that role has bounced back sharply.

Shoprite Holdings Ltd. is said to be in talks with Investec about a partnership as Africa’s largest grocer seeks to expand the financial services it offers millions of customers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The UK has voiced concerns that the European Union’s push for technological autonomy will damage British digital companies, arguing that it should be eligible to compete for contracts under forthcoming “Made in Europe” tech rules.

Polens Opfer des NS-Regimes wünschen sich eine »humanitäre Geste«, doch dafür hat Deutschland bisher kein Geld vorgesehen. Die Entscheidung zu vertagen, wäre schäbig.

After decades of violent displacement and land theft, the country’s quilombola communities are fighting back

For most of his 39 years, Josias Dias dos Santos, known as Jota, has endured degrading cycles of displacement as a quilombola, a descendant of Black people once enslaved on Brazil’s sugar cane and coffee plantations. He says his and other quilombola families subsisting in the rainforests in Pará, northern Brazil, were first forced out of their settlements by violent loggers, then by ranchers and miners.

Yet, they say the worst came with the arrival of the palm oil industry in what is now the country’s most deforested state. Palm oil companies producing biofuels and supplying global customers, subsidised by the federal government, have laid claim to ever larger tracts of traditional quilombola territory over the past two decades.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of The Palm Oil War

© Photograph: Courtesy of The Palm Oil War

© Photograph: Courtesy of The Palm Oil War

US stocks fell on Thursday as escalating concern about the Mideast conflict pushed oil futures higher, spurring inflation fears with US midterm elections less than two weeks away. Meta Platforms Inc. tumbled as investors parsed its results along with the rest of the latest batch of technology earnings for evidence that massive spending on AI is paying off.

The US midterm election is less than a month away, and Wall Street is bracing for stocks to fall if Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress. Voters appear likely to hand the party a majority in at least the House of Representatives. The outlook for the Senate is far less certain, though Democratic candidates have a polling edge in key races. With control of even one chamber, the party would gain majorities on committees that can propose legislation and hold hearings — including on to

French bond stress intensified as a broad flight from risk and the threat of another round of weekend protests reinforced the country’s status as the weak link in global markets.

European countries need to acknowledge that a degree of reliance on US technology is inevitable, said Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir Technologies Inc.’s UK and Europe operations, following moves by some governments in the region to reconsider their use of the company’s data analysis products.

Composers have harnessed TV and cinema since Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors pulled in five million viewers 75 years ago but for my money Kombat Opera’s satire showed us how to do it best

It’s not even Halloween, but here’s an operatic Christmas story for you. This is the 75th anniversary of the first opera made for television: Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, broadcast at Yuletide in 1951 and watched by five million people across the US in a production sponsored by Hallmark. You can watch the original broadcast on YouTube: it was introduced with wit, self-deprecation and early 50s elegance by Menotti himself (vastly less charmingly, the role of King Balthazar was played by a singer in blackface). Chet Allen’s performance as the boy, Amahl, is staggering, and even more moving is Rosemary Kuhlmann’s Mother, especially in her aria, All That gold!.

Amahl is “an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood”, Menotti said. It was played on US TV every Christmastime throughout the 50s, and was recorded and remade in new productions the next decade, while the BBC picked it up in 1953, and there was even an Australian TV version. Less than an hour long, Menotti’s festive fable works because of the intimacy of its story, and its refusal to patronise its intended audience.

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© Photograph: Dima Gavrysh/AP

© Photograph: Dima Gavrysh/AP

© Photograph: Dima Gavrysh/AP

The S&P 500 Index closed higher for a third day on Wednesday as solid earnings from SpaceX and Super Micro Computer Inc. bolstered bullish views of the artificial-intelligence trade. Attention turns next to earnings from tech giants Meta Platforms Inc. and Tesla Inc., due after the bell.

The yield on benchmark French debt hit 5% for the first time since 2002 as rising energy prices exacerbated concern over the country’s fiscal outlook.

The S&P 500 Index erased early-session losses to close higher on Tuesday as big banks and healthcare companies rallied. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index ended the day with a slight decline after South Korean neocloud company Elice Inc. tanked in its trading debut, spurring concern about the sustainability of the global AI boom.

The sharp selloff in French government bonds is a reminder that an intensifying battle for capital is putting borrowers under greater scrutiny, particularly in a world awash with high yields, according to the BlackRock Investment Institute.

A measure of French bond risk breached a key level on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges facing the government as it struggles to tame the budget deficit and grapples with cost-of-living protests.

There’s a growing push to review guidelines for the $9.5 trillion-a-day currency market more often, to make sure they keep pace with artificial intelligence’s rapid advance.

Chips companies rallied in Monday trading, helping stocks rebound after the worst week for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index since the tariff turmoil of April 2025.

Trudy weakens to tropical storm after warnings of strong winds and heavy rain, while one person killed in Greece

In contrast to the quiet Atlantic hurricane season, there has been ongoing activity in the Pacific, with Trudy being the 22nd and latest named system. The category 2 hurricane remained roughly 100 miles (160km) south-west of the coast of Mexico, meaning the worst of the conditions stayed offshore. However, the US National Hurricane Center put coastal parts of the states of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima under hurricane warnings, with sustained winds of up to 60-90mph forecast on Sunday.

Rainfall totals of 100-150mm were likely for these areas, prompting warnings of flooding and landslides. Warnings also covered the risk of a dangerous storm surge accompanied by damaging waves in areas of onshore winds across the coast of south-western Mexico. By Monday morning, Trudy had weakened and been downgraded to a tropical storm, with coastal warnings being lifted.

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© Photograph: Javier Verdin/Reuters

© Photograph: Javier Verdin/Reuters

© Photograph: Javier Verdin/Reuters

French government bonds dropped after a weekend of violent unrest, underlining the tension between protesters upset over the cost of living and a government that can’t pay to keep the peace.