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By KEN SWEET

NEW YORK (AP) — All the major banks passed the Federal Reserve’s annual “stress tests” of the financial system, the central bank said Friday, but the test conducted by the central bank was notably less vigorous than it had been in previous years.

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All 22 banks tested this year would have remained solvent and above the minimum thresholds to continue to operate, the Fed said, despite absorbing roughly $550 billion in theoretical losses. In the Fed’s scenario, there would be less of a rise in unemployment, less of a severe economic contraction, less of a drop in commercial real estate prices, less of a drop in housing prices, among other metrics compared to what they tested in 2024. read more

A federal judge has upheld a ruling directing OpenAI to preserve logs and data slated for deletion after news outlets including the New York Daily News suing the technology giant accused the company of hiding evidence of copyright infringement.

The new ruling, issued Thursday in Manhattan Federal Court, denied the company’s objection to an earlier court order directing OpenAI to keep any data used to train its artificial intelligence bots — logs which plaintiffs say may contain details of widespread content piracy.

OpenAI executives have maintained that they are merely safeguarding users’ privacy by objecting to any data retention request or order.

But lawyers for the plaintiffs said the privacy argument is nothing more than a distraction.

“This is like a magician trying to misdirect the public’s attention,” said Steven Lieberman, a lawyer representing the News and several other media outlets.

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The stream of haunted houses for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights continues to trickle out, and Friday’s announcement sounds like a cool relief for folks living through another Florida summer. The maze, the seventh announced for the 2025 event, is called Galkn: Monsters of the North, and it looks cool, in the literal way.

“In a remote northern village, a wicked being rises from the dead, bringing a horde of monsters and demons from the fjords to wreak havoc on the townspeople.,” reads a post on Universal Orlando‘s social media platforms. “You’ll face icy, horned, winged and wolfish fiends that gradually merge into one giant horror. Then you’ll try to escape the belly of the beast.”

It’s the fifth (and final) original house announced within a week for HHN, which begins at Universal Studios Florida theme park on Aug. 19.

Universal Horror Unleashed picks Chicago for 2nd site

Previously announced originals include Grave of the Flesh (featuring flesh-eaters); Dolls: Let’s Play Dead (created by twisted little girl); Hatchet and Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters (spawn of Sinister Sinema 2); and El Artista: A Spanish Haunting (spooky paintings). read more

By KEN SWEET, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Senate Republicans have moved to cut the funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by roughly half, as part of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is likely to lead to hundreds of job cuts at the nation’s financial watchdog agency.

It would be a major blow to the CFPB, which was created after the 2008 financial crisis to police potential bad actors in the financial services industry, and it would be a win for the GOP, who have largely wanted to make the CFPB go away since its creation.

The CFPB is funded through the Federal Reserve, not the Congressional appropriations process. But in the latest version of the bill to come out of the Senate Banking Committee, the CFPB’s funding would be cut from 12% of the Federal Reserve’s profits to 6.5% of the central bank’s profits.

The CFPB requests its annual budget from the Fed every year, effectively as a line of credit from the central bank. It has never needed the entire 12% of the Fed’s profits, but it has come close in previous years to using much of what the Fed would allocate to it. For example, last year the CFPB requested $762.9 million from the Fed, which was close to the transfer cap of $785.4 million. read more

By CORA LEWIS

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of millions of ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ loans will soon affect credit scores for millions of Americans who use the loans to buy clothing, furniture, concert tickets, and takeout.

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  Big banks all pass the Federal Reserve’s stress tests, but the tests were less vigorous this year

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Scoring company FICO said Monday that it is rolling out a new model that factors the short-term loans into their consumer scores. A majority of lenders use FICO scores to determine a borrower’s credit worthiness. Previously, the loans had been excluded, though Buy Now, Pay Later company Affirm began voluntarily reporting pay-in-four loans to Experian, a separate credit bureau, in April. read more