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"I am excited to get to work alongside every person in this district to make a real difference in the lives of New Yorkers," Goldman said. "Each of the candidates in this race raised critical issues that must be addressed in City Hall, Albany and Washington, and I learned so much from them during the primary."

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Goldman will be the overwhelming favorite in a general election against Republican and Conservative Party nominee Benine Hamdan, who ran unopposed.

Errors are so rife that in 2019 the Equifax CEO, Mark Begor, told the New York Times that when he first checked his own report, it showed he bought a vacuum cleaner he didn't own, a mobile phone service he hadn't signed up for and a credit card he didn't have.

BOTTOM LINE

Credit data is being used in broader ways that it was initially intended to be, sometimes quite sloppily, consumer advocates warn.

"Credit scores are increasingly being used as a measure of character, when sometimes its just luck," said Chi Chi Wu, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

The pandemic has further thrown the reliability of the data into question. People and businesses that struggled to pay their bills on time during lockdowns and layoffs that were far beyond their control may have seen their creditworthiness take a hit through no fault of their own.

The fall in sky-high energy prices gets much of the credit for the lower inflation readings. The BLS said July's 1.8% drop in wholesale goods prices -- the largest monthly decline since a lockdown-triggered plunge in April 2020 -- is a function of lower energy prices. The agency also attributed 80% of the price decline in goods to a 16.7% drop in gasoline prices from June to July.

Prices at the pump hit a symbolic threshold on Thursday, falling below $4 a gallon for the first time since March. Nationwide, the average price for a gallon of gas was $3.99, according to AAA, which attributed at least some of the drop to cooling demand.  

"What it reflects is that gasoline demand is maybe a little bit more elastic than people think," said Stewart Glickman, energy equity analyst at CFRA Research, noting that Americans have been driving less in response to the rapid jump in prices at the pump in the spring and early summer.

Of the 528,000 jobs added, the lion's share of the gains were in private-sector service-providing areas, including 122,000 in education and health services; 96,000 in leisure and hospitality (including 74,000 in restaurants and bars); and 89,000 in the professional and business services sector.

Prior to Friday's report, which also included upward revisions totaling 28,000 jobs for May and June, the nation was about 524,000 jobs short of the employment level seen in February 2020.

In one giant fell swoop, that gap was erased.

However, a notable laggard persists: public-sector employment, notably city and county government and public education. Government-related jobs are 597,000 below where they were pre-pandemic.

"There's just really strong competition with the private sector right now, and the public sector has not kept up its wage hikes in order to be able to compete with the private sector," Nick Bunker, Indeed's economic research director for North America, told CNN Business.

Now, a handful of tech companies have launched initiatives to help with repairing old gadgets. Earlier this year, Apple and Samsung launched their self-service repair stores, offering parts for users seeking do-it-yourself fixes for their smartphones. Google similarly promised parts for repairing Pixel phones will be available to the public later this year.

For my first stop after leaving Richmond, I pulled into a rest stop in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It was only about 160 miles south from my hotel and I still had half of a full charge.

I sipped coffee and answered some emails while I waited at a counter. I figured I would take as long as I wanted and leave when I was ready with whatever additional electricity the car had gained in that time. In all, I was there about 45 minutes, but at least 15 minutes of that was used trying to get the charger to work. One of the chargers was simply not working at all, and, at another one, a call to Electrify America customer service -- the EV charging company owned by Volkswagen that, by coincidence, operated all the chargers I used on the trip -- I got a successful charging session going at last. (It was unclear what the issue was.)

That's left Walmart (WMT) and other retailers stuck with too much clothing and bigger-ticket stuff sitting on their shelves. To help clear out the backlog, Walmart is cutting prices on some items and marking down products.

"The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a news release Monday. "Apparel in Walmart U.S. is requiring more markdown dollars."

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The company expects a slowdown on customer spending for general merchandise in the second half of the year, McMillon said.

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Walmart is the largest retailer in the United States, and its move could prompt rivals to bring down prices in these areas.

Two camps are starting to form. One is epitomized by the White House, which maintains that while the US economy is sliding into a lower gear, it's not experiencing a recession as we would typically define it.

"This is not an economy that's in recession," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday on "Meet the Press." "But we're in a period of transition in which growth is slowing."

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Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, espoused a different view — this one focused not on what the data is currently showing, but on what's likely to happen next.

"I think there's a very high likelihood of recession," Summers said. "When we've been in this kind of situation before, recession has essentially always followed."

Powell appears to be loosely following the monetary playbook set by Volcker in the high-inflation days of the 1980s, but each chair has to play to their own strengths, said Reinhart. "Greenspan could dive deeply into the data. Volcker had a personal authority about his understanding of markets and banking that was intimidating," he said. Powell seems to be interested in coming off as plain-spoken; he's shifted the focus and attention of the Fed to all Americans instead of just economists and investors, he added.

But this central bank will face a new set of challenges when "the economy is not feeling so good and inflation still isn't back down to the target level," said Rehling. Powell will have to decide whether the Fed stays the course on hawkish rate hikes while facing political and public pressure about the state of the overall economy. Perhaps that's when the Fed will enter its 'Material Girl' era.

The FOMC will meet in Washington next week and is widely expected to announce another interest rate hike of 75 basis points.

Bollywood celebrities including Priyanka Chopra, Richa Chadha and Farhan Akhtar are among those to have lambasted the commercial for Layer'r Shot, a brand of male fragrance, calling it "shameful," "disgusting" and "incredibly tasteless."

Its controversial advert shows four men appearing to stalk a frightened-looking woman in a store before cutting to one of the men saying, "We're four, there's one, who takes the shot?"

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Only when the woman turns round does it become clear they are talking about the body spray -- which one of the men then takes from a store shelf and uses.

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The commercial caused a storm on social media, where critics including various celebrities blasted its innuendo as making light of rape.

Many said the timing of the advert made it particularly insensitive, as it was broadcast just a week after a case in which a 17-year-old was allegedly raped by five men in the southern city of Hyderabad -- the latest in a series of high-profile crimes against women and minority groups across the country.

"This advertisement is clearly promoting sexual violence against women and girls and promoting a rapist mentality among men. The advertisement is cringeworthy and should not be allowed to be played on mass media," wrote Swati Maliwal, chairwoman of the Delhi Commission for Women, to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Saturday.

"We're seeing an increase in bad debt to slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels as well as extended cash collection cycles," said AT&T CEO John Stankey on a conference call with analysts Thursday.

However, Stankey noted AT&T executives "still expect customers will pay their bills, albeit a little less timely." The company's chief financial officer Pascal Desroches assured analysts that AT&T is "not, in any way, alarmed by this."

Its rival Verizon (VZ) reported earnings Friday and lowered its outlook for the year, sending shares 6% lower. LIke AT&T, Verizon also sees some customers starting to feel the pinch.

"We're seeing weaker consumer wireless volumes. The inflationary environment is clearly impacting consumer behavior," said Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg on a call with analysts.

"Consumer budgets are becoming strained," he concluded.

With that in mind, Verizon recently launched a cheaper monthly wireless plan called Welcome Unlimited that Vestberg said "will meet the needs of budget-conscious consumers."

For prospective buyers, steep price gains and higher mortgage rates have created an affordability ceiling, said Ratiu.

"Many Americans are finding they no longer have enough money to purchase a home that meets their needs," he said.

A year ago, a buyer who put 20% down on a median priced $390,000 home and financed the rest with a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage at an average rate of 2.78% had a monthly mortgage payment of $1,279, according to calculations from Freddie Mac.

Today, a homeowner buying the same priced house with an average rate of 5.54% would pay $1,779 a month in principal and interest. That's $500 more each month.

The "Save Gas for a Safe Winter" plan announced Wednesday sets a target for the 27 member states to reduce their gas demand by 15% between August and March next year. That reduction is based on countries' average gas consumption during the same months over the previous five years.

The plan is focused on curtailing demand by businesses and in public buildings, rather than private homes. Among the proposed measures, the EU Commission is encouraging industry to switch to alternate energy sources — including coal where necessary — and to introduce auction systems that compensate companies for reducing their gas consumption.

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The Commission is also hoping to pass a new law that would give it the power to force states to reduce their demand for gas "when there is a substantial risk of a severe gas shortage or an exceptionally high gas demand," it said in a press release.

Instead, the retired postal worker tries to escape the heat in the unfinished basement of her Hickory Hills, Illinois, home. She brought down a chair so she can read there.

And, to avoid using her stove while upstairs, she makes sandwiches and warms up food in the microwave.

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Morris, 65, already had her power shut off in June -- when the thermometer in the Chicago area hit at least 90 degrees on seven days -- after falling behind on her payments. She was forced to use savings to settle the nearly $500 tab, which she can't do again since she's on a fixed income after retiring last year.

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A typical property costs $28,570 per square meter in Hong Kong, $26,262 in London and $10,947 in Toronto. Meanwhile, it is $8,250 per square meter in San Francisco and just $3,170 in Miami.

"Maybe it is a good thing they were absent when US real estate was super hot," said Yun. "No one really missed the foreign market, but given the current shift in the market, with more inventory and homes staying on the market, it might begin to pick up as more international travel is possible."

Foot and mouth is already spreading fast in Indonesia, where the first cases were detected in April. By May Indonesian authorities had alerted Australia, which -- along with New Zealand, Central and North America, and continental Western Europe -- is free of FMD.

Indonesia tried to roll out a vaccination program, but by June 27, only 58,275 of the country's roughly 17 million-strong herd had been vaccinated, Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo said in a tweet.

Schipp said the slow rollout reflected the logistical challenges in a decentralized country comprised of thousands of islands.

"You can have the vaccine available at the national level, but it needs to get out to the provincial and district levels. And then when it gets there, the question is, how are we going to get this into animals? We don't have yards. We can't catch the cattle. We don't have money for petrol. We don't have money for a meal allowance," he said.

"They're the types of logistical issues that we've been trying to work with them on."

The timing of the outbreak has been disastrous in Indonesia, coming weeks before Idul Adha, the "feast of sacrifice," when animals are typically sold in large volumes for slaughter over three days from July 10. After families pray and share a meal together, they sacrifice livestock and distribute the meat to the poor.

The Abu Dhabi Money Laundering Court convicted Ghafoor of committing "two crimes of tax evasion and money laundering related to a tax evasion operation in his country and sentenced him to three years in prison and a fine of three million dirhams [$US 816,748], with deportation from the UAE," according to WAM.

Ghafoor, who is also a co-founder and board member of their organization, was detained by UAE security agents at Dubai International Airport, human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) had said in a Friday news release.

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According to WAM, the case came up when American authorities asked for judicial assistance from the UAE regarding their investigations of Ghafoor for alleged tax evasion and making suspicious money transfers to the UAE, which prompted Abu Dhabi's inquiry into his bank accounts.

As protests in San Jose de las Lajas were disrupted by government supporters and police, Nadir and Jorge Perdomo returned to their house and filmed a video on their phones that they were able to post online despite the government's attempts to cut internet access on the island.

"No one paid us," Nadir says in the video, rebuffing government claims that the protests had been contrived.

"We are just reacting the way all the people did."

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The brainchild of Boris Dayma, a Houston-based machine-learning engineer, Craiyon is popularizing a growing trend in AI. Computers are getting better and better at ingesting words and producing increasingly realistic-looking images in response. Lately, people are typing in about 5 million prompts per day, Dayma said.

There are similar, much more powerful AI systems than Craiyon, such as OpenAI's DALL-E (Craiyon was initially named DALL-E Mini as an homage) and DALL-E 2, as well as Google's Imagen. But unlike Craiyon, which anyone can try, most of these are not available to the public: DALL-E 2 is open to users via invitation only, while Imagen has not been opened up to users outside Google.