News

By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer Stocks ended higher on Wall Street Friday but not enough to erase the market’s losses from earlier in the week. The S&P 500 added 0.8% but still posted a weekly loss after two weeks of gains. The benchmark index set a record high on Monday. Trading was mostly subdued

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and GEIR MOULSON Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin have reaffirmed their sharply different views of Moscow’s treatment of imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Merkel traveled to Moscow on Friday, which was the anniversary of Navalny’s poisoning with what European officials later identified as

BEIJING (AP) — China is tightening control over data gathered by companies about the public under a law approved by its ceremonial legislature. The data protection law expands the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on internet industries. It follows anti-monopoly and other enforcement actions against companies including e-commerce giant Alibaba and games and social media operator

By TERRY SPENCER Associated Press FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Millions of students in Florida, Texas and Arizona are being required to wear masks in class as school boards in mostly Democratic locales are imposing anti-COVID mandates in defiance of their Republican governors. The three states are all hot spots in the nation’s recent COVID-19

By The Associated Press BOSTON — Taliban websites that delivered the victorious insurgents’ official messages to Afghans and the world at large in five languages have abruptly gone offline. It is not immediately clear why the sites in the Pashto, Urdu, Arabic, English and Dari languages went offline Friday. They had been shielded by Cloudflare,

By DAVID SHARP Associated Press PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A boy who recently hiked the Appalachian Trail is preparing for his next adventure in kindergarten. Five-year-old Harvey Sutton tagged along with his parents over more than 2,100 miles to complete the feat. He was 4 years old when he and his parents began their walk

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has vowed to hold officials accountable over mistakes during recent floods that led to the deaths of hundreds of people in a major provincial capital, including 14 who were trapped when the city’s subway system was inundated. More than than 300 people were killed in last month’s floods

By KELLI KENNEDY and CODY JACKSON Associated Press JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Hospitals are overflowing with COVID patients in northeast Florida, the hot zone in the state’s latest surge. But the patients rapidly filling wards in Jacksonville are younger than last summer’s peak outbreak. And they’re getting sick faster. The caseload is more than double

By WILSON RING and ROY NKOSI Associated Press DEDZA, Malawi (AP) — The Peace Corps is beginning the process of returning its volunteers to countries across the globe, but how quickly that happens will depend on the pandemic. The U.S. government program is marking its 60th anniversary this year. But in March 2020, more than