Stocks sink around the world on first trading day of 2016
NEW YORK (AP) — The new year got off to an inauspicious start on Wall Street as stocks tumbled Monday in a global sell-off triggered by new fears of a slowdown in China and rising tensions in the Middle East.
The Dow Jones industrial average clawed back from a steep early decline but still ended the day down 1.6 percent, its biggest drop in two weeks. Markets in Asia and Europe suffered heavier losses.
The wave of selling on the first trading day of 2016 served as a reminder that the global worries that weighed on financial markets last year are not going away anytime soon.
“It’s going to be a turbulent year,” said Kevin Kelly, chief investment officer of Recon Capital Partners. “This isn’t a blip.”
The trouble started in China, the world’s second-largest economy, where signs of manufacturing weakness sent the Shanghai Composite Index plunging 6.9 percent before Chinese authorities halted trading by using a new “circuit-breaker” mechanism for the first time.
Unusual shooting attack sets off panic in Israeli heartland
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — For all its years of strife, Israel has rarely seen anything quite like this: an armed, wanted Arab killer on the loose, spreading fear across the land.
Even the most stoic are keeping their children home from school following the deadly daytime shooting at a popular bar on a busy Tel Aviv street that has become among the most unsettling attacks in a three-month wave of violence.
Israelis are used to quickly resuming their daily routines following attacks because assailants are typically captured or killed. But the frantic search for this gunman, whose attack on Friday afternoon was caught on security cameras, has sent jitters across this seaside city.
The unusual escape of the accused gunman, Nashat Milhem, an Arab from northern Israel who is considered to be armed and dangerous, is one of many elements of a case that has left Israelis on edge.
“Everything about this is characterized by uncertainty,” said Yossi Melman, a prominent security analyst, adding that the level of planning and sophistication were closer in style to those of Islamic State attackers in Brussels, Paris and California.
Levees among possible cause of more frequent flooding
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Mississippi River floods more often than it used to, and at higher levels. Richard Knaup thinks he knows why.
The veteran emergency management director for southeast Missouri’s Cape Girardeau County is fighting floods again, just as he did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
“Prior to levee building, the river was a wild thing and it spread out between the river bluffs,” Knaup said Monday. “Now we’ve tried to tame it. Mother Nature and Old Man River will fight back.”
The rains that caused this winter’s flood, blamed already for 25 deaths and damage to hundreds of homes and businesses, ended a week ago, but the water was still rising Monday in southern Missouri and Illinois. The Illinois River, which joins the Mississippi above St. Louis, was expected to reach near-record crests this week between the Illinois towns of Havana and Valley City, creating “a very dangerous situation” as levees there become saturated, said Steve Buan, a National Weather Service hydrologist.
Several other states along the Mississippi River were still bracing for the crest, which was flowing past Tiptonville, Tennessee, and expected to reach Memphis on Thursday at 6.5 feet above flood stage.
US sues VW because of emissions-cheating software in diesel cars
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued Volkswagen on Monday over emissions-cheating software found in nearly 600,000 vehicles sold in the United States, potentially exposing the company to billions of dollars in penalties for clean air violations.
The civil complaint against the German automaker, filed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency in U.S. District Court in Detroit, alleges the company illegally installed software designed to make its “clean diesel” engines pass federal emissions standards while undergoing laboratory testing. The vehicles then switched off those measures in real-world driving conditions, spewing harmful gases at up to 40 times what is allowed under federal environmental standards.
“Car manufacturers that fail to properly certify their cars and that defeat emission control systems breach the public trust, endanger public health and disadvantage competitors,” John C. Cruden, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement.
“The United States will pursue all appropriate remedies against Volkswagen to redress the violations of our nation’s clean air laws alleged in the complaint,” he said.
The company is in the midst of negotiating a massive mandatory recall with U.S. regulators and potentially faces more than $18 billion in fines for violations of the federal Clean Air Act.
The smart-tech future beckons to us from the CES gadget show
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Look around. How many computing devices do you see? Your phone, probably; maybe a tablet or a laptop. Your car, the TV set, the microwave, bedside alarm clock, possibly the thermostat, and others you’ve never noticed.
Much of that computing isn’t doing much while segregated into individual devices. But many of these gadgets have the potential to get smarter by connecting to their fellows, which in turn could open the door to a brave new “Internet of Things.”
To see where that might be taking us, there’s no better place than the annual gadget extravaganza formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show — and now simply as CES.
The show, which starts Wednesday in Las Vegas, is the place for companies large and small to show off new connected devices. These range from the seemingly trivial — for instance, smart umbrellas that message you if you leave them behind — to the undeniably helpful, such as navigation devices that display driving directions onto your windshield so you don’t have to take your eyes off the road.
And while traditional consumer electronics such as phones and TVs account for about half of revenue in U.S. consumer tech, they aren’t growing as quickly as newer connected devices, according to the Consumer Technology Association, the organizer of CES. For instance, smart home devices, such as cameras, thermostats and locks, are expected to grow 21 percent to 8.9 million units in 2016, or $1.2 billion in revenue.
