Financial Mindset

Authorities announced a new crackdown on a sprawling international fraud ring involving North Korean IT workers, naming more than a dozen defendants in two new indictments, including New Jersey man Zhenxing “Danny” Wang. The indictment claims the scheme allegedly generated more than $5 million in illicit earnings and hundreds of thousands in fees for the U.S. conspirators. In a second indictment, four North Korean nationals have been charged with executing a sophisticated operation that generated nearly $1 million in stolen crypto. All told, law enforcement searched 29 suspected laptop farms across 16 states and seized 29 financial accounts allegedly used to launder money and digital assets.   The Justice Department on Monday announced a significant crackdown on the North Korean IT workers fraud scheme , with two new indictments naming more than a dozen alleged conspirators accused of stealing millions from at least 100 companies in the past four years.  According t...

Mark Zuckerberg is stacking the deck in the AI race, betting that unlimited capital, top talent, and raw computing power will ensure victory. If the winning hand Zuckerberg is chasing—AI “superintelligence”— is still very much a vague and theoretical concept, the Meta CEO’s remarkable series of moves unveiled Monday instantly changed the reality for everyone else in the game, particularly the pioneering AI startups without Meta’s resources. Zuckerberg announced a major revamp of its AI operations on Monday, putting the company’s collection of AI businesses and projects under the umbrella of a newly created organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL, and appointing Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, as Meta’s first ever Chief AI Officer. “As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo obtained by Fortune . “I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for ...

Aspiring Starbucks Corp. baristas now have to go through an additional layer of interviews to land a job as part of a new hiring push by Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol. As of early June, external applicants must be screened by district managers in addition to the manager of the store where they’re applying, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. District managers normally oversee about 10 locations and weren’t previously part of the hiring process at the store level. Starbucks is bulking up staffing as Niccol pushes to revive sales in part by speeding up service. It’s a reversal of past years where the coffee chain cut the average number of store workers. Starbucks has said that nearly all of its more than 10,000 company-operated locations in the US will get more workers by the end of September. Starbucks declined to comment beyond what executives have previously said about hiring plans. Chief Operating Officer Mike Grams told ...

China has lifted a ban on seafood imports from most regions of Japan, partially mending a years-long dispute over Tokyo’s handling of nuclear wastewater. China and Japan are key trading partners, but increased friction over territorial rivalries and military spending has frayed ties in recent years. Japan’s brutal occupation of parts of China before and during World War II remains a sore point, with Beijing accusing Tokyo of failing to atone for its past. Japan began gradually releasing treated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean in 2023. The move was backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the plant operator TEPCO says all radioactive elements have been filtered out except for tritium, levels of which are within safe limits. But it drew sharp criticism from Beijing, which banned imports of Japanese seafood as a result. Russia later followed suit. Samples from long-term monitoring of nuclear-contaminated water from Fukushima ha...

A 30-year-old Chinese fund manager is trouncing peers this year with a portfolio stocked with Gen Z-favored names like Pop Mart International Group, betting that new-age shopping trends can help his fund overcome the country’s economic sluggishness. Xie Tianyuan’s Penghua Selected Return Flexible Allocation Mixed Fund has returned 24% this year, ranking in the top 3% among roughly 2,300 peers, data from fund tracker East Money Information Co. show. That’s a turnaround from its recent past when holdings in traditional sectors like alcoholic beverages and farming dragged performance.  The Shenzhen-based fund manager, who took over early 2024, wasted little time in replacing what was then the fund’s top holding Kweichow Moutai Co., a baijiu distiller, with the maker of smash-hit Labubu dolls, Pop Mart.  His repositioning for the fund, which has about $7 million in assets under management, reflects how cultural shifts—brought on by digital influence and youth spending—are creat...

Senate Republicans restored major Medicaid cuts to Donald Trump’s signature economic legislation, re-fashioning a key provision to overcome a procedural obstacle. Spending cuts to the health insurance program for the poor and disabled partially offset revenue losses from tax cuts in the measure and are a crucial demand of GOP fiscal conservatives. The revision helps Republicans shore up the spending cuts they need to fund the bill, but it could also alienate three crucial senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — who have been pushing to scale back the Medicaid cuts. Senate Republican Leader John Thune is trying to navigate competing demands from conservatives and moderates as he rushes to pass the massive tax and spending package to meet a July 4 deadline Trump has set for congressional approval. The Senate’s legislative rules-keeper had judged a series of key health care provisions in the legislation ineligible for a special p...

Stock futures pointed slightly higher on Sunday after the Senate advanced President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill over the weekend. Trump also said he would rather impose tariff rates on countries than extend a temporary pause on so-called reciprocal duties that will expire on July 9. A holiday-shortened trading week will be highlighted by the monthly jobs report. U.S. markets are poised for new highs as President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda of tax cuts and spending priorities cleared a key hurdle in the Senate, even as he also cast doubt on trade talks. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 180 points, or 0.42%. S&P 500 futures were up 0.18%, and Nasdaq futures also added 0.23%, after both indexes notched new record highs on Friday. U.S. oil prices dipped 0.84% to $64.97 per barrel, and Brent crude was down 0.65% at $67.33. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down 0.8 basis point to at 4.275%. The dollar fell 0.07% again...

Gen Z are avid job hoppers , with the generation firmly believing it’s the best way to secure pay raises and promotions. But the CEO of college-readiness test company ACT thinks it could backfire. Just like General Motors’ Mary Barra, Janet Godwin has spent her entire career at a single company —and she tells Fortune young people would be better off putting more time in their current gigs for long-term success. For many high school students, the memory of taking the ACT or SAT might feel like a fever dream: Waking up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning, heading to a local high school, and sitting in a room full of strangers—with nothing but a No. 2 pencil and test booklet to focus on for the next three hours (or, more recently, a computer screen). While at the time, it may have felt a waste of precious time better spent sleeping in or hanging out with friends, in reality, the test has opened doors for millions of students to pursue their dream schools and careers. For AC...

Former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Alan Blinder said naming a so-called shadow Fed chief well before Jerome Powell’s term is up would sow confusion in financial markets and even set up a potential revolt against the eventual chair. Wall Street analysts also it is a self-defeating idea that would sink the U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds. Naming a so-called shadow chair for the Federal Reserve well before Jerome Powell is due to step down as the top central banker could blow up spectacularly. President Donald Trump said earlier this month his pick to replace Powell is coming “very soon,” and on Friday even vowed to tap someone who will do what he has been pressuring the Fed to do for months. “If I think somebody’s going to keep the rates where they are or whatever, I’m not going to put them in,” Trump said. “I’m going to put somebody that wants to cut rates.” That’s after repeated insults and name-calling directed at Powell, who has held off on lowering rates, citing the resilient e...

President Donald Trump said Friday that he’s suspending  trade talks with Canada  over its plans to continue with its tax on technology firms, which he called “a direct and blatant attack on our country.” Trump, in a post on his social media network, said Canada had just informed the U.S. that it was sticking to its plan to impose the digital services tax, which applies to Canadian and foreign businesses that engage with online users in Canada. The tax is set to go into effect Monday. “Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” Trump said in his post. Trump’s announcement was the latest swerve in  the trade war  he’s launched since taking office for a second term in January. Progress with Canada has been a roller coaster, starting with the U.S. presid...

Nike stocks soared Friday , despite a 12% revenue slump in the fourth quarter. CEO Elliott Hill told analysts Thursday he expects a better fiscal year ahead, albeit one that begins with a tariff-fueled cost increase estimated at $1 billion. Nike leadership braced investors for tariff-fueled cost increases and smaller margins during the sportswear company’s Q4 earnings call Thursday. Still, shares soared 15% on Friday following a better-than-feared quarterly report. Adjust earnings per share tumbled 86% to 14 cents, beating Wall Street forecasts by a penny. Revenue dropped 12% to $11.1 billion, above views for $10.7 billion. CEO Elliott Hill said on the call with analysts that earnings were “not up to the Nike standard,” but he’s optimistic in the company’s turnaround strategy. Meanwhile, CFO Matt Friend estimated that tariff costs will be about $1 billion and told analysts that Nike will “fully mitigate” that amount over the next fiscal year by reducing U.S. imports of China-p...

The Seoul city government has asked online retail giants Temu and AliExpress to suspend sales of certain children’s products over safety concerns, saying Friday that some goods far exceeded local limits for hazardous substances. Chinese e-commerce titans like Shein, Temu and AliExpress have seen a surge in global popularity in recent years, drawing in consumers with a wide range of trendy, ultra-low-cost fashion and accessories—positioning them as major rivals to U.S. giant Amazon. Their rapid rise has triggered growing scrutiny over business practices and product safety, including in South Korea. The Seoul city government said Friday it recently inspected 35 children’s products sold on Temu and AliExpress—including umbrellas, raincoats and rain boots—and found that 11 failed to meet South Korea’s safety standards or contained hazardous substances above local limits. In six of the umbrellas, phthalate-based plasticizers—chemicals used to make plastics more flexible—were found at le...

The U.S. and China finalized a trade understanding reached last month in Geneva, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said, adding that the White House has imminent plans to reach agreements with a set of 10 major trading partners. The China deal, which Lutnick said had been signed two days ago, codifies the terms laid out in trade talks between Beijing and Washington, including a commitment from China to deliver  rare earths  used in everything from wind turbines to jet planes.  “They’re going to deliver rare earths to us” and once they do that, “we’ll take down our countermeasures,” Lutnick told Bloomberg News in an interview.  A White House official said the U.S. and China agreed to the terms to implement the Geneva accord. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment, while China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.  The offshore yuan was little changed on the news and Chi...

  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told his brother that Mark Zuckerberg was offering compensation packages worth more than $100 million to lure OpenAI staff to Meta . Altman said he was happy that none of the best minds at OpenAI had gone for the golden ticket so far. On Thursday, three OpenAI researchers who lead the firm’s Zurich office announced they would join Meta. The trio of OpenAI engineers who co-founded the firm’s Zurich office last year will indeed be leaving to join Meta—but they aren’t getting $100 million apiece to do so.  Lucas Beyer posted on X Thursday that he, Alex ander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai would depart OpenAI to join the $1.8 trillion company led by Mark Zuckerberg. Beyer said it was “fake news” that Zuckerberg was paying him that level of compensation. However, that news came from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself, who called the offers “crazy” this month.  “They started making these like, giant offers, to a lot of people on our team—$100 million ...

Having grown up on a small dairy farm in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, Terry Canning was well aware that dairy cows were vital to his upbringing—but they weren’t meant to be his future. Instead, Canning was “shipped off to academia,” he tells Fortune, where he studied engineering for four years. After graduation, he worked for a number of computing companies. Then, in 2004 at age 30, Canning decided to return to his family home and set up his own company—developing a software product for managing livestock. The idea of animal analytics was hugely important within the agricultural industry at the time, because of recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, highlighting the risks of not keeping records of animal movements. To solve that problem, the initial idea was to attach devices to animals—as Canning describes it, a kind of “ Fitbit for cows,” but that turned out to be expensive and tricky to do. Batteries would run out, or ear tags could get caught and removed as a cow move...

Japan’s chief trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa said the country can’t accept the U.S.’s 25% tariffs on cars, adding that the Asian nation’s automakers produce far more cars in the U.S. than they export to America.  Japanese automakers make roughly 3.3 million cars in the U.S. a year, a number that’s far larger than the 1.37 million that they ship there, Akazawa told reporters on Thursday before leaving for Washington to hold his seventh round of trade negotiations with U.S. counterparts. The companies have invested more than $60 billion in the U.S. and created 2.3 million local jobs, Akazawa said.  “We have repeatedly explained to the U.S. that Japan’s automobile industry has made an enormous contribution to the U.S. economy, and we intend to keep explaining this clearly and seek understanding,” Akazawa said. “In any case, we consider the 25% automobile tariff to be unacceptable.” The auto tariffs are a sticking point in the bilateral negotiations as Washington focuses on it...

President Donald Trump’s spending cuts and border security package would inject roughly $150 billion into his mass deportation agenda over the next four years, funding everything from an extension of the United States’ southern border wall to detention centers to thousands of additional law enforcement staff. The current annual budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the government’s primary department for immigration enforcement, is around $10 billion. If the Republican president’s big bill passes in Congress, the immense cash infusion could reshape America’s immigration system by expanding the law enforcement and detention network while increasing costs to legally immigrate to the U.S. The Senate is debating its own version of the bill, which largely aligns with the House’s approach when it comes to these issues. In recent days, Republicans have focused on sometimes-violent protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown to press for quick passage over Democratic opposit...

A U.S. intelligence report suggests that  Iran’s nuclear program  has been set back only a few months after  U.S. strikes  and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment. The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites  did significant damage , the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — c...