The 8-foot hunk of balsa wood led to one of the great debates in film: Could Jack have fit on it‚ too?

Mortgage demand tumbled again last week amid stubbornly high mortgage rates‚ which have depressed the housing market and caused pain for homebuyers. Mortgage loan application volume decreased by 0.7% last week on a seasonally adjusted basis‚ according to a report Wednesday from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The volume of refinances dropped by 2% during that same time‚ according to the group’s weekly survey‚ and has plunged 9% from a year ago. The declining...

U.S. business leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday‚ the latest of Beijing’s efforts to bolster foreign investment in China amid tensions with the U.S. Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman‚ Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon‚ Bloomberg Chair Mark Carney and FedEx President Rajesh Subramaniam were among the attendees‚ according to state media. The companies did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. Earlier...

The artificial-intelligence boom is sending Silicon Valley’s talent wars to new extremes. Tech companies are serving up million-dollar-a-year compensation packages‚ accelerated stock-vesting schedules and offers to poach entire engineering teams to draw people with expertise and experience in the kind of generative AI that is powering ChatGPT and other humanlike bots. They are competing against each other and against startups vying to be the next big thing to unseat the giants. The offers...