US Business

US central bankers have been hammering home a single message: Interest rates will rise until inflation begins to come down. But financial markets keep hoping to hear a different tune, one indicating the pace of rate hikes will slow.

All eyes will be on this week’s annual gathering of policymakers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to hear Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell explain his stance — again — with market watchers hoping to get something more to their liking.

The Fed could be a victim of its own success. 

After keeping the benchmark borrowing rate at zero throughout the pandemic, the steep spike in prices, which surged to a 40-year high following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prompted the central bank to take aggressive action.

In the battle to contain red-hot inflation, which topped nine percent in June, the Fed has hiked rates four times, including massive, three-quarter point increases in June and July — steep moves unheard of since the early 1980s.

But in recent weeks signs of easing price pressures and a slowing economy, along with falling energy costs and indications global supply chain snarls have lessened, caused financial markets to become optimistic the Fed will dial back or even pause rate increases — and even begin to cut next year.

Stocks on Wall Street have risen for four straight weeks, despite a string of officials repeating the message that rates will continue to rise, even though annual inflation slowed in July as oil prices fell.

While the annual gathering often becomes a place for global central bankers to signal shifting policy, Powell is expected to repeat that message Friday — though he may acknowledge that a slowdown will come later in the year.

“It does seem like what we’ve heard from Powell so far suggests there’s quite a high bar for them to transition from aggressive hikes” to a slower pace of 25 basis point steps, said Jonathan Millar of Barclays.

Millar, who served as a Fed economist and forecaster under four central bank chiefs, told AFP that markets are looking further ahead, anticipating the rate hikes will be successful in slowing inflation.

But for policymakers “One thing they definitely want to communicate is that they remain very much focused on issues with price stability and that they will react very cautiously to any signs of improvements in the inflation data.”

That means indications prices are coming down more broadly, not just because of falling oil.

Managing the market’s expectations “is really job one,” Millar said. “They have to enforce that credibility.”

But like other economists he believes the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) at its September meeting will step down to a 0.5 percentage point increase, taking the range of the key lending rate up to 2.75 to 3.0 percent, to be followed up with quarter-point hikes in November and December

– Walking a narrow line –

Kathy Bostjancic of Oxford Economics said the dilemma for Powell is to recognize the progress towards achieving a soft landing — bringing inflation back down towards the two percent target, without derailing economic growth — while confirming the Fed’s resolve.

He “continues to have to walk kind of a narrow line,” she told AFP. “You don’t want to be too pessimistic.”

And with housing prices and sales cooling from their torrid pace along with other encouraging data “he has the wind at his back.”

But she said, “The message he really has to give is that we’re still going to be looking to raise rates to restrictive level to really make sure inflation is still our number one priority.”

The annual monetary policy symposium hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank runs August 25-27. It often is a place for officials from around the world to come to discuss policy changes in the works, but so far no major global central bank chief has confirmed they speak at the event other than Powell.

Eccentric former NBA star Dennis Rodman is planning a trip to Russia in an effort to seek the release of imprisoned WNBA player Brittney Griner, NBC News reported on Sunday.

The network quoted Rodman as saying that he was hoping to fly to Russia this week in an attempt to help basketball superstar Griner, who was sentenced to nine years in jail by a Moscow court earlier this month on a drug charge.

“I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl,” Rodman told NBC. “I’m trying to go this week.”

No further details were provided by Rodman, who was speaking at a restaurant in Washington where he was attending a sports apparel convention, according to NBC.

A senior official for US President Joe Biden’s administration said in a statement to AFP, “it is public information that the Administration has made a significant offer to the Russians and anything other than negotiating further through the established channel is likely to complicate and hinder release efforts.”

Rodman, 61, a five-time former NBA champion, has a record of unorthodox forays into geopolitics.

He has formed a relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un over the past decade, and has made several trips to the reclusive state. He traveled to Singapore in 2018 when Kim famously met former US President Donald Trump.

Rodman has also spoken approvingly of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past. In 2014 he described Putin as “actually cool” after meeting the Russian leader in Moscow.

Two-time Olympic basketball gold medalist and Women’s NBA champion Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possessing vape cartridges with a small amount of cannabis oil.

The 31-year-old, who was in Russia to play for the professional Yekaterinburg team during her off-season from the Phoenix Mercury, was charged with smuggling narcotics and was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony in early August.

Griner pleaded guilty to the charges, but said she did not intend to use the banned substance in Russia.

Since her arrest, Moscow and Washington have been in talks about a potential prisoner exchange, despite soaring tensions over Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Computer-animated martial arts film “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero,” the 21st in the Japanese franchise, seized control of the North American box office this weekend with an estimated take of $20.1 million, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.

That impressive result for the film from Crunchyroll — which called it the best global opening ever for an anime movie — proved a bright spot in a tepid August, easily outshining the $11.6 million take of another new release, Universal’s “Beast.” 

“This is another outstanding Crunchyroll anime opening,” said analyst David A Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. He said Crunchyroll, 95 percent owned by Sony, now “dominates the genre.”

Gross rated “Beast,” meantime, as having only a “fair opening” for the Friday-through-Sunday period — at least “for an action adventure film featuring a beast.”

The beast, in this case, is a huge rogue lion that pursues a recently widowed man (Idris Elba) and his daughters when they go on safari. Iceland’s Baltasar Kormakur directs.

Sony’s action-thriller “Bullet Train,” which topped the box office the last two weekends, slid to third at $8 million. Brad Pitt plays a paid assassin on a train seemingly loaded with them.

In fourth was the still high-flying “Top Gun: Maverick,” which took in a substantial $5.9 million in its 13th week out. The Tom Cruise vehicle has pulled in $683 million domestically and $703 million overseas. 

And in fifth, down three spots from last weekend, was Warner Bros.’s animation “DC League of Super-Pets,” at $5.8 million. 

August is always slow at the box office, “but with no big releases during the last two weeks, business has dropped more than normal, to roughly -40 percent below August 2019,” Gross said, “and that’s how it will continue until October.”

Rounding out the weekend’s top 10 were:

“Thor: Love and Thunder” ($4 million)

“Nope” ($3.6 million)

“Minions: The Rise of Gru” ($3.5 million)

“Where the Crawdads Sing” ($3.2 million)

“Bodies Bodies Bodies” ($2.4 million)

US First Lady Jill Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 twice and will come out of isolation Sunday, the White House said.

The 71-year-old wife of President Joe Biden tested positive on August 16, nearly two weeks after her husband contracted the virus for a second time. 

She is double vaccinated and twice boosted, and experienced mild symptoms. She was prescribed a course of the oral antiviral pill Paxlovid.

“After isolating for five days and receiving negative results from two consecutive COVID-19 tests, the First Lady will depart South Carolina later today for Delaware,” her communications director Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement. 

Jill Biden had tested positive while on holiday in South Carolina, where she stayed at a private residence.

President Biden, who turns 80 in November, has recently recovered from two separate bouts of the coronavirus.

He first tested positive on July 21 and continued to carry out his duties while isolating at the White House.

After four days of negative tests he again received a positive result on July 30 and entered isolation a second time, before coming out, having recovered fully, on August 7.

Celebrity couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck tied the knot Saturday — for the second time in just over a month — in a lavish ceremony at the “Good Will Hunting” star’s estate, US media reported.

The A-list lovebirds already wed in Las Vegas in mid-July, but made it official again, this time in front of friends and family at Affleck’s 87-acre (35-hectare) waterfront compound in the southeastern US state of Georgia.

Among the Hollywood types in attendance at the three-day affair were longtime Affleck pal Matt Damon and director Kevin Smith, People magazine reported.

Guests wore all-white while Lopez donned a Ralph Lauren dress made in Italy, according to Fox News.

Images posted by celebrity gossip site TMZ ahead of the wedding showed dinner seating being arranged on what appeared to be a large, covered dock, with a substantial barge for pyrotechnics floating nearby.

The pair — he is 50 and she is 53 — first met on the set of the widely panned movie “Gigli” in 2002.

They became a media sensation as they dated but postponed their planned 2003 nuptials, then announced their relationship was over in early 2004.

“Bennifer” — the couple’s public nickname from their first highly publicized relationship — set the internet alight last year when photos of them together again began circulating. 

Lopez and Affleck announced their engagement in April.

Lopez posted a video of herself appearing emotional and admiring a green ring in her newsletter, “On The JLo.” US media reported that the ring was an emerald-cut pale green diamond.

This is the fourth marriage for Lopez and the second for Affleck.

Lopez discussed her renewed relationship with Affleck in an interview with People in February.

“It’s a beautiful love story that we got a second chance,” she said.

The girls can’t hide their excitement as they’re brought out to the racing arena.

“Black Tail” is up first, taking a few seconds to sniff her surroundings before placing her paw on a lever and zooming away. 

After storming to the finish line, she devours a well-earned Froot Loop hanging on a “treat tree.”

Black Tail is one of the University of Richmond’s rat drivers — a group that first dazzled the world with their ability to operate tiny cars back in 2019. 

Now, the rodents serve as ambassadors for the school’s Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory, headed by Professor Kelly Lambert.

“It gets people’s attention about how clever and teachable these animals are,” explained Lambert, who has to balance her affection for the furry speedsters with the need for scientific detachment — naming them only by the Sharpie colors that mark their tails.

The idea of racing rodents started out as a playful challenge from a colleague. 

But far from being a novelty act, the animals are part of a boundary-pushing project exploring the ways in which environmental enrichment sculpts the brain — and could in turn hold potential for solving human mental health challenges.

For Lambert, one of the great failings of modern medicine has been its inability to cure mental illness through drugs, even as pharmaceutical companies have reaped in huge profits.

These pharmaceutical approaches have faced increasing scrutiny since a landmark study published in July questioned the theory that chemical imbalances, especially a lack of serotonin, cause depression.

– Froots of their labor –

Instead, Lambert sees behavior therapy as the key to treating the mind, which is where studying fellow mammals comes in.

“Our brains are changing, from the womb to the tomb,” she said. “If we have some type of engaging life, this is probably important and related to depression.” 

A previous experiment of hers had split rats into groups of “workers,” who were assigned an effort-based reward task of digging through dirt mounds for a Froot Loop — or a control group of “trust fund” rats that were simply handed over treats.

When challenged with stressful tasks, the worker rats persisted longer than those conditioned to remain in a state of what psychologists call “learned helplessness.”

And when tasked with swimming, the worker rats showed greater emotional resilience, as shown by a higher ratio of the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone to cortisol in their droppings. 

Rats that learned to drive also had biomarkers of greater resilience and lowered stress — which Lambert suggests might be linked to the satisfaction of acquiring a new skill, like a human mastering a new piano piece.

“They make pathways that they take over and over again in the wild, and we wanted to see if they could continue to have this great navigational skill in a vehicle,” explained research lab specialist Olivia Harding.

Training wasn’t simple: the team first tried having the rats nudge the driving control with their snouts, before finding the animals preferred to stand on their hind legs and use their front paws.

Early car models required the rats to touch wiring placed in the front, left or right of the car, completing a mild electric circuit that corresponded to movement direction. 

Now, though, they get around in fancier rides with levers designed by a roboticist. 

Even when their cars were placed in an unfamiliar spot, pointed away from the treat, the rats learned to turn their vehicles and navigate toward the reward, indicating advanced cognitive processing at work.

Today’s driving ladies, Black Tail and Multicolored Tail, show clear signs of “anticipatory” behavior when humans enter the room, pacing back and forth and trying to climb their walls.

However, just like people, not all rats have similar interests: while certain individuals seemed eager to drive just for the fun of it, others did so just for treats, while still others couldn’t be coaxed into participating at all.

– Into the wild –

Female rats in particular were long ignored by science, because earlier generations of researchers thought their four-day estrous cycles muddied research results.

This potentially deprived scientists of female-specific insights, a trend Lambert has been adamant to reverse in her experiments — and is also now a required condition for federal grants.

Lambert recognized early in her career that studying rats living “non-enriched” lives inside cages without obstacle courses and activities was of limited use, akin to studying humans in solitary confinement.

In her driving study, rats raised in enriched cages fared far better at driving tasks.

Her most recent paper focused on differences between lab rats and those caught in the wild — finding the latter had larger brains, more brain cells, larger spleens to fight disease, and much higher stress levels than their captive cousins.

“It kind of blows my mind” that there had been so little interest in understanding these differences, given their possible impact on human medicine, she said.

It also raises an intriguing philosophical question: are we more like the caged lab rats, the enriched-setting lab rats, or the wild rats?

“I’m feeling a little bit closer to the provisioned lab rat rather than the wild rat,” muses Lambert.

But the wild rats, who have to scavenge for food and avoid predators every day of their lives — much like our own ancestors — might have something to teach us about mental resilience.

When Emily Sack saw a young man leap at Salman Rushdie on the stage of a cultural center in western New York state, it happened so suddenly that she barely realized she was witnessing an attack on the author’s life.

Like many other residents of the Chautauqua Institution — a retreat that hosts educational and cultural programs in a huge park dotted with quaint colonial homes and perched on the shores of gorgeous Lake Chautauqua — her memory of the attack is a bit of a blur.

And yet, she was there on August 12 in the open-air amphitheater for a conference featuring Rushdie when police say Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey with roots in Lebanon, launched the attack that shocked much of the world.

“It was so fast,” the woman in her eighties told AFP. “You know, it was almost over before it began.”

Afterward, the Chautauqua Institution canceled its events for the rest of the day. 

“Everybody here was totally bummed out, including me,” Sack said, tears in her eyes. 

– Reputation for tolerance –

The Chautauqua Institution presents itself as a beacon of diversity, tolerance and cultural, communal and religious life in the northern United States.

Founded in 1874 by two Methodist clergy, the institution became a celebrated venue for contemplative activities and conferences in the arts, education and religion.

The center’s website says it is “dedicated to exploring the best in humanity.”

US president Franklin Roosevelt delivered a famed speech there in 1936, just a few years before the outbreak of World War II, offering “every nation of the world the handclasp of the good neighbor.”

The non-profit Chautauqua Institution operates with the support of its members and the 100,000 — mostly older — visitors who attend its summer festival. 

Residents and visitors stroll or ride bikes across its verdant grounds through a village-like community that features its own streets and homes, magnificently maintained gardens and even its own police department and postal service.

“Indeed, it was a shock to our entire community, and I think the entire region and anyone who knows Chautauqua Institution,” said Emily Morris, the center’s senior vice president, fighting back sobs. 

“We’ve been around for almost 150 years and have never had anything like this happen.”

Resident David Wilson said: “It’s a shame, and unfortunately I think it’s emblematic of what’s going on all over the world. A shame it happened here.” 

– Security in question –

For most people in this peaceful and scenic area — including county seat Mayville, where Matar appeared in court on Thursday for a hearing on charges of assault and attempted murder — no one expected an attack that would stun the world.

Prosecutor Jason Schmidt is building the case over the assault on Rushdie, who has lived since 1989 under an Iranian threat of death over his book “The Satanic Verses.” 

But Schmidt acknowledged to the press that his office lacked the resources to handle such a case, which is also being probed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   

Sack had never imagined such a thing could happen in Chautauqua. 

“I hadn’t thought about it before,” she said. “But you know, it happens all over the world. Well, why not here? I mean, horrible as it is.” 

Barbara Warner, a retired Chautauqua resident also in her 80s, agreed. 

“Unfortunately, these things are happening in lots of different places in the country,” she said.

Wilson called the attack “quite a shock,” but said he feels no less safe, as the institution continues its remaining lineup of summer activities.

The center has been criticized in US media for the apparent lack of security measures for someone as obvious a potential target as Rushdie, who is slowly recovering from his wounds in a hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Morris, the Chautauqua vice president, said the center had deployed security measures around the amphitheater, including metal detectors and a ban on bags.

Guards now visibly patrol around the structure, with strict controls at entry points.

Security around Rushdie had grown less stringent during his 20 years living in the United States. 

But Morris said the institution “would not have proceeded if we didn’t think we had a plan appropriate to that event.”

“And we’re taking a very close look at that.”