Month: December 2021

By ZEN SOO Associated Press HONG KONG (AP) — Alibaba this week revealed an ambitious vision to quintuple its Southeast Asian e-commerce business to $100 billion in transacted sales, as well as a pledge to reach carbon neutrality in its operations by 2030. The plan to quintuple Lazada’s total transacted sales came as Alibaba looked

SUDHIN THANAWALA A week after a deadly tornado outbreak, families of the victims are still processing the terrible toll. Authorities on Thursday found the body of a Kentucky teenager who had been missing. Nyssa Brown was the seventh member of her family to die in the tornado that hit Bowling Green last week, and family

By JOSEF FEDERMAN Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — An Associated Press photographer has been pushed and beaten by Israeli police in an unprovoked attack while covering a protest in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood. Mahmoud Illean was bleeding after the attack and taken to a hospital with light head wounds. Illean was attacked in Sheikh Jarrah,

By KANTELE FRANKO and MATT O’BRIEN Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Some parents kept their children home, police stepped up patrols and educators tightened security protocols Friday in response to viral TikTok posts alluding to unconfirmed threats of violence that raised anxiety levels at schools nationwide. With stress levels already soaring from the effects

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Federal wildlife officials say two species of rare, winged insects in the Rocky Mountains will need several thousand acres of glaciers and snowfields if they are to survive a warming world that’s threatening them with extinction. The western glacier stonefly and the meltwater lednian stonefly live in streams that flow from

By CAROLYN THOMPSON Associated Press BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The union vying to represent Starbucks employees is objecting to the results of elections at two Buffalo-area stores. The union says the coffee retailer waged a “shock and awe” campaign meant to dissuade workers from voting to unionize. The claims are made in objections filed with

By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer Pfizer is testing an extra dose of its COVID-19 vaccine for babies and preschoolers after preliminary research hinted the usual two doses wouldn’t be enough. Pfizer had been testing very low-dose shots in children under age 5, with some data expected by year’s end. But Pfizer and its partner

By CURT ANDERSON AP Legal Affairs Writer Rock singer Rod Stewart and his son have pleaded guilty to battery in an assault case stemming from a New Year’s Eve 2019 altercation with a security guard at an exclusive Florida hotel. Court records released Friday show that Stewart and his son Sean recently entered guilty pleas

NEW YORK (AP) — A rare copy of a Superman #1 comic book that sold on newsstands for a dime in 1939 was purchased for $2.6 million in an auction. ComicConnect.com, an online auction and consignment company, said the comic was sold Thursday night to a buyer who wishes to maintain a secret identity. Houston-based

By COLLEEN LONG Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A Capitol rioter who attacked police officers working to hold back the angry mob on Jan. 6 has been sentenced to more than five years behind bars, the most so far for anyone sentenced in the insurrection. Robert Palmer, 54, of Largo, Florida, wept as he told

By PAUL WISEMAN and DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Business Writers The global economy hadn’t experienced anything like this for decades. Maybe ever. After years in which ultra-low inflation became a fixture of economies across the world, prices rocketed skyward in 2021 — at the grocery store, the gasoline pump, the used-car lot, the furniture store. Chalk

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time since the pandemic began, the box office is booming. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” grossed $50 million in Thursday previews alone, a stunning start for a movie set to break pandemic records. Sony Pictures’ “No Way Home” scored the third-largest preview total

CLEVELAND (AP) — McDonald’s will pay $33.5 million to a former baseball player who owns multiple franchises to end a lawsuit he brought against the company accusing it of racial discrimination. Herb Washington, who’s Black, owned more than a dozen restaurants in Ohio and Pennsylvania when he filed a lawsuit in February saying the company

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — A lawyer says a Pakistani court has sentenced four men implicated in the 2013 killing of a female activist in Karachi to life in prison. A fifth man was sentenced to seven years. The five did not actually pull the trigger in the shooting ambush of Perveen Rehman but were convicted

NEW YORK (AP) — The editor of Forbes magazine says he testified Thursday before a grand jury hearing evidence in a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump and his business practices, answering questions about a magazine article examining whether the former president inflated his wealth. Forbes editor Randall Lane wrote in a post on

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s top financial regulators told Congress Friday that threats to financial stability remain elevated even though the country has recovered from the worst economic shocks stemming from the COVID pandemic. In its annual report on financial system threats, the Financial Stability Oversight Council listed climate

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer A white Christmas is going from reality to more of a dream for chunks of the United States. Analysis of 40 years worth of United States snow measurements shows less of the country now has snow on the ground on Christmas than it did in the 1980s. It’s especially

By PATRICK WHITTLE Associated Press PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — New England’s commercial shrimp fishery will remain shuttered because of concerns about the health of the crustacean’s population amid warming ocean temperatures. The cold-water shrimp were once a winter delicacy in Maine and beyond, but the fishing industry has been shut down since 2013. A board

KINGSLAND, Ga. (AP) — A federal agency expects to announce its decision Monday on whether to allow a launchpad that would fly commercial rockets from coastal Georgia. However, the Federal Aviation Administration is emphasizing that a license authorizing Camden County to operate a spaceport would not yet permit the launch of any rockets. In a

By RAF CASERT Associated Press BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union and the departed United Kingdom are showing that their relationship remains on the rocks even if last year’s Brexit trade deal was supposed to have ended the acrimony between them. On Friday, they postponed talks on their continued deep-seated differences into the New Year.

By DENISE LAVOIE Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Crews working to remove the pedestal where a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had stood believe they’ve found a time capsule buried there in 1887. The massive equestrian statue was taken down in September. At the time, work crews were unable to locate the

By PAUL WISEMAN and DEE-ANN DURBIN AP Business Writers The global economy hadn’t experienced anything like this for decades. Maybe ever. After years in which ultra-low inflation became a fixture of economies across the world, prices rocketed skyward in 2021 — at the grocery store, the gasoline pump, the used-car lot, the furniture store. Chalk

MADRID (AP) — The European Union crime agency says police in Spain, France and Belgium have broken up a drug trafficking ring believed to be smuggling tons of cocaine and hashish by speedboat from Morocco to Europe. Europol said Friday that Spanish police arrested 17 people, including 11 Spaniards and six Moroccans, earlier this week.

By The Associated Press This week’s new entertainment releases include fresh music from U2 as part of the soundtrack for the animated “Sing 2,” a marathon of holiday films on TCM and the end-of-the-world comedy “Don’t Look Up.” There also Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem star as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Aaron Sorkin’s

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has given emergency approval to a coronavirus vaccine made by U.S.-based Novavax, paving the way for its inclusion into the U.N.-backed program to get such vaccines to poorer countries around the world. The vaccine, known as CovavaxTM, becomes the ninth vaccine to be granted an emergency use authorization

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (AP) — Sears plans to sell the sprawling suburban Chicago corporate headquarters that has been the struggling retailer’s home for three decades. Sears’ parent company, Transformco, confirmed this week that in early 2022 it plans to market the 273-acre corporate headquarters in the northwest suburb of Hoffman Estates. Transformco has been downsizing

MOSCOW (AP) — The developer of Russia’s Sputnik V says its vaccine provides the best protection against the omicron variant of the coronavirus. The Gamaleya Institute said in a statement on Friday that a preliminary laboratory study showed Sputnik V had “the best virus neutralization results against omicron in comparison with other vaccines.” The claim