General World News

New Paris Museum Offers Dazzling Display of Contemporary Art

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As French cultural institutions reopen after months of coronavirus restrictions, a spectacular new museum has made its debut in Paris, housing the contemporary art collection of French billionaire Francois Pinault, including a number of prominent Black artists. A wax replica of The Rape of the Sabine Women by 16th century artist Giambologna at the Pinault […]

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Trump appointees have been left furious after being asked to ‘immediately’ pay thousands of dollars in deferred payroll taxes, which they thought would be forgiven

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Summary List Placement Some staffers from President Donald Trump’s administration have reportedly seen their tax bills spike as they’re being asked to pay payroll taxes deferred by the president. Politico reported that members of Trump’s administration have reportedly been receiving letters asking them to pay Social Security taxes that were deferred, with at least one […]

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‘In the Heights’ Celebrates Diversity in America

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In the Heights, a film about the dreams and struggles of the Latino community in a New York neighborhood, is Lin Manuel Miranda’s love letter to the place where he grew up. It also represents Miranda’s high-stakes bet that people will flock to the theater after months of COVID restrictions. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more […]

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The role of compliance in digital mortgages

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Imagine wanting to build software in the mortgage industry. You spend your time visualizing the problem your technology plans to solve, but after researching the industry, you realize that when it comes to building mortgage technology, you’re not just building an application. You actually have to take the proper steps to make sure it gets […]

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MOOCs are ‘massive open online courses,’ made popular by platforms like edX and Coursera. Here’s how they work — and why they’re one of the best ways to learn online

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  Summary List Placement If you’re interested in online learning, you’ve probably heard the term MOOC — Massive Open Online Course — before. But you might have questions about what they are, what exactly “open” means, how much they cost, or how they generally differ from other forms of e-learning, like apps or online degrees. […]

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Biden’s $6 trillion budget dropped key campaign promises on student debt cancellation and healthcare reform

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Summary List Placement President Joe Biden officially unveiled his first budget proposal on Friday, which requests $6 trillion for fiscal year 2022 to largely help fund his two-part infrastructure plan. But several issues he promised during his campaign to reform are noticeably missing from this budget. The budget outlines spending focused on climate change, education, […]

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Statement by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on the President’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget

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The Biden-Harris Administration today submitted to Congress the President’s budget for fiscal year 2022. As the Administration continues to make progress defeating the pandemic and getting our economy back on track, the budget makes historic investments that will help the country build back better and lay the foundation for shared growth and prosperity for decades […]

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An inside look at Stanford Graduate School of Business’ pivot to remote learning — and why it plans to keep some of its innovations post-pandemic

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Summary List Placement Grace Lyo‘s role as assistant dean and director of teaching and learning at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) was created two years ago, just in time to establish her team before COVID-19 came around.  She’s since been heavily involved in helping the MBA program not just transition to virtual learning — […]

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Pandemic stimulus, cyber threats, pulling out of Afghanistan, and more: Biden’s budget for the next fiscal year might break all the records

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Summary List Placement Hello! This story is from today’s edition of Morning Brew, an awesome daily email publication read by 2.5 million next-generation leaders like you. Sign up here to get it! This morning, President Biden will send Congress a jumbo-sized $6 trillion budget for FY2022, the NYT reported yesterday. If it passes, federal spending will eclipse […]

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New York City restaurants are being crushed by the current labor shortage and may take months to get enough staff, Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer said

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Summary List Placement New York City restaurants are being crushed by the US’ current labor shortage — and it could take months for them to reach proper staffing levels, restaurateur Danny Meyer told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Wednesday. “Nobody can hire back all of their workers even if they wanted to because many of our workers […]

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The Senate GOP wants to divert stimulus money for infrastructure — but the White House says it may come at the expense of restaurants and hospitals

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Summary List Placement The White House on Thursday cautioned Senate Republicans against redirecting stimulus money to fund infrastructure, saying that step could come at the expense of rural hospitals, restaurants, and small businesses that have been financially devastated by the pandemic. The statement from White House press secretary Jen Psaki comes after a group of […]

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MBA promotes Knowlton, adds Kelley to political teams

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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) announced two additions to its executive team on Thursday. The company named Alden Knowlton associate vice president of legislative affairs and Rachel Kelley associate vice president of political affairs, the MBA said in a release. Knowlton, who joined MBA in 2016 and previously held the title of associate vice president […]

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Elizabeth Warren says the GOP infrastructure plan is not a ‘serious’ counteroffer and leaves out women

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Summary List Placement A group of Republican senators unveiled their $928 billion counterproposal to President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, increasing the price tag from their first $568 billion counteroffer. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was not impressed with this new plan. “I don’t really think this is a serious counteroffer,” Warren told MSNBC following the release […]

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CEO pay surged nearly 16% in 2020, study says — dwarfing the 1.8% jump in average worker compensation

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Summary List Placement Add pay growth to the list of inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. CEO pay skyrocketed 15.9% through the pandemic as the rallying stock market boosted compensation packages, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a Thursday blog post. That marks an acceleration from the 14% jump seen in 2019 despite COVID-19 roiling […]

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14 Democratic state treasurers caution Congress against ‘clawing back’ stimulus funds for infrastructure

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Summary List Placement On Thursday, Republican senators introduced their second counter-offer to President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, proposing funding the plan by using unspent stimulus money. State treasurers say this is a bad idea. In a letter sent to Congress on Thursday — organized by Invest in America Action — 14 state treasurers urged lawmakers to […]

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HBO Max Airs Highly-Anticipated ‘Friends’ Reunion

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After so many years — and episode re-watches — could there BE anything left to learn about “Friends”? As the highly-anticipated, almost two-hour reunion special for HBO Max shows (and with apologies to Matthew Perry for continuing to borrow his lines), “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.” One thing that we didn’t need to learn […]

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Mortgage rates drop below 3% again

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Mortgage rates fluctuated again last week, down 5 basis points to 2.95% after managing to pop back up to 3% the week prior, according to Thursday data from Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. Mortgage rates have been hovering around 3% for over a month now, as macro economic factors left the bond market hesitant over the global […]

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Senate GOP unveils $928 billion infrastructure counteroffer that’s largely funded by Biden stimulus money

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Summary List Placement Senate Republicans on Thursday made a $928 billion infrastructure counteroffer to the White House in a proposal that only modestly increases new federal spending compared to what the Biden administration is seeking to overhaul the economy. GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia has spearheaded the working group through the month. […]

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US weekly jobless claims sink to new COVID-era low of 406,000

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Summary List Placement Filings for unemployment insurance declined last week as businesses slowed layoffs amid reopening. New jobless claims totaled an unadjusted 406,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That comes in below the median estimate of 425,000 from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The reading marks a fourth straight decline and places claims at their […]

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An economic theory called ‘reallocation friction’ may explain why employers are having a hard time finding workers — and why a full recovery could be years away

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Summary List Placement By now you’ve probably heard about the big mystery in the US economy: Restaurants can’t find enough people to hire, even though millions of Americans remain out of work. Republicans blame the government for extending unemployment benefits and eroding the country’s “work ethic.” Democrats point to school and daycare closures that are […]

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Most executives say they want more contract and temp workers. A majority of those workers say that’s not good enough. (UBER, LYFT, DASH, GRUB)

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Summary List Placement Around a quarter of Americans say they work mostly in the gig economy, and 62% of those workers say that they’d rather not, according to a survey published Wednesday by McKinsey and Ipsos. “Gig workers would overwhelmingly prefer permanent employment,” the survey found.  That preference is even stronger among immigrants and workers […]

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The decision to cut $300 federal unemployment benefits in GOP states is ‘tied to politics, not economics,’ JPMorgan says

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Summary List Placement The move to cut federal unemployment benefits in red states is “tied to politics, not economics,” according to a Tuesday note by the economic research team at JPMorgan.  The note refers to two dozen GOP-run states deciding to end their federal unemployment benefits early, leaving 4 million workers set to lose an extra […]

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Fannie Mae taps Evans as next single-family chief

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Fannie Mae now has a clear successor to take the reins of its single-family business following the departure of Andrew Bon Salle in December. The government sponsored entity has named Malloy Evans, the company’s current chief credit officer for single family, to head the division, it said in a statement Wednesday. The appointment of Evans […]

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Lenders pick up the pace in closing mortgages

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The average time to close on a mortgage has decreased for a fourth consecutive month to 51 days, according to a new study from ICE Mortgage Technology. The study, ICE’s Origination Insight Report, also found April to be the second consecutive month of slowdown in share of refinances among total originations, dropping to 56% from […]

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Ocwen to buy $48B MSR package from AmeriHome

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If you have any mortgage servicing rights you’re looking to offload, you may want to give Ocwen Financial a call. A few weeks after striking a deal to buy $14 billion of mortgage servicing rights from Texas Capital Bank, a subsidiary of Ocwen has agreed to buy $48.3 billion of conventional MSR from AmeriHome Mortgage. Ocwen’s subsidiary PHH […]

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The CEO of Coursera, a $6 billion education company, wants to help everyone build the skills to future-proof their careers

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Summary List Placement Late last February, after Japan’s prime minister closed every school in the country due to a novel respiratory infection that beset the region, Jeff Maggioncalda made a prediction. Maggioncalda, the CEO of the online-learning platform Coursera, was on his way to an airport in Texas after visiting Rice University. But before boarding […]

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The pandemic took the homebody economy mainstream — and it’s here to stay

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Summary List Placement Americans are going on a spending spree. In a post-stimulus, increasingly vaccinated world, they’re ready to live like it’s 2019 again. They’re buying dresses, jeans, and crop tops and booking beauty services like mani-pedis and haircuts for their hot vaxx summer. They’re taking public transit, dining at bars and restaurants, and taking flight.  […]

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Biden’s Education Dept. is tackling the big problems with student-loan forgiveness programs but it will take a while

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Summary List Placement The Biden administration is tackling the flaws in the federal student-debt forgiveness programs, but it could take a while to see results. On Monday, the Education Department announced it is beginning the process of issuing new higher education regulations, mainly concerning student debt-forgiveness programs. The first step of the process will be […]

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Cryptocurrencies are for speculators, criminals, and cosplayers. Other than that they’re useless.

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Summary List Placement Cryptocurrencies are for speculators, criminals and cosplayers. Aside from that, they’re useless, and I’m tired of everyone trying to pretend otherwise. I have waited for years for someone to explain to me a decent use case for cryptocurrencies. But throughout the recent fervor over crypto with its huge price boom and subsequent […]

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Secretary Cardona Holds Virtual Roundtable to Discuss the Importance of Providing Pell Grants for Incarcerated Individuals

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This afternoon, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona held a virtual roundtable to showcase the importance of providing Pell Grants for incarcerated individuals by speaking with students and former students who took college courses in prison. This session allowed the Secretary to hear directly from students who have gone through college in prison programs and provided insight […]

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Mortgage applications decrease 4%

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After two straight weeks of increases, mortgage applications dropped 4.2% for the week ending May 21, 2021, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association‘s weekly mortgage applications survey. “Demand is robust throughout the country, but homebuyers continue to be held back by the lack of homes for sale and rapidly increasing home prices,” said Joel Kan, […]

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A McDonald’s in Illinois is so desperate for staff that it’s giving away iPhones to new recruits if they stay for 6 months

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Summary List Placement A McDonald’s restaurant in Illinois that is desperate to attract staff is giving away iPhones to new recruits if they stay for six months.   A viral photo shared by Twitter user @brogawd_ shows a sign placed in the window of a restaurant reading: “Now hiring. Free iPhone.” LMFAO G MCDONALDS IS STARVING […]