BUSINESS

James joined the Lakers in 2018 on a four-year, $153.3 million contract.

Before your single mom or dad remarries, talk with them about estate-planning issues.

The 41-year-old legend has informed the Lakers he will not re-sign with them and will enter free agency.

Still, after decades of mere rhetoric, Israel’s utility as a land-based American aircraft carrier has finally been put to the test.

Amazon does not operate gas stations, so it generally can’t compete with Costco’s low-priced gas pumps. The gas stations at the membership-based chain drive members to its warehouses, which leads to them going into the stores.Costco CEO Ron Vachris said during the company’s fiscal Q3 earnings call that gas customers tend to become higher-value members over time.”We believe this will drive even greater loyalty with these members in the future as members who use our gas stations typically spend more with us in the warehouse,” he shared.Costco’s fuel operations are widely viewed as traffic-driving amenities that encourage more frequent in-store shopping. Retailers are competing for a larger share of household discretionary spending, particularly around seasonal events like Independence Day.Now, Amazon has a new holiday deal for Prime members that might keep them from making the trip to Costco,Amazon offers a chance for a cheap fill-upHaving just passed Prime Day, Amazon wants to keep its sales momentum up as the Fourth of July holiday approaches.”87% of consumers plan to celebrate the Fourth of July in 2026 and spend a record average of $94.41 on food items,” according to the National Retail Federation Fourth of July 2026 report.In addition, the study shows that 62% of people celebrating will do so with a barbecue or picnic, which creates sales opportunities for both Amazon and Costco. By giving Prime members a chance to fill-up at a gas station that might be closer to home than Costco, the retailer could win more of the sales connected with those celebrations.Amazon explained how the deal works on its website.”Prime members can link their Amazon account to Earnify and save 50¢ off per gallon July 2-5 only (one-time use). Simply enter your phone number or use the Earnify app at 7,500 bp, Amoco, and participating Thorntons locations. Before July 2, Prime members save 10¢ per gallon,” the company shared.Joining Earnify gives members a baseline savings of $0.05 per gallon with Amazon offering to match that until July 2, when an additional $0.40 per gallon will be offered until the end of the day on July 5.”Once the promotional period concludes, Prime members will be able to access a total of 10¢ off a gallon at participating stations,” Amazon shared.Amazon framed the promotion as part of its broader summer savings strategy.”Summer is a time for making memories, and Prime is here to make the entertaining more affordable,” said Amazon Vice President Carmen Nestares in a press release. “…this July 4 holiday we’re excited to introduce $0.50 per gallon fuel savings.”The retailer is also offering Prime members a $5 monthly grocery credit from July through September, applied automatically at checkout on orders of $25 or more, up to $15 in total savings.Gas prices have fallen but remain high”Drivers are continuing to see relief at the pump as the national gas price average declines for the fifth consecutive week. Today’s national average is $3.91 per gallon. Crude oil prices have also continued to fall as the U.S. and Iran work toward a long-term deal,” according to AAA. Despite lower prices, demand could rise as a record number of Americans prepare to travel for Independence Day weekend, with 85% planning to drive to their destinations.June 29 National Average: $3.918One Week Ago: $3.999One Month Ago: $4.507One Year Ago: $3.227

Costco gas stations can only be used by members and they do not take cash.Shutterstock

Costco keeps it simpleWhile Amazon’s deal may be enticing for non-Costco members, RTMNexus CEO Dominick Miserandino won’t see its customers go elsewhere because the warehouse club makes getting low prices easy for members.“Costco wins because its value proposition is completely frictionless. You show your card, and you get the lowest price in town immediately,” he told TheStreet.More Costco:As consumers struggle, Costco sets a troubling recordCostco makes an even bigger bet on its house brandCostco just lowered prices on key itemsHe was critical of a recent Kroger promotion which, like the Amazon deal, required steps beyond just tapping your membership card on the pump. “Kroger’s model requires digital coupon clipping, tracking specific calendar windows like ‘4X Fridays,’ and monitoring point balances. In a tight economy, convenience-fatigued consumers eventually reject complex loyalty gamification,” he added.Miserandino does think the gas promotion will be seen as a positive by Prime members.”In this economy, gas is king and it’s a good way to increase loyalty,” he wrote. Americans do want gas savingsConsumers are looking to save money on gas, and high gas prices are forcing them to cut back in another area, according to a Numerator survey of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers. Key findings included:93% of drivers are trying to save money on gas.36% choose stations based on price over convenience.61% say gas prices are impacting ability to afford other expenses.With gas prices averaging more than $4 per gallon, BMO Capital Markets Senior Economist Sal Guatieri explained that most Americans will have to spend less in other areas.“Apart from undermining confidence, the increase will erode spending power, particularly for lower-income households. Gasoline and other fuels account for 2% of U.S. personal consumption, so the price increase, if sustained, could cut annual spending by about 0.7%. That works out to more than $1,000 for the average American household,” he wrote.Related: Ulta Beauty is leaving Target, here’s what’s replacing it

The biggest moves in a stock rarely start where investors are looking. They start in places that never reach the U.S. business pages.Right now, Wall Street is fixated on one name above almost all others. SpaceX (SPCX) went public on June 12 in the largest initial public offering in history, and the part of the business doing the heavy lifting is not rockets.It is Starlink’s satellite-to-phone service, the technology that turns an ordinary smartphone into a device that can text and call straight through space.That service crossed 10 million subscribers earlier this year, and management wants 25 million by December. When I ran those targets against the company’s $1.77 trillion valuation, the math only holds if Starlink keeps winning new countries, and winning them quickly.That is the bull case. The bear case is just as loud, because SpaceX lost billions last year, which turns every new subscriber into a referendum on whether the growth ever catches up to the spending.Now one of those countries has said yes. On June 29, Globe Telecom, the Ayala-controlled carrier that dominates the Philippines, secured regulatory approval to commercially launch a direct-to-mobile Starlink service, becoming the first telecom in the country to flip the switch, according to Inquirer.Why a Philippines Starlink phone deal matters to Wall StreetSatellite-to-phone is no longer science fiction. SpaceX has launched thousands of Starlink satellites, and the newest ones act like cell towers in space, beaming a signal to any phone with a clear view of the sky.More Telecommunications:Comcast launches new service to win back internet customersVerizon drops 2 new plans as wireless customers flee high pricesT-Mobile warns customers that a key service will double in priceFor most of its life, Starlink sold internet through a pizza-box dish bolted to your roof. The phone version needs no new hardware, which is why it scales fast and why investors now treat it as the clearest path to the $1 trillion in revenue Elon Musk says the company “might be able to reach approximately” by 2030, according to CNBC.There is one more wrinkle for stock pickers. SpaceX folded Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI into the company earlier this year, so a single SPCX share now buys rockets, satellites, and a chatbot all at once.Here’s the catch on the phone business, however. The U.S. version has been underwhelming. T-Mobile (TMUS) runs Starlink’s direct-to-cell product in America, and its own chief executive conceded this spring that satellite traffic was barely a rounding error on the network, most of it coming from people stranded in national parks.So the real growth has to come from somewhere else. It has to come from parts of the world where towers were never built in the first place.

A Starlink’s carrier in the Philippines just got the green light to switch it on.Gilbert Rondilla Photography / Getty Images

What Globe and Starlink just cleared in ManilaThe Philippine approval is the opposite of a rounding error. Globe is switching the service on for a market where roughly 4 percent of people still live outside any mobile signal at all.The country’s regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission, cleared the launch as part of a push to close the digital divide between connected cities and cut-off provinces.To work, the service needs a clear line of sight to the sky, but once it connects, it carries far more than emergency texts. Subscribers can make voice and video calls, send messages, and pull up navigation, all routed through orbit.Related: The SpaceX $17 billion spectrum buy finally makes senseThe rollout starts on Android phones with an active Globe SIM and prices at 99 pesos, about $1.70, for prepaid users, with no extra charge on higher-tier postpaid plans. Even in the most remote or disaster-stricken areas, “Filipinos remain connected,” Globe chief executive Carl Cruz said, according to Inquirer.That last point is not marketing. Globe tested the technology on more than 150,000 users in the country’s south after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in June, using it as a backup when the towers went dark.Strip away the corporate language, and here’s the signal that matters to a stock: Each new country is a checkmark against that 25 million subscriber target. The Philippines, with more than 110 million people and thin rural coverage, is a far bigger prize than another slow weekend in a U.S. national park.The satellite stocks U.S. investors can actually buyYou cannot buy a slice of the Globe deal, and until July 7, most index funds cannot buy SPCX either. That changes when the stock joins the Nasdaq-100, the moment passive funds will be “forced to sell billions” of existing holdings to make room for it, according to SpotGamma.In my analysis, that mechanical buying is exactly why a phone deal in Manila quietly matters to a retirement account in Memphis. The stronger Starlink’s subscriber story looks heading into that index event, the more the forced bid has to chew on.Wall Street is not fully sold. NewStreet Research opened coverage with a $165 target, while CFRA slapped a sell rating and a $115 target on the stock in its first days, betting the price had run out ahead of the cash flow, according to CNBC.Because that SPCX share also carries rockets and a chatbot, the cleaner ways to bet purely on satellite-to-phone are the rivals and partners that trade on their own. AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) builds the competing direct-to-phone network behind AT&T (T). Amazon (AMZN) is racing its own constellation, now branded Amazon Leo, toward commercial service. T-Mobile remains the U.S. storefront for Starlink itself.Here is a quick scoreboard on the engine behind the headline.Largest IPO ever, about $75 billion raised at a $1.77 trillion valuation, CNBC reported.Starlink Mobile above 10 million subscribers, targeting 25 million in 2026, according to TheStreet.SpaceX net loss in the billions in its latest reported quarter, CNBC noted.SPCX trading near $153, with average analyst price target around $188, according to Investing.com.Stock joins Nasdaq-100 on July 7, 2026, Investing.com confirmed.Where the Starlink land grab goes nextThe next proof points are already lining up. SpaceX has told investors it wants to sell Starlink phone service straight to U.S. consumers, a move that would turn its carrier partners into rivals overnight, as I covered for TheStreet.For now, the tell is geography. Watch which countries say yes next, because every Globe-style approval is a brick in the wall holding up that $1.77 trillion valuation, and the first crack will show in the subscriber count long before it shows in the share price.So the next time a remote village half a world away gets a signal it never had, do not file it under foreign news. If you own a Nasdaq-100 fund after July 7, you will own a sliver of that signal, regardless of whether you meant to.Related: SpaceX just put every US wireless carrier on notice

Beef prices are sizzling and Washington’s recipe for high costs — import more meat — only grills your wallet.

Here’s what 45 years of data on death crosses in gold can tell us about the path ahead.

The businessman known as Miles Guo, who pushed the fraudulent H-Coin project and had close ties to Steve Bannon, was finally sentenced after his 2024 conviction.

Google is upgrading its AI image generation capabilities today with the debut of Nano Banana 2 (NB2) Lite, an optimized model built for rapid execution and tight infrastructure budgets. Technically designated as Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Image on Google’s application programming interface (API), NB2 Lite is positioned as the fastest and most cost-effective option within Google’s creative model family, capable of generating images in 4 seconds at a flat rate of $0.034 per 1,000 images. It’s available immediately to enterprise developers through Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (GEAP).It’s not quite as fast or customizable as startup Krea’s new, partially open licensed Krea 2 Turbo (which allows for open modification and commercial usage by small enterprises), but the big selling point here is the low price and bundling with Google’s larger Workplace and AI offerings. This release lands alongside the public preview of Gemini Omni Flash, a multimodal conversational video generation and editing model. However, while Omni Flash represents Google’s long-term bet on agentic video manipulation, Nano Banana 2 Lite is the immediate infrastructure workhorse, tailored specifically for high-throughput commercial application, rapid programmatic prototyping, and automated asset generation workflows. The technology of speedAt its core, Nano Banana 2 Lite is built directly upon the Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite architecture, engineered to solve the persistent tension between computational latency and operational overhead. In high-velocity enterprise frameworks, traditional large-scale image models introduce significant friction due to multi-second processing delays and high per-token costs. Google’s new lightweight model circumvents these bottlenecks by generating a standard 1k resolution image in under four seconds. This represents a stark performance optimization over its legacy predecessor, Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image), achieved through targeted enhancements in core baseline capabilities. According to internal documentation, the model features upgraded world knowledge for drafting rough data visualizations and contextual layouts, enhanced character consistency to preserve identity across continuous image streams, and localized typographic rendering capabilities. The trade-offs inherent to this “Lite” designation are transparently outlined in Google’s technical data sheets. Unlike the broader standard Nano Banana 2 (NB2) and Nano Banana Pro (NB Pro) lines, which support versatile multi-resolution scaling across 1k, 2k, and 4k outputs, Nano Banana 2 Lite restricts its resolution support exclusively to a 1k canvas. Yet, within this specialized operational boundary, the architectural tuning yields surprising competitive efficiencies. In standardized internal benchmarks, Nano Banana 2 Lite achieved a Text to Image arena Elo score of 1251. This score comfortably eclipses the legacy NB1 score of 1151 and remarkably edges out the bulkier, more expensive NB Pro, which sits at 1245 in the same text-to-image track. For specialized editing tasks, the model maintains a single-image editing Elo score of 1308 and a multiple-image editing score of 1294, providing a highly optimized sweet spot for real-time applications.A boost to rapid prototyping and marketing researchFrom a product implementation perspective, Google is marketing Nano Banana 2 Lite not as an artistic engine, but as an invisible, high-throughput utility layer for automated workflows. The target demographic spans software engineers, programmatic ad platforms, and digital commerce applications where rapid iteration is crucial. Think real-time A/B testing for thousands of targeted advertising variations or immediate layout adjustments on localized storefronts. Google highlights three specific production environments where the model excels. First, its world knowledge allows systems to instantly draft accurate contextual scenes or location-specific mockups. Second, its character consistency handles the rigorous demands of storyboarding tools and digital fashion try-ons, where keeping object fidelity static across sequential generations is historically difficult. Finally, its text rendering improvements mean legible copy can be embedded directly into rapid ad generations, allowing teams to verify layout compatibility across various languages on the fly. Developers should note, however, that while native image generation operates with lowest-latency profiles, conditional image editing tasks may experience marginally higher response times due to the secondary processing layers required to rewrite existing pixels. Licensing and acessThe deployment mechanism of Nano Banana 2 Lite via proprietary APIs underscores an enterprise-first commercial licensing strategy. Unlike open-weights models that developers can pull down to run locally under open-source frameworks like Apache 2.0 or modified OpenRAIL licenses, Google’s latest models remain tightly integrated into its managed cloud stack. For enterprises, this eliminates the operational complexity of hosting hardware but binds usage strictly to Google’s metered pricing terms.Financially, this commercial strategy is highly aggressive. At $0.034 per 1,000 images across both AI Studio and GEAP channels, the model undercuts the older, less capable NB1 model ($0.039) and slashes costs dramatically compared to standard NB2 ($0.067) and NB Pro ($0.134) tiers. Internal notes indicate that the model delivers roughly 60–70% of the general capability of NB2 and NB Pro while executing at significantly higher speeds and a fraction of the cost. By lowering the fiscal barrier to high-frequency image generation, Google is making a direct play to lock enterprise developers into its commercial platform ecosystem.