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Stock market today: Asian markets extend losses after Wall Street drifts lower

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Shares slipped in Asia on Thursday after Wall Street drifted downward following a rally that sent it roaring 16% higher for the year so far. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 3% on heavy selling of Chinese banks shares after Goldman Sachs downgraded them citing concerns about the slowing economy and lenders’ exposures to debt. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.7%. U.S. futures declined and oil prices were mixed. Share prices had soared recently amid signs the U.S. economy is stronger than had been feared, fending off recession so far despite high interest rates. Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting released Wednesday showed that some central bank officials wanted to raise rates in mid-June, though in the end they voted unanimously to keep rates steady.The threat of further rate hikes has been weighing on investor sentiment. The next focus for the U.S. will be jobs data due out on Friday.Markets are also watching for updates on tensions between the ...

Body parts strewn around state capital outside Mexico City, apparently left by violent cartel

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

TOLUCA, Mexico (AP) — A violent drug cartel is suspected of leaving a severed human leg found hanging from a pedestrian bridge Wednesday in the city of Toluca, just west of Mexico City. The trunk of the body was left on the street below the bridge near the city’s center, along with handwritten signs signed by the Familia Michoacana cartel. Other parts of the body were found later in another neighborhood, also with handwritten drug cartels signs nearby. The victim was apparently a man aged between 35 and 40.Then parts of at least one other body were found elsewhere in the city. Police discovered a dismembered body in a neighborhood on the city’s east side, along with a sign similar to those in the first case.Later, in an industrial neighborhood on the north side, parts of a body were found in a burning car. Authorities were investigating whether they were parts of the second dismembered body.The mayor of Toluca, which is the capital of the State of Mexico, appealed for calm. Th...

FIA not interested in early renegotiations of bedrock Formula One agreement, president tells AP

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

The head of the FIA says the motorsports governing body has no interest in signing an early renewal of its contract with Liberty Media and the 10 Formula One teams, who have stated their wish to sweeten the deal while the series is basking in global popularity. The eighth and current Concorde Agreement — which sets the rules and regulations for F1 as well as how television revenue and prize money is distributed — began in 2021 and runs through the 2025 season. In a May conference call with Wall Street analysts, the CEO of Liberty Media, which holds the commercial rights to F1, indicated a desire for a new agreement much sooner than that.“There’s a consensus among the teams and the FIA and ourselves that now might be a good time to try and strike while the iron is hot and renew and extend the Concorde Agreement,” the CEO, Greg Maffei, said on the call. “I hope we have a more positive relationship, and everybody sees the benefit of going early and providing certainty for all involved....

Trump valet charged in classified documents case set again for arraignment after earlier delays

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A valet for Donald Trump accused of helping the former president hide classified documents from federal authorities is due back in a Florida court on Thursday after an earlier appearance was postponed because of a canceled flight.Walt Nauta, who was charged alongside Trump in June in a 38-count indictment alleging the mishandling of classified documents, is set to be arraigned before a federal magistrate in Miami. That was to have happened twice before already, but he has struggled to retain a lawyer licensed in Florida to represent him.Trump pleaded not guilty during his June 13 arraignment to charges including willful retention of national defense information. But Nauta’s arraignment was postponed that day because he did not have with him a defense attorney authorized to practice in Florida. It was pushed back again last week when a flight from New Jersey he was to have taken was canceled after being delayed on the tarmac for hours.The indictment filed by specia...

Kingmaker California? US House control could hinge on district battles in famously liberal state

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In 2024, control of the U.S. House could hinge on congressional districts in one famously liberal state: California. Command of the narrowly divided chamber will again be in play next year, and leaders in both parties agree on this much: The outcome in a string of contested California districts will be critical in determining the balance of power, after the state played a pivotal role in securing the gavel for Republicans in 2022 and installing Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield as speaker.The decisive fight for the House “will run through California,” predicts Rep. Pete Aguilar, the third-ranking Democrat in the chamber, who lives in Redlands, east of Los Angeles. North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, who heads the House Republican campaign arm, is bullish about gaining ground, even in a state known as a Democratic monolith.“I think we can actually pick up seats in California,” said Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.The 10 competitive...

Guantanamo detainees tell first independent visitor about scars from torture and hopes to leave

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — At the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the aging men known by their serial numbers arrived at the meeting shackled. Every single one told the visitor — for many the first independent person they had talked to in 20 years — “You came too late.” But they still talked, about the scant contacts with their families, their many health problems, the psychological and physical scars of the torture and abuse they experienced, and their hopes of leaving and reuniting with loved ones.For the first time since the facility in Cuba opened in 2002, a U.S. president had allowed a United Nations independent investigator, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, to visit. She said in an interview with The Associated Press that it’s true she came too late, because a total of 780 Muslim men were detained there following the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, and today there are just 30 remaining.The United Nations had tried for many years to send an independent investiga...

Biden is heading to South Carolina to show his economic agenda is keeping even red states humming

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is heading to South Carolina on Thursday to make the case that economic measures he pushed through Congress despite stiff Republican opposition are helping to keep the deep red state — and others that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — humming. Ahead of Biden’s visit to a state that he lost by nearly 12 percentage points in 2020, White House officials argued that if Republicans had their way, South Carolina, like many other Republican-controlled states, would have lost out on billions of dollars in investments and thousands of jobs. Biden will use his visit to showcase a new clean energy manufacturing partnership between solar firm Enphase Energy and manufacturer Flex Ltd. that is projected to create 600 jobs in the state and 1,200 more throughout the country.Enphase, which is making a $60 million investment to open up six new manufacturing lines, including two in South Carolina, is benefitting from tax incentives included in Biden’s $...

First of 2 Iowa teens scheduled to be sentenced in 2021 beating death of teacher

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

FAIRFIELD, Iowa (AP) — The first of two Iowa teenagers who pleaded guilty to beating their high school Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat will be sentenced Thursday morning.Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale pleaded guilty in April to the 2021 attack on Nohema Graber in a park where the 66-year-old teacher regularly walked after school. Prosecutors said the teens, who were 16 at the time, were angry at Graber because of a bad grade she had given Miller.Miller will be the first sentenced after he pleaded guilty as part of an agreement in which prosecutors recommended a term of between 30 years and life in prison, with the possibility of parole.Under Goodale’s agreement to plead guilty, prosecutors recommended a sentence of between 25 years and life with the possibility of parole. Goodale’s sentencing is scheduled for August but his lawyers have sought a delay in the hearing.The teens acknowledged killing Graber on Nov. 2, 2021, in Chautauqua Park in Fairfield, a ...

Relatives of El Paso Walmart shooting victims seek justice, saying they’re down but not out

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A brother who traveled more than 1,000 miles to confront his sister’s killer. An uncle of an orphaned 4-year-old whose parents died while shielding the boy from the spray of bullets. A wife whose husband was gunned down at her side while their 9-year-old granddaughter looked on. Nearly four years after a white gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in a racist attack that targeted Hispanic shoppers, relatives of the victims are packing a courtroom near the U.S.-Mexico border this week to see Patrick Crusius punished for one of the nation’s worst mass shootings. The sentencing phase, which began Wednesday and continues Thursday, is the first time families have had the opportunity to address Crusius face-to-face since the Aug. 3, 2019, shooting. Crusius, 24, is expected to receive multiple life sentences in federal prison after pleading guilty to 90 murder, weapons and hate crime counts in February. He could also still receive the death penalty und...

83,000 Hawaii homes dispose of sewage in cesspools. Rising sea levels will make them more of a mess

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:26:24 GMT

HONOLULU (AP) — The town of Hauula packs hundreds of homes into a narrow strip of land sandwiched between verdant, towering cliffs of the Koolau mountain range and the Pacific. But the stunning views obscure an environmental problem beneath the ground.This rural part of the island of Oahu is not connected to city sewers — and waste from toilets, sinks and showers is mostly collected in hundreds of pits called cesspools. With climate change, rising seas are eroding Hawaii’s coast near homes with cesspools. Sea rise also is pushing the island’s groundwater closer to the surface, allowing the cesspool effluent to mix with the water table and flow into the ocean. And scientists say cesspool pollution may even percolate into streets and parks in low-lying former wetlands in the future. “We want proper sanitation as much as anybody wants it. We don’t want our children swimming in an ocean of bacteria,” said Dotty Kelly-Paddock, president of the Hauula Community Association. “It’s got to c...