U.S. main stock indexes slipped on Wednesday as comments from certain Federal Reserve officials exacerbated worries that the central bank will keep hiking interest rates this year.

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams backed views of a peak rate of 5.00%-5.25%, higher than what markets expect, after Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged on Tuesday that the battle against inflation will take quite a bit of time.

Money market participants are now betting the U.S. central bank’s benchmark rate to rise above 5% in May before peaking to 5.18% by July, levels that officials have backed vociferously.

“I could understand the market being weak … with the Fed funds futures implying more rate hikes moving forward, compared with before last Friday and before yesterday’s (Powell) speech,” Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital Llc, said.

Fed Governor Lisa Cook said the U.S. central bank is not yet done raising rates and even though inflation has shown signs of moderation, the economy is still running too hot.

Comments from the policymakers come after a strong jobs report on Friday that stymied expectations of rate cuts any time this year, and could test the solid start to 2023 for U.S. equities following last year’s battering.

“The market’s view is that the Fed may cut rates, but only by 25 basis points at the end of the year, and the Fed is still signaling they won’t make any cuts this year,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth in Boston.

In a bright spot, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) rose 1.5% after the tech giant said it was revamping its Bing search engine and Edge Web browser with artificial intelligence.

Offsetting Microsoft’s gains was Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), which was down 7% after its much anticipated AI chatbot Bard delivered an incorrect answer in an online advertisement.

At 10:40 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) was down 58.20 points, or 0.17%, at 34,098.49, the S&P 500 (.SPX) was down 21.61 points, or 0.52%, at 4,142.39, and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) was down 109.91 points, or 0.91%, at 12,003.88.

Ten of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors fell, with communications services shares (.SPLRCL) down 3.7%.

President Joe Biden‘s comments at the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening that supported calls to tax corporate share buybacks also weighed on sentiment.

Of all the S&P 500 companies that have reported quarterly earnings, 69% of them have beaten expectations, according to Refinitiv. Still, analysts expect quarterly earnings to decline 2.9%.

Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) slid 1.6% after UK’s antitrust regulator said Microsoft’s purchase of the “Call of Duty” maker raised competition concerns about cloud and console gaming.

Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) rose 0.7% on upbeat earnings expectations for the year.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.86-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 2.05-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.

The S&P index recorded eight new 52-week highs and two new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 56 new highs and 18 new lows.

The debate over who is the NBA’s greatest player of all time may never be settled but some observers could finally be willing to give LeBron James the edge over Michael Jordan after he broke one of the game’s most sacred records this week.

Surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s nearly 40-year-old record as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer on Tuesday is one of the most notable statistical achievements of the modern era and a testament to James’ sustained dominance.

After etching his name in the annals of NBA history as the all-time scoring leader, the Los Angeles Lakers forward made no secret about where he feels he belongs in the debate about the “GOAT” — a label that refers to the Greatest Of All Time.

“For me personally I am always going to take myself against anybody that has ever played this game, but everyone is going to have their favourite, everyone is going to decide who their favourite is,” James said after Tuesday’s game.

“I know what I bring to the table every single night and what I can do out on this floor. I always feel like I am the best to ever play this game but there are so many other great ones and I am happy just to be part of the journey.”

Since James and Jordan played in different eras and had their own version of obstacles to overcome to achieve greatness in their respective careers, finding a consensus on the “GOAT” seems highly unlikely.

The two players’ careers never overlapped as Jordan retired for the third and final time two months before James was taken by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the first overall pick of the 2003 NBA Draft.

Jordan averaged 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds and 5.3 assists in 1,072 regular season games across 15 seasons while James, now in his 20th season, has averaged 27.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.3 assists in 1,410 games during his NBA career.

Those who favour Jordan, who personified greatness on the court, quickly point out that he went a perfect 6-0 in the NBA Finals, leading the Chicago Bulls to two three-peat performances during the 1990s. James has four titles in 10 NBA Finals trips.

Two months ago the NBA even renamed its Most Valuable Player award after Jordan, who won the trophy given to the regular season MVP five times during his Hall of Fame career. James has been named MVP four times.

Perhaps the most compelling argument in favour of James, who may be the most scrutinized player the NBA has seen, is that he has managed to dominate so many different aspects of the game for all of these years.

At 38, James continues to raise the bar when it comes to what experts think is possible for an elder statesman in a league where the average age at the start of the 2022-23 season was 26-years-old.

When it comes to longevity, James holds a clear advantage and the cushion he holds over Jordan in total career points, assists and rebounds will only widen as he has shown no signs of slowing down.

“It’s tremendous that he can still play like this in Year 20. His athleticism is incredible, and I’m happy for him,” Dallas Mavericks great Dirk Nowitzki said in December. “I always say Michael Jordan is the GOAT. But … I’m sort of running out of arguments for Michael.”

Former NBA coach George Karl, whose teams went up against both Jordan and James, also weighed into the GOAT debate last month. Karl suggested Jordan would have been even more dominant in today’s game amid a league-wide trend in favour of offense.

“Anyone who is debating Michael’s GOAT status doesn’t realize he would average a 40 PPG triple double in the modern game!” Karl, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, wrote on Twitter.

JANDARIS, Syria (Reuters) – Lying bandaged in a makeshift shelter with his surviving infant daughter, Abdulrahman Ali al-Mahmoud laments the loss of his wife and other baby girl after their house in Syria’s Jandaris was flattened in Monday’s earthquake.

“My young daughter died in my arms and my wife died next to me,” said Mahmoud, his arm in a sling and his face still marked from the debris that fell as the family house collapsed, killing his wife Sahar.

Mahmoud and his other daughter, a toddler who sat near him in a pink jacket wiping her eyes, were rescued by his wife’s brother Salah al-Haji al-Akab, who pulled them out along with the bodies of his sister and infant niece.

Mahmoud and his daughter are now in a temporary shelter, held up with sticks and with blankets for walls. He took his daughter’s body to the hospital, but in the chaos he does not know who buried her or where.

“We were asking. We wanted to bury her next to her mother. No one was answering,” he said, his voice shaking.

Just a few miles from the border with Turkey, Jandaris suffered extensive damage from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, with drone footage showing many of its buildings collapsed and others with caved-in walls or roofs.

“It feels like a nightmare that we woke up from and found everything in ruins,” said Akab, standing on the immense pile of rubble that was once Mahmoud’s home.

Overnight, rescue workers had struggled in the darkness, guided by their headlamps and the beams from mechanical diggers as they worked to save survivors from the wreckage of Jandaris.

Yet because Jandaris is located in a rebel-held region of northwest Syria that no outside aid has reached, battered survivors of the earthquake have been left more vulnerable to the bitter winter cold.

A senior U.N. aid official said on Wednesday that cross-border relief work into northwestern Syria could resume on Thursday.

Northwest Syria is home to thousands of Syrians from other parts of the country who fled because of fighting or fear of reprisals after the government recaptured rebel-held areas elsewhere in the country.

Mahmoud, Akab and their family were originally from the eastern city of Deir al-Zor but had relocated to Jandaris. Including his dead wife and daughter, Mahmoud lost 20 family members in the earthquake, he said.

“My friends and the people I was raised with, everyone is gone. Who will make up for them? How do I build a whole new life?” he said.

Mahmoud had gone to the bathroom when the earthquake struck and ran back inside to get his family but the house collapsed around them. His brother-in-law Akab, who lived nearby, came and heard them shouting.

“We are going to be living in a different reality. Our friends are gone. All our neighbours are gone. I don’t think we want to live anymore,” Akab said as he searched in the rubble of the collapsed building for any more sign of survivors.

At the cemetery, diggers had scratched out long trenches in the ground to bury the lines of bodies lying wrapped in white shrouds.

As a body was passed down into a grave where Mahmoud’s family was buried, a man intoned “there is no God but God”.

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The White House said on Wednesday that a blog post by a U.S. investigative journalist alleging the United States was behind explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines “is utterly false and complete fiction.”

Reuters has not corroborated the report, published by U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on his blog.

What happened: The mainstream media published some ridiculous headlines about President Joe Biden’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon he allowed to traverse the continental United States before the military finally shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean.

• Yahoo! News: “Republicans pounce on Biden over appearance of Chinese spy balloon”

• ABC News: “Republicans paint Biden as soft on China as surveillance balloon soars over US”

(Yes, the ABC News headline is real. We’re not making this up.)

Why it matters: This is how the mainstream media always cover stories that reflect poorly on Democratic politicians. They’d rather not cover the scandal itself, so they skip ahead and frame the story in terms of the Republican response while implying that any GOP criticism is overblown or in bad faith.

Where it’s headed: There are presumably no depths to which mainstream journalists are unwilling to stoop when it comes to protecting their allies in the Democratic Party, no scandal egregious enough to warrant fair and balanced coverage. Their ability to demand the American public’s respect while conducting themselves in such an unserious fashion is almost impressive.

Here are a few examples of how the media might cover future scandals using the “Republicans pounce” framing, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis:

The post ANALYSIS: These ‘Republicans Pounce’ Headlines Are Out of Control appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Courtroom sketch of Sam Bankman-Fried with his attorneys at his arraignment hearing in December.

Jane Rosenberg/Reuters

• Sam Bankman-Fried appealed a judge’s decision to release the names of his bail guarantors.
• Besides his parents, two as-yet-unidentified people cosigned the $250 million bail bond to get the FTX founder released from jail. 
• Bankman-Fried’s attorneys argued the potential of physical threats were reasons to keep their identities sealed.

Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t want the public to know the names of the wealthy backers who helped bail him out of jail while he awaits trial.

Attorneys for the FTX founder appealed a judge’s decision to reveal the two non-parental cosigners of his $250 million bail bond, according to a court filing on Tuesday.

This comes a week after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in favor of a joint petition by multiple media companies seeking the names of the bail guarantors. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Bloomberg, along with a slew of other newsrooms, have all filed a suit to get the court to unseal the names. 

“The public’s interest in this matter cannot be overstated,” a January 12 filing reads. “Mr. Bankman-Fried stands accused of perpetrating one of the largest financial frauds in history.”

Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Mark Cohen previously argued that revealing the cosigners names could result in physical threats for the two individuals, similar to what Bankman-Fried’s parents have faced.

“In recent weeks, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents have become the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats,” Cohen said last month. “Among other things, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents have received a steady stream of threatening correspondence, including communications expressing a desire that they suffer physical harm.”

Federal prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of defrauding investors. The eight criminal charges he faces, including wire fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations, carry a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Google’s new maps features will include a “very fast charging filter” to help EVs charge in a hurry, Google Geo head Chris Phillips said.

Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

• Google maps will now help electric vehicles find charging stations more quickly.
•  Its new features will deploy artificial intelligence to assist EV drivers looking to power up.
• A “very fast charging filter” can help EVs charge in a hurry, Google Geo head Chris Phillips said.

Google Maps will soon have AI-driven features to help electric vehicles power up quickly. 

At a Google presentation in Paris on Wednesday, the head of the company’s maps division, Chris Phillips, said that upgrades to its maps tool will cater to electric vehicle drivers looking to charge their vehicles more easily. 

The advanced features will use artificial intelligence to find nearby charging stations, including stores that have them. They will also include a “new very fast charging filter” that he said can help the car power up and get going again “in less than 40 minutes.” 

“As we’re seeing more drivers embrace electric vehicles, we’re launching new maps features for EVs with Google built in, to make sure you have enough charge no matter where you’re headed,”  Phillips said. “We’ll use AI to suggest the best charging stop.”

The new feature, which will be available in coming months for cars with Google built in, could help address driving range anxiety and facilitate EV adoption.

While EV range continues to improve, charging infrastructure still poses a major hurdle for electric-vehicle adoption. Insider’s Dominick Reuter previously reported that in 2021, one in five California EV owners had switched back to gas cars because charging represented too much of a “hassle.”

While many EV drivers charge their vehicles at home, longer drives necessitate careful organization. EV drivers have told Insider in the past that taking long trips with an electric car requires planning charging pit stops down to the mile, and accounting for broken and slow chargers. Last year, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal said a lack of EV charging sites and accurate charging maps left her spending more time waiting for her car to charge then sleeping during a 2,000-mile road trip.

Google’s “very fast charging filter” could also help other EV companies compete with Tesla’s Supercharger network, which accounts for the majority of fast-charging stations in the US.

The Google presentation followed Microsoft’s event on Tuesday, in which it unveiled its “new Bing” search engine powered by OpenAI’s technology. Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi described it as a new “large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT.”

The announcement marked what is widely seen as a battle between the tech giants to leverage artificial intelligence, like the generative AI tool ChatGPT, to boost search and other offerings. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

• Microsoft stock could jump as its adds AI features to its Bing and Edge search products, Jefferies said. 
• The firm raised its price target for the tech giant to $310 from $275 a share and reiterated its buy rating. 
• Microsoft’s “new Bing” was created with OpenAI, the research lab behind the popular ChatGPT tool. 

Microsoft’s overhaul of its search engines to incorporate AI chatbot features – in a race set off by ChatGPT –  will provide a long-term lift for its stock, Jefferies said in driving up its price target on the Silicon Valley stalwart. 

Microsoft unveiled its “new Bing” on Tuesday that was created with OpenAI, the company behind the popular ChatGPT tool. Microsoft said its chat extension that can help users with tasks such as planning trips and shopping. Microsoft said its Edge web browser will have a chat feature allowing users to ask questions. 

Jefferies in a note released Wednesday raised its 12-month price target to $310 from $275 per share, indicating it expects Microsoft shares to rise 16% from Tuesday’s close at $267.56. Microsoft shares rose 3% during Wednesday trade. 

“Search improvements will act as a tailwind to ad [revenue long-term], but it will take time to bring users back to Bing and they will need a crowbar to pry away advertisers from Google,” Jefferies equity analyst Brett Thill said in a note reiterating its buy rating on Microsoft. 

“We view these updates as the tip of the iceberg for MSFT’s AI capabilities, with the largest opportunity in enterprise use cases,” said Thill.  

Microsoft is “reviving Bing” as it sees a big opportunity in the digital advertising market, the analyst said. The market is valued at $570 billion in 2022 and search represents about 40% of that. 

“Despite the higher cost to serve a GPT-powered answer, MSFT stated incremental margins are high. While an exciting opportunity, the move feels early innings with true revenue inflection likely on an extended timeframe,” said Thill. 

Microsoft recently said it would invest billions of dollars into OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT-like tools into its products including Excel, Powerpoint and search. 

Jefferies said it would temper near-term revenue expectations stemming from Microsoft’s  product updates as it foresees an “extended monetization timeline” while the company builds the ecosystem and ramps ad spending. 

The “more exciting AI opportunity lies within enterprise, unlocking potential through Power Apps, Teams, and GitHub,” said Thill. Meanwhile, “we would not expect GOOGL to stand still as it is also accelerating its push to embed more AI in Google search,” he said. 

This week, Google introduced Bard, with CEO Sundar Pichai describing it as “an experimental conversational AI service”. Bank of America said Google is ready for ‘battle’ in the AI-services business. 

“It’s a new day in search, it’s a new paradigm for search,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at his company’s event Tuesday. Search is the “largest software category on planet Earth,” he said.

 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

• Kevin McCarthy has promised that cuts to Medicare and Social Security won’t be part of a debt limit deal.
• AOC told The Independent she’s concerned they might still be cut given lack of details on GOP spending cuts.
• During the State of the Union address, Republicans heckled Biden for saying they want to cut the programs.

AOC is worried that GOP promises to leave Medicare and Social Security alone might not hold up. 

As debt limit negotiations have been heating up, Republican lawmakers have expressed their intent to use raising the debt limit — and keeping the US on top of paying its bills — as leverage to achieve their own priorities, particularly spending cuts. 

And while some Republicans previously expressed a desire to cut Medicare and Social Security, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy made clear last month that cuts to those programs are “off the table.” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however, isn’t convinced.

“Kevin McCarthy says a lot of things, but the math does not add up in what he’s talking about,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent.

“He cannot both say, we’re going to balance the budget, we’re not going to touch any of the Trump tax cuts, and we’re also not going to cut any critical services,” she continued. “The math does not work in Kevin McCarthy’s favor.”

The day before Biden’s State of the Union, McCarthy delivered remarks of his own on negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, reiterating that “cuts to to Medicare and Social Security are off the table” and saying that “it’s time for Washington to change its behavior and act like adults.”

“First, we will continue to sit down and negotiate – just as President Biden did in the past,” McCarthy said. “Second, we must commit to finding common ground on a responsible debt limit increase. Finding compromise is exactly how governing in America is supposed to work – and exactly what the American people voted for just three months ago.”

Still, McCarthy did not specify what exactly he wants to cut, raising questions on the GOP’s plans to reach a debt limit deal. Social Security and Medicare also took a spotlight during the State of the Union — when Biden made a remark accusing Republicans of wanting to cut the two programs, he was heckled by some lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who repeatedly called him a “liar.”

But Biden went back and forth with Republicans in real time during his speech, saying “Social Security and its bookend, Medicare, are off the books now, right?” And when both parties applauded leaving cuts to the programs off the table, Biden declared, “We have unanimity!”

—MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 8, 2023

Some Republicans are not quite ready to take Medicare and Social Security out of the conversation. They’ve introduced legislation that would create commissions to consider the solvency of Social Security and Medicare as part of a debt limit deal, and GOP Rep. Kevin Hern told Bloomberg he “wouldn’t think it’d be off the table.”

But the White House slammed that idea, with spokesperson Andrew Bates telling Bloomberg after it was reported that “the American people want more jobs and lower costs, not a death panel for Medicare and Social Security.”

“Meanwhile, they’re voting to worsen the deficit with tax welfare for the rich and big corporations,” Bates said. “Think about that: they’re targeting the Medicare and Social Security benefits that middle class families pay in to earn their whole lives, then turning around and giving tax handouts to big corporations.”