BEA

July 31 (UPI) — The Federal Reserve‘s preferred inflation gauge rose more than expected in June, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released Thursday.

The personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE, rose 0.3% in June from the previous month and 2.6% from June 2024. Core PCE, which excludes volatile food and energy prices rose 2.8% on an annual basis.

The annual increases were higher than analysts’ expectations of a 2.5% increase for PCE and 2.7% rise for core PCE.

Additionally, when measured at a monthly rate, Americans saw their income increase by 0.3%, or $71.4 billion. However, after taxes that increase in dollars dips to around $61 billion, and the value of the goods and services bought by or for American citizens, or personal consumption expenditures, also rose 0.3% to $69.9 billion.

As for savings, residents held on to $1.01 trillion in personal savings in June, and when measured as a percentage of disposable income, those personal savings came in at 4.5%.

Inflation was also evident via the consumer price index, or CPI, as that rose 0.3% for urban consumers increased 0.3% since June when seasonally adjusted, and 2.7% over the last 12 months not seasonally adjusted, despite dipping as low as 2.3% in April.

The Fed continues to hold short-term interest rates steady at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% following its meeting earlier this week, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell citing earlier this month that the impact of President Donald Trump‘s reciprocal tariff strategy is the reason the Fed hasn’t gotten back to cutting rates.

Trump, who has been pushing for the Fed to lower rates, posted to Truth Social Thursday in regard to the Fed’s hold, saying Powell “is costing our Country TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS,” and called him a TOTAL LOSER.”

Sunday Brunch hosts Tim Lovejoy and Simon Rimmer issued an apology to comedian Aisling Bea after they asked her a ‘boring’ question about motherhood

Sunday Brunch hosts Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy playfully said sorry to comedian Aisling Bea after they quizzed her on her personal life.

The Irish comedian made an appearance on the Channel 4 morning show alongside guests like Big Zuu, with Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson from Such Brave Girls.

Almost immediately into the show, Tim disclosed a backstage chat with Aisling, prompting a cheeky apology from him.

He explained: “Aisling, this morning you came in and I said to you, ‘How is it being a mum?’ and then Simon said to you, ‘Congratulations, I’ve not seen you since becoming a mum,’ and you said, ‘Simon, the boring thing and being a mum is that everyone keeps asking about it’.”

“So I apologise for that,” he said with a chuckle: “But how is it being a mum?” reports the Manchester Evening News.

Aisling responded with playful repartee: “Thank you for apologising, I’ll work on forgiveness but I can’t guarantee it.”

She continued: “I still identify as a child-free, single lady because of the vibe but I do have a baby and a boyfriend.”

With her signature wit, Aisling commented on “rival show” Saturday Kitchen, saying her little one “couldn’t get her head around it” so she likely wasn’t watching her mum today.

Opening up about motherhood, she added: “I feel like I’m not a mum yet, at the start you’re just like dealing with a new person in the house, I think it’ll be a while before that feels like I’m a mother.”

Aisling revealed that she and her partner Jack Freeman became parents for the first time in August last year, after getting celebrities like Paul Rudd and Travis Kelce to announce her pregnancy news months earlier.

She took to Instagram to share the birth of her baby, posting a series of photos showing her growing bump, ending with a final snap of her cradling her newborn daughter in hospital.

In a playful post, she wrote: “Trip advisor review of Pregnancy One star,” and listed a series of “negatives” such as it being “expensive” and leaving her feeling “very unrested”.

“Not as described online or in pictures. Reminded me of the Glasgow Willie Wonka experience. Towards the end of my stay I was repeatedly kicked in the nuts,” she continued.

She then went on to list: “UTIs, bleeding, depression, cramps, insomnia, nosebleeds, sinus blockage, migraines, vomiting, being randomly touched by people without asking, bones mushing, organs moving, skin stretching, being told that you’ll forget all the pain/that it’s a privilege / that it will all be “worth it” in the end, heightened awareness of climate change and worst of all- boredom- all described as « normal » and was repeatedly recommended « a nice bath » as a fix to all of the above.”

Aisling also shared the “positives”, saying she enjoyed the bath at the end and appreciated the help with her bags, adding: “Before checking out, nearby kebab shop man provided free extra chips and quite a flirty wink, which I appreciated. Was given a little gift at check out which is, admittedly, quite cute. “

Sunday Brunch airs from 10am on Channel 4.

Once upon a time, PBS was virtually the only portal through which British mysteries came to America. Jeremy Brett‘s peerless Sherlock Holmes, two flavors of Miss Marple, David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, Roy Marsden and Martin Shaw successively as Adam Dalgliesh, “Inspector Morse” and its prequel “Endeavour,” Michael Gambon in “Maigret,” Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect,” “Rumpole of the Bailey,” “Foyle’s War,” the Benedict Cumberbatch contemporized “Sherlock,” Alec Guinness in John LeCarre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Wallander” with Kenneth Branagh — classics, all. With the rise of cable, as channels looked abroad for content, there was eventually competition for shows, and in the streaming environment, with BritBox and Acorn TV wholly devoted to bringing U.K. content to the U.S., there is even more.

Meanwhile, PBS, which used to run “Mystery!” under its own flag, now has it booked as part of “Masterpiece.” Yet it still nabs some genre gems, often with something conceptually extra, recently including the meta “Magpie Murders” and its sequel, “Moonflower Murders.” Now comes “Patience,” an ingratiating episodic series premiering Sunday, whose title character, played by Ella Maisy Purvis, is autistic (as is Purvis herself).

Adapted by Matt Baker from the French series “Astrid et Raphaëlle,” it stars Purvis as Patience Evans, a civilian clerk working in the seemingly uninhabited and endless archives of the York police department, where, by wheeling some shelves together, she has fashioned herself a little fortress of solitude in which she hides out with some pet mice. In the opening two-part episode, she detects a pattern linking a new and old murder, which brings her into the orbit of detective inspector Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser), her juniors Jake Hunter (Nathan Welsh) and Will Akbari (Ali Ariaie) and their boss Calvin Baxter, played by Mark Benton, whom BritBox watchers will recognize from “Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators,” if considerably cleaned up and a little lighter.

While Bea sees the merits of bringing Patience into the investigation, Jake rejects her, both as an outsider and as “temperamentally unsuitable for this kind of work,” though — spoiler alert — he will come around. (It’s a friendly show.) “I don’t care if she’s autistic,” says detective Bea, “I just care if she’s right.” (She is — mostly.) For her part, Patience tells Bea, “Your deductive leaps of logic can be haphazard and your notes are cursory,” but she admires her clearance rate, the best in the country.

Whether diagnosed (or diagnosable) or not, the quirky sleuth has been a feature of detective fiction since Holmes first whipped out a magnifying glass. Fans and scholars have retrospectively diagnosed the character as being on the spectrum, and you can easily find essays and discussions as to whether Poirot’s fastidiousness at least borders on OCD. There are arguments pro and con, but some fraction of the neurodivergent community is happy to claim them as their own. In this century, television has given us “Monk,” “Bones,” “Professor T.” (also via PBS, and streaming from the website), the ongoing “Ludwig” and broadcast shows “Will Trent,” “Elsbeth” and “High Potential,” with heroes whose preternatural, if not pathological, focus amounts to a superpower. (Diane Kruger’s Det. Sonya Cross on FX’s “The Bridge,” is often held up as particularly true to life.) Of course, all fictional detectives, whether social, antisocial or introverted, tend to be superhuman to some degree, whatever personal challenges they might face, with a more original, more acute perception than their colleagues. That’s why we love them.

Billy Thompson (Connor Curren) leads an autism support group that Patience (Ella Maisy Purvis) attends.

(Eagle Eye Drama / Toon Aerts)

The opening episodes offer a primer in autism, conducted mainly by Patience’s godfather, retired Det. Douglas Gilmour (Adrian Rawlins), with whom she lives, and Billy Thompson (Connor Curren), who leads an autism support group. (Curren is also autistic.) If it’s a little on the money in terms of dialogue, it’s useful information given that many are aware of autism without knowing much about it — it shows up more on TV because it shows up more in the zeitgeist, and screenwriters are always looking for a new angle. (It’s especially welcome here, given the ignorant remarks of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current secretary of health, on the causes and experiences of autism.) Still, the neurotypical viewer might wonder how accurately the series portrays neurodivergence, and indeed, within the community, which is nothing like homogeneous, one finds a multiplicity of views. (The series has already shown in the U.K.) That Purvis, now 21 and diagnosed at 17, is herself autistic, suggests that, while she’s playing someone other than herself, the series is to some degree true to her own experience.

Patience carries two umbrellas in case one breaks. (It rains a lot in England, you know.) Building up to approaching Bea, she writes out what she wants to say in a conversational flow chart. She won’t cross a “police line, do not cross” tape unless ushered through and she jumps from an elevator as soon as it becomes too crowded (and exceeds its legal capacity). She’s incapable of small talk (“Are you just being polite or do you really want to know?” she asks Bea, when Bea asks how she is), but does point out that Bea’s socks are mismatched and tells cute forensic specialist Elliot Scott (Tom Lewis) that “Your surname’s a first name and your first name’s a surname,” though, to be picky about it, both names are first names and surnames. Still, it’s the beginning of something.

The mysteries are of the usual unusual sort common to cozy mysteries. (They can be a little sillier than they’re meant to, but it’s not fatal.) Why are apparently happy men killing themselves, on the fourth Friday of the month? One, set in a natural history museum, involves fossils; there’s a locked room mystery (with a mystery writer for a victim), which delights Patience, an Agatha Christie fan, and there’s a corpse that seemingly walks off a table in the morgue. Patience, who cannot resist an unsolved puzzle, is drawn reluctantly out of her shell, and Bea begins to notice things in her young son Alfie (an impressively individual Maxwell Whitelock) that remind her of Patience.

There are times when characters act less than reasonably, or less intelligently than their official position might indicate. If Patience is fast in making calculations and connections, the others can seem slow off the mark, and although everyone is on the case — in cop shows, teamwork typically makes the dream work — she makes the breakthroughs that lead to a solution. Of course, the very logic of the series demands she be invaluable, and in this regard, it’s no different from most mystery series, where one character is out ahead of everyone else in solving the crime.

Not everything makes perfect, or even imperfect, sense. But as always, the plots are there almost as a pretext to spend time with the characters, and the whole cast is good company. But Purvis especially, in spite of Patience’s self-containment, radiates quiet charisma — new-star power. A second season, happily, is already on the cards.