Prices rose 0.4% from March to April, the government said Wednesday, up from 0.1% from February to March. Compared with a year earlier, prices climbed 4.9%, down just slightly from Marchs year-over-year increase.

The nations inflation rate has steadily cooled since peaking at 9.1% last June but remains far above the Federal Reserves 2% target rate.

The Fed is paying particular attention to so-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs and are regarded as a better gauge of longer-term inflation trends. Core prices rose 0.4% from March to April, the same as from February to March. It was the fifth straight month that core prices have risen by 0.4% or more. Increases at that pace are far above the Feds 2% target.

Compared with a year ago, core prices rose 5.5%, just below a yearly increase of 5.6% in March.

Economists say the overall slowdown in U.S. inflation since last summer might turn out to have been a relatively easy phase of the nations drive to conquer inflation.

The supply chain snarls that left many grocery shelves bare and delayed the delivery of furniture, cars, electronics and numerous other goods have been resolved. Gas prices have dropped since topping $5 a gallon nationally after Russias invasion of Ukraine, though they rose again in April after OPEC agreed to cut oil output.

Yet unlike goods prices, the costs of services from restaurant meals to auto insurance, dental care to education are still surging. A major reason is that companies have had to raise pay in those industries to find and retain workers. Federal Reserve officials say that fast-rising wages, while good for workers, have contributed to higher costs in services industries because labor makes up a significant portion of those industries expenses.

Last week, the Fed signaled that it might pause its rate increases, after imposing 10 straight hikes, so that it could take time to assess how higher borrowing costs have affected the economy. The full economic impact of the hikes, though, might not become evident for months.

For more than two years, high inflation has been a significant burden for Americas consumers, a threat to the economy and a frustrating challenge for the Fed. The central bank has raised its key interest rate by a substantial 5 percentage points since March 2022 to try to drive inflation back down to its 2% target.

Besides making borrowing far more expensive for consumers and businesses, those higher rates have contributed to the collapse of three large banks in the past two months and to a likely pullback in bank lending. The result could be a further weakening of the economy.

Even more ominously, the governments debt ceiling may be breached by early June, and Republicans in Congress are refusing to raise the cap unless President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats agree to sharp spending cuts. If the debt ceiling isnt raised in time, the nation would default on its debt, a scenario that could ignite a global economic crisis. When they met last week, the Feds policymakers agreed to raise their benchmark rate by a quarter-point, to about 5.1% the highest level in 16 years. The Feds rate hikes, which are intended to cool spending, growth and inflation, have led to higher costs for mortgages, auto loans and credit card and business borrowing.

Most economists think the rate hikes will, over time, have their intended effect. Yet most also worry that the hikes will weaken the economy so much as to tip it into a recession sometime this year.

Even the so-called Godfather of A.I., Geoffrey Hinton, quit his respectable gig at Google to warn society about the danger it faces in the wake of artificial intelligence developmentand even says he regrets his lifes work. 

The dystopian picture of the future Hinton paints is bleak, complete with chatbots seeking power and humans becoming as defenseless as frogs. 

Its eerily similar to the end of the human race that the globally renowned scientist Stephen Hawking predicted years before his own death. 

But for now (and on the less extreme end of the spectrum), the emergence of A.I. poses one very real risk: that it will replace human jobs. 

Experts have predicted that project management and middle management will be the first to fall, and Goldman Sachs estimates that A.I. could replace around 300 million full-time jobs globally.

So for managers fearful of the future of their role, IBM offers some cautionary advice on how to face A.I.  

Work with AI, not against it

A.I. may not replace managers but the managers that use A.I. will replace the managers that do not, IBMs chief commercial officer Rob Thomas said during a recent press conference, according to TechCrunch. It really does change how people work.

Thomas advice for managers to start using A.I. if they want to future-proof their roles, rings similar to Yishan Wongs advice to workers concerned about being replaced by A.I.

Instead of wasting time worrying, Wong told Fortune that workers should look into how to side-step their careers into A.I. because it doesnt require an enormous amount of technical skill.

Nontechnical people can build pretty valuable and novel applications on AI. Theres this enormous amount of leverage that an individual can have, he added.

Likewise, the economist Richard Baldwin echoed A.I. wont take your job during a panel at the 2023 World Economic Forums Growth Summit. Its somebody using A.I. that will take your job.

Regardless of the job function, he thinks that automation and A.I. will disrupt every single role, and as such, everyone will need to learn how to deal with it.

Managers would do well to listen: If theyre worried about the longevity of their role, it may be wise to take up the experts advice and start learning how to use A.I. pronto.

The admission was made in court filings outlining Mirror Group Newspapers defense.

The group continued to deny that it hacked phones to intercept voicemail messages, and said that Harry and three less-well-known celebrities brought their claims beyond a time limit.

But it acknowledged there was some evidence of the instruction of third parties to engage in other types of UIG (unlawful information gathering) in respect of each of the claimants, which includes the Duke of Sussex. It said this warrants compensation but didnt spell out what form that might take.

MGN unreservedly apologizes for all such instances of UIG, and assures the claimants that such conduct will never be repeated, the court papers said.

The publisher said its apology was not a tactical move to reduce damages but was done because such conduct should never have occurred.

The trial is Harrys opening salvo in his legal battle against the British press. Harry and the other celebrities are suing the former publisher of the Daily Mirror for alleged invasion of privacy.

The case is the first of the dukes three phone hacking lawsuits and threatens to do something he said his family long feared: put a royal on the witness stand to discuss embarrassing revelations.

The activities in question stretch back more than two decades, when journalists and private eyes intercepted voicemails to snoop on members of the royal family, politicians, athletes, celebrities and even crime victims. A scandal erupted when the hacking was revealed.

Harry is expected to testify in person in June, his lawyer has said. It wont be his first time in the High Court, following his surprise appearance last month to observe most of a four-day hearing in one of his other lawsuits.

He did not show up for opening statements in the trial. Harry breezed through London for Saturdays coronation of his father, King Charles III, before leaving immediately after the ceremony to fly back to California to be with his family for his sons birthday.

The prince has waged a war of words against British newspapers in legal claims and in his best-selling memoir Spare, vowing to make his lifes mission reforming the media that he blames for the death of his mother, Princess Diana. She died in a car wreck in Paris in 1997 while trying to evade paparazzi.

Harry has also sued the publishers of the Daily Mail and The Sun over the phone hacking scandal that metastasized after a year-long inquiry into press ethics in 2011 revealed that employees of the now-defunct News of the World tabloid eavesdropped on mobile phone voicemails.

Harry has outlined his grievances against the media in court papers, saying the press hounded him since his earliest days and created a narrative that portrayed him as the thicko, the cheat, the underage drinker. His relationships with girlfriends were wrecked by the entire tabloid press as a third party.

Looking back on it now, such behavior on their part is utterly vile, he said in a witness statement in a similar case.

His lawsuits could further roil family relations that have been strained since Harry and his wife, Meghan, left royal life in 2020 and moved to the United States after complaining about racist attitudes from the British press.

Mirror Group Newspapers and other publishers have primarily defended themselves by asserting that Harry failed to bring his cases within a six-year year time limit. The dukes lawyer has argued that an exception should be applied because publishers actively concealed the skullduggery.

In a stunning revelation last month that dredged up an embarrassing chapter in his fathers life, Harry blamed his delay in bringing suit, in part, on his family.

He asserted he was barred from bringing a case against The Sun and other newspapers owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch because of a secret agreement allegedly approved of by Queen Elizabeth II that called for reaching a private settlement and getting an apology.

The reason for this was to avoid the situation where a member of the royal family would have to sit in the witness box and recount the specific details of the private and highly sensitive voicemails that had been intercepted, Harry said in a witness statement against News Group Newspapers.

The institution was incredibly nervous about this and wanted to avoid at all costs the sort of reputational damage that it had suffered in 1993, he said, alluding to a transcript of a leaked recording published in the Sunday Mirror of an intimate conversation his father, then Prince of Wales, had with his paramour, now Queen Camilla, in which he compared himself to a tampon.

Harry said his brother, Prince William, had quietly settled his own hacking claims with News Group for huge sum of money in 2020. He also claimed his father had directed palace staff to order him to drop his litigation because it was bad for the family.

Murdochs company denied there was a secret agreement and wouldnt comment on the alleged settlement. The palace hasnt responded to requests for comment.

Harry has alleged that reporters at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People used illegal methods to gather material from his family and friends for nearly 150 articles. The newspaper has said he is wrong about how its reporters got information, saying they used legal methods for many articles.

In 2015, publishers of The Mirror printed a front-page apology for phone hacking and tripled its fund to 12 million pounds ($15 million) to compensate victims.

Mirror Group said more than 600 of some 830 claims had been settled. Of the remaining 104 cases, 86 were brought too late to be litigated, it said in court papers.

Where historical wrongdoing has taken place, we have made admissions, take full responsibility and apologize unreservedly, a spokesperson for Mirror Group Newspapers said in advance of the trial. But we will vigorously defend against allegations of wrongdoing where our journalists acted lawfully.

The lawsuits were combined as a test case that could determine the outcome of hacking claims also made against Mirror Group by former Girls Aloud member Cheryl, the estate of the late singer George Michael, and former soccer player Ian Wright.

Under the law, companies in the European Union and U.K. may not hang onto anyones personal datathat is, information relating to any identifiable living personfor longer than is strictly necessary, which generally means a maximum retention time measured in weeks or months.

Google may now face investigations over potential violations of the GDPR, after Maslouh filed protected whistleblower complaints with the U.K. Information Commissioners Office in November and with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)which has jurisdiction over Googles activities in the EUin February.

The allegations come at a time when Google is already under scrutiny in both the EU and the U.K. over potentially anticompetitive behavior around online ad technology and billing practices in its Android app store, and as it continues to appeal a $4.3 billion fine levied by the EU over other Android-related antitrust abuses. The company has previously been fined tens of millions of euros over GDPR violations, by authorities in France, Spain and Sweden.

Google says it deployed a global automatic deletion tool last year to protect the privacy of job applicants and candidates in gHire, in line with the GDPRs demands. The rollout ended in the fall, after Maslouh raised his concerns with Randstad and Google, but Google says it announced the tool internally as early as 2021.

However, even if the offending data has now been deleted as Google says, the timeline would indicate over four years of non-compliance after the GDPR came into effect in May 2018, bringing with it the threat of fines as high as 4% of global annual revenues for severe violations.

If it takes them so long to be in line with the law then its their problem, because they are breaching some peoples privacy, German data-protection lawyer Michael Kissler told Fortune.

Googles deletion processes

Google told Fortune the deletion tools rollout followed several years of careful development, to ensure it met both regulatory demands and the companys business needs.

Google would have been obligated to delete data within a maximum of one year [after the end of the application procedure] had they implemented appropriate measures, said Nandenie Lachman, a Dutch privacy lawyer whose profile was among those Maslouh saw.

Although the GDPR itself doesnt specify the maximum retention time that is allowed, it says personal data must be kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purpose behind its collection. The European Commission has stressed that data must be stored for the shortest time possible. The Dutch privacy regulator says it is customary to delete such data no longer than four weeks after the application procedure ends, though the data can be kept for up to a year if applicants give their permission for extended retention (which Lachman says she did not do).

Under the GDPRwhich treats any processing of personal data as illegal unless theres a good reason behind itthe burden of proof is on Google to explain how what it was doing was legal, according to Kissler, who suggested Google might be on the hook over its collection of data as well as holding onto it for too long.

If they cannot have a deletion process in place that is good enough, then why did they collect the data in the first place, if they knew it? Kissler asked. So they breached it and they then further breached it and said, It took so long because were such a big company. So what? That cannot be the argument.

We have tight policies, processes, and access restrictions to protect the privacy of applicants and candidates, which are in line with laws, including the GDPR, said a Google spokesperson. Like most companies, we continuously update our internal processes and systems as laws change.

We only retain specific information on job candidates for a limited amount of time, which is an industry practiceand only for candidates who applied to a role at Google, who were referred for a role by a Googler, or who a recruiter believed might be a strong fit for a role based on their public job profile.

What the whistleblower found

Maslouh was last year a 34-year old employee of Randstad, which was contracted by Google to identify potential job candidates and enter their publicly available informationderived from services such as LinkedIninto gHire, Googles applicant tracking system.

When he accessed the system with authorization, Maslouh noticed the excessive age of some of the European personal data within it, and also noted that many of the records for so-called passive applicantswho had not actively applied to Googleshowed no evidence of Google ever having reached out to them. Many of these individuals were listed as working for organizations such as Interpol, the CIA, the U.K. Home Office, the European Parliament, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Maslouh complained to Randstad about the legal consequences of a potential GDPR violation, and the ethical issues around collecting passive candidates data at a time when Google had a hiring freeze in placeit should be noted here that, when Google announced its hiring slowdown in July 2022, it said it would continue to hire for engineering, technical and other critical roles.

When I myself apply for a job or use any services, I want those people to be compliant with the legislation, Maslouh told Fortune.

Maslouh says Randstad advised him to write an anonymous whistleblower report about the GDPR issue to Google, through the Big Tech firms submission portal. He did so in mid-October, before filing his whistleblower reports with the U.K. ICO and the Irish DPC. The complaints, which Fortune has seen, noted that a significant amount of this information has been retained on the system since 2011 [and] has not been deleted, while also claiming that Google obtained some of the personal data though scraping it from the Internet.

The term scraping refers to the automated extraction of online data, which is a risky practice under the GDPR for a few reasons: it can involve extracting more data than is necessary for the task at hand; the affected people dont know their data has been scraped; and peoples really sensitive dataabout things like race or healthcan only be legally collected with their explicit consent. Maslouh based his scraping accusation on the lack of recorded correspondence in some peoples gHire profiles, along with what he saw as a suspicious mismatch between the candidates recorded employment and the roles for which they might be considered.

However, Googlewhich points out that it recruits people from a wide range of backgroundsstrongly denies scraping potential candidates non-public data.

Our system only has resumé information from job applications we have received from candidates, through referrals or publicly available information relevant to our recruitment, Googles spokesperson said. Any information we have about candidates current or previous employment was either provided to us directly by the candidate or was included in their resumé or public profile.

Fortune spoke with six of the people whose data was in evidence collected by Maslouh in early September last year. Only one said he had never applied for a job with Google nor been contacted by the companyand Google disputes this. One refused to comment, and the other four all confirmed having had interactions with Google.

Maslouh no longer works for Randstad. When he refused to continue working on the Google account until he was satisfied that the work was GDPR-compliant, he says Randstad asked if he would prefer to work on another account, then failed to provide any such options and asked if he would prefer to leave the company. Maslouh says he took that option and, after filing a constructive dismissal case, received four months pay in compensation.

Randstad encourages the reporting of any concerns via our misconduct reporting procedure which is available to all employees, talent, and third parties, a Randstad spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The company declined to respond to Maslouhs account of his departure, saying it is unable to comment on individual cases.

According to Kissler, many companies fail to comply with Europes privacy law because its a general problem that the GDPR is not enforced well enough by the authorities.

Companies take the risk very often just because they know its very unlikely that something happens [to them], he said.

The U.K. Information Commissioners Office declined to comment on Maslouhs complaint, saying it cannot provide commentary on active complaints brought to us by an individual. The Irish Data Protection Commission did not respond to multiple requests for comment.