QuickBooks Online is operating normally as of Tuesday morning, according to the latest status checks from Intuit’s official monitoring page and independent outage-tracking services, though a small number of users have reported scattered issues over the past 24 hours.

StatusGator, a third-party service that monitors the uptime of QuickBooks and thousands of other cloud-based platforms, last checked QuickBooks’ status at 9:10 a.m. UTC Tuesday and found the service operational. The site noted three user-submitted reports of potential outages within the preceding 24-hour window, a relatively low volume that falls within the range typically associated with isolated, individual connectivity problems rather than a widespread service disruption. A separate StatusGator monitor tracking the Intuit QuickBooks Online API specifically reported the service operational as of its most recent check Monday afternoon, with five user-submitted reports logged over the prior day.

Intuit, QuickBooks’ parent company, maintains its own official status page where the company posts real-time updates on outages, degraded performance and scheduled maintenance across its various products. According to that page, the most recent disruption affected QuickBooks Online users on June 18, when some customers experienced an error related to sales tax calculations while attempting to save invoices and transactions. Intuit confirmed that issue had been resolved as of June 18 and apologized for any inconvenience it caused. Since that incident, the company’s status history shows no further reported outages for QuickBooks Online itself, though several rounds of planned maintenance have been scheduled and completed for related products in the QuickBooks ecosystem.

Among those scheduled maintenance windows, QuickBooks Time, the company’s time-tracking and workforce management tool, underwent planned maintenance from 8:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Pacific time on June 28, with Intuit noting the work was intended to be brief and apologizing in advance for any disruption. That maintenance window has since concluded. A separate maintenance period for QuickBooks Online itself was logged on June 22, lasting roughly two and a half hours, part of a recurring pattern of brief, planned overnight maintenance windows the company has used periodically throughout June to perform system updates without significantly affecting daytime business hours for most users.

Independent outage trackers have offered a broadly consistent picture in recent days, even as individual user reports continue to surface intermittently, which is typical for any large-scale cloud software platform serving millions of small businesses. Outage-monitoring service Outage.Report indicated QuickBooks Online was functioning normally, noting that report volume remained within the typical range expected for the time of day and that the platform’s last confirmed significant incident occurred roughly six months ago. That service also noted zero outage signals detected within the most recent 24-hour window at the time of its last check.

For users currently experiencing problems with QuickBooks Online, Intuit recommends checking the company’s official status page first to determine whether an outage or scheduled maintenance event has already been logged. If an issue appears on that page, it indicates the company is aware of the problem and actively working toward a resolution. Users can also subscribe to receive automatic notifications whenever a service status changes, alerting them when an outage begins or when systems return to normal operation. For issues that don’t appear on the official status page, Intuit suggests visiting the QuickBooks Community forum, where other users frequently report and discuss similar problems in real time, and where members of the QuickBooks support team regularly post updates and troubleshooting guidance.

QuickBooks Online, developed by Intuit, serves as cloud-based accounting software used widely by small and medium-sized businesses to manage invoicing, expense tracking, payroll processing and financial reporting. Given how central the platform has become to daily financial operations for millions of businesses, even brief outages or partial disruptions can create significant downstream complications, delaying invoice processing, payroll runs and financial reporting deadlines for companies that rely on the service as their primary accounting system.

Historical data compiled by outage trackers underscores how frequently large cloud platforms like QuickBooks experience some level of disruption, even if most incidents are brief and narrowly scoped. StatusGator’s records show it has tracked more than 400 distinct outages affecting QuickBooks users since it began monitoring the service in 2019, spanning everything from brief login failures to more significant disruptions affecting core accounting functions. Past incidents have included problems with invoice printing and sending, sales tax calculation errors, and login access issues, the kinds of disruptions that tend to generate the highest volume of user complaints given how directly they interfere with day-to-day business operations.

For businesses that depend heavily on uninterrupted access to QuickBooks Online, particularly around sensitive periods like payroll processing or invoice deadlines, outage history suggests it remains worthwhile to monitor both Intuit’s official status page and independent tracking services during any reported slowdown, since crowdsourced monitoring tools have at times detected and flagged emerging issues before they were formally acknowledged on a company’s own status page. As of this report, however, no active outage has been confirmed for QuickBooks Online, and the platform appears to be functioning as expected for the vast majority of users.

Sephora is bringing “quiet hours” to all of its U.S. stores, the latest sign that major retailers are investing in sensory-friendly shopping experiences aimed at making stores more accessible for neurodivergent customers.

The beauty retailer announced that during designated quiet hours, stores will lower music volume, adjust in-store digital screens and minimize strong scents to create a calmer shopping environment. Sephora has not announced a nationwide schedule for the quieter shopping periods.

The nationwide rollout follows a pilot program at 32 Sephora stores across eight markets. The company said it developed the initiative alongside disability advocacy organization Open Inclusion and consultancy Purposeful Futures after gathering feedback from neurodivergent and sensory-sensitive beauty shoppers.

“Quiet Hours at Sephora is one meaningful step in our ongoing commitment to building more welcoming environments for our employees, consumers, and communities,” Deborah Yeh, Sephora’s global chief marketing officer, said in a statement.

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Kohl’s planned to turn Sephora into a $2 billion business by opening 850 locations by 2023. (Image courtesy of Kohl’s. ©2017 Kohl’s Department Stores, Inc. / Fox News)

The move comes as retailers increasingly view accessibility initiatives as both a customer service effort and a way to reach a broader customer base.

Walmart became the first major U.S. retailer to permanently introduce daily sensory-friendly shopping hours nationwide in 2023 after testing the concept during the back-to-school season. The retailer now offers the quieter shopping experience from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. local time each day, turning off overhead music, dimming lights where possible and displaying static images on television screens.

At the time, Walmart said the decision to make the program permanent followed overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers and employees, including associates with autism and ADHD.

“From face-to-face conversations, emails, listening sessions, social media and our personal experiences in the stores, we have seen what these changes mean for our customers and associates,” Walmart executives Denise Malloy Deaderick, Cedric Clark and Alvis Washington wrote when announcing the nationwide expansion.

DC RESTAURANT OFFERING ‘QUIET HOURS’ FOR PATRONS LOOKING TO ESCAPE BRUNCH ‘PARTY AMBIANCE’

A Sephora store at the Docks Bruxsel shopping center in Brussels on June 25, 2026. Sephora is expanding “quiet hours” to all U.S. stores as retailers continue investing in sensory-friendly shopping experiences. (Marius Burgelman / BELGA MAG / Belga / AFP / Unknown)

Other retailers have also experimented with sensory-friendly shopping. Target has tested quieter shopping hours at select stores by dimming lights, limiting overhead announcements and reducing music, while Toys “R” Us has offered “Quiet Hour” events at some locations.

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Outside traditional retail, Chuck E. Cheese has operated its monthly “Sensory Sensitive Sundays” program at participating locations since 2016, opening early with dimmed lights, reduced sound and a calmer environment for families.

The programs are designed to reduce sensory triggers such as loud music, bright lighting and other in-store distractions that can make shopping more challenging for some customers.

The US government has lifted export controls on Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools, just weeks after ordering it to restrict access to them over national security concerns, the company has said.

Anthropic said in a social media post that it will begin restoring access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Wednesday after being notified that the US Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on the two models.

They are the firm’s most advanced AI tools, which were abruptly suspended on 12 June over concerns that they could be used by hackers to exploit weaknesses in computer systems.

The BBC has contacted the Department of Commerce for comment.

Mythos and Fable are two of Anthropic’s AI models built on its Claude platform – a rival to the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.

Fable 5 is a version of the AI model for the cosumer market, capable of deep reasoning and can perform complex tasks independently.

Mythos 5 is a version of the platform designed for businesses and cybersecurity experts. It is said to be able to identify vulnerabilities in computer code and exploit them.

The firm previously said that US authorities had not pinpointed specific concerns about its technology even as it ordered both platforms to be suspended around the world.

“Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’ Fable 5,” the company said at the time, referring to a process of slipping past software safety restrictions to unblock features.

“However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”

US President Donald Trump made more than $1bn (£750m) last year from business dealings in cryptocurrency, according to his mandatory financial report for 2025.

In a 927-page disclosure, he reported $635m in royalties from a Trump meme coin that has plunged in value since he launched it three days before taking office.

He also reported over $500m in income from World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm founded by his own sons and the children of his special envoy, Steve Witkoff.

He earned millions more from real estate, Trump-themed Bibles, watches and other items. But the White House denied he was profiting from the presidency.

Much of the income was from transactions with World Liberty Financial, a venture from which Trump and family members receive 75% of the company’s proceeds.

It represents a significant increase in moneymaking compared with Trump’s 2024 financial disclosure, when he disclosed over $600m in income.

But White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly rejected any suggestion of ethical concerns and said Trump had proudly made the US “the crypto capital of the world”.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest,” she said in a statement.

She added: “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people – and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”

FuelCell Energy shares jumped sharply again Tuesday, climbing 18.21% to $35.22 and extending one of the most explosive runs of any stock on Wall Street this year, as the clean-power company continued to reap the benefits of a landmark data center power deal and a series of bullish analyst calls tied to surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The latest move builds directly on a 24.3% surge Monday that pushed shares to a fresh 52-week high of $30.41, itself following a 17% jump the previous Friday. Combined, FuelCell Energy stock has now climbed roughly 320% so far in 2026, vastly outpacing peers across the broader hydrogen and fuel cell sector, including Bloom Energy and Plug Power, neither of which has matched FuelCell’s pace of company-specific catalysts in recent weeks.

Tuesday’s gains continue to be driven by a cluster of developments that have rapidly reshaped Wall Street’s view of the Danbury, Connecticut-based company. The most concrete of those came June 23, when the Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a $49 million financing package to support delivery of FuelCell Energy’s fuel cell units to Gyeonggi Green Energy in South Korea. The financing covers five 2.8-megawatt FuelCell Energy Blocks and is structured in two tranches, with roughly $22 million in net proceeds expected to be disbursed around June 30 and a second tranche following in October. FuelCell Energy Chief Financial Officer Michael Bishop emphasized the significance of the funding structure.

“It adds non-dilutive capital to support growth,” Bishop said.

The non-dilutive nature of the financing has been a key driver of investor enthusiasm, since it allows the company to fund growth without issuing additional shares, a meaningful distinction for a stock that has historically faced dilution concerns tied to its persistent unprofitability.

Layered on top of the EXIM financing news, Wall Street has grown increasingly bullish on FuelCell Energy’s positioning within the booming market for AI-driven electricity demand. B. Riley Securities upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral on Monday and more than doubled its price target to $32 from $13, the highest target currently on Wall Street, citing the company’s agreement to supply up to 380 megawatts of continuous clean baseload power to Fit Energy USA for AI and advanced computing data centers as evidence that FuelCell’s commercial strategy is translating into real, signed business rather than speculative potential.

That assessment echoed an earlier upgrade from Jefferies analyst Julien Dumoulin Smith, who raised the firm’s rating to Buy from Hold and lifted his price target to $24 from $16 after the Fit Energy agreement was first announced. Dumoulin Smith characterized the deal, structured as a Capital Equipment Purchase Agreement and representing FuelCell Energy’s first contracted U.S. data center order, as the catalyst that shifted the investment thesis from speculative to executable. The agreement includes an initial 30-megawatt firm deployment backed by an immediate, non-refundable deposit, which at roughly $3,000 per kilowatt before tax credits implies approximately $90 million in near-term revenue. Dumoulin Smith also pointed to FuelCell’s valuation relative to peers, noting the stock traded at roughly 8 times projected 2030 enterprise value to EBITDA compared with Bloom Energy’s 19 times multiple, a gap he described as an asymmetric entry point for investors.

The Fit Energy deal arrived against a backdrop of otherwise disappointing fundamentals. FuelCell Energy’s second-quarter fiscal 2026 results, reported June 8, missed Wall Street estimates on nearly every financial metric, with revenue of $35.6 million falling 5% year-over-year and missing consensus expectations of $40.5 million by roughly $5 million. The company’s net loss widened to $78.7 million, more than double the loss recorded in the same period a year earlier, while its backlog declined 9.9% to $1.14 billion as of April 30 compared with the same point last year. Despite those weak headline numbers, management highlighted a 267% quarter-over-quarter surge in its sales pipeline to four gigawatts, with nearly 90% of that growth tied to AI-related data center projects, a figure that has become central to the bullish narrative now driving the stock’s valuation even as the company continues to post steep losses.

FuelCell Energy has also benefited from structural, passive buying pressure tied to its inclusion in the Russell 3000 index, which forces index-tracking funds to hold shares in proportion to the company’s market weighting regardless of near-term profitability concerns. That technical tailwind has compounded the stock’s rally alongside the steady drumbeat of company-specific news.

Despite the dramatic run, the gap between Wall Street’s longer-standing consensus view and the market’s current enthusiasm remains notable. According to data compiled before the recent string of upgrades, the average rating across eight analysts tracking the stock stood at “Hold,” with a 12-month price target of $22, implying a meaningful downside from current trading levels even before accounting for this week’s additional gains. That consensus has clearly begun shifting in a more bullish direction following the B. Riley and Jefferies upgrades, though FuelCell Energy’s broader financial profile, marked by consistent unprofitability and negative operating cash flow, continues to leave the stock firmly in speculative territory by most analysts’ assessments.

FuelCell Energy designs, develops and manufactures high-temperature carbonate fuel cells used for on-site power generation, grid support, microgrids and carbon capture applications, alongside solid oxide electrolysis technology for distributed hydrogen production. The company serves utilities, independent power producers, data centers, wastewater treatment facilities and a range of industrial, commercial and government customers across the United States, South Korea, Europe and Canada.

Investors are now watching closely for confirmation that the first EXIM financing tranche disburses as scheduled around June 30, a milestone that would validate the non-dilutive funding narrative currently being priced into the stock. Additional follow-through on the Fit Energy 380-megawatt commitment, along with any new data center customer announcements, is likely to shape sentiment heading into the company’s next earnings release. Even so, market commentators have continued to caution that FuelCell Energy remains an extremely volatile and speculative stock, one that has logged dozens of single-day moves greater than 5% over the past year, and that a sharp short-term rally driven by deal announcements does not by itself resolve the deeper questions surrounding the company’s path to sustained profitability.