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US stocks hit records as profits keep piling up for Palantir and others, while oil prices ease

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market rallied to records on Tuesday as profits kept piling up for companies and as oil prices eased. The S&P 500 shot up 1.8%, and the main measure of Wall Street’s health topped its prior all-time high set a couple months ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 907 points, or 1.7%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.6%. Despite worries about high inflation, the war in Iran, frustration with the economy and a possible bubble in stock prices because of the boom in artificial-intelligence technology, Wall ...

Missouri election chief rejects bid to hold public vote on Trump-backed congressional districts

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s top election official has rejected a citizens’ petition seeking a statewide referendum on new congressional districts backed by President Donald Trump. Supporters of the referendum had submitted hundreds of thousands of petition signatures in a bid to force a November election on a new U.S. House map approved by the Republican-led state Legislature. But Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins asserted Tuesday that the petition is unconstitutional because congressional redistricting plans cannot be subject to voter referendums. A group ...

Today in History

On Aug. 5, 1962, South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was arrested on charges of leaving the country without a valid passport and inciting workers to strike; it was the beginning of 27 years of imprisonment. Also on this date: In 1861, Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act of 1861, which levied the first income tax on Americans (a flat tax of 3% on those making over $800/year) to help fund the Union’s Civil War effort. In 1864, during the Civil War, Union Adm. David G. Farragut led his fleet to victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama. In 1884, the ...

Record low Danube levels push some countries in Eastern Europe to the brink of energy emergency

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Numerous governments across Central and Eastern Europe are taking steps to conserve electricity and avert an energy crisis as record low water levels on the Danube River have forced power plants to the brink of shutting down. Persistent drought and successive extreme heat waves have deprived one of Europe’s largest rivers of water, pushing the Danube’s levels in Hungary’s capital Budapest to around 10 centimeters (4 inches) on Monday, well below the previous all-time low of 33 centimeters (13 inches) set in 2018. Water levels are not expected to rise ...

Washington state fires destroy hundreds of structures and force Spokane-area residents to evacuate

SPOKANE (AP) — Light winds and lower temperatures were in the forecast Monday to help firefighters with wildfires in eastern Washington state that forced the evacuation of 60,000 people in the Spokane area while destroying at least 600 homes, businesses and other structures. The fires in and around Spokane, the state’s second-largest city, burned about 12.5 square miles (about 32 square kilometers) by Monday morning and filled the sky with smoke and haze. They were 0% contained, Courtney James, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, said. The ...

Days after killing her 3 children, Lindsay Clancy told a psychologist she was ‘horrified’

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — After an opening week of wrenching testimony and a jury trip to the home where Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children, her murder trial resumed Monday with more details about the killings in a coastal Massachusetts town in 2023. Monday’s witnesses included doctors who tried to save two of the children and treated Clancy after she jumped from her home’s second-floor window following the killings. She remains paralyzed from the waist down. Two days later, when a forensic psychologist asked how she felt, Clancy responded: “horrified.” She also asked ...