In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest man, a distinction he once held, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk at least twice in the past week of “killing” children in the world’s poorest countries by cutting foreign aid under the Trump administration.

Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, assailed Musk for the actions he has taken as the head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

He said that Musk bore responsibility for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that he argued had undermined decades of progress fighting diseases such as measles, H.I.V. and polio. In a wide-ranging interview with The (New York) Times Magazine last week, Gates said that Musk had put the U.S.A.I.D. in “the wood chipper.”

He also questioned whether Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, would uphold his commitment to what is known as the Giving Pledge — a nonbinding commitment to give away at least half of one’s wealth to charity — which Mr. Musk signed in 2012. “He could go on to be a great philanthropist,” Gates told the magazine. “In the meantime, the world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”

Gates on Thursday said he would donate 99% of his remaining tech fortune to the Gates Foundation, which will now close in 2045, earlier than previously planned. Today, that would be worth an estimated $107 billion.

Markets leap on UK-U.S. trade deal

U.S. stocks rose Thursday after the United States and United Kingdom announced a deal on trade that would lower some tariffs between the two countries, the first of what Wall Street hopes will be enough agreements to keep a recession from hitting the economy.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.6% for its 11th gain in the last 13 days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 254 points, or 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.1%.

It wasn’t just stocks. Bitcoin jumped back above $101,000, and crude oil prices climbed, while the price of gold eased back as investors felt less need for safety. Treasury yields rose on bets that more trade deals with other countries may mean the Federal Reserve won’t need to cut interest rates as sharply as feared in order to prop up the economy.

Krispy Kreme pauses McDonald’s plan

Krispy Kreme will no longer pay quarterly cash dividends in order to pay down its debt and focus on growth, the company said on Wednesday.

The doughnut maker is also pausing the expansion of its partnership with McDonald’s Corp. and withdrawing the 2025 profit guidance it issued in February, saying it won’t provide an updated outlook at this time due to macroeconomic weakness and uncertainty over the tie-up.

Krispy Kreme Chief Executive Officer Josh Charlesworth said the move to discontinue the dividends — paid out to shareholders every quarter since the North Carolina firm’s return to public markets in 2021 — had been under consideration “for some time.”

30-year mortgage rate flat

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. held steady this week, not far from its highest levels this year, but below where it was a year ago.

The rate stood at 6.76% for the second week in a row, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.09%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, eased. The average rate dropped to 5.89% from 5.92% last week. It’s down from 6.38% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

Compiled from New York Times, Bloomberg and Associated Press reports.