Fair game: The city-parish and several other agencies are hosting a Disaster Recovery Resource Fair on Saturday to help homeowners and renters who were impacted by the August flood. The event will serve as a one-stop shop for flood impacted residents looking for information and resources on the ‘Shelter at Home’ program, flood insurance, foreclosure prevention, title issues and successions, disaster tax relief, loans, unemployment, housing counseling, legal services and more. The fair will be held on Saturday, Oct. 15, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Southern University Law Center, 2 Roosevelt Steptoe Drive in the A.A. Lenoir Hall, on Southern’s campus. The city-parish is hosting the event in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Southern University Law Center, and the state of Louisiana. The event is free and open to the public. Anyone with questions about Saturday’s event can call (225) 389-5350.
Near future: U.S. central bankers debating the merits of raising interest rates last month described the decision about whether to raise interest rates as a close call, with several saying a rate hike was needed “relatively soon,” minutes of the Federal Reserve’s September meeting showed. As Bloomberg reports, several members said that it would be appropriate to increase the target range for the federal funds rate relatively soon if economic developments unfolded about as the committee expected. The Federal Open Market Committee left the benchmark lending rate unchanged in a range of 0.25% to 0.5%for the sixth straight meeting last month, even as a majority of the 17 participants still forecast at least one hike this year. Read the full story.
Up in flames: Samsung Electronics slashed its third-quarter profit estimate by a third today, revising the figure to absorb more than $2 billion in losses from its decision to end production of its troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone and recall millions of devices around the world, The New York Times reports. Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker by market share, says it was compelled to revise its estimates to reflect an estimated 2.6 trillion won, or $2.3 billion, loss from its decision to ditch the Galaxy Note 7. It was already one of the largest and costliest product recalls in the technology industry. Samsung’s woes began in August with a growing number of consumer reports that Galaxy Note 7 phones were heating up and catching fire. In an unprecedented decision in the smartphone market, Samsung said on Sept. 2 that it would recall as many as 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s around the world while it tried to fix what it called a defective battery. Read the full story.
