Mortgage rates last week rose for the sixth straight week, causing demand for home loans to drop to the lowest level since 1995.

Total application volume fell 6.9% compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index.

A for sale sign in San Mateo County, Calif., on Aug. 22, 2023.Liu Guanguan / China News Service via Getty Images file

The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) increased to 7.70% from 7.67% and points decreased to 0.71 from 0.75 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment. That is the highest rate since November 2000. The rate was 6.94% during the same week one year ago.

Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home dropped 6% week to week and were 21% lower than the same week one year ago.

Applications to refinance a home loan fell 10% for the week and were 12% lower than a year ago.

“Both purchase and refinance applications declined, driven by larger drops for conventional applications,” said Joel Kan, vice president and deputy chief economist at the MBA, in a release. He added that the adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share was 9.3%, the highest share in 11 months.

ARMs offer lower rates and can be fixed for up to 10 years before the rate resets. More borrowers are turning to these loan products to gain purchasing power, as both interest rates and home prices are rising.

Mortgage rates moved even higher to start this week, with the 30-year fixed hitting 7.92% on Tuesday, according to Mortgage News Daily. That is a cyclical high. The increase was due to a much stronger-than-expected monthly retail sales report.

Top U.S. law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia universities who it believed were tied to organizational statements about Israel, one of the latest responses to open letters from university groups about the Israel-Hamas conflict that have roiled university donors, employers, alumni and students. 

“These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” said the email, signed by Neil Barr. 

Small-business lawyer Joseph Gerstel posted a screenshot of the email Tuesday on LinkedIn. A Davis Polk representative confirmed it as authentic. 

Barr went on to write, “At this time, we remain in dialogue with two of these students to ensure that any further color being offered to us by these students is considered.”

A representative of Davis Polk pointed to a statement that was included in the email: “The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system. For this reason and to ensure we continue to maintain a supportive and inclusive work environment, the student leaders responsible for signing on to these statements are no longer welcome in our firm; and their offers of employment have thus been rescinded.” 

The representative did not immediately respond to a question about how the firm identified the students as having signed the statements.

The identities of the students were not revealed in the email, which did not specify which statements the students allegedly signed. A series of public statements supporting Palestinians and blaming Israel for the recent Israel-Hamas conflict has created a firestorm on college campuses and in corporate America since last week.

On Oct. 10, The Harvard Crimson, one of the university’s student-run news publications, reported that more than 30 Harvard student groups signed on to a letter that said they held Israel “entirely responsible” for “all unfolding violence” in the conflict, which came after a surprise Hamas attack on Israel killed over 1,300 people. Since the letter was published, numerous CEOs, business leaders and a federal judge have responded by cutting ties with the university, calling for the identifications of students involved with the letter or saying they would not hire the students involved. 

Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman posted on X that he would “like to know” which students signed the Harvard statement “so I know never to hire these people.” 

“Same,” EasyHealth CEO David Duel wrote on X, replying to Neman. 

FabFitFun CEO Michael Broukhim echoed them, and in a post on X he wrote, “Discriminating against terrorist supporters is the most comically easy decision I’ll ever have to make as a CEO.”

Judge Matthew Solomson of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims also reportedly made a statement on LinkedIn that he would not let any of the students who signed on to the statements clerk for him. 

Prominent donors have also cut ties with Harvard over the statement, including the Wexner Foundation — co-founded by Leslie Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret. 

The Harvard Crimson reported last week that at least four online websites have revealed the identities and personal information of students in groups that signed the statement. The Harvard student group that issued the statement has removed the list of organizations that signed on to it.

Harvard President Claudine Gay pushed back against the students’ statement, writing in her own statement to the Crimson on Oct. 10 that “no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”

Student groups at other Ivy League universities, including Columbia University, issued similar joint statements in support of Palestinians. 

A week previously, another prominent New York City law firm, Winston & Strawn, announced it had rescinded a former summer associate’s letter of employment over “inflammatory comments” that were distributed to the NYU Student Bar Association.

Rite Aid has announced it will close at least 154 stores as part of its bankruptcy process.

The chain had 2,253 stores as of Sept. 3, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey also approved additional closings at a later date. The company has not disclosed how many more stores it may shut down.

Rite Aid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday after struggling for years with debt and sluggish sales. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Rite Aid was negotiating with its creditors over a plan to close 400 to 500 stores.

The states hardest hit by the closures include Pennsylvania, California and New York.

Rite Aid is currently the third-largest U.S. drugstore chain behind CVS and Walgreens, which have around 9,000 locations each. But all three are closing stores as they deal with greater competition from pharmacies in big box stores and grocery chains, as well as newer retailers in the beauty industry and online pharmacies.

The loss of pharmacies is a serious problem, especially for people in poorer urban and rural areas, according to Nick Fabrizio, senior lecturer in health policy at Cornell University and also a consultant for hospitals and medical groups.

‘If that’s your one Rite Aid that’s closing, the thought of having to go 20 minutes to find another Walmart or another pharmacy is daunting,’ he said, referring to people in smaller towns.

Fabrizio added that the closures aren’t just inconvenient for people who have to drive farther to fill a prescription. It means people will have a harder time getting everything from bandages to over-the-counter medications.

And over the last few years, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, pharmacies have started to replace physicians’ offices as a destination for all sorts of vaccinations.

‘Pharmacies since Covid are doing so much more, including immunizations, and if we take them out of the picture that’s significant,’ Fabrizio said. ‘Right now there is no one to backfill in these pharmacy deserts.’

‘The greatest risk are those communities both in rural America and inner cities where there might be fewer choices,’ he said.

United Airlines will change its boarding order next week by letting economy-class passengers who have selected window seats to board before those with middle and aisle seats.

The company said the change could shave two minutes off the boarding process.

The new procedure will begin Oct. 26, according to a company memo shared with CNBC. United said boarding times have increased up to two minutes since 2019.

Airlines regularly tinker with boarding procedures to save precious time getting passengers onto planes, generally rewarding their biggest spenders with some of the earliest boarding. A departure delay because of chaotic boarding could cascade to further disruptions throughout the day if aircraft and travelers arrive late, especially at congested airports.

United’s boarding process from preboarding — which includes travelers with disabilities, active duty members of the military, travelers with children under 2 years old and United’s top-tier elite frequent flyers — through Group 3 will remain the same, according to the memo.

Beginning with Group 4, passengers with window seats will board first, followed by those with middle seats and then aisle seats. People on the same reservation, such as families, can board together, United said.

The new boarding process will be implemented on all domestic flights and some international flights.

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford Motor Executive Chair Bill Ford on Monday warned that an ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers threatens the future livelihood of the company as well as the American automotive industry.

Ford, who has been a part of UAW negotiations since 1982, pleaded with union members and leaders to work with the company, instead of against it, to reach a tentative deal to “end to this acrimonious round of talks.”

Such comments by the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford are uncharacteristic during contract talks with the UAW.

“We are at a crossroads,” Ford said during a news conference at the company’s massive Rouge Complex in metro Detroit. “Choosing the right path is not just about Ford’s future and our ability to compete. This is about the future of the American automobile industry.”

Ford, ahead of speaking on stage, told reporters he wanted to “elevate” the conversation about the contract negotiations. Ford said he didn’t want to get personal in his remarks because “it doesn’t matter” at this point.

“The UAW’s leaders have called us the enemy in these negotiations. But I will never consider our employees as enemies. This should not be Ford versus the UAW,” Ford said. “It should be Ford and the UAW vs. Toyota and Honda, Tesla, and all the Chinese companies that want to enter our home.”

UAW President Shawn Fain countered Ford’s plea by ratcheting up the pressure.

“Bill Ford knows exactly how to settle this strike. Instead of threatening to close the Rouge, he should call up [Ford CEO] Jim Farley, tell him to stop playing games and get a deal done, or we’ll close the Rouge for him,” he said in a statement. “It’s not the UAW and Ford against foreign automakers. It’s autoworkers everywhere against corporate greed. If Ford wants to be the all-American auto company, they can pay all-American wages and benefits. Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others are not the enemy — they’re the UAW members of the future.”

Ford did not threaten to close the Rouge Complex in his remarks. He did mention if American carmakers such as Ford lose to the competition, then jobs, future investments and “factories like the one we are in today” will be lost.

Ford’s remarks come after a week of contentious talks between the company and the UAW, including the union unexpectedly announcing a strike Wednesday night at the company’s highly profitable Kentucky Truck Plant.

More than 19,000 of Ford’s 57,000 UAW members are currently impacted by the strike, including more than 16,600 striking workers. Another roughly 2,480 employees have been laid off as a result of the work stoppage.

Ford last week said it was “at the limit” of what it can offer the UAW in terms of economic concessions.

The company’s most recent proposal included 23% to 26% wage increases depending on classification; retention of platinum health-care benefits; ratification bonuses; reinstatement of cost-of-living adjustments; and other benefits.

Overall, only about 34,000 U.S. autoworkers with the companies — or roughly 23% of UAW members covered by the expired contracts with the Detroit automakers — are currently on strike.

The UAW has been gradually increasing the strikes since the work stoppages began after the sides failed to reach tentative agreements by Sept 14.

Fain last week said the union has entered a “new phase” of the targeted strikes in which it would no longer pre-announce the work stoppages, as it had been.

Fain has said it’s ultimately up to the members to decide when the strike ends, not UAW leadership.

How are workers responding?

Opinions of the strike and current contract proposals varied on picket lines Monday outside Ford’s nearby Michigan Assembly Plant, which was the first of three facilities to go on strike last month.

“I trust Shawn Fain,” said Latosha Smith, a four-year worker at the plant. “All the steps he’s taken, it’s for the cause.”

Tamika Genus, a worker at the plant for roughly five years, said of course she’d like it to come to a resolution, but “it’s worth it.” She later added, “We’re doing what we’ve got to do.”

Jeff Nichol, a body shop worker at the plant who was laid off due to the strike, said he wishes that the sides “would come to a conclusion a lot sooner than later.” He also would like union leaders to be more transparent regarding exact details of the company’s proposals.

Nichol, who’s been autoworker for over 11 years, said he knows it’s an “unpopular opinion,” but he’d support Ford’s current proposal, including a 23% wage increase.

“What I’ve been getting is good enough, so any little bit of extra does help, especially with the current economy,” he said. “The way I look at it, too, is the amount of time that we’re off, that also plays into how long it’s going to take for us to make a difference for the amount of money that we lose every single week.”

Ford said Friday employees who have been on strike since Sept. 15 have on average lost about $4,000 in pretax income through four weeks of the strike.

Top U.S. law firm Davis Polk announced in an internal email that it had rescinded letters of employment for three law students at Harvard and Columbia universities who signed on to organizational statements about Israel, one of the latest responses to open letters from university groups about the Israel-Hamas conflict that have roiled university donors, employers, alumni and students. 

“These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” said the email, signed by Neil Barr. 

Small-business lawyer Joseph Gerstel posted a screenshot of the email Tuesday on LinkedIn. A Davis Polk representative confirmed it as authentic. 

Barr went on to write, “At this time, we remain in dialogue with two of these students to ensure that any further color being offered to us by these students is considered.”

A representative of Davis Polk pointed to a statement that was included in the email: “The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system. For this reason and to ensure we continue to maintain a supportive and inclusive work environment, the student leaders responsible for signing on to these statements are no longer welcome in our firm; and their offers of employment have thus been rescinded.” 

The representative did not immediately respond to a question about how the firm identified the students as having signed the statements.

The identities of the students were not revealed in the email, which did not specify which statements the students signed. A series of public statements supporting Palestinians and blaming Israel for the recent Israel-Hamas conflict has created a firestorm on college campuses and in corporate America since last week.

 On Oct. 10, The Harvard Crimson, one of the university’s student-run news publications, reported that more than 30 Harvard student groups signed on to a letter that said they held Israel “entirely responsible” for “all unfolding violence” in the conflict, which came after a surprise Hamas attack on Israel killed over 1,300 people. Since the letter was published, numerous CEOs, business leaders and a federal judge have responded by cutting ties with the university, calling for the identifications of the signers or saying they would not hire the signers. 

On Oct. 10, Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman posted on X that he would “like to know” which students signed the Harvard statement “so I know never to hire these people.” 

“Same,” EasyHealth CEO David Duel wrote on X, replying to Neman. 

FabFitFun CEO Michael Broukhim echoed them, and in a post on X he wrote, “Discriminating against terrorist supporters is the most comically easy decision I’ll ever have to make as a CEO.”

Judge Matthew Solomson of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims also reportedly made a statement on LinkedIn that he would not let any of the students who signed on to the statements clerk for him. 

Prominent donors have also cut ties with Harvard over the statement, including the Wexner Foundation — co-founded by Leslie Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret. 

The Harvard Crimson reported last week that at least four online websites have revealed the identities and personal information of students in groups that signed the statement. The Harvard student group that issued the statement has removed the list of organizations that signed on to it.

Harvard President Claudine Gay pushed back against the students’ statement, writing in her own statement to the Crimson on Oct. 10 that “no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”

Student groups at other Ivy League universities, including Columbia University, issued similar joint statements in support of Palestinians. 

A week previously, another prominent New York City law firm, Winston & Strawn, announced it had rescinded a former summer associate’s letter of employment over “inflammatory comments” that were distributed to the NYU Student Bar Association.

Rite Aid, the third-largest U.S. drugstore chain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday, and it’s likely the company will close a big chunk of its 2,000 stores.

One result is that people will have fewer options for where they fill their prescriptions. That has been the trend in drugstores lately, and it looks like they’ll dwindle further.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Rite Aid might close 400 to 500 stores as part of bankruptcy proceedings. (The company hasn’t confirmed the report.) CVS is closing 300 stores per year, a process that began last year and is expected to continue into next year, and Walgreens announced in June that it would close about 150 U.S. stores by next summer.

At the same time, big box chains and grocery stores like Walmart and Target are opening pharmacies in their stores, and more people are getting their medications delivered through apps.

The decline of the neighborhood pharmacy

So a consumer reading this news might think, ‘So what? Nobody likes going to drugstores.’ And that’s partly the point.

Drugstores have done the wrong thing over and over again, said Neil Saunders, the managing director at the consulting company GlobalData. The result is that people don’t want to shop at them, and that has made lots of openings for competitors.

“You go into the store, usually they’re badly lit, they are fairly depressing, there isn’t lot of great customer service, the products are locked very often, there aren’t enough staff to help, the prices are very expensive relative to other retailers,” Saunders told NBC News. ‘They’ve shot themselves in the foot, and now they’re reaping the consequences of all those years of poor decisions and underinvestment.”

Poor decisions, crushing debt and failed deals

Rite Aid’s bankruptcy filing wasn’t a surprise, because the 60-year-old chain has been in dire financial shape for a long time. It has lost money in each of its last six fiscal years, it had already been closing stores to cut spending, and it was looking at a $1 billion charge related to its role in the opioid crisis.

CVS and Walgreens have paid similar settlements, but it was much harder for Rite Aid to do so. In recent years, the stock market has valued Rite Aid in the tens of millions of dollars even though it had $24 billion in sales last year.

Rite Aid’s downfall arguably dates to its purchase of the Brooks and Eckerd chains in 2007. The company borrowed money to pay for the deal and also assumed some of the debt of Brooks and Eckerd’s former parent company, the Canadian drugstore company Jean Coutu Group.

At one point, Rite Aid agreed to be bought by Walgreens, but the deal fell through. Walgreens ultimately sold almost 2,000 stores, and Rite Aid unsuccessfully pursued other deals to stabilize its business.

The company had $3.3 billion in long-term debt as of June 3.

All that debt made it harder for Rite Aid to invest in its stores or to expand and branch out into new businesses the way its rivals did. CVS now has more than 1,000 clinics in its stores, and it bought a pharmacy benefits manager and a health insurer over the years. Walgreens and CVS both expanded into some types of primary care, as well.

But Saunders said all three have neglected their stores as they have prioritized the health care parts of their businesses over the retail parts.

‘They are not good retailers. None of them,’ he said. ‘They just haven’t really evolved and changed with the times at all.’

As Rite Aid shrinks even further, it will create opportunities for all of its rivals to boost their sales. Saunders said there will always be a place for physical pharmacies.

‘We’re still going to have a physical pharmacy retail space, but it’s going to be somewhat smaller than it has been traditionally,’ he said.

DETROIT — The United Auto Workers union isn’t adding any factories to those that are now on strike, but its president says more walkouts could begin at any moment.

Until this week the union had been announcing additional factories on Fridays. But UAW President Shawn Fain told workers in a live video appearance that the companies started gaming the system, waiting until Fridays to make progress in bargaining.

“We will be calling out plants when we need to, where we need to, with little notice,” Fain said on Friday morning. “We’re not sticking to one pattern or one system of giving these companies an extra hour or an extra day. They know what needs to happen and they know how to get it done.”

Fain said the union is still bargaining hard with General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis. But he criticized Ford, which said Thursday that it had reached the limit of how much money it will spend to settle the strike.

“I found a pathetic irony in that statement,” Fain said, adding that it’s workers who have reached their limits by not getting raises for a decade and giving up what he called retirement security.

His statements came four weeks after the union began its walkouts against the Detroit automakers on Sept. 15.

The strikes started with one assembly plant from each company. The union later added 38 parts warehouses at GM and Stellantis, and then one assembly factory each from Ford and GM. The UAW then made a surprise move on Wednesday, escalating the strikes by adding a huge Ford pickup truck and SUV plant in Kentucky.

About 33,700 workers are on strike against the companies. Analysts say parts supply companies, especially smaller ones without a lot of cash reserves, will be squeezed as the strikes go on.

The head of Ford’s combustion engine vehicle unit said Thursday that the company had reached its limit for the amount of money it will spend to reach a deal with the union.

Kumar Galhotra, president of the Ford Blue business unit, told reporters Thursday that the company stretched to get to the offer it now has on the table that includes a 23% pay raise over four years and other benefit increases.

“We have been very clear we are at the limit,” he said on a conference call with reporters. “We risk the ability to invest in the business and profitably grow. And profitable growth is in the best interest of everybody at Ford.”

The company has a set amount of money, but is willing to move dollars around in a way that might fit the union’s needs, Galhotra said, adding that he still thinks it’s possible to reach a deal.

But Fain told workers Friday that the union added the Kentucky plant after Ford presented an economic offer Wednesday with no more money than a proposal from two weeks ago.

“Ford thought they could wait until Friday morning and then just make a better offer. They stopped being interested in reaching a fair deal now and only became interested in gaming our system of announcing strike expansions on Friday,” Fain said. “They thought they figured out the so-called rules of the game. So we changed the rules.”

Fain added that the Kentucky truck plant strike is sending a “very clear message” to Ford — as well as GM and Stellantis.

The union began the strike by targeting a small number of plants from each company rather than have all 146,000 UAW members at the automakers go on strike at the same time.

Last week, the union reported progress in the talks and decided not to add any more plants. This came after GM agreed to bring joint-venture electric vehicle battery factories into the national master contract, almost assuring that the plants will be unionized.

Battery plants are a major point of contention in the negotiations. The UAW wants those plants to be unionized to assure jobs and top wages for workers who will be displaced by the industry’s ongoing transition to electric vehicles.

Galhotra said Ford is trying to figure out the complexities of pulling its joint venture battery factories into the national contract with the UAW. That would match GM and essentially ensure the plants would be union.

Fain told workers that despite the escalation, they are making progress in their quest to get large wage gains, restore cost of living adjustments, get defined benefit pension plans for all workers, end different pay scale tiers around the nation and win job security assurances with promises to build new vehicles in the U.S.

Two of the people closest to Sam Bankman-Fried were asked the same question as they began their testimony this week: Did they commit financial crimes while they were working at FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that crumbled last fall?

Both Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison answered ‘Yes.’

While the finer points of cryptocurrencies, financial market trading and securities law can seem dizzying, the most striking moments in the first two weeks of Bankman-Fried’s trial have been relatively simple.

Here’s a rundown of some of the key moments from the trial so far:

The cocoa bean trader

The government began its case not with an FTX insider but with a commodities broker named Marc-Antoine Julliard, who said he invested $100,000 with FTX.

Julliard testified that he decided to buy digital currencies to diversify his investments and that he bought through FTX because it had attracted so much media coverage and because of the celebrities and investment funds involved with it. He said he didn’t make any risky trades but lost almost all of his investment when FTX failed.

Prosecutors called him to represent typical investors who, according to the government, lost money because Bankman-Fried and his co-workers fooled those investors and spent the money on themselves or gave it to lenders to Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argue that he didn’t defraud anyone, that startups like FTX are complex and often fail and that the government is looking for someone to blame for customers’ losses.

Family grocery bills have been on the rise with higher prices for some items, such as ground beef, and lower prices for others, such as eggs. But unless shoppers are taking notes, it can be hard to really see which items are seeing the biggest spikes.

NBC News is monitoring the average point-of-sale prices and how much those prices have changed since September 2022 for six popular supermarket items: orange juice, eggs, chicken breasts, fresh ground beef, bacon and bread.

Readers can use this interactive chart to see how the price they have paid for groceries differs from the national average or from the prices shoppers paid in other major metro areas.

The goal is to track the impact of inflation on consumers’ wallets during the pandemic and as the economy reopens. The White House has said inflation is on the rise and here to stay.

The NBC News grocery price tracker is one measure of the outcomes of President Joe Biden’s economic policies for everyday people.

The Federal Reserve has said that prices have accelerated and that they are expected to keep rising. Input costs are up, especially for food and fuel, which pressures grocery prices. Supply chain disruptions and weather also play roles.

The data in the NBC News tracker, provided by NIQ, formerly NielsenIQ, is collected from real checkout prices paid nationwide at grocery stores, drugstores, mass merchandisers, selected dollar stores, selected warehouse clubs and military commissaries.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly consumer price index, which uses human data collectors and includes other food product categories, is another resource for average price data.

This story will be updated monthly.