Browsing: Business

NEW YORK: Gold traded back above the $5,000 an ounce level this week, with spot prices around $5,078 as a softer U.S. dollar coincided with renewed demand for the metal. The move followed sharp swings since late January, when gold reached record territory before pulling back in early February. On Tuesday, spot gold eased to about $5,030.80, still holding above $5,000. The latest rebound came after gold briefly slid to roughly $4,400 in early February, according to market pricing cited in the latest updates. Gold’s recent high-water mark was $5,594.82 on January 29, when prices touched an all-time peak before reversing lower in the…

NEW YORK: Amazon shares slid sharply this week as a pullback in large technology and software stocks erased about $1 trillion in market value from the S&P 500 software and services group since Jan. 28, according to index calculations. The sell-off followed a series of earnings updates in which major companies outlined steep increases in spending for artificial intelligence data centers, chips and related infrastructure. Amazon outlined capital expenditures of about $200 billion for 2026, up from $131 billion in 2025, as it expands computing capacity for Amazon Web Services and other operations. The stock fell 5.6% on Friday, underperforming broader indexes…

NEW YORK: U.S. employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the sharpest start to a year since the Great Recession, as reductions in transportation, technology and healthcare drove a surge in planned layoffs, according to a monthly report released this week by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. The January total rose 205% from December and was up 118% from January 2025, the report said. It marked the highest January figure since 2009, when employers announced 241,749 cuts during the financial crisis. Challenger’s tracking reflects layoff announcements and public plans disclosed by employers, which can unfold over weeks or months. Transportation led…

NEW YORK: Amazon shares fell about 8% in U.S. trading on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, after the company forecast roughly $200 billion in capital spending for 2026 and reported fourth-quarter earnings that came in slightly below analyst expectations. The stock drop made Amazon one of the weakest performers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average session. Amazon said it expects to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across the company in 2026. The forecast follows a sharp rise in spending on property and equipment, with purchases of property and equipment totaling $131.8 billion for full-year 2025, according to the company’s cash flow statement.…

KANSAS: Beef processed at Sustainable Beef’s producer-owned facility in North Platte, Nebraska is now appearing on Walmart shelves across the region, with product sent to a packaging plant in Olathe, Kansas for final packaging and distribution, according to a January 2026 update from local officials in North Platte. Packages carry a USDA establishment identifier, EST m3199, which is part of the federal numbering system used to trace meat products to their processing origin. Walmart opened its first owned-and-operated case-ready beef facility in Olathe on June 27, 2025, describing the site as a state-of-the-art operation spanning more than 300,000 square feet. The facility processes…

CryptoWire, NEW YORK: Bitcoin fell back toward $73,000 this week, giving up gains built after the November 2024 U.S. presidential election and marking one of its sharpest pullbacks since last year’s peak. The largest cryptocurrency briefly dipped below $73,000 on Tuesday, February 3, and later rebounded above $76,000 by the end of U.S. trading, after sliding to levels last seen in November 2024, according to market and crypto data services. The move left bitcoin trading around the same range seen shortly after election night in 2024, effectively unwinding the post vote rally that helped push the token to new highs in 2025. Bitcoin had reached…

MENA Newswire, TEXAS: Oracle has announced plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in gross proceeds during calendar year 2026 to expand cloud infrastructure capacity for artificial intelligence workloads, as questions swirl in markets about the cost of building data centers at scale. Separately, an investment bank research report has said Oracle is considering workforce reductions of 20,000 to 30,000 roles, a figure the company has not confirmed. Oracle said the financing plan is designed to fund additional capacity to meet contracted demand from its largest cloud infrastructure customers. The company said it aims to use a balanced mix of debt and equity…

MENA Newswire, OTTAWA: Canada’s exporters are expanding shipments to markets outside the United States as new and expanded U.S. tariffs reshape trade flows and push up costs for some cross border sales. Official trade data show exports to countries other than the United States reached a record high in October, led by gold to the United Kingdom and crude oil to China, before easing in November as gold shipments fell and motor vehicle exports weakened. The shift has unfolded alongside a series of U.S. tariff actions on major Canadian sectors. The United States imposed global Section 232 tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum imports…

MENA Newswire, NEW YORK: Gold and silver prices tumbled in a sharp, disorderly selloff that erased an estimated $7 trillion in notional value across precious metals, after a record-setting rally gave way to forced liquidations, margin pressures, and a stronger U.S. dollar. The drop reverberated across commodities and global equities, underscoring how quickly leveraged positioning can unwind even in markets often used as defensive holdings. Gold posted its biggest daily fall since 1983 on Friday, January 30, sliding about 9% after touching a record high the prior day. The selling extended into Monday, February 2, with spot gold down another roughly 3% to about…

MENA Newswire, SAN FRANCISCO: Shares of several video game and game technology companies fell sharply on Friday after Google opened access to an artificial intelligence model that can generate interactive, game like worlds from a text or image prompt, a launch that drew investor attention to how generative tools could alter parts of the game creation pipeline. Google said the new capability is available as an experimental prototype called Project Genie, which lets users create, explore and remix interactive worlds. The company described the system as producing environments that respond in real time as a user moves and interacts, rather than only generating static images…