Business Highlights
Roundup of top economy stories
NEW YORK — Election falsehoods are thriving on Twitter after former President Donald Trump dug in on those claims during a recent CNN town hall. That’s going on despite Twitter owner Elon Musk insisting that stolen-election claims on the platform “will be corrected.” An analysis for The Associated Press shows the 10 most widely shared tweets promoting a “rigged election” narrative in the five days after the town hall have not been labeled or removed. Tech accountability experts say monitoring content on such a large scale is difficult. But they say Musk has reinstated notorious election deniers, overhauled the site’s verification system and gutted much of the staff that had moderated such posts.
• • • LONDON — Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit claiming the German lender should have seen evidence of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein when he was a client. That’s according to lawyers for women who say they were abused by the financier who killed himself in prison awaiting criminal charges. A woman only identified as Jane Doe sued the bank in federal district court in New York and sought class-action status to represent other victims of Epstein. Two law firms representing victims are calling it a “groundbreaking settlement” following a decadelong investigation, acknowledging its mistake in taking on Epstein as a client.
• • • CHATGPT is now a smartphone app, which could be good news for people who like to use the artificial intelligence chatbot and bad news for all the clone apps that have tried to profit off the technology. The free app started to become available on iphones in the U.S. on Thursday and will later be coming to Android phones. Unlike the web version, you can also ask it questions using your voice. The company that makes it, Openai, said it will remain ad-free but “syncs your history across devices.”
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A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia and Mongolia — found payments on the debt are consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to provide basic services. And it’s draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.
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LOS ANGELES — The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate edged higher this week after a two-week drop, a modest move in line with a mostly moderate shift in home loan rates in recent weeks. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan rose to 6.39% from 6.35% last week. The average rate a year ago was 5.25%. The average benchmark rate has moved lower in seven of the last 10 weeks since reaching a high for this year of 6.73% in early March. Still, it remains elevated relative to 2020 and 2021, when the average rate fell below 3%.