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Home prices see biggest spike in 6 years in September

People walk into a house for sale in Floral Park, Nassau County, New York, on Sept. 6, 2020.

Wang Ying | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Covid-induced demand from homebuyers over the summer caused an exceptionally strong spike in home prices.

Values jumped 7% annually in September, up from a 5.8% annual gain in August, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index. That is the largest annual gain since September 2014. Prices are now nearly 23% higher than their last peak in 2006.

The 10-City Composite was up 6.2% year over year, up from 4.9% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a 6.6% gain, up from 5.3% in the previous month. There was no reading for Detroit, due to data collection issues resulting from the pandemic.

This index is a three-month running average, so it represents prices from July through September, when

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Dow crests 30,000 points on vaccine hopes, Biden transition

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 30,000 points for the first time Tuesday as progress in the development of coronavirus vaccines and news that the transition of power in the U.S. to President-elect Joe Biden will finally begin kept investors in a buying mood.

Traders were also encouraged to see that Biden had selected Janet Yellen, a widely respected former Federal Reserve chair, as treasury secretary. The Dow rose more than 450 points, or 1.5%, to cross the milestone. The S&P 500 index, which has a far greater impact on 401(k) accounts than the Dow, rose 1.6%, climbing to its own all-time high.

The gains extend a monthlong market rally driven by growing optimism that development of coronavirus vaccines and treatments will loosen the pandemic’s stranglehold on the economy. They also mark a rapid climb for the Dow from its March 23 low of just under 18,600 during the

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Purdue Pharma pleads guilty to charges related to nation’s opioid crisis

More than two decades after it started marketing OxyContin, Purdue Pharma on Tuesday admitted its tactics contributed to the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic that has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of American deaths.



text: A Purdue Pharma logo is affixed to part of a Purdue building in Stamford, Conn., in this May 8, 2007, file photo.

© Douglas Healey/AP, FILE
A Purdue Pharma logo is affixed to part of a Purdue building in Stamford, Conn., in this May 8, 2007, file photo.

Purdue pleaded guilty during a video hearing before a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, to conspiracy charges that stemmed from the company’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin and other opioid products.

The plea to three felonies — conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute — was part of a settlement with the Justice Department that required Purdue to pay more than $8 billion, though the actual amount will likely be far less and determined through bankruptcy.



a sign hanging off the side of a building: A Purdue Pharma logo is affixed to part of a Purdue building in Stamford, Conn., in this May 8, 2007, file photo.

© Douglas Healey/AP, FILE

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Colorado’s first confirmed wolf pack in decades still hanging around

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Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials have confirmed they have additional evidence that a group of wolves is now residing in northwest Colorado.

The Coloradoan

Recent trail camera photos showing two gray wolves playing at night indicate Colorado’s first confirmed wolf pack in at least seven decades has persisted for the past year.

A pack of six wolves was first spotted in October 2019 and confirmed in Moffat County in January by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Tracks and fur were found throughout the summer and last week images from Defenders of Wildlife trail cameras captured the two wolves. Howling recordings by CPW staff confirmed their presence.

“These photos are a rare glimpse into the lives of Colorado’s few wolves,” said Karin Vardaman, manager of the Working Circle, a coexistence-focused initiative led by Defenders of Wildlife. “Monitoring these wolves is crucial to understanding their patterns of behavior so we can help

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Salesforce’s Einstein platform is now serving over 80 billion predictions per day

In September 2016, Salesforce launched Einstein, an AI platform to power predictions across all of the company’s cloud-hosted products. Just over four years after Einstein’s debut, Salesforce says the platform is now delivering more than 80 billion AI-powered predictions every day, up from 6.5 billion predictions in October 2019.

Forrester Research recently wrote that companies “have to rebuild their businesses, not for today, or even next year, but to prepare to compete in an AI-driven future.” Reflecting this changing landscape, IDC expects global spending on AI to more than double to $110 billion in 2024, up from $50 billion in 2020.

Salesforce asserts that Einstein is poised to drive a substantial portion of this growth. Einstein’s predictions can include internal and customer service answers for a given use case, like when to engage with a sales lead, how likely an invoice is to be paid, and which products to recommend

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Keep the mask: A vaccine won’t end the US crisis right away

NEW YORK — Don’t even think of putting the mask away anytime soon.

Despite the expected arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in just a few weeks, it could take several months — probably well into 2021 — before things get back to something close to normal in the U.S. and Americans can once again go to the movies, cheer at an NBA game or give Grandma a hug.

The first, limited shipments of the vaccine would mark just the beginning of what could be a long and messy road toward the end of the pandemic that has upended life and killed more than a quarter-million people in the U.S. In the meantime, Americans are being warned not to let their guard down.

“If you’re fighting a battle and the cavalry is on the way, you don’t stop shooting; you keep going until the cavalry gets here, and then you might even

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Top Glove warns on deliveries after virus outbreak shuts plants

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s Top Glove Corp expects deliveries to be delayed and sales to fall below its forecasts after thousands of positive COVID-19 tests among its workers forced the world’s biggest rubber glove maker to shutter some factory operations.

The firm said some deliveries could be delayed by four weeks and new orders could take longer to process, while sales could fall 3% short of its projections for the 2021 financial year. Its shares were down by as much as 7.5% on Tuesday.

“To minimise the impact on our customers, we are allocating sales orders to unaffected factories and rescheduling deliveries where possible,” it said in a statement.

Top Glove’s shares, which have soared this year as global demand for protective gear has surged in the pandemic, slipped after the government said it would close 28 of the firm’s factory buildings in phases to screen and quarantine workers

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Why BlackRock is buying Aperio, betting on separately managed accounts

  • BlackRock plans to buy the California-based investment provider Aperio for its coveted direct-indexing capabilities by way of separately managed accounts, or SMAs, the firm said on Monday. 
  • The asset manager is making a big bet on SMAs, which allow investors to tailor investments by owning securities directly, rather than passively owning a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund, for instance. 
  • In paying $1 billion in cash for Aperio, BlackRock is doubling down on these increasingly popular, customizable investments where the structure can offer clients ways to pay fewer taxes.
  • New entrants in the space like Fidelity-backed Ethic have looked to capitalize on that growth, and Charles Schwab bought the technology of the startup Motif, which focused on customized thematic portfolios.  
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

BlackRock’s plans to buy a firm specializing in customized portfolios is a sure sign that clients’ expectations for personalized investments are rising, and a

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Unemployment Scam Using Inmates’ Names Costs California Hundreds of Millions

Part of the problem, the task force wrote, was that, unlike at least 35 other states, California lacks the technology to crosscheck its state prison rolls and jail rosters against its lists of unemployment insurance claimants.

About two weeks ago, however, the group received a crosscheck from the U.S. Department of Labor between federal unemployment insurance claims data and a list of California prison inmates that federal officials had subpoenaed from the state.

The 35,000-plus payments sent out in the name of state prisoners alone, they discovered, totaled more than $140 million between March and August, with nearly a half-million dollars disbursed in the names of 133 death row inmates. Among the largest: a claim for $19,676 disbursed in the name of a death row inmate and another for $48,600 in the name of another felon.

The crosscheck did not include the state’s 58 county jails, state hospitals where sexually

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4 Fishermen Missing After Boat Sinks Off Coast of Massachusetts

The United States Coast Guard is searching for four fishermen who went missing Monday morning after their fishing vessel sunk approximately 20 miles northeast of Provincetown, Massachusetts.



a man standing in front of a window: US Coast Guard

© Provided by People
US Coast Guard

According to a press release, Coast Guard authorities in Boston received an alert at 1 a.m. from the 82-foot Emmy Rose’s emergency position indicating radio beacon — a device that is used to notify search and rescue services in the event of an emergency.

Calls to the boat’s satellite phone were not answered and so the Coast Guard launched helicopter and ship rescue crews. They found debris and an empty life raft at the Emmy Rose’s last known location.

RELATED: Illinois Woman, 20, Vanished Monday Morning After Dropping Younger Sister Off at School

Authorities described the conditions as 6 to 8-foot waves and winds of around 34 mph.

On Tuesday morning, the Coast Guard announced that

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