Monthly job growth falls over 70%, unemployment hits four-year high.
US employers added 22,000 nonfarm jobs in August, down from 79,000 in July. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 4.3%, its highest since 2021. The Labor Department's August jobs report comes after President Donald Trump responded to July's report by firing its lead economist over accusations of inaccurate data.
Pentagon sends fighter jets to target cartels in the Caribbean.
The Department of Defense—rebranded the Department of War by President Donald Trump yesterday—deployed 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to combat Latin American drug cartels. The move followed reports two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over one of three Navy vessels dispatched last month as part of the crackdown.
Anthropic agrees to at least $1.5B copyright settlement.
The artificial intelligence company plans to settle a federal class-action lawsuit over its alleged use of pirated books to train Claude AI models. The $1.5B payment will be the largest publicly recorded copyright settlement, according to attorneys for the authors who filed the suit. The proposed deal, which covers roughly half a million books, also requires Anthropic to destroy its datasets of pirated works.
EU regulator hits Google with $3.5B antitrust fine.
The European Commission fined the US tech company for breaching the European Union's competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services. The penalty, which Google plans to appeal, came over two years after the commission announced antitrust charges. Earlier this week, in a US antitrust case concerning Google's monopoly on internet searches, the tech giant was allowed to keep its Chrome web browser but ordered to share search engine data with rivals.
Tesla poised to offer Elon Musk nearly $1T pay package.
The electric vehicle maker's board is asking shareholders to approve a nearly $1T, 10-year pay package for Musk—one of the largest in corporate history—that would also boost his voting power. To unlock the full payout, Tesla must increase its market cap by roughly eightfold to $8.5T and meet operational targets, including deploying 1 million self-driving taxis, within a decade. A previously proposed $56B package was struck down in court last year; Musk now has a $29B package.
UK deputy prime minister resigns over tax error.
Angela Rayner resigned as the UK's deputy prime minister, deputy Labour Party leader, and housing secretary yesterday after an independent inquiry found she underpaid taxes on a $1M home by roughly $54K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer began reshuffling his Cabinet on the news, moving David Lammy from foreign secretary to deputy prime minister and justice secretary, among other changes.
Separately, the Thai parliament chose conservative politician Anutin Charnvirakul to be prime minister until next year's elections. Former Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was ousted last week after a controversial call with Cambodia's senate president amid this summer's border tensions was leaked.
The world's largest, oldest iceberg is collapsing.
Iceberg A23A, once the size of Rhode Island and weighing a trillion tons, has shrunk to about the size of Houston as it drifts between southern Africa and South America. The iceberg will likely melt and shatter—creating a floating avalanche—in the coming months during the Southern Hemisphere's summer. It's been overtaken as the world’s largest iceberg by D15A, which is nearly twice A23A's current size.
