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1. Small business confidence rises in US
Small business owners increased their confidence in the United States last month, according to data from the National Federation of Independent Business. The Wall Street Journal reports that in July, the small-business optimism index rose to 99.8, which is its highest level since August 2025. According to WSJ, economists anticipated that score to be 97.
Small businesses, which provide nearly half of private-sector jobs in the U.S., are usually more affected than larger firms by economic uncertainty.
“Although uncertainty is currently elevated, Main Street anticipates that business conditions will continue to improve,” the NFIB’s Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said.
2. Earthquake kills more than 120 people in Colombia
The strongest recorded earthquake in Colombia in a decade hit the country Monday. More than 120 are reportedly dead following the 7.4-magnitude earthquake, and the death toll is expected to rise, according to The New York Times.
Cali, the third-largest city in Colombia with about 2 million residents, reported major damage. Smaller cities Pereira and Manizales, which are hubs in the coffee-growing region and each have about 500,000 residents, were also badly hit by the quake.
Around 1,495 people are reported injured. Nearly 5,000 homes were damaged and 387 were completely destroyed, while 61 buildings have collapsed. Rescue missions are underway, targeting the collapsed buildings.
3. IHG reports first-half results
According to its first-half earnings call, IHG Hotels & Resorts is weathering the storm that is the conflict in the Middle East with steady growth and signs of resiliency, CoStar News' Terence Baker reports.
New hotel signings have IHG leadership confident the company will drive “high-single digit percentage growth in fee revenue annually over the medium to long term,” CEO Elie Maalouf said during call.
IHG’s global RevPAR grew by 4.1% year over year in the first half of 2026. IHG's hotels in the Americas grew RevPAR by 4.8%, hotels in Greater China increased RevPAR by 3.1% and the company's hotels in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia grew RevPAR by 3%.
4. Wildfire smoke returns to parts of US
Wildfires in Canada are again wafting smoke into the U.S., the Washington Post reports. Eleven new fires were reported in Canada’s British Columbia over the weekend, where a state of emergency was declared. As of Sunday, the largest fire had burned over 33,000 acres and was still out of control.
The U.S. Pacific Northwest has hazy skies, which spread across the northern part of the country into the Northeast.
Conditions on Monday included a thicker haze across the Midwest, pushing "toward the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Southeast — where it will be dense on Tuesday and Wednesday and may linger until Thursday," according to the article.
5. Americans increasingly continue to travel abroad
In 2025, Americans took 24 million trips to Europe, and that number is expected to increase another 5% by the end of the year, according to Tourism Economics data cited in the Wall Street Journal.
"Behind the shift is a supercharged U.S. economy that in the course of a generation has created a larger and wealthier class of Americans that views travel as an essential rather than a luxury. Older Americans, who are driving this new era of travel, hold about $110 trillion in wealth. They’re also living longer, and looking to make the most of those years," reads the article.