Breaking News

Uncategorized

US mortgage rates brush 7%, weighing on buyers, sellers and further straining a bleak housing market

Home shoppers holding out for relief from rising mortgage rates may be in for a long wait. The weekly average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate home loan has been rising for months and this week climbed to just below 7% — its highest level in over 19 months. The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose to 6.95% from 6.76% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the average rate was 6.26%. This is the fourth week in a row that mortgage rates have moved higher. The average rate hasn’t reached this level since Jan. 30, 2025. Borrowing costs on 15-year ...

EU plans new firefighting fleet after deadly summer heat wave

BRUSSELS (AP) — A scorching summer that dried up rivers and killed tens of thousands across the European Union from Portugal to Hungary has shown that the bloc needs to develop new tools to meet a worsening climate, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday. She said that this instability led her to propose a new European Heatwave Plan as well as a future European firefighting fleet of airplanes. Currently, the EU operates a small fleet itself but coordinates a network of aircraft, water trucks and volunteers that move across the 27-nation bloc as fires ...

Centenarians living in Japan exceed 100,000 for the first time

TOKYO (AP) — The number of people aged 100 or older in Japan surpassed a record 100,000 this year, the latest government figures show, underscoring the country’s rapidly aging and declining population. The Health and Welfare Ministry statistics released Tuesday show Japan now has 107,677 centenarians, up 7,914 from the previous year and exceeding the 100,000 mark for the first time. Nearly 88% of them are women. Kyoto resident Fuyo Kishimoto was recently recognized as the oldest Japanese woman at age 114. Japan’s oldest male is 112-year-old Hikaru Kato from Kumamoto in southern ...

Judge refers Philadelphia district attorney to federal prosecutors for investigation

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal judge referred Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday for investigation into whether he broke the law while overseeing a post-conviction case. U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond disqualified Krasner and Assistant DA Matthew Stiegler from participating in the case involving Dennis Johnson, who is seeking to have his second-degree murder conviction overturned. Diamond also took the unusual step of recommending that the DOJ investigate whether Krasner committed any crimes, including perjury and ...

Satellites show Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, Antarctica in 47 years

About 12.5 trillion tons (11.3 trillion metric tons) of ice from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have melted since 1979, which is enough frozen water to stack ice 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep across the continental United States, according to a major scientific report. A warming Earth is accelerating the melting of the planet’s two major ice sheets, with five-sixths of the melt not coming from hotter air, but from warmer waters eating away at the ice sheets from below and the sides, with glaciers flowing into the oceans, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Scientific Data. ...

Parachute packing, 1942

AP Photo Some of the ground crew at work in the parachute packing room, at an airfield somewhere in England, Sept. 17, 1942, performing a vital job for the safety of the aircrew.