Anna Edwards

As the fighting between Israel and Hamas risks bursting into regionwide chaos, the prospect of a long and potentially widening war could pile economic havoc atop a devastating human toll.For Gaza, a broader conflict would almost certainly deepen the already worsening humanitarian conditions in the territory. And Israel faces a fresh blow to a resilient economy that until recently had been hailed as an entrepreneurial powerhouse.The outlook for the Palestinian economy was already dire before Israel declared a siege of Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks, creating what the World Health Organization called a “humanitarian catastrophe.” An assessment…

The monthlong strike by the United Automobile Workers and the union’s demands for substantial pay and benefits increases risk damaging the U.S. auto industry, hurting its ability to compete against nonunion foreign rivals, the executive chairman of Ford Motor said on Monday.The fight should not be seen as the U.A.W. against Ford, or its crosstown rivals, General Motors and Stellantis, said William C. Ford Jr., the great-grandson of the company’s founder Henry Ford, noting that at times U.A.W. officials have referred to the automakers as the union’s “enemy.”“It should be Ford and the U.A.W. against Toyota, Honda, Tesla and all…

Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, reiterated the central bank’s commitment to moving forward “carefully” with further rate moves in a speech on Thursday. But he also said the central bank might need to raise interest rates more if economic data continued to come in hot.Mr. Powell tried to paint a balanced picture of the challenge facing the Fed in remarks before the Economic Club of New York. He emphasized that the Fed was trying to weigh two goals against each other: It wants to wrestle inflation fully under control, but it also wants to avoid doing…

The snack chips had become pretty pricey.For years, customers stopping at Casey’s General Stores, a convenience store chain in the Midwest, hadn’t thought twice about snagging a soda and a bag of Lay’s or Doritos chips. But over the past year, as the price of a bag of chips soared and some customers felt squeezed by the high cost of gas and other expenses, they began picking up Casey’s less-expensive store brand.So Casey’s began stocking more of its own chips, in a variety of new flavors. This summer, Casey’s brand made up a quarter of all bags of chips sold,…