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Federal Reserve sees progress on inflation but envisions just one rate cut this year

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials said Wednesday that inflation has fallen further toward their target level in recent months but signaled that they expect to cut their benchmark interest rate just once this year. The policymakers’ forecast for one rate cut was down from their previous projection of three cuts, because inflation, despite having cooled in the past two months, remains persistently above their target level. The scaled-back estimate for rate cuts came as something of a surprise, given that the government reported earlier Wednesday that consumer inflation ...

Alzheimer’s drug that can slow disease gets backing from FDA advisers

WASHINGTON (AP) — A closely watched Alzheimer’s drug from Eli Lilly won the backing of federal health advisers on Monday, setting the stage for the treatment’s expected approval for people with mild dementia caused by the brain-robbing disease. Food and Drug Administration advisers voted unanimously that the drug’s ability to modestly slow the disease outweighs its risks, including side effects like brain swelling and bleeding that will have to be monitored. “I thought the evidence was very strong in the trial showing the effectiveness of the drug,” said panel member Dean ...

AI ‘gold rush’ for chatbot training data could run out of human-written text

(AP) — Artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT could soon run out of what keeps making them smarter — the tens of trillions of words people have written and shared online. A new study released Thursday by research group Epoch AI projects that tech companies will exhaust the supply of publicly available training data for AI language models by roughly the turn of the decade -- sometime between 2026 and 2032. Comparing it to a “literal gold rush” that depletes finite natural resources, Tamay Besiroglu, an author of the study, said the AI field might face challenges in ...

IRS decides people who got money from Norfolk Southern after Ohio derailment won’t be taxed on it

Most people who received money from Norfolk Southern in the wake of last year’s fiery train derailment in eastern Ohio won’t have to pay taxes on millions of dollars in aid payments after all. The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday that it had decided that most of the payments people who live near East Palestine, Ohio, received to help them pay for temporary housing or replace their belongings aren’t taxable because the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment that forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes qualified as “an event of a catastrophic nature.” The railroad ...