Avie Schneider

The Biden administration says the federal government needs to do a better job of acknowledging the ways that communities of color are blocked from fair and equal access to housing.

"Today the average Black family has just one-tenth the wealth of the average white family, while the gap between white and Black in home ownership is now larger than it was in 1960," Susan Rice, head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a news briefing Tuesday.

New Zealand has kept its community spread of the coronavirus low by keeping tight border controls, but on Sunday the country of 5 million reported its first suspected community case since November. And officials say it might involve a more transmissible variant of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says letting the science speak on the pandemic got him "into a little bit of trouble" during the Trump administration.

Jaime Harrison is a former U.S. Senate candidate who lost to Republican Lindsey Graham in November, but not before shattering fundraising records. Now Harrison is the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, selected by President Biden.

Clues may come soon as to what caused the crash Saturday of an Indonesian airliner with 62 people on board. Authorities said Sunday that they know the location of the so-called black boxes of the Boeing 737-500 that went down in the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta, the nation's capital.

Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations, the fourth such pact in recent months between Israel and Arab countries in the Middle East and Africa.

In announcing the latest agreement on Thursday, President Trump tweeted: "Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!"

The Minneapolis City Council has voted to shift almost $8 million in police funding to expand other services, including violence prevention and mental health crisis response teams. But, in the face of a veto threat from the mayor, the council also voted to keep its police staffed at current levels, reversing earlier plans to cut officers from the force.

Updated at 8:07 p.m. ET

A company that started as a single air mattress for rent in a San Francisco apartment is now worth $100 billion.

Airbnb made its long-awaited stock market debut on Thursday and more than doubled its offering price.

From afar, it may have appeared as a peculiar time for a lodging company to go public, as the coronavirus continues to devastate the travel and hospitality industry. Wall Street, however, has a different story to tell.

Boeing's 737 Max is making a comeback after two crashes that killed a total of 346 people in late 2018 and early last year. Ireland's Ryanair, a major European carrier, has ordered 75 of the planes, which had been grounded since March 2019, the two companies announced on Thursday.

Here's a stunning stat: Women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate as men.

The burden of parenting and running a household while also working a job during the pandemic has created a pressure cooker environment in many households, and women are bearing the brunt of it.

Updated at 4:14 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 509 points Monday following a report that large global banks were involved in transactions flagged as possible money laundering.

And hopes for another relief measure from Congress flagged as lawmakers focused on the fight over a Supreme Court nomination following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Updated at 1:16 p.m. ET

Apple has hit $2 trillion in market value, the first publicly traded U.S. company to do so.

The iPhone maker first crossed the $1 trillion milestone just two years ago.

This week, Apple and a handful of other tech giants propelled the S&P 500 index to a new record. Apple's stock is up nearly 60% this year.

The U.S. stock market has come a long way in a short time.

The S&P 500 index closed at a record high Tuesday, nearly six months after coronavirus lockdowns that shut down much of the economy sent the markets plunging.

The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are set to testify before a House antitrust subcommittee Wednesday about whether their companies have too much power.

For Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, it will be his first appearance before Congress. He begins his prepared remarks with a personal story, as he often does in public appearances:

Updated at 11:34 a.m. ET

New claims for unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time in four months — since March 28 — as states began reimposing lockdown restrictions in an effort to reverse a surge of coronavirus cases.

More than 1.4 million new claims were filed during the week ending July 18, an increase of more than 100,000 over the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Updated at 12:45 p.m. ET

The dramatic collapse of the U.S. economy from the coronavirus is pummeling America's largest banks, raising new concerns about how much growth is slowing.

Updated at 10:21 a.m. ET

Another 1.5 million people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week, a decline of 58,000.

But the number who are continuing to seek the payments is continuing to fall as workers return to their jobs. The Labor Department said continued claims dipped by 62,000 to 20.5 million.

In the past 13 weeks, since the early days of the coronavirus crisis, new claims have totaled a staggering 45.7 million. New weekly filings peaked at nearly 6.9 million in March and have been dropping ever since.

Updated at 3:36 p.m. ET

The Justice Department is proposing legislation to curtail online platforms' legal protections for the content they carry.

The proposal comes nearly three weeks after President Trump signed an executive order to limit protections for social media companies after Twitter began adding fact checks to some of his tweets.

Updated at 4:05 p.m. ET

U.S. stock markets surged Tuesday after reports that retail sales rebounded strongly in May and that the Trump administration is preparing an infrastructure plan to boost the economy, which has been battered by the coronavirus crisis.

Updated at 4:59 p.m. ET

After opening sharply lower, U.S. stock indexes climbed Monday after the Federal Reserve announced it will begin buying corporate bonds. It was the central bank's latest step to help an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 157 points, or nearly 0.6%, and the broader S&P 500 index rose 0.8%. The Dow was down nearly 600 points shortly after the opening.

Updated at 4:05 p.m. ET

Stock prices rebounded Friday, one day after a punishing drop triggered by fears that the coronavirus cases are increasing in the Sunbelt.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 477 points, a gain of 1.9%. The broader S&P 500 index climbed 1.3%.

A day earlier, the Dow lost 1,861 points, or about 7%, and the S&P 500 dove nearly 6%.

The pain in the job market continues as an additional 1.5 million sought jobless benefits for the first time last week, down 355,000 from the prior week. Continued claims fell by 339,000 to 20.9 million, a sign that more people are returning to work as the economy reopens after pandemic lockdowns.

More than 44 million first-time claims have been filed in the past 12 weeks.

Tens of millions of people are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic, but Amazon says it's willing to keep 125,000 people it hired to deal with the online shopping spike as permanent workers.

The company hired 175,000 temporary workers as people stuck at home because of the pandemic switched to shopping online. Now Amazon says it's offering most of those workers permanent full-time jobs.

Updated at 9:38 a.m. ET

More than 1 in 4 U.S. workers have lost their jobs since the coronavirus crisis shut down much of the economy in March.

Just last week, another 2.1 million people filed for unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's down 323,000 from the previous week but brings the total for the past 10 weeks to 40.8 million, which represents 26% of the civilian labor force in April.

Updated at 5:36 p.m. ET

Tensions between President Trump and Twitter escalated Wednesday as he threatened to "strongly regulate" or shut down social media platforms, which he accused of silencing conservative viewpoints.

Updated at 5:19 p.m. ET

Nearly 3 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week — bringing the total to 36.5 million in the past eight weeks, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The number of people filing claims has been steadily dropping for weeks, since hitting nearly 7 million during one week in March. Still, claims remain at historically high levels, suggesting that the coronavirus isn't done pummeling the U.S. economy.

The private sector slashed a record 20.2 million jobs between March and April — a somber preview of Friday's monthly jobs report. That's up from the 149,000 private jobs cut a month earlier.

Updated at 8:46 a.m. ET

The number of people forced out of work during the coronavirus lockdown continues to soar to historic highs. Another 4.4 million people claimed unemployment benefits last week around the country, the Labor Department said.

That brings the total of jobless claims in just five weeks to more than 26 million people. That's more than all the jobs added in the past 10 years since the Great Recession.

Updated at 4:29 p.m. ET

A severe oversupply continued to hammer oil prices a day after they turned negative for the first time ever. That sign of crashing demand in the global economy sent stocks indexes down again.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 631 points Tuesday, a drop of nearly 2.7%, after tumbling 592 points, or 2.4%, a day earlier. The Dow is down 22% from its record high in February.

Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET

The number of people filing for unemployment climbed by another 5.2 million last week as the toll of the nation's economic dive amid the pandemic continues to mount. That number is down from the revised 6.6 million in the week that ended April 4, the Labor Department said.

But in the past four weeks, a total of 22 million have filed jobless claims — nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession.