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Money & Markets

Deadline looms, but COVID relief deal may be far off

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reported some progress in advance of a Tuesday deadline for reaching a pre-election deal with President Donald Trump on a new coronavirus relief package, but the same core problems bedeviling the effort remain in place despite optimistic talk from the ...

US jobless claims rise to 898,000 with layoffs still high

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week by the most in two months, to 898,000, a historically high number and evidence that layoffs remain a hindrance to the economy’s recovery from the pandemic recession. Thursday’s report from the Labor ...

Census whiplashed by changing deadlines, accuracy concerns

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can end the 2020 census, a text message went out to field supervisors in Northern California telling them to start collecting the iPhones their census takers use for gathering household information during their ...

Used vehicle prices up as supply sinks, but relief is coming

DETROIT — It cost a whole lot more to buy a used SUV, car, truck or van last month than it did before the coronavirus hit, and that almost singlehandedly caused September’s modest consumer price increase. Blame it on the pandemic, which knocked supply and demand way out of whack, causing ...

Microsoft attempts takedown of global criminal botnet

Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election. The operation to knock offline ...

Business council paints rosier picture on Iowa economy

Executives of Iowa’s 22 largest companies are more bullish on the next six months after the beginning of the year saw the worst economic darkness since the Great Recession. The Iowa Business Council’s quarterly outlook survey found its members expecting to hire at a greater clip in the ...