Turbulent week on Wall Street ends on placid note ADVERTISING Turbulent week on Wall Street ends on placid note NEW YORK (AP) — Well, that was exciting. Days after China threw the biggest scare into Wall Street in years, U.S.
Turbulent week on Wall Street ends on placid note
NEW YORK (AP) — Well, that was exciting.
Days after China threw the biggest scare into Wall Street in years, U.S. stocks came surging back and ended the week on a placid note, suggesting the worst might be finished — for now.
Investors are buckling their seat belts for more turbulence ahead.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell a scant 11.76 points Friday, or 0.1 percent, to 16,643.01, capping a week that saw stomach-churning losses and gains of about 600 points per day. The Standard &Poor’s 500 index rose 1.21 points and the Nasdaq composite added 15.62 points.
U.S. stocks went into their swoon last week, mostly because of signs of a slowdown in China, the world’s second-biggest economy. Before the six-day losing streak ended, the Dow plummeted 1,900 points.
Former student convicted in scandal at NH prep school
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A graduate of an exclusive New England prep school was cleared of rape but convicted Friday of lesser sex offenses against a 15-year-old freshman girl in a case that exposed a tradition in which seniors competed to see how many younger students with whom they could have sex.
The jury took eight hours to reach its verdict in the case against Owen Labrie, who was accused of forcing himself on the girl in a dark and noisy mechanical room at St. Paul’s School in Concord two days before he graduated last year.
Labrie, who was bound for Harvard and planned to take divinity classes before his arrest put everything on hold, could get as much as 11 years in prison at sentencing Oct. 29. The 19-year-old from Tunbridge, Vt., also will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Europe’s migrant crisis brings tragedy by land and sea
VIENNA (AP) — Death and desperation mounted in Europe’s migrant crisis Friday as Austrian police said 71 people appeared to have suffocated in the back of an abandoned truck, while an estimated 200 people were feared drowned off Libya when two overloaded boats capsized.
More than 300,000 people have sought to cross the Mediterranean Sea so far in 2015, up from 219,000 in all of last year, as European authorities grapple with the largest influx since World War II.
The death of 71 people locked in the truck on a highway south of Vienna shows “the desperation of people seeking protection or a new life in Europe,” said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva.
The International Office of Migration has recorded 2,636 deaths linked to Mediterranean crossings this year, and more may have vanished beneath the waves out of sight of rescuers.
Each day, thousands are boarding flimsy boats for Italy or Greece, and many more are placing themselves and their families at the mercy of human traffickers by slogging for days or weeks through the western Balkans toward what they hope will be a brighter future. Most are fleeing war, conflict or persecution in countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
Lebanon garbage protests highlight a country rotting from the inside
BEIRUT (AP) — To the casual visitor, Lebanon may seem like a tiny slice of Mediterranean modernity and coexistence in a turbulent region plagued by violence and extremism.
But for many Lebanese, it’s a rotting state eaten away by a political class that has long used the country’s sectarian power-sharing system to perpetuate corruption and nepotism.
And while recent protests over uncollected trash have challenged an arrangement almost universally denounced by Lebanese, they also can’t seem to shake it. Many argue that system is what has allowed the country of 4.5 million people from 18 recognized and often rival sects to survive.
“You Stink,” the main activist group behind the protest movement, has called for a massive demonstration on Saturday. Its campaign started over the fetid piles of trash mounting in Beirut’s streets after the government closed the country’s main landfill, but it has mushroomed into a movement against the entire political structure.
At the heart of Lebanon’s problems, some say, is an unwritten arrangement since Lebanon’s 1943 independence which stipulates that the country’s president must be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim — the three largest communities.
Citing religious freedom, Kentucky clerk asks Supreme Court to intervene in gay marriage case
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Two months after it legalized gay marriage nationwide, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked by a Kentucky county clerk for permission to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis objects to same-sex marriage for religious reasons. The Supreme Court says the constitution guarantees gay people have the right to marry, but Davis contends the First Amendment guarantees her the right of religious freedom.
She stopped issuing all marriage licenses the day after the Supreme Court effectively legalized gay marriage nationwide in June.
Two gay couples and two straight couples sued Davis, arguing she must fulfill her duties as an elected official. A federal judge ordered Davis to issue the licenses and an appeals court upheld that decision. Davis’ lawyers said they petitioned the Supreme Court on Friday to delay that decision until her appeal is finished, a process that could take months.
Her attorneys with the Christian law firm Liberty Counsel wrote in their appeal to the court that Davis is seeking “asylum for her conscience.”
Before nation’s top Democrats, Hillary Clinton sends message to Biden: 2016 bid won’t be easy
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In ways both subtle and blunt, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign is sending a message to Vice President Joe Biden about his potential presidential campaign: This won’t be easy.
While Clinton and her team speak warmly of Biden in public, they have taken steps to make clear how they’ve taken control of the party’s establishment in hopes of discouraging the vice president from entering the race.
The latest came Friday in the most public of settings: the Democratic National Committee summer meetings. In a speech to the party’s most committed activists, Clinton cast herself as its standard-bearer and vowed to win the presidential race and rebuild the party from the ground up.
“We are building something that will last long after next November,” Clinton told party officials gathered in a Minneapolis ballroom. “Other candidates may be fighting for a particular ideology, but I’m fighting for you and your families.”
The speech came after her team rolled out a string of high-profile endorsements in early-voting states and scheduled an onslaught of fundraisers across the country in the effort to ice a Biden bid before he even gets started.
