NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are edging lower on Thursday as Wall Street makes its final moves before the head of the Federal Reserve gives a highly anticipated speech on Friday that could hint at where interest rates are going.
The S&P 500 dipped 0.2% following four straight modest loss since it set an all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 101 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.
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Walmart was one of the market’s biggest movers and fell 4.4% after reporting a profit for the spring that came up short of analysts’ expectations, while Big Tech stocks were holding a bit steadier following two days of sharp swings.
The moves were a little stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields rose after a report forced Wall Street to scale back hopes that the Federal Reserve may soon deliver relief by cutting interest rates.
The report suggested growth in U.S. business activity is accelerating and hit its fastest rate so far this year. That’s good news for the economy, but the preliminary data from S&P Global also said tariffs helped push up average selling prices at the fastest rate in three years. That’s a discouraging sign for inflation.
Taken all together, such data has historically aligned more with the Federal Reserve considering a hike in interest rates, rather than a cut, according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Virtually no one expects a rate hike to happen soon, but the overwhelming expectation on Wall Street has been for coming cuts. Traders are betting on a three-in-four chance that the Fed will lower its main interest rate at its next meeting in September, according to data from CME Group. The hope on Wall Street has been that Fed Chair Jerome Powell may give some hints on Friday that easier rates may be coming.
He will be speaking in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at an annual conference of central bankers that’s been home to big policy announcements in the past.
A cut in interest rates would be the first of the year, and it would give investment prices and the economy a boost by making it cheaper to borrow to buy houses, cars or equipment. But it could also risk worsening inflation.
The Fed has so far been hesitant to cut interest rates out of fear that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher, but a surprisingly weak report on job growth across the country earlier this month suddenly made the job market a bigger worry. Trump, meanwhile, has angrily been pushing for cuts to interest rates, often personally attacking Powell while doing so.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.32% from 4.29%. The two-year Treasury, which moves more on expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with short-term interest rates, climbed to 3.77% from 3.74%.
On Wall Street, Walmart was one of the heaviest weights on the market following its profit report. It delivered encouraging growth in revenue and raised its forecast for profit over its full fiscal year, but analysts said the market’s expectations were high coming into the report.
The Bentonville, Arkansas, company’s stock came into the day with a gain of 13.5% for the year so far, well above the rest of the market.
Big Tech stocks are under even more pressure to deliver bigger profits amid criticism that their stock prices ran too high, too fast and have become too expensive because of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.
Several AI superstar stocks have swung sharply this week, taking some shine off their skyscraping surges for the year, because of such criticism. But they were holding a bit steadier on Thursday.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI boom, rose 0.2%. Palantir Technologies, which at one point on Wednesday was on track to fall more than 9% for a second straight day before paring its loss, slipped 0.3%.
Coty tumbled 19.4% after the beauty products company reported a loss for the latest quarter, when analysts expected a slight profit. The company, whose brands include CoverGirl and Joop!, said uncertainty about tariffs and the economy are making retailers cautious in their orders.
On the winning side of Wall Street was Nordson, which makes products and systems used for precision dispensing and other things. It delivered profit and revenue for the latest quarter that topped analysts’ expectations, and its stock rose 6.5%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across much of Europe and Asia.
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, saw its DAX remain roughly flat after the U.S. and European Union officials offered a framework for their trade deal.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.6% after a survey showed Japan’s factory activity contracted again in August.
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda has agreed a deal with the United States to take deported migrants on condition that the deportees should not have criminal records and not be unaccompanied minors, officials said Thursday.
The Ugandan foreign affairs ministry in a statement said the “two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented.”
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Uganda also expressed a preference that those brought into the country should be of African nationalities.
It was not clear if the agreement had been signed but the ministry statement said it had been “concluded.”
International Relations Minister Henry Okello Oryem told The Associated Press that while Uganda is known globally for its benevolent refugee policy, there are limits.
And he questioned why the country would take people rejected by their own countries.
“We are talking about cartels: people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he asked.
He said the government was in discussions about “visas, tariffs, sanctions, and related issues, not accepting illegal aliens from the U.S. That would be unfair to Ugandans.”
In July, the U.S. deported five men with criminal backgrounds to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini and sent eight more to South Sudan.
By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court has thrown out the massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump, ruling Thursday in New York state’s lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating his wealth.
The decision came seven months after the Republican returned to the White House. A panel of five judges in New York’s mid-level Appellate Division said the verdict, which stood to cost Trump more than $515 million and rock his real estate empire, was “excessive.”
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After finding that Trump engaged in fraud by flagrantly padding financial statements that went to lenders and insurers, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered him last year to pay $355 million in penalties. With interest, the sum has topped $515 million.
The total — combined with penalties levied on some other Trump Organization executives, including Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. — now exceeds $527 million, with interest.
“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Judges Dianne T. Renwick and Peter H. Moulton wrote in one of several opinions shaping the appeals court’s ruling.
The court, which was split on the merits of the lawsuit and the lower court’s fraud finding, dismissed the penalty Engoron imposed in its entirety while also leaving a pathway for further appeals to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
The appeals court, the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court, took an unusually long time to rule, weighing Trump’s appeal for nearly 11 months after oral arguments last fall. Normally, appeals are decided in a matter of weeks or a few months.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the suit on the state’s behalf, has said the businessman-turned-politician engaged in “lying, cheating, and staggering fraud.”
Trump and his co-defendants denied wrongdoing. In a six-minute summation of sorts after a monthslong trial, Trump proclaimed in January 2024 that he was “an innocent man” and the case was a “fraud on me.” He has repeatedly maintained that the case and verdict were political moves by James and Engoron, who are both Democrats.
Trump’s Justice Department has subpoenaed James for records related to the lawsuit, among other documents, as part of an investigation into whether she violated the president’s civil rights. James’ personal attorney, Abbe D. Lowell, has said that investigating the fraud case is “the most blatant and desperate example of this administration carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”
Trump and his lawyers said his financial statements weren’t deceptive, since they came with disclaimers noting they weren’t audited. The defense also noted that bankers and insurers independently evaluated the numbers, and the loans were repaid.
Despite such discrepancies as tripling the size of his Trump Tower penthouse, he said the financial statements were, if anything, lowball estimates of his fortune.
During an appellate court hearing in September, Trump’s lawyers argued that many of the case’s allegations were too old, an assertion they made unsuccessfully before trial. The defense also contends that James misused a consumer-protection law to sue Trump and improperly policed private business transactions that were satisfactory to those involved.
State attorneys said the law in question applies to fraudulent or illegal business conduct, whether it targets everyday consumers or big corporations. Though Trump insists no one was harmed by the financial statements, the state contends that the numbers led lenders to make riskier loans than they knew, and that honest borrowers lose out when others game their net-worth numbers.
The state has argued that the verdict rests on ample evidence and that the scale of the penalty comports with Trump’s gains, including his profits on properties financed with the loans and the interest he saved by getting favorable terms offered to wealthy borrowers.
The civil fraud case was just one of several legal obstacles for Trump as he campaigned, won and segued to a second term as president.
And in December, a federal appeals court upheld a jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s and later defamed her, affirming a $5 million judgment against him. The appeals court declined in June to reconsider; he still can try to get the Supreme Court to hear his appeal.
He’s also appealing a subsequent verdict that requires him to pay Carroll $83.3 million for additional defamation claims.
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I turn a bend and see a figure in a cornfield. The gray sky is foreboding, a storm clearly on the horizon. When I take a step forward, I’m hit with a gust of wind and fog. Suddenly, it’s no longer a silhouette in the haze but a scarecrow, shrouded in hay, lurching toward me.
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Only I am not on a Midwestern farm, and there is no threat of severe weather. I’m in a warehouse in Las Vegas, walking through a maze called “Scarecrow: The Reaping.” I jump back and fixate my phone’s camera on the creature, but that only encourages them to step closer. I’m hurried out of the farmland and into a hall, where giant stalks now obscure my path.
Welcome to Universal Horror Unleashed, which aims to deliver year-round horrors and further expand theme park-like experiences beyond their hubs of Southern California and Central Florida. Horror Unleashed, which opened Aug. 14, is an outgrowth of Universal’s popular fall event, Halloween Horror Nights, which has been running yearly at the company’s Los Angeles park since 2006 and even longer at its larger Florida counterpart.
Like Halloween Horror Nights, there are maze-like haunted houses — four of them here themed to various properties such as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Exorcist.” Their more permanent status allows for a greater production factor — think disappearing walls and more elaborate show scenes — and they are surrounded by brooding bars, a pop-up rock-inspired dance show and a host of original walk-around characters. “Hey, sugar,” said a young woman as I near the warehouse’s main bar, a wraparound establishment themed to a large boiler. The actor’s face was scarred with blood, hinting at a backstory I didn’t have time — or perhaps the inclination — to explore.
Horror Unleashed is opening just on the cusp of when theme parks and immersive-focused live experiences are entering one of the busiest times of the year: Halloween. The holiday, of course, essentially starts earlier each year. This year’s Halloween Horror Nights begins Sept. 4, while Halloween season at the Disneyland Resort launches Aug. 22. Horror shows and films are now successful year-round, with the likes of “Sinners” and “The Last of Us” enrapturing audiences long before Oct. 31. Culture has now fully embraced the darker side of fairy tales.
“You can make every month horrific,” says Nate Stevenson, Horror Unleashed’s show director.
That’s been a goal of David Markland, co-founder of Long Beach’s Halloween-focused convention Midsummer Scream, which this year is set for the weekend of Aug. 15. When Midsummer Scream began in 2016, it attracted about 8,000 people, says Markland, but today commands audiences of around 50,000. “Rapidly, over the past 10 or 15 years, Halloween has become a year-round fascination for people,” Markland says. “Halloween is a culture now. Halloween is a lifestyle. It’s a part of people’s lives that they celebrate year-round.”
There will be challenges, a difficult tourism market among them, as visits to Las Vegas were down 11.3% in June 2025 versus a year earlier, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. And then there’s the question of whether audiences are ready for year-round haunts that extend beyond the fall Halloween season to winter, spring and summer. I entered Horror Unleashed for a media preview on an early August night when it was 105 degrees in the Las Vegas heat. It’s also been tried before, albeit on a smaller scale. Las Vegas was once home to Eli Roth’s Goretorium, a year-round haunted house that leaned on torture-horror and shuttered after about a year in 2013.
But Universal creatives are undaunted.
Bars and food locations serve craft cocktails and themed bites in select areas at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. (Universal Destinations & Experiences/TNS/TNS)
“Scarecrow: The Reaping” is one of four haunted houses at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. (Universal Destinations & Experiences/TNS/TNS)
The Boiler offers guests a momentary respite, with craft cocktails underneath a flaming machine at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. (Universal Destinations & Experiences/TNS/TNS)
Horror icons await guests in the Universal Monsters haunted house at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. (Universal Destinations & Experiences/TNS/TNS)
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Bars and food locations serve craft cocktails and themed bites in select areas at Universal Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas. (Universal Destinations & Experiences/TNS/TNS)
More than a decade, of course, has passed, and Horror Unleashed is more diverse in its horror offerings. A maze themed to Universal’s classic creatures winds through a castle and catacombs with vintage-style horrors and a mid-show scene in which Frankenstein’s monster comes alive. Original tale “Scarecrow: The Reaping,” which began at Universal Studios Florida, mixes in jump scares with more natural-seeming frights, such as the aforementioned simulated dust bowl.
TJ Mannarino, vice president of entertainment, art and design at Universal Orlando, points to cultural happenings outside of the theme parks in broadening the terror scene — the success of shows such as “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story,” which found audiences outside of the Halloween season, as well as “Stranger Things,” which he says opened up horror to a younger crowd. Theme parks are simply reflecting our modern culture, which is craving darker fantasies. Universal, for instance, recently opened an entire theme park land focused on its classic monsters at its new Epic Universe in Florida, and even Disney is getting in on the action, as a villains-focused land is in the works for Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.
“We think our audience really wants this,” says Mannarino, noting theme park attendance surveys were prodding the company to give horror a permanent home. And at Universal’s Orlando park, Halloween Horror Nights starts earlier, beginning in late August.
“Just a couple years ago, we started in August, and we were selling out August dates,” Stevenson says. “On a micro level, we’re seeing that, boy, it doesn’t matter if you extend past the season or extend out before the season — people are coming. People want it.”
Universal is betting on it, as the company has already announced that a second Horror Unleashed venue will be heading to Chicago in 2027. Smaller, more regional theme park-like experiences are once again something of a trend, as Netflix has immersive venues planned for the Dallas and Philadelphia regions, and Universal is also bringing a kid-focused park to Frisco, Texas.
There are antecedents for what Universal is attempting. Disney, for instance, tried an indoor interactive theme park with DisneyQuest, for which a Chicago location was short-lived and a Florida outpost closed in 2017. Star Trek: The Experience, a mix of theme park-like simulations and interactive theater, operated for about a decade in Las Vegas before it shuttered in 2008.
“I know there’s horror fans and Halloween fans who are always looking for something to do,” Markland says. “What (Universal is) doing is very ambitious and big, and so I’m nervous along with them. We’ll see how it goes. I’m sure people will go as soon as it opens and through the Halloween season, but after that, I don’t know. … They’ve definitely invested in Halloween and horror fans. They’re all-in.”
Horror, says author Lisa Morton — who has written multiple books on the Oct. 31 holiday, including “Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween” — is thriving in part because today it is taken more seriously by cultural critics. The genre also has metaphorical qualities — the struggle, for instance, that is life, art and creativity in “Sinners” or the underlying themes of PTSD that permeated the latest season of “The Last of Us.” That makes it especially appealing, she says, for today’s stressful times.
“I suspect that’s part of the reason horror is booming right now,” Morton says. “Everything from climate change, that we seem to have no voice in, and our politics, that don’t seem to represent us. Many of us are filled with anxiety about the future. I think horror is the perfect genre to talk about that. When you add a layer of a metaphor to it, it becomes much easier to digest.”
To step into Horror Unleashed is to walk into a demented wonderland, a place that turns standard theme park warmth and joy upside down. Don’t expect fairy tale-like happy endings. The space’s centerpiece performance is twisted, a story centering on Jack the Clown and his female sidekick Chance, who have kidnapped two poor Las Vegas street performers and are forcing them to execute their acts to perfection to avoid murder. The deeper one analyzes it, the more sinister its class dynamics feel, even if it’s an excuse to showcase, say, street dancing and hula hoop acrobatics.
The space has an underlying narrative. Broadly speaking, the warehouse is said to have been a storage place for Universal Studios’ early monster-focused horror films. That allows it to be littered with props, such as the throne-like chair near its entrance, and for nooks and crannies such as a “film vault” to be renamed a “kill vault.” Somehow — horror loves a good mystery — the space has come alive, and don’t be surprised to be greeted by a vampire or a costumed swampland figure that may or may not be related to the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The goal, says Universal creatives, is to give Horror Unleashed a bit of an immersive theater feel, something that can’t really be done among the chaotic scare zones and fast-moving mazes of a Halloween Horror Nights event. But here, guests can linger with the actors and probe them to try to uncover the storyline that imbues the venue. One-to-one actor interaction has long been a goal of those in the theme park space but often a tough formula to crack, in part because cast members are costly and in part because of the difficulty to scale such experiences for thousands.
“As we’ve evolved this style of experience, we have given more and more control of the show to the actors,” says Mannarino on what separates Horror Unleashed from Halloween Horror Nights. “It’s less programmed. It’s less technology. I’ve had conversations with tech magazines, and they’ll ask me what is the most critical piece, and I’ll say it’s the actors. … The lifeblood of our all stories — we can build all of this, but it doesn’t go without the actors.
“It’s what really drives this whole animal,” he adds.
It extends a bit to the mazes as well. Audiences should expect to spend about five to seven minutes in each of the four walk-through attractions, but unlike a Halloween Horror Nights event, where guests are rushed from room to room without stopping, in Las Vegas there will be one dedicated show scene per maze. Here, groups will be held to watch a mini-performance. In the “Exorcist” maze, for instance, that means witnessing a full exorcism, complete with special effects that will have walls give way to demonic specters. In the ’70s-themed “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” haunt, look out for a bloody scene designed to drench guests.
The mazes are intended to be semi-permanent. Stevenson says there’s no immediate plans to swap them out in the near future but hints that Horror Unleashed will be an evolving venue and, if all goes according to plan, will look a bit different in a few years. Thus, he says the key differentiator between Horror Unleashed and Halloween Horror Nights is not necessarily the tech used in the mazes, but the extended time they can devote to unwrapping a story.
“When Universal builds a haunted house, the level of story that starts that out is enormous,” Stevenson says. “There’s so much story. All of our partners need that because they base every little nuanced thing off of that story. Unfortunately, we don’t always have the chance to tell that story, and all our fans tell us they want to know more story.”
Story percolates throughout the venue. Flatbreads, for instance, are shaped like chainsaw blades. Desserts come on plates that are mini-shovels. Salad dressing is delivered in syringes. In the past, says Mannarino, no one wanted their food to be played with. ‘”Don’t do horrible things to my food!’” he says in mock exaggeration. “But now, people really love that.”
Little, it seems, is obscene, when every day can be Halloween.
