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Stock market today: Asia mixed after Wall St sinks

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets were mixed Friday after Wall Street sank on worries about the health of U.S. banks that are under pressure from interest rate hikes.Shanghai declined while Hong Kong and Sydney advanced. Markets in Japan and South Korea were closed for holidays. Oil prices advanced.Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index lost 0.7% on Thursday as investors worried about the health of banks following three high-profile failures in the United States and one in Switzerland. Shares of PacWest Bancorp, a target of investor scrutiny, tumbled 50.6%. The bank said it was considering options and has been approached by potential partners and investors.Investors are watching what steps authorities might take to “limit further contagion risks,” Yeap Jun Rong of IG said in a report. “Any inaction over the weekend could translate to a more downbeat risk environment to start next week.”The Shanghai Composite Index shed 0.7% to 3,326.18 while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong gain...

Oregon GOP boycott: most bills have high reading score

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

Oregon Republicans blocking bills about abortion, gun control and gender-affirming healthcare in the Statehouse say they are simply following a decades-old law requiring that bill summaries be easy to read.The 1979 state law requires a score of at least 60 on something called the Flesch readability test. That’s the equivalent of an 8th- or 9th-grade reading level. Dr. Rudolf Flesch, a Vienna-born psychologist, developed the test in the 1940s.Scores range from 1 to 100, with 100 being the easiest to read and 1 being the most difficult. But most bills have a college-level reading score, regardless of political party affiliation. Here is a sampling of summaries from some recent Oregon bills and their Flesch readability scores:CONTESTED BILLS:House Bill 2005 What it’s about: A gun control measure banning untraceable guns, raising minimum age to buy firearms like semiautomatic weapons from 18 to 21 and allowing local agencies to prohibit firearms on government property. Flesch Reading Sc...

Press group: China biggest global jailer of journalists

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society.Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual index of press freedom, behind only neighbor North Korea.The ruling Communist Party has tightened already strict controls on media in China, where all newspapers and broadcasters are state-owned. Websites and social media are required to enforce censorship that bans material that might spread opposition to one-party rule.Xi, China’s most powerful figure in decades, called during a 2016 meeting with journalists who had been awarded official prizes for them to adhere to “the correct orientation of public opinion.”Xi is pursuing a “crusade against journalism,” Reporters Without Borders said in a re...

Pride organizers keep eye on drag laws ahead of festivals

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Tennessee organizers booked more than 50 drag entertainers for next month’s Midsouth Pride festival in Memphis now that the state’s new law placing strict limits on cabaret shows is temporarily on hold. But they are being cautious, making adjustments to performances should the limits of the first-in-the-nation law essentially banning drag from public property or in the presence of minors kick in before June celebrations. “As soon as this stuff started making its way, I immediately started coming out with plans to be able to counteract that,” said longtime festival organizer Vanessa Rodley. “Because, at the end of the day, we can’t put on an event that then segregates a huge portion of our community, right? We just can’t do that. So you have to find ways around it.”The show must go on.Organizers of Pride festivals and parades in mostly conservative states where there’s been a broader push targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been under increasin...

Massachusetts blast site where 1 died moves to cleanup phase

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

NEWBURYPORT, Mass. (AP) — Rescue workers in Massachusetts have recovered the body of a person killed Thursday after a powerful explosion tore through a pharmaceutical chemical plant.Acting Newburyport Fire Chief Stephen Bradbury III described the blast as a seven-alarm hazardous materials event and said crews were expected to resume cleanup Friday morning, including removing chemicals from the building.Authorities said there was no threat to the nearby population. The explosion happened around 1 a.m. Thursday at the Sequens/PCI Synthesis plant, officials said. Video showed most of the roof torn off a building, marking at least the third safety problem at the plant since 2020.U.S. Sen. Edward Mark of Massachusetts said the company needs to provide answers about what happened.“We can’t keep excusing companies’ flagrant disregard for worker safety,” he said in a tweet. It wasn’t immediately known what caused the explosion, or what — if any — chemicals were involved. Smoke from th...

Faster IRS offering better picture on looming debt ‘X-date’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — That big infusion of cash that Congress approved last year to shape up the beleaguered IRS is having an unexpected side benefit.The funding increase has helped the agency to catch up on processing new and backlogged tax returns. And that, in turn, has allowed federal bean-counters to give policymakers a more precise picture of when the Treasury could run out of money — the so-called X-date — if the government isn’t able to take on more debt.The nation is stepping uncomfortably close to an unprecedented default that could have catastrophic effects on the global economy because it is bumping up against its legal limit for borrowing. Congress and the White House have been unable to agree on a plan to lift or suspend the borrowing limit. The debt covers the gap between revenues collected by the government and the programs, projects and services it provides.In the meantime, the Treasury is using “extraordinary measures” to keep the U.S. from running out of cash. T...

Hard to read? Oregon GOP boycott comes down to reading level

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

Republicans blocking votes on bills about abortion, gun control and gender-affirming healthcare in Oregon this week have based their boycott on an obscure, 44-year-old state law that requires bill summaries to be written at the reading level of an 8th- or 9th-grader.GOP leadership says their walkout — now entering day three — is about “every bill” but that two bills that would expand protections for abortions and transgender health care and place more limitations on gun ownership “specifically don’t qualify” under the 1979 law. Democrats say Republicans didn’t take issue with the writing style of bipartisan bills they backed earlier in the session until hot button issues were on the table. The fate of the contested bills is now unclear; under a new voter-approved law, Oregon legislators who have 10 unexcused absences are banned from re-election.“This is about abortion, guns and transgender rights,” said Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber. “The timing of this is such that...

Listen both ways: Blind walkers winning safer road crossings

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — After a retinal disease left him legally blind, architect John Gleichman was struck by a taxicab while walking home near Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo — at the same intersection where a 4-year-old girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver years earlier.Although Maya Hirsch’s death in 2006 ignited a citywide crusade for pedestrian safety improvements, almost all the electronic upgrades since then have been for people who can see. Nearly 3,000 Chicago intersections are now equipped with visual crossing signals, yet fewer than three dozen include audible cues.In a landmark victory for blind residents challenging the accessibility of a major city’s signalized crosswalks, a federal judge in March ruled in a class-action lawsuit that such disparity in the nation’s third-largest city violates the Americans with Disabilities Act.“Every time I go out to go downtown for a meeting, I have to think I could get hit today and not make it home,” said Gleichman, 65...

River rafters say big California snowmelt means epic season

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

COLOMA, Calif. (AP) — Triple Threat. Deadman’s Drop. Satan’s Cesspool. After years of drought, the rapids along California’s American River are truly living up to their names. As a historic snowpack starts to melt, the spring runoff is fueling conditions for some of the best whitewater in years on the American River and its forks, which course through the Sierra Nevada northeast of Sacramento.“This is an epic whitewater rafting season,” said Deric Rothe, who owns Sierra Whitewater Inc. and has been rafting for decades. “The conditions are awesome. If you compare the rafting to a rollercoaster, it’s bigger, faster, more fun, and more exciting. So, we’re loving it.”A series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California this winter, replenishing rivers and reservoirs and bringing an end — mostly — to the state’s three-year drought.Cascading volumes of water are now flowing into various rivers at rates not seen in years. Even with the snowmelt only st...

Anti-Muslim Twitter feed in Spain: ‘A recipe for disaster’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:12:47 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The person who operates the Twitter account claims to be an Islamic fundamentalist living in Spain, empathizing with violent extremists and longing for the days, more than six centuries ago, when Muslims ruled the country.The views are as fake as the account, part of a loose and informal effort by far-right nationalists in Spain to use social media to stir up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fervor and to undermine faith in Spain’s multicultural democracy. In some cases, they exploit Twitter’s loose rules to spread hateful messages and threats of violence, while in others they pose as Muslims as a way to disparage actual followers of Islam.By harnessing the power of social media to communicate, coordinate and evangelize, those behind the so-called Reconquista movement are relying on the same playbook used by far-right extremists in the U.S., Brazil and other countries who have used social media to expand their power and recruit new followers.Reconquista a...