American families are increasingly being pushed past their financial limits at the grocery checkout counter, turning to credit card debt just to keep food on the table, according to a new study.

Data released Monday from the Urban Institute found that a cumulative 32% increase in food costs over the last five years has pushed more than one in four working-age Americans into credit card debt just to cover their regular grocery bills.

“Groceries are one of the largest household budget items for families. Over the past five years, food costs have increased substantially,” the report said. “This means that families today face persistently higher prices when they go to the grocery store, and food affordability remains a key concern for many.”

The report also found, “Between 2023 and 2025, the share of working-age adults who paid for groceries with a credit card and did not make the minimum payment increased, signaling worsening financial distress among families.”

WHITE HOUSE, GAS STATIONS POINT FINGERS OVER STUBBORN PRICES WHILE LOCATIONS THAT SLASHED PRICES SEE BOOM

While recent relief at the gas pump offered a temporary inflation reprieve, corporate supply chain strains and the lingering effects of global trade and geopolitical shocks are expected to keep prices elevated for the foreseeable future, The Conference Board Chief Economist Dana M. Peterson recently told Fox News Digital. She predicted everyday Americans will continue to feel the squeeze at the grocery store, with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal remaining out of reach until at least 2028.

Though June’s inflation data via the consumer price index (CPI) will be released this Tuesday, April’s personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index rose 0.4% on a monthly basis and is up 3.8% from a year ago.

The Urban Institute findings underscore current price pressures, noting 63.2% of working-age Americans ages 18-64 charged their grocery purchases to credit cards last year. More than one-quarter of those individuals then encountered repayment struggles.

Additionally, the share of individuals who failed to make the minimum payment on credit cards used for grocery purchases increased from 7.1% in 2023 to 8.7% in 2025.

“Buy now, pay later” installment plans were used by 8.9% of adults to secure food, but more than a third (34.8%) of those users failed to make an installment payment on time.

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Those hit hardest by the food costs are middle-income earners, the data shows, with middle-class families earning between 200% and 400% of the federal poverty level seeing missed minimum credit card payments on food jump from 9.3% in 2023 to 12.3% in 2025.

“Although access to credit and savings can provide a lifeline for families struggling to meet basic needs,” the Urban Institute wrote, “relying too much on these strategies may lead to financial instability if they have a hard time keeping up with debt or do not recover financially after drawing down savings.”

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Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s decade-long custody arrangement has officially come to an end, as their youngest children, twins Knox and Vivienne, turned 18 this month, freeing both parents from the legal restrictions that have governed their relationship with the couple’s six children since their 2016 split.

The twins, born in Nice, France, on July 12, 2008, are the youngest of the six children Jolie and Pitt share, following Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, and Shiloh, 20. With all six children now legal adults, the former couple are no longer bound by the custody terms that shaped much of their post-divorce lives, marking what amounts to a new chapter for both Pitt and Jolie roughly two years after their divorce was formally settled.

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 after 12 years together, an announcement that stunned fans given the couple’s status as one of the most closely watched relationships in Hollywood. What followed was an unusually protracted legal battle, stretching roughly eight years and covering both the couple’s shared assets and the custody of their children, before the divorce was finally settled in December 2024.

Jolie had spoken publicly years earlier about how central the custody agreement was to her day-to-day life, including her decision to remain based in Los Angeles. In a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Jolie explained that the custody terms were the primary reason she stayed in the city at all. “As soon as they’re 18, I’ll be able to leave,” she said at the time, adding that she planned to spend significant time abroad once free of the arrangement. “I’ll spend a lot of time in Cambodia. I’ll spend time visiting my family members wherever they may be in the world.”

More recently, Jolie suggested in an interview with Variety in June that her children have been not just aware of, but actively encouraging of, the freedom she would gain once Knox and Vivienne turned 18. “My kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me travelling the world, they want me to get out and do things,” Jolie said. “They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot. I think they’re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn’t felt as free to do.”

While the end of the custody agreement marks a significant milestone for Jolie, Pitt’s relationship with the couple’s children has followed a markedly different trajectory in recent years. Pitt is now largely estranged from his six children, and five of them have taken the notable step of publicly removing his surname from their own names, choosing instead to go simply by Jolie.

Shiloh was the first of the siblings to legally change her name, doing so upon turning 18 in 2024. Maddox followed soon after, filing legal documents to officially drop the Pitt surname, having previously been credited as Maddox Jolie in the film “Couture.” Zahara publicly dropped the surname during her college commencement ceremony in May 2026, later filing to legally change her name to Zahara Jolie. Vivienne chose to be credited as Vivienne Jolie during the 2024 Broadway production of “The Outsiders,” while Knox opted to have the name Knox Jolie printed on his high school diploma. Pax remains the only one of the six children who has not publicly taken steps to drop his father’s surname.

Despite the resolution of both the divorce and the custody arrangement, Pitt and Jolie remain entangled in a separate, contentious legal dispute over their jointly owned French winery, Château Miraval, a multimillion-dollar battle that has continued well beyond the settlement of their divorce and custody terms and shows no clear sign of resolution.

Jolie and Pitt were together beginning in 2004, marrying in 2014 before announcing their split just two years later in 2016. Their relationship, and subsequent divorce, became one of the most closely tracked celebrity separations of the past decade, in part because of the scale of their shared family and assets, and in part because of how long the legal proceedings ultimately took to resolve.

With the custody agreement now formally concluded, both Pitt and Jolie enter a phase of their post-divorce lives no longer shaped by the day-to-day logistical and legal obligations tied to raising minor children together. For Jolie, that shift appears to align with plans she has discussed publicly for more than a decade, centered on increased international travel and time spent with extended family and humanitarian work abroad, including in Cambodia, where she has maintained long-standing personal and philanthropic ties.

The end of the custody arrangement does not, however, close the book on the legal ties that continue to connect the former couple. The ongoing dispute over Château Miraval, the winery the couple purchased together in the south of France in 2008 and later became a flashpoint in their divorce proceedings, remains unresolved and continues to keep Pitt and Jolie legally connected even as the custody chapter of their relationship comes to a formal end.

As their children continue to step further into adulthood, several of them have also begun carving out their own public identities separate from their famous parents, with Zahara’s recent college graduation and the visible pattern of surname changes among the siblings reflecting a broader shift in how the six children are choosing to define themselves publicly, nearly a decade after their parents’ split first made international headlines.

The banker who bought Northern Rock and turned Virgin Money into a high-street challenger is the government’s choice to run the Financial Reporting Council, the watchdog that polices the auditors and accountants every UK business depends on.

Business Secretary Peter Kyle has named Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia DBE CVO as his preferred candidate to chair the FRC, succeeding Sir Jan du Plessis when he steps down on 30 September.

For business owners, the appointment matters more than the acronym suggests. The FRC sets the standards behind company accounts and audits, the numbers on which lenders, investors and trading partners decide whether to back a business. It has shown its teeth in recent years, imposing a record £48 million in fines on audit firms over failures at Carillion and London Capital & Finance.

Dame Jayne-Anne arrives with a CV that spans both sides of the regulatory fence. A chartered accountant by training, she led Virgin Money from 2007 to 2018, steering the acquisition of Northern Rock and the listing of the combined business. Since then she has been a founder and dealmaker in fintech, giving her rare first-hand experience of what regulation feels like from the smaller end of the market.

She currently chairs Moneyfarm, OVO and Shakespeare’s Globe, serves as Lead NED at HMRC and Senior Independent Director at the Tate, sits on the boards of PRA Group and Innovo Group, and advises SumUp. She also spent five years as the government’s Women in Finance Champion, following her review that led to the Women in Finance Charter, now signed by more than 400 firms.

Mr Kyle said: “Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia has a proven track record in driving growth and championing high standards in the organisations she leads, along with exceptional experience in financial services.

“She is perfectly placed to lead the FRC at this important time and I look forward to working with her to boost confidence in British businesses.”

Dame Jayne-Anne said: “I am honoured to be appointed Chair of the FRC at such an important time for the organisation and for the UK economy. Strong corporate governance, high-quality reporting and trusted audit are not abstract regulatory goals — they are the foundations on which businesses grow, investors commit capital and public confidence is maintained. The FRC has done impressive work in recent years to raise standards and modernise how it regulates and I look forward to working with Richard and the whole team to build on that progress.”

She inherits a regulator that has worked to reposition itself as more focused, transparent and proportionate under Sir Jan, a shift smaller firms will hope continues at a time when 96 per cent of businesses say regulators are creating unnecessary problems in their industries.

Richard Moriarty, the FRC’s chief executive, said: “I am delighted with Dame Jayne-Anne’s appointment and look forward to working with her. Her exceptional experience, her deep understanding of what it takes to build and lead institutions that command public trust, and her commitment to the role the FRC can play in supporting our economy make her ideally suited to lead our Board.”

Her nomination follows an open competition for the post. The Business and Trade Committee will hold a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing before the Secretary of State confirms the appointment.

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Ryan Blaney turned in one of the most dominant performances of the NASCAR Cup Series season Sunday night, leading a race-high 171 laps and surviving a dramatic overtime finish to win the Quaker State 400 Available at Walmart at EchoPark Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, a race that carried into the early hours of Monday after a lengthy weather delay and ended with a controversial post-race penalty that dropped runner-up Bubba Wallace all the way to 29th.

Blaney, driving the No. 12 Team Penske Ford, started from the pole and controlled the majority of the 400-mile event, sweeping both stages en route to what became his second win of the 2026 season. The race was red-flagged on Lap 108 after lightning and heavy rain moved through the Hampton area, forcing a delay of roughly three hours and nine minutes before the field returned to the track under the lights to complete the remaining laps. A late caution ultimately forced the race into overtime, where Blaney once again rose to the occasion, holding off a hard-charging Bubba Wallace and Carson Hocevar to secure the victory. Blaney’s 171 laps led marked the most laps led at a drafting-style track since Richard Petty’s performance in the 1964 Daytona 500.

“I knew Bubba was probably going to take us three-wide there when he was clear,” Blaney said after the race. “Overall, just a great night. To start on the pole, win both races, win the race, that’s an unbelievable weekend.” Blaney also praised the quality of racing throughout the extended event. “I thought the racing was great the whole night,” he said. “By the end of the race everyone is gripped up — they have the ability to get to the middle, the bottom, and that made it a little more chaotic.”

The race’s decisive moment came on the final lap, when Wallace, driving the No. 23 Toyota for 23XI Racing, took the white flag in third position and shoved Ryan Blaney to the lead entering Turn 1. As Blaney’s car swung high on Carson Hocevar, Wallace darted to the bottom of the track down the backstretch, creating a three-wide battle for the lead. In doing so, Wallace dropped below the track’s double yellow line and remained alongside Hocevar and Blaney through Turns 3 and 4, when a push from Christopher Bell ultimately propelled Blaney across the finish line first. Wallace initially crossed the line in second, appearing to have secured a runner-up finish, but NASCAR officials assessed a post-race penalty for advancing his position below the yellow line, dropping him to the back of the lead-lap cars in 29th and elevating Bell to the runner-up spot.

Wallace defended his move to reporters after the penalty was announced, arguing he never actually gained position while below the line. “The rule says advancing your position, which I did not do,” Wallace said. “I stayed third and I was all over the brakes to make sure I did not advance. As soon as I turned, I was like, ‘I am going to wreck.’ I got on the brakes, kept it underneath me and still ended up side-by-side.” Wallace maintained that the move, had it worked as intended, would have carried him to the win rather than a penalty. “That move should have propelled us to the lead and it didn’t because I knew it was wrong because my car did not like that move,” he said. “We will see what we can do, but I did not advance my position. I stayed third from the entry to three, all the way until 50 yards away, Ty Gibbs gave us a shot.”

Elsewhere, Wallace offered a competing account to another outlet, describing the maneuver as an instinctive reaction to his car losing grip. “I turned left because I got super loose and I just ended up there,” Wallace told EchoPark Speedway’s own reporting team.

Following the penalty announcement, Wallace and his team, including crew chief Charles Denike and 23XI Racing director of competition Dave Rogers, reviewed the race data before heading to the NASCAR hauler for a 31-minute meeting with series officials. NASCAR ultimately upheld the penalty, ruling that Wallace had violated Section 8.7.2.A of the NASCAR Rule Book, which states that “passing below the double painted lines to advance position will result in a black flag.” Wallace accepted the ruling without further argument as he left the meeting. “A penalty is a penalty,” he said.

The final-lap penalty alone cost Wallace 27 points, part of a costly night that also included lost points at the end of Stage 2, when Ty Gibbs bumped Wallace out of sixth position coming to the green-white-checkered finish. Combined, the two incidents left Wallace with just nine points on a night in which he spent significant time racing at the front of the field, including 11 laps leading the race outright. The two drivers discussed the Stage 2 incident on pit road after the race, with Wallace recounting the exchange. “I just said lift,” Wallace said. “I said there’s an opportunity to give, and you didn’t. He was like, ‘Well, don’t block me.’ It’s like, bro, you hit me square in the bumper. The block was well ahead; you seen it coming.” Gibbs, who had also given Wallace a late push toward what briefly appeared to be a runner-up finish, described his own side of the exchange. “I went to tell him sorry because he cleared himself and then, unfortunately, he showed a lot of disrespect,” Gibbs said. “It seems like it didn’t work out for him. I tried to help him out there at the end and push him to win.”

With the 29th-place result, Wallace has now finished outside the top 20 in six of his last nine races. He remains 13th in the regular-season points standings, 55 points above the playoff cutline, after losing 22 points relative to that cutline at EchoPark.

Sunday’s race carried broader championship implications beyond the Wallace penalty. Blaney’s win moved him past William Byron in the regular-season standings and trimmed his deficit to points leader Denny Hamlin to just 65 points, while Christopher Bell’s elevation to second place propelled him into the NASCAR In-Season Challenge semifinals, eliminating his own teammate Hamlin from that separate bracket competition in the process. Chase Elliott also advanced in that tournament by finishing ahead of Chase Briscoe, while Tyler Reddick, who won at EchoPark in February, finished eighth Sunday and cut his deficit to Hamlin in the overall championship standings nearly in half, down to just 24 points.

The race featured seven caution flags across 49 laps and 30 lead changes among 10 different drivers over the course of the extended, weather-interrupted event. The NASCAR Cup Series now heads to North Wilkesboro Speedway next weekend for the series’ first points-paying race at the North Carolina short track in 30 years, with Bell and Blaney set to face off in the next round of the In-Season Challenge bracket alongside the rest of the field.

India’s markets regulator has imposed ​a two-year cooling-off ​period for former officials, barring them from representing ​clients before it in investigations, settlement proceedings and applications for fundraising or regulatory approvals, according to a government notification.

The regulator also ‌extended investment ⁠restrictions to ⁠employees’ family members, the notification, published on Saturday, said.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India had decided to review its rules after former chief Madhabi Puri Buch faced conflict of interest allegations from the now-shuttered Hindenburg Research.

Buch had denied the ​allegations and was cleared by India’s ⁠anti-corruption body ‌last year.

The new rules, including the ​voluntary adoption ​of a stricter code of conduct for ⁠senior officials at the regulator, were approved by ​SEBI’s board last month.

The rules, effective Monday, ​require SEBI officials to recuse themselves from matters involving family members, close associates and former professional relationships, and to disclose negotiations for future employment within 30 days.
Officials must also liquidate or freeze equity holdings before ‌joining SEBI and refrain from trading while in office.The regulator, in a departure from its ​2008 code ​of conduct, extended ⁠restrictions on investments by employees’ family members, including spouses and dependent children, with limited exemptions for employee stock option plans ​and pooled investment vehicles.

The rules also cap exposure to products offered by a single SEBI-regulated fund manager, including mutual funds, portfolio management services and alternative investment funds, at 25% of the employee’s total investments.