The rich are getting richer.

The final key economic report four days before the US presidential election held something for both candidates today, showing the monthly unemployment rate ticked up slightly but created far more jobs than expected.

US employers created only 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up, denting President Barack Obama's re-election chances.

FRANCE came under heavy fire on global markets yesterday reflecting fears that the eurozone’s second biggest economy is being sucked into the debt crisis after a warning that Paris’s inability to adapt should be “ringing alarm bells”.

YOU might call it the cognitive divide — the split between an evidence-based worldview and one that is rooted in faith or ideology — and it is one of the most important fault lines in the United States today.