McDonald's CEO just admitted the fast-food recovery story is over

McDonald's chief executive Chris Kempczinski told investors Wednesday that customer traffic has gone flat and he sees no improvement coming — a remarkably downbeat assessment from the leader of the world's most-watched restaurant chain.

When a company simultaneously announces an $8.5 billion investment plan and still watches its stock fall nearly 5%, the market is telling you it doesn't believe the growth is coming — and Kempczinski's own words made it hard to argue otherwise.

Florida's pension fund suing the Times is a new kind of attack on press independence

Florida's state-run public pension fund filed a lawsuit demanding the New York Times open its internal books and records, framing the action around whether the paper is living up to its own editorial standards in its coverage of Israel.

Whatever the legal merits, using a pension fund as a vehicle to compel a newsroom to expose its editorial decision-making is a tactic with implications that stretch well beyond one newspaper or one story.

Microsoft's Gulf investment confirms AI infrastructure is now a geopolitical bet

Microsoft announced it will pour more than $10 billion into cloud and AI infrastructure across Gulf states through 2030, a commitment that landed alongside yet another Wall Street upgrade and a price-target increase from Stifel, whose analysts said the company has clearly turned the corner on turning its computing power into actual revenue.

With Azure revenue set to be broken out separately for the first time in the upcoming quarterly report, the market will finally have a clean number to attach to Microsoft's AI ambitions — and analysts expect it to be a big one.