1,200 graduates: Baton Rouge Community College will celebrate more than 1,200 graduates next week, including a record-breaking class of roughly 200 dual enrollment students earning both high school diplomas and associate degrees. ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Complex leader Regina Davis will deliver the commencement address, highlighting the college’s growing workforce ties with industry and its expanding role in accelerating career readiness.
Initial filings rise: The number of Americans filing for jobless aid rose last week but remains historically low despite the economic uncertainty caused by the war in Iran. U.S. applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending May 9 rose to 211,000, a gain of 12,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s slightly more than the 207,000 new applications analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet forecast. Read more from The Associated Press.
Anthropic raises stakes: Anthropic is accelerating its enterprise AI push with the new Claude for Small Business aimed at helping smaller companies automate tasks like payroll, bookkeeping analysis and business insights within tools they already use, including QuickBooks, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. The launch expands Anthropic’s sector-specific AI strategy as competition intensifies in enterprise software, while at the same time fueling concerns that traditional SaaS providers could face growing disruption if they fail to adapt. Read more from Yahoo Finance.
