Money, in brief

The US Supreme Court heard Anderson v. Intel on Tuesday 6 October. [1]

A former worker at Intel, the US chip-maker, sued the people who run its 401(k), a US workplace retirement savings account, in 2019. [1]

He says they put workers' savings into hedge funds and private equity, two kinds of private fund. [1] He says these earned less than plain funds that track the stock market. [1][4]

Lower courts threw the case out. They said weak returns prove nothing on their own without a 'meaningful benchmark', a fair fund to compare against. [1]

The justices must decide whether a saver has to name that comparison before the case can go ahead. [1][4]

Justice Clarence Thomas said a fund built for high but risky returns cannot be compared with a fund built to protect against losses. [1]

Several justices, including liberal ones, used the same picture of apples and oranges. [1]

Lawyers who followed the hearing took the justices' questions as a sign the court will side with Intel. [1]

Lawyers for fund groups say a win for Intel would make employers feel safer adding private funds to 401(k)s. [1]

Most large US employers offer no private funds in their 401(k)s, and one lawyer for big employers expects the biggest to move slowest, because they face the most lawsuits. [1]

Supporters say such funds lock money up for years, which suits 401(k) savings that are also left untouched for decades. [6]

Critics say private funds are hard to see inside and charge high fees, for savings that are meant to be simple. [5] Supporters say some other US retirement accounts have been allowed to hold them for decades. [6]

Why it matters. Watch the court's written ruling, and whether it spells out what a fair comparison must look like, as the US government's lawyer asked. [1]

On 1 October the US stopped covering refugees, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking through Medicaid, its public health cover for people on low incomes. [7][8] The cut comes from the tax and spending law that President Trump's Republican Party passed in 2025. [7][8] Arizona officials said 29,000 legal immigrants were removed from Medicaid that day. [7] Florida's figure is estimated at about 177,000, and KFF, a health research group, puts the total across nine states and Washington DC at more than 281,000. [7]

Why it matters. Full-price plans on the US health marketplaces are often too dear for the people cut, KFF says, and many work in jobs that offer no health cover. [8] A family in Tucson, Arizona, says Medicaid had paid about 25,000 dollars a month for their son's care. [7] Most states have chosen to keep covering pregnant women and children who would otherwise lose cover. [9]

Scammers are sending fake invites that appear in people's online calendars, such as Google Calendar, without being accepted. [10] Calendar apps can add an invite on their own, so the target does not even need to open the email, says Luke Wescott of Sublime Security, an email security firm. [10] The entries look like meetings, voicemail alerts, payment receipts or PayPal warnings. [10] They link to fake login pages or to fake 'support' phone numbers. [10] Wescott says his firm has seen 'exponential growth' in the trick. [10]

Why it matters. An entry sitting next to a real dentist appointment gets trusted more than a strange email, Wescott says. [10] Some scammers send the invites through real services such as Zoom, which makes them hard to block without blocking real meetings too, says Cofense, another security firm. [10]

Three friends who started at Newcastle University in 2012 each borrowed about 37,500 pounds under Plan 2, the student loan England brought in that year. [11] Ten years into repaying, one has cleared it, one owes about 47,000 pounds that is not shrinking, and one sees her balance still rising. [11] Since April, Charlotte has repaid about 450 pounds while about 500 pounds of interest was added. [11] The UK government plans to freeze the income at which repayments start, 29,385 pounds, for three years from 2027. [11]

Why it matters. A frozen threshold means graduates start repaying sooner and pay more each month. [11] Campaigners want the rate cut and the freeze reversed in the Budget later this month. [11] The Department for Education says it will keep looking for ways to make the system fairer. [11]

Police in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, are hunting a man accused of taking 7.2 million rupees from a family to get their daughter into Harvard University. [12] He was not a registered visa agent, and claimed to work as an accountant at Pakistan's Supreme Court, the Federal Investigation Agency says. [12] The family also paid him 550,000 rupees for a job for her brother, and sold a plot of land and gold to raise the money, police sources say. [12] The student, Laiba Aijaz, a recent graduate, died on Friday; she reportedly took her own life. [12]

Why it matters. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered the man's arrest, and his name is on a list that stops him leaving Pakistan. [12] Investigators hold the visa papers he gave the family, and are looking for a woman who allegedly helped him. [12]

Starter homes made up 36.2% of US homes listed for sale this August, down from 38.1% in August 2019, figures from Realtor.com, a property listings site, show. [14] Realtor.com counts a home as a starter home when it costs 80% or less of the middle price in its area. [14] Their typical price rose 30.8% over those years, from about 260,000 to about 340,000 dollars. [14] Of 8,300 ZIP codes, the US postcodes, in the 100 biggest metro areas, only 18.3% had mostly starter homes for sale. [14]

Why it matters. These are the homes first-time buyers can reach, and rising mortgage rates make each one harder to afford. [14] The share did rise in at least 20 of the 100 biggest metro areas. [14]

Australian universities have filled only about two-thirds of their places for international students this year, Department of Education figures show. [15] Charles Sturt University, which teaches in country towns across New South Wales, has filled 40% of its places. [15] It says the fall since before Covid costs it 35 million Australian dollars, and it has announced job cuts. [15] Its head of international students blames a visa fee raised to 2,500 Australian dollars and refusal rates of about 53% for applicants from South Asia. [15]

Why it matters. Fees from overseas students pay for part of the teaching of Australian students, so a shortfall can mean fewer services for them, university heads say. [15] The visa fee is not refunded, and applicants have about one chance in two. [15] That makes applying 'more like a lottery ticket', says Phil Honeywood of the International Education Association of Australia. [15]

Hurricane Isaias came ashore in Florida's Panhandle late on Friday and killed four people in Florida and Alabama. [17][18] Two died when trees fell on their homes, and a man died from the fumes of a generator running in a closed garage. [17][18] Power cuts hit more than 900,000 customers early on Saturday, and about 550,000 were still without power that afternoon. [17] Matthew Palazola, an insurance analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, says insured losses could run to several billion dollars, under ten billion. [16]

Why it matters. Two calm hurricane seasons let insurers rebuild the money they hold for claims, and Florida's recent insurance reforms have not yet faced a big storm, Palazola says. [16] Florida's stronger building rules may have held the damage down, he says. [16]

Tehran's city government has frozen the prices of essential goods for six months, under what it calls a 'Zero-Inflation Initiative'. [13] The city's mayor, Alireza Zakani, says the scheme will now spread across Iran. [13] He presents it as a defence against US sanctions. [13] The US tightened them in late August with a campaign to cut Iran off from world trade. [13]

Why it matters. Shoppers gain from the freeze only while shops keep selling at the old prices. The announcement does not say how shops will be paid if their own costs rise.

Hafiz Naeemur Rehman leads Jamaat-i-Islami, a political party in Pakistan. [19] On Saturday he said he will not meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif unless Pakistan's government promises to scrap the petroleum levy, a charge on fuel. [19] His party has held sit-ins against it for 42 days, and says it will name a date for a march on Islamabad after 12 October if no relief comes. [19]

Why it matters. Ministers' statements suggest the levy will stay, Rehman said. [19] Pakistan's government says it is held back by the International Monetary Fund, and Rehman rejects that. [19]