By Phil Mattingly, CNN

(CNN) — A Reporter’s Notebook from four cities, 5,000 miles, three dozen interviews and the people I can’t stop thinking about.

We were a few minutes into a drive when Jolene Simecek said something that left me speechless.

She was steering me through Parma, Ohio, narrating the new subdivisions as they slid past — block after block of brand-new homes she’s made her peace with never owning. Around here, she said, they don’t last on the market long enough to put in an offer. Her parents never built the kind of wealth you hand down. So you rent, and you work harder — 16-hour days, never home — and the math still won’t move. Not for her, not for most people her age.

“What kind of pressure does that put on you?” I asked.

STREAMING NOW: What happens when hard work is no longer enough? Priced Out in America follows families trapped in the affordability crisis, revealing structural forces that have profoundly and permanently reshaped the U.S. economy.

She didn’t hesitate. “It’s not fun. I wanted a yard for my kid. Just the normal American dream — a house, a picket fence, a yard. And it just seems like that’s more and more out of touch. Not reality.”

I sat in silence. When I got back to DC and watched the tape, the weight of the moment was visible — a couple of seconds of dead air while I sat with what she’d said.

Here’s what the camera couldn’t pick up. For months before I booked a flight, I’d been buried in economic data, chasing a theory I’d never said out loud: that the cost-of-living crisis wasn’t just making life expensive. It was eviscerating the deal we’d all signed onto and believed. Go to school, get a job, work hard and do the right things. Buy the first home, raise the family, build a little wealth, buy the bigger home.

Jolene is 42, a single mom, working since she was 13. She gave up her apartment and went $15,000 into debt to go back to nursing school, betting on herself and the shortage in healthcare. The tradeoff: her sister’s basement, because there were no other options. Her new roommates are five and three.

As we drove past her old apartment complex, she walked me through the math that forced her to leave. Her rent had gone from $785 to nearly $1,600 — for the same unit – over the course of seven years. Her income hadn’t moved.

“I’ve already paid a quarter million dollars in rent in my life,” she said. “I should already have the home with the equity paid off.” Then her voice trailed off. “But I didn’t make the right decisions.”

Jolene and I are the same age, same graduating class, same state, just opposite corners – her side of Cleveland, my side of Toledo. For a while our lives ran parallel. Then they split, and I can’t tell you where or why. She did all the things we were told to do, and she’s living in her sister’s basement. In the weeks after, the only answer I could come up with was an old proverb: There but for the grace of God go I.

What I built before I ever left

“Affordability” is everywhere now — a clipboard word that flattens Jolene into a data point shorthanded for poll-tested talking points. A word that detaches itself from the actual people experiencing the long-fraying fabric that underpins the economic promise of America tear straight through.

The stock market sets new records on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Corporate earnings, productivity growth and consumer spending

By Bryan Mena, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Spending at US retailers last month was weaker than expected, despite the World Cup drawing tourists from around the world and online sales events.

Retail sales rose 0.2% in June from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Thursday, down sharply from May’s revised 1% increase. That was lower than expectations of a 0.3% increase, according to a poll of economists by data firm FactSet. Retail sales are adjusted for seasonal swings but not inflation.

The World Cup and Amazon’s Prime Day sale helped boost spending last month, according to economists, though lower gas prices weighed on the government’s retail figures, since they’re not adjusted for inflation. Excluding sales at gas stations, spending in June was up by a solid 0.7%.

A measure of retail spending that strips out volatile categories, such as sales of building materials and gasoline, rose 0.5% in June, down from May’s 0.8%, but slightly higher than expectations of a 0.4% increase. That shows underlying consumer demand continued to hum along last month.

Sales were up across most categories last month, rising the most among online retailers (1.9%) — likely thanks to the Prime Day sale — and car dealerships (1.9%). Retail spending declined the most at gas stations, plummeting 5.3%, and at health and personal care stores, which fell 0.8%.

Spending at restaurants and bars edged higher by just 0.1% last month, despite an influx of World Cup tourists. Sales at department stores were also up by only 0.1% in June.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the US economy, has held up this year, despite higher inflation and unusually weak consumer sentiment. That’s partly due to layoffs and a still-solid labor market, though low-income households are feeling the pain of price hikes and mounting debt more so than their high-income counterparts, who have benefited from a resilient stock market. Economists refer to that divergence as the K-shaped economy.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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By Bryan Mena, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Spending at US retailers last month was weaker than expected, despite the World Cup drawing tourists from around the world and online sales events.

Retail sales rose 0.2% in June from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Thursday, down sharply from May’s revised 1% increase. That was lower than expectations of a 0.3% increase, according to a poll of economists by data firm FactSet. Retail sales are adjusted for seasonal swings but not inflation.

The World Cup and Amazon’s Prime Day sale helped boost spending last month, according to economists, though lower gas prices weighed on the government’s retail figures, since they’re not adjusted for inflation. Excluding sales at gas stations, spending in June was up by a solid 0.7%.

A measure of retail spending that strips out volatile categories, such as sales of building materials and gasoline, rose 0.5% in June, down from May’s 0.8%, but slightly higher than expectations of a 0.4% increase. That shows underlying consumer demand continued to hum along last month.

Sales were up across most categories last month, rising the most among online retailers (1.9%) — likely thanks to the Prime Day sale — and car dealerships (1.9%). Retail spending declined the most at gas stations, plummeting 5.3%, and at health and personal care stores, which fell 0.8%.

Spending at restaurants and bars edged higher by just 0.1% last month, despite an influx of World Cup tourists. Sales at department stores were also up by only 0.1% in June.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the US economy, has held up this year, despite higher inflation and unusually weak consumer sentiment. That’s partly due to layoffs and a still-solid labor market, though low-income households are feeling the pain of price hikes and mounting debt more so than their high-income counterparts, who have benefited from a resilient stock market. Economists refer to that divergence as the K-shaped economy.

This story is developing and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post Retail sales last month rose less than expected appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Giovanni Canales only knows one way to watch the World Cup: In Spanish on Telemundo.

Canales, 24, was raised in Rhode Island by a father who formerly played for the Honduran national team. And in his household, the Spanish-language network’s spirited soccer commentary, with sportscaster Andrés Cantor’s signature cries of “goooooooool,” are essential to the viewing experience. Never mind that Canales doesn’t speak Spanish himself — the way that Telemundo announcers start talking faster as the action on the pitch intensifies is its own kind of language. Even if he steps away from the TV for a moment, he can rest assured that he won’t miss anything important (something he made light of in a recent Instagram reel).

“Sometimes I just doze off if it’s in English,” he adds.

For many Latin American fans in the US, watching the World Cup in Spanish is a given. But for the 2026 tournament, even some people who don’t have Latin American roots or who don’t speak Spanish are opting for Telemundo over Fox. Meghan Dyer Pavs, a former elementary school teacher outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, calls Telemundo broadcasts “the best thing in American culture right now.” Having already convinced her kids and husband of her position, she recently converted her college roommate, too. Comedian Trevor Noah is also a fan, declaring Telemundo “the best coverage in town.”

This World Cup has been particularly successful for Telemundo. Last month, the network reported that it was pacing at “more than double” its audience for the 2022 tournament in Qatar. The July 5 match between Mexico and England drew in a record 23.2 million viewers for the network, according to Variety. Fox Sports, which holds the English-language broadcast rights, saw around 21.7 million viewers for the same game. And while Fox’s viewership has generally been higher than Telemundo’s for games with no connection to Latin America, Defector’s Diana Moskovitz notes that the difference is not as vast as one might expect. (Given the tension this has caused between the two networks, CNBC’s Alex Sherman reports that FIFA is potentially looking to package English- and Spanish-language US rights together for the next men’s tournament.)

Telemundo is well aware of its new viewer base. If anything, the hype around Telemundo’s World Cup coverage is the result of a deliberate strategy: The network began courting non-Spanish speakers months ago, with a Super Bowl ad featuring Owen Wilson, noted non-Latino, getting swept up in the energy of Telemundo’s commentators. And during last month’s France-Sweden match, one announcer briefly switched into English to thank viewers who don’t speak Spanish for watching.

As Spain faced Belgium in the quarterfinals last Friday, Socceria, a new soccer-themed cantina in Brooklyn, was streaming Telemundo on its screens. Owner Tania Apolinar, who hails from Torreón, Mexico, says the bar has been showing around 95% of the matches in Spanish, though it has occasionally experimented with Fox for games that don’t involve Spanish-speaking n

By Nick Paton Walsh, Victoria Butenko, Daria Tarasova-Markina, CNN

(CNN) — It is the fate of just one town, over a year, but provides a rare insight into Russia’s ill-fated war of choice.

The slow and costly infiltration of Kostyantynivka, key to Moscow’s advance in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas and claimed as occupied by the Russian defense ministry on July 3, lays bare the persistence of the Kremlin’s forces and the devastating casualties they will tolerate to obtain even the smallest of goals.

On July 3, the Ministry of Defense posted a series of videos of Russian troops at various points inside the town’s center, waving Russian flags, to bolster its assertion they had taken the town. The false claim – contradicted by recent videos, testimony from Ukrainian troops, and independent mapping of the frontlines – was one of several made in past months by Russia’s leaders, seeking to suggest their battlefield progress was greater than it is, to perhaps persuade their domestic audience, or counterparts in the White House, that their military campaign had not stalled.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky swiftly seized on the falsehood, and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him in the town to talk peace, if indeed it was under Moscow’s control.

CNN, which has reported in or near Kostyantynivka twice over the past year, has used geolocated videos and testimony, to show the horrific cost and slow pace of the Russian advances that led up to the false claim of the town’s capture. The town’s fate exposes both the dogged, relentless nature of Moscow’s assault, and the relatively minute nature of the victories it claim, even if falsely.

July 29, 2025

Mapping by the independent Ukrainian analysts Deep State shows Russian forces outside the town, trying to push in. The road into the town is already lined with fishing nets, to protect traffic from Russian attack drones. Cars safely drive into town and the market, in its center, remains busy, despite the occasional threat of drones.

A CNN team that visited in July last year, found streets bustling with civilians, although some were reluctant to be filmed, perhaps fearing future Russian occupation and being sanctioned for “cooperating” with Western media.

November 2025

By the first winter months, the map shows the so-called gray zone of disputed territory edging closer to the town center. Russia’s assault with airstrikes had escalated. Videos posted by Ukrainian forces show apartment blocks in the town’s southwest in flames.

And a Russian drone captures the damage caused by an airstrike, just a few streets away.

But the Ukrainians are still confidently inside the town center, with the General Staff posting a video of one officer casually standing in Victory Square in November.

Russian footage posted from that time shows what appears to be their infantry’s point of view from inside an apartment complex courtyard, off the town’s Gromov Street, on the southwestern edges again.

January 2026

It is in the latter days of the year that Russia appears to take its largest steps forward, recorded by Deep State in the first week of 2026. The gray zone has reached the town and two separate Russian prongs edge closer to its main access roads.

Two key factors inform the extent of Moscow’s progress. The range of attack drones – either the tiny First-Person View drones that target individuals or vehicles, or the larger-payload machines that hit buildings – grows monthly, slowly putting the safe space around Kostyantynivka at a greater distance and complicating its defense by Ukraine. More significantly, at this