Heavy, pungent wildfire smoke darkened skies across a wide stretch of the United States on Thursday, from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility in major cities and prompting warnings that breathing the outside air could pose a serious health risk to millions of people.
The smoke, drifting south from hundreds of active wildfires burning across Canada, triggered air quality alerts in at least 18 states stretching from Minnesota to New Hampshire and as far south as Virginia. According to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, roughly 858 wildfires were burning across Canada as of Thursday, the majority concentrated in the province of Ontario, where 113 fires remained classified as out of control. Some of that smoke traveled more than a thousand miles to reach cities in the United States, including New York City, despite Toronto itself sitting more than 1,100 miles from where many of the largest fires were burning in sparsely populated parts of Ontario.
Wildfire Smoke Blankets American Midwest to East Coast as Milwaukee Records Worst Air Quality in History
Milwaukee bore some of the worst conditions recorded anywhere in the country. City officials said the Wisconsin city recorded its worst air quality on record Thursday, with an Air Quality Index reading of 644, more than double the city’s previous record of 300, which had stood since 1987. Readings at that level fall far outside the standard 0-to-500 scale typically used to describe air pollution, reflecting just how severe the smoke concentration became in parts of the Upper Midwest.
Milwaukee was far from alone. According to rankings compiled by the air-quality monitoring service IQAir, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., were among the cities most heavily affected by the smoke, with several registering conditions officially classified as hazardous, the most severe category on the U.S. Air Quality Index. Parts of New York City recorded AQI readings exceeding 200 Thursday evening, a level considered “very unhealthy,” while officials in several cities warned that readings above 150 posed a danger to the general public, not just to individuals in traditionally sensitive groups such as children, older adults or people with existing respiratory conditions.
All of New York State, including New York City, along with parts of New Jersey, was placed under an air quality advisory Thursday because of the smoke. Images from around the city showed the sun shrouded behind a thick haze as it set behind Manhattan’s Hudson Yards development, while in Chicago, residents sought relief along the Lake Michigan shoreline even as smoke settled over the lakefront. In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey urged residents to monitor the latest health guidance from the city as conditions continued to shift, saying officials would continue tracking the situation and sharing updates as needed.
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Forecasters said the smoke was expected to remain a significant problem through the end of the week and into the weekend. According to meteorologists, the latest wave of smoke settled unusually close to the ground because of a shift in the region’s weather pattern, in contrast to an earlier smoke plume earlier in the week that largely remained higher in the atmosphere and caused comparatively less severe surface-level pollution. As a result, air quality deteriorated sharply across the Northeast, Great Lakes and Midwest, with forecasters warning that poor conditions were likely to persist through Saturday as additional plumes of smoke continued arriving from the north.
Health officials have said the extreme smoke was expected to linger through Thursday evening across the Upper Midwest, including northern Wisconsin and northern Michigan, before continuing to affect the New York City area and other parts of the Northeast. Broader estimates from meteorologists tracking the smoke’s reach suggested that unhealthy air quality was affecting more than 120 million people across the Midwest and Northeast as of Thursday, underscoring the scale of the event compared with more localized smoke episodes in past summers.
Wildfire smoke of this kind carries fine particulate pollution known as PM2.5, tiny airborne particles capable of traveling deep into the lungs and, in some cases, entering the bloodstream when inhaled. Exposure to elevated PM2.5 levels has been linked to a range of health effects, including irritated eyes and airways, coughing, difficulty breathing, and worsened symptoms for people with asthma or other chronic respiratory or cardiovascular conditions. Health officials have urged residents in affected areas to limit time spent outdoors, avoid strenuous physical activity outside, keep windows closed, and run air conditioning or air purification systems on recirculating settings where possible to reduce the amount of smoke-laden outside air entering homes.
This week’s smoke event adds to what has already been a difficult wildfire season across parts of North America. Wildfires within the United States, mostly concentrated across the western half of the country, have burned more than 3.6 million acres so far this year, contributing to smoke and air quality concerns that had already affected parts of the West, the Plains and the Midwest earlier in the summer, independent of the thicker Canadian smoke now moving over the Great Lakes and Northeast.
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Photographs and video captured across affected cities Thursday showed the extent of the smoke’s visual impact, including images of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor photographed from the Staten Island Ferry against a hazy, smoke-filled sky, and children continuing outdoor activities such as playing football in New York parks despite the deteriorating air quality around them. Similar scenes played out in Toronto, where a plane was photographed landing at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport amid smoke that had settled over the city a day earlier.
With hundreds of wildfires continuing to burn across Ontario and other parts of Canada, and forecasters warning that additional smoke plumes remained likely to drift south in the coming days, officials across the affected U.S. states said they would continue monitoring air quality conditions closely and issuing updated guidance as the smoke’s movement and intensity continued to shift through the remainder of the week and into the weekend.
A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
A new estimate for the great wealth transfer has sparked a debate over how many trillions of dollars will pass from baby boomers to their heirs, and how it will be spent and invested.
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Last week, Visa Business and Economic Insights released a new projection for the great wealth transfer, estimating that $36 trillion in baby boomer wealth will be passed down to Gen X and millennials over the next 20 years. The figure is a fraction of the widely cited estimate from Cerulli Associates, which says $105 trillion will pass from older generations to heirs by 2048.
The more than $60 trillion gap between the two studies has raised new questions about the size and impact of the great wealth transfer. Some say it will be the largest in history, dramatically reshaping wealth management, charity and the global wealth landscape. Others say its impact will be far more limited and simply marks a continuation of long-term inheritance trends.
The dueling Visa and Cerulli numbers highlight just how important the estimates have become for wealth managers and other companies overhauling their businesses to prepare for the next generation of wealth.
Visa, as a credit card payments company, focuses its study on the amount of inherited wealth that will be spent by everyday American consumers. Cerulli, being a financial research firm, focuses its study on the total wealth being transferred, including the outsized share of fortunes being passed down by the ultra wealthy. While Cerulli focuses on all wealth transfers in coming decades, Visa looked only at transfers from baby boomers.
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“We wanted to go through and inspect how much money will actually be spent,” said Wayne Best, chief economist at Visa. “A lot of people think about the $93 trillion or $124 trillion and think ‘All that money’s going to be available for spending; this is going to be incredible.’ That’s why we went through the kind of the step-by-step process.”
Visa’s process started with the total amount of wealth held by today’s baby boomers, which it put at about $93 trillion. The report then stripped out liabilities, which includes mortgage debt, of $5 trillion and subtracted the wealth of the top 1%, estimated at $28 trillion.
Best said the top 1%, or those with wealth of at least $12 million, approach money very differently from the rest of consumers. They spend a much smaller share of their wealth and they tend to buy different things.
“They don’t spend like the rest of us,” Best said. “They’re buying yachts and airplanes. It’s all great for the economy, but that’s not what the average person really thinks of. So we removed that top 1%, to put this more on a normal or level playing field.”
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Visa then stripped out the retirement spending of baby boomers, which could be larger than expected. Because boomers are living longer and spending their wealth more than past generations, Visa estimates their retirement spending at $16 trillion. It also subtracted $8 trillion for charity and taxes.
In addition, Visa focused its analysis exclusively on the wealth being transferred from baby boomers over the next 20 years. Cerulli looked at transfers from all generations by 2048, which includes members of the older Silent Generation, as well as the younger Generation Xers, who are now between 46 and 61 years old.
After taking out the debt, the fortunes of the top 1%, retirement spending, taxes and charity, Visa estimates that boomers will pass on only $36 trillion of their $93 trillion in wealth.
Of that $36 trillion, they estimate that $28 trillion will go to savings and investments and $8 trillion will go to spending. The $8 trillion will be spent mainly on cars, homes, travel and retail.
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“You know, $8 trillion in spending is nothing to sneeze at,” Best said.” It’s a significant amount of money. And it’s additive. But we wanted to put that in perspective because when you start throwing around trillions of dollars it can get confusing very quickly.”
Cerulli, by contrast, sought to estimate the total wealth being passed down by all wealth groups, of all ages, by 2048.
Chayce Horton, Cerulli’s associate director of wealth management, said the biggest impact of the great wealth transfer will be in wealth management, rather than consumer companies.
Half of the more than $100 trillion being passed down will be from high net worth or ultra-wealthy families, he said. The first transfers in the coming years will be to spouses, mainly women. Cerulli estimates that $4 trillion will go to spouses before being passed down to children and other family members.
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“When you look at that demographic, on average, spouses are a couple years younger, and those spouses live a couple years longer,” Horton said.
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Cerulli said it does factor in retirement spending, taxes and debt. It also estimates that about $18 trillion of $124 trillion in total transferrable wealth will go to charity — leaving a total of $106 trillion going to heirs and spouses.
Gen Xers will be the first recipients, followed by millennials and then Gen Z. Gen X will inherit $14 trillion in the next 10 years, but millennials will eventually inherit the most, estimated at $46 trillion in the next 25 years.
Horton said it would be a mistake for the wealth management industry or any company serving wealthy clients to discount the impact of the great wealth transfer and the acceleration of inherited wealth. He said that one of every four wealth management clients currently come from inherited wealth — second only to business owners and founders, and ahead of corporate executives.
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“The focus of our report when we do this analysis is understanding where the wealth is today, and where that wealth will be moving tomorrow so the wealth and asset management industry can adapt,” Horton said. “Something that we continue to emphasize as an important consideration for the wealth management industry, is making sure that they have those relationships across spousal lines, as well as intergenerational lines.”
Microsoft Patches a Record 570 Security Flaws in July as AI Accelerates the Pace of Vulnerability Discovery
Microsoft released software updates Tuesday to fix at least 570 security vulnerabilities across Windows and its other products, nearly tripling the number of flaws the company patched in last month’s already record-setting release, as the company points to artificial intelligence as a major driver behind the surging patch counts.
Nearly 60 of the vulnerabilities addressed in this month’s release earned a “critical” severity rating, meaning attackers could potentially exploit them to seize remote control of a Windows device with little or no action required from the user. Microsoft also patched three zero-day vulnerabilities as part of the release, including two flaws that were already being actively exploited before the fix became available.
Two of the zero-day vulnerabilities allow attackers to elevate their level of access on a compromised Windows system, joining roughly 250 other elevation-of-privilege flaws fixed this month. Among them are CVE-2026-56155, a bug affecting Active Directory Federation Services, and CVE-2026-56164, a vulnerability in Microsoft SharePoint. Separately, Microsoft addressed CVE-2026-50661, a security feature bypass affecting Windows BitLocker that could allow an attacker with physical access to a device to gain entry to encrypted data. Microsoft said that flaw had been publicly detailed but that the company was not aware of any active exploitation of it at the time of the patch’s release.
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Microsoft has attributed the dramatic rise in disclosed vulnerabilities directly to artificial intelligence tools now being used to hunt for security flaws across its massive codebase. In a blog post published July 9, Microsoft Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri wrote that users would begin noticing “a higher volume of security updates included in each security release” as AI-assisted discovery methods continue to mature. Davuluri explained that advances in AI are changing how quickly vulnerabilities can be found, allowing researchers to identify more issues across larger volumes of code than was previously possible using traditional manual review methods.
Among the vulnerabilities drawing particular attention from security researchers is CVE-2026-48561, a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Copilot carrying a severity score of 9.6 out of a possible 10 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Jack Bicer, director of vulnerability research at the cybersecurity firm Action1, flagged the bug as especially serious, noting that Microsoft has said an attacker could exploit it simply by hosting a malicious website capable of automatically sending crafted prompts to Copilot when a victim visits the site using Microsoft Edge on an Android device.
The same forces accelerating Microsoft’s ability to find and patch vulnerabilities are also making it easier for attackers to develop working exploits for known flaws more quickly. Microsoft has traditionally used an internal measure called the “exploitability index” to estimate how likely it is that a given vulnerability will be reliably exploited by attackers. But Satnam Narang, a senior staff research engineer at the cybersecurity firm Tenable, argued that Microsoft’s current approach to rating exploitability has not kept pace with how quickly AI tools can now generate working exploits. Narang pointed to this month’s SharePoint zero-day as an example, noting that Microsoft had initially rated it as “less likely” to be exploited, even though the flaw had already been added to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list by July 1.
Narang cited internal research from Anthropic’s red team as evidence of how quickly the landscape has shifted, noting that the company’s Mythos Preview model was able to independently produce proof-of-concept exploits for 13 of 14 known vulnerabilities that Microsoft had rated as unlikely to be exploited. “What this means is that our way of looking at Patch Tuesday has changed, because the exploitability index is centered around humans, not AI tools, and as these tools continue to improve, defense needs to improve alongside it,” Narang said.
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Microsoft is not alone in scaling up its patch cadence in response to AI-assisted vulnerability discovery. Chris Goettl, a security researcher at the IT management firm Ivanti, noted that several other major software makers have similarly increased how frequently they release security fixes. Adobe announced this week that it is shifting to a twice-monthly security bulletin schedule, publishing updates on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, and specifically cited AI as a factor accelerating its own patch cycles. Goettl added that Cisco, Mozilla and Oracle have also increased the frequency of their security updates recently, while Google’s cumulative patch releases in June 2026 alone totaled more than 900 individual security fixes.
Security professionals recommend that organizations and individual users back up their systems and data before applying large batches of operating system updates. Given the unusually high volume of patches included in this month’s release, some experts suggested users consider waiting a few days before installing the updates, since large patch releases can occasionally introduce system stability issues alongside the security fixes they deliver. That risk appears to have grown alongside the dramatic increase in patch volume seen in recent months, as Microsoft and other vendors race to keep pace with AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery on both the defensive and offensive sides of the security landscape.
The record patch count adds to a broader industry conversation about how artificial intelligence is reshaping both cybersecurity research and the software development practices that produce the underlying code in the first place. While AI tools have proven effective at surfacing previously undiscovered flaws in massive, decades-old codebases that would be impossible for any single researcher to fully review manually, the same technology is simultaneously lowering the barrier for attackers to weaponize newly disclosed vulnerabilities, a dynamic that security researchers say is forcing companies like Microsoft to rethink how they prioritize and communicate risk to their customers going forward.
When a man in a black Air Jordan T-shirt walked up to a self-checkout kiosk at a Louisiana Lowe’s last spring, he looked like any other customer.
Over the course of about seven minutes, he methodically rang up different gift cards for $95 each, using his phone to tap-to-pay for each card as a red-vested associate circled nearby, surveillance video showed.
Unknown to the employee, the man was part of a sprawling Chinese crime ring, using stolen credit cards to buy the gift cards while a Southeast Asian scam compound coached him through each transaction through the wireless headphones in his ears, police say.
“We know that there are hundreds of individuals at any one time doing this across the country,” said Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, who investigated the case. “Even though you think that’s $95 every transaction, that adds up to a lot of money.”
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A suspect that police said is connected to a Chinese organized crime ring using stolen credit cards to purchae gift cards at a Lowe’s in Hammond, Louisiana.
HSI
After the man left the hardware store, he purchased more gift cards with stolen credit card information at other retailers only to return to the original Lowe’s the same day to repeat the act, Parks said. He was not arrested and is still a suspect, he added. Lowe’s didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment from CNBC.
While credit card theft and fraud isn’t new, with the proliferation of tap-to-pay and growing use of retail apps, these digital thefts are shaping the next wave of organized retail crime and earning Chinese gangs as much as $1 billion annually, police said. Unlike typical retail theft operations — where criminals clear out shelves in big box stores and resell merchandise piece by piece on online marketplaces — the crimes can be carried out right under a store employee’s nose or from a computer anywhere in the world.
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“It’s very low risk for the bad actors,” said Scott Glenn, vice president of asset protection at The Home Depot. “It’s not the same thing as walking into a Home Depot, filling up a cart full of power tools, and then walking out. It’s just not as visible, it’s not as obvious to what’s happening out there and so it’s become a more preferred method over the last several years.”
Fraudsters have selected retailers as their targets because their platforms carry sensitive information such as stored credit cards and personal data but they do not have the same level of security as banks, according to industry experts and law enforcement.
A man police say participated in a tap-to-pay fraud scheme at a Target store self-
checkout in Tennessee
Source: Knox County Sheriff’s Office
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There’s no firm data on how much retailers are losing from digital forms of retail crime, but CNBC found around a dozen criminal cases across the country affecting a wide variety of retailers that police said involve a combination of organized groups and low-level fraudsters.
The cases are complex and often hard for local authorities to handle, said Capt. Matt Lawson of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee, who said he’s been investigating a fraud ring with ties to Chinese organized crime.
Unless the theft hits a certain dollar threshold or rises to the level of a federal crime, “it’s kind of like they get away with it almost,” he said.
Unpaid toll bills and pending criminal judgments
Tap-to-pay fraud, which involves a fraudster adding a stolen credit card to their digital wallet and using it to buy gift cards or merchandise,often starts with a familiar text message and can end with an unwitting consumer’s identity up for sale on platforms such as Telegram.
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Fraudsters send out mass text messages warning about unpaid tolls, expiring car registrations or pending arrests that are designed to scare consumers into providing their credit card information, email credentials or other sensitive data. AI has only made the schemes easier, as crime groups can scale the scams more quickly and make the messages appear more legitimate, experts said.
“Once a fraudster has a person’s email password and credit card, they can load that credit card into a device that they control,”said Jeff Otto, the chief marketing officer of Riskified, a tech company that works with retailers including Macy’s, Peloton and Prada to fight fraud.
Jeff Otto, the chief marketing officer of Riskified.
CNBC
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“Whenthe bank reaches out to say, ‘Hey, is that you loading the card?’ They’ve already got access to the victim’s email” and can often check it for a one-time passcode before the consumer notices, he said.
Low-level opportunists engaging in tap-to-pay schemes can operate independently, using the practice to either buy merchandise or purchase gift cards and resell them at a discount for cash.
But on the Chinese organized crime level, the practice involves an entire criminal network, Parks said. In order to get profits back to China, crime groups use tap-to-pay fraud to buy gift cards and then use those gift cards to purchase high-value goods that can be resold at a premium in China, such as iPhones with American settings, Parks said. The practice allows gangs to skirt strict banking laws both in the U.S. and China and convert higher amounts of cash into the legitimate economy.
At the heart of the strategy are foot soldiers such as the customer at Lowe’s who police say helped carry out the fraud, which in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic has ramped up along with a surge of Chinese nationals at U.S. land crossings, Parks said.
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People looking to enter the country illegally often rely on smugglers and organized crime networks, and they then owe a debt that crime groups require them to pay off once they’re in the U.S.
“So [they’re] going to instruct you on how to go into a store, convert the stolen credit card information into acquiring goods and then now you’re going to ship those goods back to China,” Parks said. “That’s where a lot of times we get our arrests, but that is the lowest level of the organization.”
Adam Parks, an assistant special agent in charge with U.S. Homeland Security
Investigations.
CNBC
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Tap-to-pay schemes also can include retail app fraud, which involves stealing someone’s credentials, logging into their account and using stored credit card information to purchase merchandise or gift cards.
Riskified’s Otto showed CNBC how data breaches, phishing and social engineering, which involves piecing together publicly available information about someone to steal their identity, can give fraudsters access to a consumer’s retail account.
CNBC saw that login credentials for Walmart‘s app and website were being sold on various Telegram channels for between $1.50 and $2.50 with information about how long the accounts had been active.
“They have Yahoo addresses that are 10 years old, Gmails that are 10 years old,” Otto said. “These are older accounts that often get past some of the more rudimentary fraud checks [because] we tend to trust accounts that have been with us for a long time. And in this case, these can be sold.”
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Telegram didn’t return a request for comment.
Compounding the issue is the fact that retail apps and websites don’t always have the same level of security as platforms like banking apps, Otto said. On their face, retail apps are for shopping, places for consumers to buy clothes, household necessities or makeup.
But they also contain stored credit cards, sensitive personal information and sometimes, access to a consumer’s store-branded credit card. For example, Macy’s customers can shop on its app and use the same platform to pay their Macy’s credit card bill.
“It has a lot to do with the fact that they are focused on convenience and they’re focused on conversion, generating the maximum amount of online revenue, and because of that, they do not use bank-grade security,” Otto said. “They don’t want to add additional friction.”
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In a statement to CNBC, Walmart said “customer privacy and safety is a top priority.”
“While we won’t disclose specific security measures, Walmart has systems in place to help detect bad actors, prevent, and respond to unauthorized account access and is continuously enhancing these protections,” the company said. “In addition, full payment card information is not stored in an unprotected form.”
Using anime to disguise fraud
In a review of tap-to-pay cases across the country, CNBC found a mix of low-level opportunists and organized crime rings.
In January,Dancliff Labady was arrested in Miami and accused of stealing nearly $95,000 primarily using TJX Companies’ store-branded credit cards for TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and Home Goods, according to a police report. Police allege he obtained access to about 15 different customer accounts by calling Synchrony Bank, the card issuer, and adding a phone number he controlled to the accounts. It’s unclear what customer information Labady needed to provide to Synchrony to make the account changes.
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Once Labady added his number to the accounts, he was able to add the cards to his digital wallet and conduct dozens of transactions at TJX stores across the Miami area over the holiday shopping season without having a physical card, police said. He was arrested after TJX’s asset protection team reported the suspicious activity to Synchrony Bank.
Labady has pleaded not guilty and his attorney declined to comment. A spokesperson for Synchrony said it doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations and is “cooperating fully with law enforcement.”
In a statement, a TJX spokesperson said “protecting our customers’ personal information and our technology systems is very important to us.”
“We have measures in place across our systems and stores designed to identify and address potential fraudulent account activity,” the spokesperson said. “We would also encourage our customers to maintain strong online account security practices, including not re-using passwords across websites or apps, and to report any suspected fraudulent activity to their bank or credit card company immediately.”
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There have been broader efforts to root out the fraud schemes, as well.
Since spring 2025, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office arrested more than a dozen suspects with alleged ties to Chinese organized crime who officials said were traveling across the country and using stolen credit card information to purchase gift cards and launder money.
In a review of cell phones seized in connection with the cases, investigators found the suspects were using special apps that contained the stolen credit card information but disguised them as games to evade detection.
“They look like anime games. They kind of look like Pokemon characters,” said Lawson, who’s been investigating the fraud ring. “We would just kind of start tapping on them … and we would find the ones that were the actual tap-to-pay apps.”
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On a national level, Homeland Security Investigations’ Project Red Hook targets gift card fraud and other forms of digital retail crime. So far, it has led to at least 239 arrests since January 2024 and is targeting some of the largest Chinese organized crime groups operating in the U.S., HSI said.
For several years, the retail industry and law enforcement organizations have been lobbying Congress to pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which they say would increase information sharing and make these types of complex cases easier to tackle. It passed the House in May and was recently included as part of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act in the Senate. It’s expected to be voted on before the end of the year.
Lawson said he’d like to see better sharing of information.
“Law enforcement sometimes likes to hold information and not share everything and kind of compartmentalize it … even the retailers are guilty of this.”
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“The more information that we get out when we notice these people are breaking these laws” the easier it will be to catch them, he said.
I am an individual investor who is now fully focused on managing my own capital. My investing background focuses on value investing with an emphasis and interest in small to mid-cap stocks. I believe history often repeats itself, and investors can gain valuable insights into the future of companies by examining their historical performance and industry peers. By understanding the history of how they got here, meaningful insights can be inferred about where the companies are going in the future. The reason to write on SeekingAlpha is to use this platform as a tracker for my investing ideas, research, performance, and also to connect with like-minded investors who have similar investing interests. I believe clarity of thought can not be obtained without clarity in writing. Putting ideas down on paper helps me refine my thinking and thesis. I tend to write a lot as I look at multiple companies a day and use writing as a tool to track and evaluate my ideas. By writing down all of my ideas it will help me to become a better investor. Although my focus is on small to mid-cap companies, I have an interest in analyzing technology, mining and the retail industry. One area I tend to avoid is biotech, as the industry is highly specialized with technical knowledge requirements and almost impossible for generalists to gain an edge. I hold a degree in accounting, and it has been particularly useful when analyzing companies that are under financial distress (commonly amongst small to mid-cap companies). Evaluating the company’s solvency and ability to continue operations is one of the necessary checks.Disclosure: author is closely associated with Troy Research
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Jordan Pickford’s nine-year run as England’s undisputed No. 1 goalkeeper should come to an end, according to a growing chorus of pundits in the wake of the Three Lions’ painful World Cup semifinal exit against Argentina.
The debate erupted on talkSPORT’s Kick Off program Thursday, with the panel largely agreeing that England needs a change between the posts heading toward Euro 2028, even as they acknowledged Pickford’s substantial contributions to the national team over nearly a decade at the top of the goalkeeping pecking order.
Pickford, 32, has made 91 appearances for England since debuting in November 2017, becoming a mainstay through three World Cups and two European Championships. His tenure has produced some of the country’s most memorable moments in major tournament football, including a crucial penalty save against Colombia’s Carlos Bacca at the 2018 World Cup that helped England secure its first-ever penalty shootout win at the tournament, and two saves in the Euro 2020 final shootout against Italy at Wembley, though England ultimately lost that match on penalties. He also denied Manuel Akanji in a quarterfinal shootout win over Switzerland at Euro 2024, and this summer broke the record for the most World Cup appearances by an England goalkeeper, with 18 caps across the tournament.
Despite that résumé, former England international Dean Ashton opened the discussion on Kick Off by suggesting the time had come for a new goalkeeper to take over the position heading into the next European Championship. “Pickford might be there, but it’s probably time for somebody to come and step in,” Ashton said.
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Fellow panelist Rory Jennings went further, arguing that Pickford’s international career should be considered finished entirely. “I think Jordan Pickford shouldn’t play for England again. I think it’s over,” Jennings said. He pushed back on what he characterized as a common misconception that Pickford has never made a costly mistake in an England shirt, pointing specifically to Wednesday’s semifinal defeat to Argentina, in which Pickford was unable to stop a long-range effort from Enzo Fernández in the 85th minute that helped complete Argentina’s dramatic comeback. Jennings noted that midfielder Jude Bellingham appeared visibly stunned as the ball crossed the line, suggesting even Pickford’s own teammates were surprised by the goalkeeper’s inability to keep the shot out.
Jennings, a self-described Chelsea supporter, was blunt in his overall assessment of Pickford’s ceiling as a goalkeeper, arguing that the lack of transfer interest from bigger clubs throughout his career reflected a broader truth about his level. He described Pickford as an “all-right Premier League goalkeeper” and said England needs someone better as it looks toward the future.
Not every voice on the panel framed Fernández’s goal purely as a technical error. Former England goalkeeper Ben Foster agreed that Pickford should have done better on the shot but attributed part of the issue to Pickford’s physical stature rather than a lapse in technique. Foster explained that Pickford, listed at 6-foot-1, lacks the imposing height of some of the tournament’s other elite goalkeepers, contrasting him with Argentina’s Emiliano Martínez, who stands 6-foot-6. According to Foster, Pickford’s positioning and the timing of his glance toward the ball as it traveled around defender John Stones left him unable to react in time, a sequence he suggested a taller goalkeeper might have handled differently. Foster rated Pickford’s overall tournament performance at roughly a 6 out of 10, praising a strong showing in England’s round-of-16 win over Mexico but noting shakier moments in matches against DR Congo and Norway.
With the position potentially open heading into the next major tournament cycle, England manager Thomas Tuchel has several options to consider. Dean Henderson, who has five England caps and was part of this summer’s squad following a strong season with Crystal Palace, represents one alternative. Aaron Ramsdale, who has represented major clubs including Arsenal and Newcastle over his career and earned five caps of his own, could also factor into the conversation despite missing out on selection for the current squad.
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The goalkeeper most frequently mentioned as Pickford’s eventual successor, however, is James Trafford, who currently has just two England caps and is fighting for regular playing time behind Gianluigi Donnarumma at his club. Asked directly who should take over from Pickford, Jennings named Trafford as his choice. “I think at the moment it would be James Trafford,” Jennings said, adding that he hoped Trafford would earn a bigger opportunity at Manchester City and continue developing into the goalkeeper he believes he can become.
For now, Pickford remains part of England’s squad as the tournament winds down. He is set for a possible 19th World Cup appearance Saturday, when England faces France in the third-place playoff match in Miami, with kickoff scheduled for 10 p.m. local time.
Wednesday’s semifinal defeat marked another agonizing near-miss for England, which came within minutes of reaching the World Cup final before Argentina scored twice in the closing stages to complete a 2-1 comeback victory. The result extended England’s wait for a first World Cup final appearance since 1966, a drought that has now spanned three consecutive tournaments in which the team reached at least the quarterfinal stage without ultimately breaking through.
Whether Tuchel shares the panel’s view on Pickford’s future remains to be seen, and no official decision on the national team’s long-term goalkeeping plans has been announced. But with growing public debate over whether Pickford’s near decade-long hold on the position should continue, the coming months are likely to bring further scrutiny over who wears the gloves for England as the team begins looking ahead to Euro 2028.
Shares of Polycab India fell 4% to an intraday low of Rs 8,888 on the BSE on Friday, despite the company reporting its highest-ever first-quarter performance. The stock declined from its previous close of Rs 9,216, even as net profit surged 33% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 797 crore.
On Thursday, the company reported a 39% YoY rise in consolidated revenue to Rs 8,210 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. The strong performance was driven by robust growth in its Wires & Cables (W&C) business and continued momentum in the Fast-Moving Electrical Goods (FMEG) segment.
EBITDA rose 32% YoY to Rs 1,136 crore, driven by improved operational efficiency and a favourable business mix. The EBITDA margin stood at 13.8%, while the net profit margin came in at 9.7%.
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The FMEG business posted 71% YoY revenue growth across all product categories, with solar products remaining the largest segment and more than doubling from a year ago. Segment EBIT margin expanded to 8%, aided by operating leverage and a richer product mix, in line with the company’s Project Spring target of 8-10% EBITDA margins by FY30.
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The Wires & Cables (W&C) business, Polycab’s largest segment, reported 39% YoY revenue growth, led by a 43% rise in domestic sales on the back of healthy demand and strong execution under Project Spring. While the wires business outpaced cables, international revenue declined 13% YoY. The company, however, said its diversified global footprint and healthy order book provide strong growth visibility. The EPC business saw revenue decline 11% YoY due to project execution timing but maintained an 11% EBIT margin, supported by a healthy order backlog and strong execution pipeline.”We have entered FY27 with strong momentum, achieving our highest-ever first-quarter revenue and profit performance,” Chairman and Managing Director Inder T. Jaisinghani said, adding that government infrastructure spending, capacity expansion, innovation, and distribution network growth will support long-term growth.
In the past six months, the stock has gained 25.12%, while it is up 16.29% so far in the current calendar year. Over the last three and five years, it has delivered returns of 128% and 361%, respectively.
(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)
Andy Burnham has been warned to rule out a wealth tax before he even reaches Downing Street, with one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory firms claiming that speculation alone is already driving capital, and the entrepreneurs who deploy it, out of Britain.
The warning from Nigel Green, chief executive of deVere Group, follows an interview in which Burnham, who replaces Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister on Monday, declined to rule out a levy on the assets of Britain’s wealthiest citizens. Speaking to Gary Lineker’s podcast, the incoming PM suggested people may eventually be asked for “a little more” and said fairness demanded difficult decisions ahead.
For business owners, the concern is less the tax itself than the uncertainty. “A wealth tax that has not been proposed is already doing damage,” Green said. “Money does not sit around waiting for legislation. It moves the moment a government signals it is willing to go there, and Mr Burnham just signalled it.
“He needs to put this to rest today, not let it hang over Britain for months while capital quietly heads for the door.”
The timing is awkward for a new administration promising stability. The UK lost an estimated 16,500 millionaires in 2025, one of the largest single-year outflows recorded anywhere in the world, and industry forecasts suggest that figure could double again in 2026 as the effects of the abolition of the non-dom regime continue to ripple through. Analysts had already warned that Britain faced the largest exodus of millionaires globally before the leadership change, and more recent research suggests the non-dom exodus is running far worse than forecast, putting billions in expected tax receipts at risk.
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The competition is not standing still. The UAE, Switzerland and Italy have all positioned themselves as beneficiaries of Britain’s loss, actively courting the capital and talent that London once took for granted.
Green argues the precedents are not encouraging. “History has run this experiment more than once, and the result never changes,” he said. “France tried it and watched tens of thousands of its wealthiest residents leave before scrapping the policy. Sweden tried it and lost entrepreneurs and headquarters it never got back.
“Wealth is mobile in a way wages are not, and every government that has taxed it hard has ended up chasing capital that has already gone.”
The economic maths, he contends, rarely works as proponents assume. “A wealth tax reads well on a policy paper and collapses on contact with reality. Tax accumulated assets and the people holding them start planning their exit immediately. What follows is not new revenue for the Treasury. It’s a shrinking base of investment, jobs and philanthropy, all disproportionately reliant on the very people this tax would target.”
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For the SME community, the second-order effects may matter most. Departing wealth takes with it the angel investment, family office backing and consumer spending that smaller firms depend on, and Green says the damage is already underway.
“Family offices are having relocation conversations this week that would not have happened a year ago. Entrepreneurs are asking advisers whether Britain is still worth building in. None of that needs a wealth tax to pass. It only needs the idea to stay alive.”
His conclusion is blunt: “Andy Burnham has a choice in his very first weeks as Prime Minister. Rule out a wealth tax now, or watch Britain’s record wealth exodus become his opening legacy.
“There’s no version of this where keeping the door open on a wealth tax helps Britain compete for capital. Every day it stays open, more of that capital walks through it.”
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Jamie Young
Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk
Yorkshire and North East sites are among those that have closed
Turtle Bay in Middlesbrough which has now closed(Image: Teesside Live)
Caribbean restaurant chain Turtle Bay has closed four sites and shed 76 jobs amid a restructuring.
Locations in Yorkshire and the North East are among those impacted following creditor approval for a Company Voluntary Agreement in the face of “significant economic headwinds”. Turnaround consultants at Interpath have been advising the Bristol-based company as it grappled with challenges seen across the hospitality market including rising costs, reduced consumer spending, and changing footfall patterns.
The majority of the chain’s 48 restaurants are unaffected though sites in York, Middlesbrough, Solihull and Walthamstow have already closed. The CVA has altered terms at 15 Turtle Bay sites which continue to trade as normal.
Ajith Jayawickrema, founder and CEO of Turtle Bay, said: “Securing approval for our CVA proposals provides us with a stable platform for the long-term future of Turtle Bay as we protect the majority of jobs and sites, address challenges in the business, and continue investing in our restaurants. I’d like to thank our landlords and creditors for their support throughout this process, our dedicated teams who have and continue to bring warmth, energy and Caribbean soul to our service and, of course, our loyal customers.
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“While we have had to make difficult decisions along the way, we believe that we now have a sustainable business at its core and can look forward with confidence.”
Last year, Mr Jayawickrema bought back a stake in Turtle Bay from private equity firm Piper. Most recent accounts to the end of March 2025 show headwinds had caused sales to fall 10% to more than £84m but with Mr Jayawichrema saying they were higher than pre-pandemic.
Interpath said the CVA was intended to secure the long-term future of the business and maximise returns for stakeholders, including landlords. The proposals were approved by about 92% of voting creditors.
Gareth Slater, managing director at Interpath Advisory and joint nominee of the CVA, said: “The hospitality industry continues to face significant challenges and so this agreement reflects the support for Turtle Bay’s offering and the impact of the leadership team’s engagement with stakeholders to find a sustainable solution to its challenges. The CVA proposals have struck a fair comprise for creditors, helping the business right-size its debt obligations, while also providing a firm foundation for Turtle Bay to stabilise and move forward with the vast majority of its sites.”
Smoke from hundreds of wildfires burning across Canada and Minnesota is expected to darken skies again Friday, prolonging a stretch of dangerous air quality across the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast that has now spilled into a diplomatic dispute between the United States and Canada.
Air quality readings reached extreme levels in parts of the Midwest on Thursday. Toledo, Ohio, recorded an Air Quality Index reading that soared above 800 around 5:30 p.m., far exceeding the standard 0-to-500 scale typically used to measure pollution and well past the threshold of 300 that officially classifies air as hazardous. Milwaukee and Detroit also registered AQI levels above 500 on Thursday, according to AirNow, the government-run monitoring service. By Friday morning, conditions had eased somewhat in several cities but remained severe: Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee all posted hazardous readings above 300 as of 6:30 a.m., while New York City registered an unhealthy reading of 185, and Philadelphia and Cleveland recorded very unhealthy readings around 260.
Forecasters said an advancing weather system was expected to help clear some of the smoke and stifling heat from parts of the Northeast later Friday. But cities closer to the fires, including Toledo, Detroit and Milwaukee, are likely to continue contending with the acrid smell of smoke and sky-tinting plumes through the weekend, with conditions across the Great Lakes potentially remaining heavy at times, particularly Saturday.
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The persistent smoke has ignited a political confrontation between American lawmakers and the Canadian government. Four Republican members of Congress from Michigan sent a letter Wednesday to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, criticizing the country’s management of its forests and warning that the United States would act on its own if Canada did not take additional steps to address the fires. Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno said he plans to introduce legislation next week aimed at penalizing Canada, describing the situation as “this atrocity.” Michigan state lawmaker Aric Nesbitt escalated the rhetoric further on social media Thursday, invoking annexation language previously used by President Trump and telling Canada to “learn to manage your forests” unless it wanted to “become the 51st state.”
Carney responded to the criticism Thursday, telling reporters in French that fighting climate change is the responsibility of every country, including the United States. He did not directly address the congressional letter, and it remained unclear as of late Thursday whether he had formally received it. Separately, Carney acknowledged the toll the fires have taken domestically, telling reporters during a visit to an armored vehicle factory in London, Ontario, that thousands of Canadians’ lives had been upended by wildfires burning across the country. He noted that Canada’s federal government has limited authority over the wildfire response, since forest management falls primarily under provincial jurisdiction, with Ottawa’s role largely confined to fires on national parks and military land. Carney said the federal government was providing search-and-rescue aircraft through the Royal Canadian Air Force and had deployed helicopters through an intergovernmental firefighting agency, adding that his government stood ready to provide further assistance as needed.
The dispute has drawn attention to the shared, cross-border nature of North American wildfire smoke. U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan native, struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post Wednesday, saying the wildfire challenge “knows no borders” and that the U.S. would continue coordinating closely with Canada as it has for more than four decades of shared wildfire emergencies. Notably, the flow of smoke across the border has not run in only one direction. In September 2020, wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington state burned more than 5 million acres and sent thick smoke drifting north into Canada, eroding air quality in cities including Vancouver for weeks. The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center reported Thursday that more than 150 new fires had been reported nationwide the previous day, including six new large fires, with firefighters working to contain more than four dozen large fires burning across the country. A Canadian helicopter pilot, Nicholas Dale, 56, died Sunday in a crash while assisting with wildfire suppression efforts in Colorado, prompting Gov. Jared Polis to call him “a heroic firefighting pilot.”
Much of the current wave of smoke originates from fires burning in northwestern Ontario near Thunder Bay, a city roughly an hour’s drive north of Minnesota, with additional fires burning around Fort Frances, Dryden, Nipigon and Sioux Lookout. Ontario has struggled for years to stay within its wildfire-fighting budget. The province budgeted 135 million Canadian dollars for emergency firefighting in 2025 but ultimately spent more than double that amount, 271 million Canadian dollars, by year’s end. This year’s budget was increased to 150 million Canadian dollars, an amount critics say still falls short of recent actual spending. Ontario Premier Doug Ford defended his government’s firefighting funding Thursday, telling reporters in Windsor that his administration would “not spare an expense, not one single penny” and that firefighting funding had more than doubled since he took office in 2018. Marit Stiles, leader of Ontario’s opposition New Democratic Party, pushed back on that characterization in a video posted to social media, accusing Ford of allowing the province’s wildland firefighting force to shrink over successive years despite warnings from firefighters.
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Ontario’s emergency preparedness minister, Jill Dunlop, said Thursday morning that the province had formally asked the federal government to help evacuate 15 remote communities under threat from the fires, including the potential deployment of Canadian soldiers. Provinces have also been leaning on each other for support, with Alberta currently providing 94 firefighters and support workers to assist in Ontario, reversing a similar arrangement from last year when large numbers of Ontario firefighters traveled west to help fight fires in Alberta.
Health officials have urged residents across the affected region to take precautions as the smoke lingers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said children, pregnant women and people with respiratory conditions such as asthma face the greatest risk, advising these groups to stay indoors, keep windows closed and run air filtration systems where available. Officials have also recommended wearing a mask, ideally an N95 rather than a cloth or surgical mask, when the Air Quality Index climbs above 200, and have urged pet owners to limit their animals’ time outdoors and wipe them down after exposure to reduce lingering pollutants on their fur.
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