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Stock market today: Wall Street poised to open with losses; Roku rises on layoffs announcement

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

Wall Street is on track for a modestly lower open Wednesday in a holiday-shortened week with so far little in the way of market-moving news.Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow industrials were both off 0.2% before the bell.Coming off the Labor Day holiday in the U.S., investors have few major economic reports to look forward to this week, while the latest round of corporate earnings is essentially finished.The Institute for Supply Management releases its latest report on the U.S. services sector later Wednesday. The service sector employs most Americans and is a big component of the economy. Its health could provide more insight into how inflation is affecting consumer spending, which has been stronger than expected under the weight of extended inflation.Roku shares tumbled 13% in off-hours trading after the streaming company said it is cutting about 10% of its employees, or 360 people, as it looks to lower expenses. Major airlines are down after several predicted rising costs f...

A former Mossad chief says Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

HERZLIYA, Israel (AP) — A former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank, joining a tiny but growing list of retired officials to endorse an idea that remains largely on the fringes of Israeli discourse and international diplomacy.Tamir Pardo becomes the latest former senior official to have concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank amounts to apartheid, a reference to the system of racial separation in South Africa that ended in 1994.Leading rights groups in Israel and abroad and Palestinians have accused Israel and its 56-year occupation of the West Bank of morphing into an apartheid system that they say gives Palestinians second-class status and is designed to maintain Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.A handful of former Israeli leaders, diplomats and security men have warned that Israel risks becoming an apartheid state, ...

Tennis ball wasteland? Game grapples with a fuzzy yellow recycling problem

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Tennis has a fuzzy yellow problem most players don’t think about when they open can after can of fresh balls, or when umpires at U.S. Open matches make their frequent requests for “new balls please.”Because tennis balls are extremely hard to recycle and the industry has yet to develop a ball to make that easier, nearly all of the 330 million balls made worldwide each year eventually get chucked in the garbage, with most ending up in landfills, where they can take more than 400 years to decompose. It’s a situation highlighted by Grand Slam events like Flushing Meadows, which will go through nearly 100,000 balls over the course of the tournament.That harsh reality in an age of heightened environmental awareness has sent ball makers, recyclers and the game’s worldwide governing body scrambling for solutions, and spurred sustainability activists to sound the alarm in online posts that pose the question: Are tennis balls a disaster for the planet?“Tennis balls, like a lot...

Use this plastic, not that plastic: The fight for truly sustainable packaging

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

In today’s Big Story Podcast, you may have noticed a lack of plastic bags at some of your favourite stores, as many places in Canada phase out single-use plastics. In their place you may have been offered ‘reusable’ shopping bags, which are also often made of plastic. You may have used sustainable containers or cups — but unless you were also told how to properly dispose of them, it probably didn’t make a difference.Natalia Lumby is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. She researches sustainability in packaging, particularly in the food and beverage industry.“At the end of the day it’s legislators working together with the people who provide products into the market and packages into the market,” says Lumby.Moving towards less and more sustainable packaging is necessary. The question is all in how we do it, and how we communicate that to people who are just trying to get through their shopping, or takeout, or coffee run. So, what actually makes pac...

African Climate Summit issues unanimous call for world leaders to support global tax on fossil fuels

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The first African Climate Summit ended with a call Wednesday for world leaders to rally behind a global carbon tax on fossil fuels, aviation and maritime transport, and it seeks reform of the world financial system that forces African nations to pay more to borrow money.The declaration backed by the leaders of the continent of 1.3 billion people — a population set to double by 2050 — calls on the world’s biggest emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases and its richest countries to keep their promises. It notes especially the unfulfilled pledge of $100 billion annually to developing nations in climate finance, made 14 years ago.“No country should ever have to choose between development aspirations and climate action,” the declaration says.Adopted unanimously, the statement also calls for Africa’s vast mineral wealth to be processed on the continent, noting that “decarbonizing the global economy is also an opportunity to contribute to equality and shared prosp...

The AP Interview: Harris says Trump shouldn’t be an exception for Jan. 6 accountability

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that those responsible for the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the ensuing violence at the U.S Capitol must be held accountable — even if that means Donald Trump. “Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she was attending a regional summit. Federal prosecutors have indicted Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, for his efforts to cling to power in 2020. The former president also has been charged in Georgia in a scheme to subvert the will of voters who elected Democrat Joe Biden instead of giving Trump a second term. “I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” said Harris, who served as California’s attorney general before moving to Washington as a U.S. senator. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And ...

South Africa didn’t know a US-sanctioned Russian ship carried its military purchases, inquiry finds

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African officials did not know a sanctioned Russian ship was assigned to deliver military equipment to the country until the vessel was nearing national waters, according to an inquiry into an incident that caused diplomatic tensions between South Africa and the U.S.U.S. Ambassador Reuben Brigety accused South Africa in May of having weapons intended for Russia loaded on to the Lady R when the container ship docked near Cape Town in December. The ship is under U.S. sanctions for ties to a company that transported arms for Russia’s war on Ukraine. South Africa denied there was a government-approved deal to ship weapons to Russia from the country, which officially has taken a non-aligned stance on the Ukraine war. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a three-person panel led by a retired judge to oversee an inquiry into the matter. An executive summary of the panel’s report released Tuesday night stated that the ship offloaded military equi...

Man stabbed multiple times during argument on North Side

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

CHICAGO — A man is in critical condition after being stabbed during an argument on the city's North Side.The stabbing happened around 2:20 a.m. Wednesday in the 3200 block of North Sheffield. Police said the 36-year-old man was arguing with another man in an alley when the offender began stabbing the 36-year-old with a knife. Bolingbrook 8-year-old dies after ATV catches fire in Pembroke Township The victim was transported by the Chicago Fire Department to Illinois Masonic Hospital in critical condition with stab wounds to the body.No one is in custody. Area Three Detectives are investigating.

Cubs hit an offensive mark again in 2023 in win over the Giants

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

CHICAGO — In besting their win total from the entire 2022 season, the Cubs kept up a 2023 trend in their victory on Tuesday evening.They did so thanks to their offense, which came alive at the perfect time to creep them a little closer to a playoff berth. Thanks to a seventh inning rally, the Cubs bested the Giants 11-8 at Wrigley Field Tuesday to extend their winning streak to three games and give them a 75th victory of the season. That's more than they had last year, keeping them three games ahead of the Reds for the second Wild Card spot and 2 1/2 games behind the Brewers for first in the National League Central division.In doing so, the Cubs also had a double-digit number of runs, which they've done for the 22nd time in the 2023 season. That's the second-most in Major League Baseball, as they only trail the Rangers in that category (23). It's the second time in three games the Cubs have pulled this off, scoring 15 runs in a win over the Reds on Sunday in Cincinnati. So far the t...

Carmakers fail privacy test, give owners little to no control on data collected

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:58:25 GMT

BOSTON (AP) — Cars are getting an “F” in data privacy. Most major manufacturers admit they may be selling your personal information, a new study finds, with half also saying they would share it with the government or law enforcement without a court order.The proliferation of sensors in automobiles — from telematics to fully digitized control consoles — has made them prodigious data-collection hubs. Tesla data security breach sees private information released: Nevada AG But drivers are given little or no control over the personal data their vehicles collect, researchers for the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation said Wednesday in their latest “Privacy Not Included” survey Security standards are also vague, a big concern given automakers’ track record of susceptibility to hacking.“Cars seem to have really flown under the privacy radar and I’m really hoping that we can help remedy that because they are truly awful,” said Jen Caltrider, the study’s research lead. “Cars have microp...