India’s flagship payment platform, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), ended the 2022 calendar year on a high note as the volume of transactions touched a record 7.82 billion in December, amounting to Rs 12.82 trillion, again a record high. Data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the […]

Lola Chantrelle Mitchell, known by her stage name Gangsta Boo, has died. The rapper and former member of Three 6 Mafia was 43. The Memphis-born star was found dead on Sunday, January 1 at around 4 p.m. (local time) and no cause of death has been determined, according to Fox […]

Global tensions are arguably at their highest point in decades. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted several waves of sanctions against Moscow as well as considerable aid to Ukraine, including weapons and arms. The result has been effectively a superpower proxy war, with Russia on one side and […]

Anita Pointer, one of the founding members of the R&B group The Pointer Sisters, passed away Dec. 31 in Los Angeles. She was 74. “Sad to report my client, Grammy Winner Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, has passed away after a heroic battle with cancer,” Pointer’s publicist Roger Neal […]

Walt Disney World is closing its Kali River Rapids ride on Jan. 9, sparking worries that the closure may be permanent. Disney frequently changes its rides, worrying longtime park-goers that a beloved ride may not return. The parks refer to the closures as “dark rides.” Usually, the changes are minor, […]

U.S. stocks just wrapped their worst year since 2008 with media and tech leading the downward spiral. Streaming got messy, linear TV declined, a theatrical recovery sputtered, inflation, interest rates, unemployment and geopolitics turned ugly, recession jitters hit advertising, and M&A mostly ground to a halt. When it didn’t, it […]

The Commerce Department released its report on U.S. personal income and spending in the month of November on Friday, although the focus was on a closely watched reading on consumer price inflation. The reading on inflation, which is said to be preferred by the Federal Reserve, showed the annual rate […]

Asian stocks fell on Friday, Treasury yields moved up and the dollar index rose as strong U.S. data released overnight fueled worries that the Federal Reserve would stick to its aggressive tightening path for longer to tame inflation. U.S. weekly jobless claims data pointed to a still tight labor market […]

After a relentless rise in home prices that lasted from mid- 2020 until just two months ago, the real estate market has reset. The number of homes sold and their prices have begun a downward turn. No part of the market has been damaged more than luxury home sales. The […]

The UK economy contracted more than estimated in the third quarter on downward revisions to industrial and construction output, vindicating the start of a long recession. The quarterly decline in gross domestic product was revised to -0.3 percent from -0.2 percent, revised data from the Office for National Statistics showed […]