MoneyWatch

An official with the Social Security Administration said seniors and others who rely on the benefits program are likely to receive a cost-of-living adjustment “closer to 8%” at the end of 2022 due to the current rate of inflation, which is the highest in four decades.  That increase would represent …

Stocks fell on Wall Street Wednesday with trading remaining choppy all afternoon as investors try to determine how rising interest rates and inflation will impact the economy. The S&P 500 fell 1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 278 points, or 0.8%, to 32,902. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.8%. …

In 2013, the first of more than 200 workers who labored to clean up the nation’s worst coal ash spill filed a suit against the contractor, blaming Jacobs Engineering for illnesses they believe were caused by exposure to heavy metals and radioactive particles in the ash. Nearly a decade later, …

President Joe Biden faced a dilemma on trade in Asia: He couldn’t just rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership that his predecessor had pulled the U.S. out of in 2017. Many related trade deals, regardless of their content, had become politically toxic for U.S. voters, who associated them with job losses. So …

Colorado’s Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a woman who expected to pay about $1,300 for spinal fusion surgery but was billed more than $300,000 by a suburban Denver hospital that allegedly included charges it never disclosed she might be liable for. This week’s ruling in favor of Lisa …

House-hunters across the U.S. are confronting a painful reality: Rising mortgage rates are adding thousands of dollars to the cost of buying a home. In April, average interest rates on a standard 30-year fixed mortgage were nearly 2 percentage points higher than a year ago, according to real estate data …

Many Americans are looking forward to traveling this summer and hunting for good deals. But that’s not how the law of supply and demand usually works. With COVID-19 posing less of a threat, air travel has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels. Hotels are filling up, and vacation rentals are booming. “Demand …

Netflix shares are sinking sharply after the streaming service suffered its first subscriber loss in more than a decade. The company’s customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, the company disclosed Tuesday in releasing its latest earnings report. Netflix’s stock price plunged more than 37% to $219.50 …

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is joining Twitter’s board of directors, a day after disclosing that he owns a 9.2% stake in the social media platform. Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion Twitter Inc. said in a regulatory filing Tuesday that it entered into an agreement with Musk …

Walmart will stop selling cigarettes in some of its 4,700 U.S. locations, the retail giant confirmed on Monday. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the development Monday. It noted some stores in California, Florida, Arkansas and New Mexico were on the list, citing anonymous sources and store …