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Stock market today: Asian shares are sharply lower, tracking a rates-driven tumble on Wall Street

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian markets were sharply lower on Wednesday after Wall Street tumbled as it focused on the downside of a surprisingly strong job market: the likelihood that interest rates will stay high. U.S. futures and oil prices edged lower. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index sank 2.2% to 30,551.85 and the Kospi in South Korea dropped 2.3% to 2,408.68. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng skidded 1% to 17,151.61. Troubled property developer China Evergrande was down 8.5% after plunging 28% on Tuesday.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 1% to 6,873.90. In Bangkok, the SET fell 0.2%.On Tuesday, the S&P 500 lost 1.4% to 4,229.45. The Dow sank 1.3% to 33,002.38, wiping out the last of its gains for the year so far. The Nasdaq composite led the market lower with a 1.9% drop to 13,059.47 as Big Tech stocks were among the market’s biggest losers. Amazon fell 3.7%, Microsoft dropped 2.6% and Nvidia lost 2.8%.The Dow is down 0.4% for the year so far, after being up nearly 8% at the start of August. ...

Child care programs just lost thousands of federal dollars. Families and providers scramble to cope

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

WILLIAMSON, W.Va. (AP) — Kaitlyn Adkins is studying law to help families in her community impacted by the opioid epidemic at the heart of West Virginia coal country.But to do that, she needs someone to help look after her three toddlers. The first-generation college graduate said she wouldn’t be able to finish law school without access to reliable daycare.Providers say millions of children and their families are now at risk of losing that vital service. After two years of receiving federal subsidies, 220,000 child care programs across the country were cut off from funding Saturday. The largest investment in child care in U.S. history, the monthly payments ranged from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, and stabilized the industry during the COVID-19 pandemic.“It feels like they’re just setting everyone up for failure,” Adkins said, dropping her 2-year-old and 1-year-old twins at daycare on a recent morning before an hour-and-a-half drive to class. For years, providers ha...

Michelle Good among authors shortlisted for Balsillie Prize for Public Policy

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

TORONTO — Michelle Good is among the finalists for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Balsillie Prize for Public Policy.The author of acclaimed novel “Five Little Indians” made the list for her collection of essays “Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada.”The $60,000 award, which will be handed out Nov. 28, goes to a book of non-fiction that advances policy debates.The winner of last year’s Donner Prize for a public policy book, “Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups: Canada’s Quest for Interprovincial Free Trade” by Ryan Manucha, also landed on the short list.“Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence” by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, which jurors say makes a “compelling case” for retooling systems and structures to accommodate AI, also earned a spot.Rounding out the short list are “Our Tribal Future: How to Channel Our ...

US appeals court to hear arguments over 2010 hush-money settlement of Ronaldo rape case in Vegas

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A U.S. appeals court planned to hear Wednesday from lawyers trying to revive a woman’s bid to force international soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo to pay millions more than the $375,000 in hush money he paid her after she claimed he raped her in Las Vegas in 2009. An attorney for the woman is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the dismissal of the case in June 2022 and reopen the civil lawsuit she first filed in Nevada in 2018.The appeal argues the federal court judge in Nevada erred in repeatedly rejecting the woman’s attempts to unseal and include as evidence the confidentiality agreement she signed in 2010 in accepting payments from Ronaldo.A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appellate court isn’t expected to issue an immediate ruling after it’s scheduled to question attorneys for Ronaldo and his accuser, Kathryn Mayorga, during oral arguments Wednesday at a special sitting at the law school on the campus of the Universit...

A test case of another kind for the Supreme Court: Who can sue hotels over disability access

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A few years back, Joseph Stramondo was a last-minute replacement as a conference speaker in Salt Lake City. He went online and made a reservation for a room accessible for people with disabilities.“I figured, ‘OK, I should be set,’” Stramondo said.But when he checked in, the room he was given looked like a standard room, without bars in the bathroom or a door wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair.Returning to the front desk, Stramondo learned the room was accessible — for people with hearing loss.The Supreme Court is taking up a case Wednesday that Stramondo, his wife, Leah Smith, and other people with disabilities worry could make it harder to learn in advance what accommodations are available that meet their needs.The justices are being asked to limit the ability of so-called testers to file lawsuits against hotels that fail to disclose accessibility information on their websites and through other reservation services.The information is required by a 2010 Jus...

Haitian students play drums and strum guitars to escape hunger and gang violence

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Woodberson Seïde held his stepsister’s hand as they walked through Haiti ‘s capital on their way to an afterschool music program.They avoided cars, motorcycles, and territory controlled by the gangs whose predation prompted this week’s U.N. Security Council vote for the deployment of a multinational armed force. Once he arrived at the school that hosts the program, 11-year-old Woodberson didn’t think much about how he sometimes eats once a day. His family sleeps on the floor of a church, something they’ve done since losing their home to gangs. The boy was neatly dressed and ready to play drums. Across Port-au-Prince, hundreds of children like Woodberson are playing percussion, piano and bass guitar to drown out the violence and hunger around them.“When I play drums, I feel proud,” Woodberson said.To many, Haiti feels hopeless. Children are mostly kept indoors for safety. Their parents worry about gangs recruiting children as...

As actors restart talks and writers return to work, here are key players in the Hollywood strikes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood actors have restarted talks with studios, opening up the possibility that their part in the industry’s double strike could end with the same kind of deal the writers reached to end their pickets last week. Actors and their employers have been divided on issues of pay, the use of artificial intelligence and self-taped auditions. Here’s a look at the key figures in the negotiations to end the new strike, and the people who successfully struck the deal to end the last one. DUNCAN CRABTREE-IRELANDDuncan Crabtree-Ireland is having his close-up in Hollywood’s labor fight. As national executive director and chief negotiator for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, he leads the team that will either make the deal to return to work or decide to continue striking. He took an unlikely path to get there. Born in Memphis and raised in London and Dallas, Crabtree-Ireland went to college at Georgetown and law s...

US warns of Chinese global disinformation campaign that could undermine peace and stability

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — For much of the world, China’s Xinjiang region is notorious, a place where ethnic Uyghurs face forced labor and arbitrary detention. But a group of visiting foreign journalists was left with a decidedly different impression.On a tour in late September sponsored by Beijing, the 22 journalists from 17 countries visited bazaars and chatted with residents over dates and watermelon slices. They later told state media they were impressed with the bustling economy, described the region as “full of cultural, religious and ethnic diversity,” and denounced what they said were lies by Western media.The trip is an example of what Washington sees as Beijing’s growing efforts to reshape the global narrative on China. It’s spending billions of dollars annually to do so.In a first-of-its-kind report, the State Department last week laid out Beijing’s tactics and techniques for molding public opinion, such as buying content, creating fake personas to spread its message and using rep...

San Francisco will say goodbye to Dianne Feinstein as her body lies in state at City Hall

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Mourners will pay their respects Wednesday to the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco City Hall, where she launched her groundbreaking political career and where she spent a decade as the city’s first female mayor. Feinstein’s body will lie in state in the City Hall rotunda, with everyone from elected leaders to city residents expected to say goodbye. She died Thursday at her Washington, D.C., home after a series of illnesses. Feinstein was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and was board president in November 1978 when a former supervisor assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay supervisor, at City Hall. Feinstein became acting mayor, and she went on to serve as mayor until 1988. San Francisco would not be San Francisco without her. She steered the city through the HIV and AIDS crisis, bringing attention to an epidemic ignored by President Ronald Reagan. She a...

Pope will open a big Vatican meeting as battle lines are drawn on his reform project

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:11:37 GMT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Wednesday opens a big meeting on the future of the Catholic Church, with progressives hoping it will lead to more women in leadership roles and conservatives warning that church doctrine on everything from homosexuality to the hierarchy’s authority is at risk.Rarely in recent times has a Vatican gathering generated as much hope, hype and fear as this three-week, closed-door meeting, known as a synod. It won’t take any binding decisions and is only the first session of a two-year process. But it nevertheless has drawn an acute battle line in the church’s perennial left-right divide and marks a defining moment for Francis and his reform agenda.Even before it started, the gathering was historic because Francis decided to let women and laypeople vote alongside bishops in any final document produced. While fewer than a quarter of the 365 voting members are non-bishops, the reform is a radical shift away from a hierarchy-focused Synod of Bishops a...