WASHINGTON (AP) — At first glance, the June employment report was a blockbuster. The U.S. economy produced a record 4.8 million added jobs last month, walloping expectations. And the unemployment rate sank from 13.3% all the way to 11.1%.
“Today’s announcement,” President Donald Trump declared Thursday after the report was released, “proves that our economy is roaring back.”
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LONDON (AP) — Britain announced Wednesday that it was extending residency rights for up to 3 million Hong Kongers eligible for the British National Overseas passport, stressing that it would uphold its historic duty to the former British colony after Beijing imposed a sweeping new national security law in the city.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told lawmakers that amid widespread concerns about Beijing’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, the U.K. was changing its immigration rules to give people who are connected to Britain by virtue of the city’s status as a former British colony a special route to citizenship.
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NEW YORK, United States (AP) — Stock indexes ended mixed on Wall Street Wednesday, even as the market extended its winning streak to a third day and gains in technology companies pushed the Nasdaq to an all-time high.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5%, coming off the heels of a whiplash start to the year where its worst quarterly performance since 2008 gave way to its best quarter since 1998. Treasury yields and the price of oil rose. Stocks in Europe fell, while markets in Asia ended mixed.
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JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AP) — A lucky Buddha figurine, a flight suit, several 3-cent stamps, a crumpled 1952 Mass schedule for St. Patrick’s Church in Washington, D.C., and 480 bags containing individual human remains.
Those were among the items recovered this month from Alaska’s Colony Glacier, where an annual somber search continues for human remains and debris after a military plane crashed 67 years ago, officials said Friday.
The goal is to identify and return remains from everyone onboard the C-124 Globemaster, which smashed into Mount Gannett north of Anchorage on Nov. 22, 1952, killing all 41 passengers and 11 crew members, military officials said Friday at a news conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage.
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MARINETTE, Wis. (AP) — Despite enormous economic headwinds and sky-high unemployment numbers, President Donald Trump sought to showcase his record as a job creator on Thursday during a visit to a shipyard in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Trump boasted of his “aptitude for manufacturing” and again offered a rosy prediction that the coronavirus-battered economy is set to turn a corner even as the U.S. marked its 14th straight week with more than a million workers making unemployment claims.
Trump made the comments during a tour of the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard, the recent winner of a $5 billion federal contract to building up to 10 new guided missile frigates. The Marine shipyard is a United States subsidiary of Italian enterprise Fincantieri, one of the world’s largest shipbuilders.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The International Monetary Fund has sharply lowered its forecast for global growth this year because it envisions far more severe economic damage from the coronavirus than it did just two months ago.
The IMF predicts that the global economy will shrink 4.9% this year, significantly worse than the 3% drop it had estimated in its previous report in April. The IMF said that the global economic damage from the recession will be worse than from any other downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — German economic experts say output won’t completely bounce back to pre-virus levels until 2022 after a sharp plunge of 6.5% this year, describing the pandemic recession and recovery as taking the shape of a “pronounced V.”
The five-member German Council of Economic Experts said Tuesday the economy would see an upswing in the second half of this year followed by more moderate growth reaching 4.9% next year. It said unemployment would continue to rise this year before falling gradually next year.
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TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump showed up in an indoor arena Saturday night for a rally that some fear could help fuel nascent spikes of coronavirus cases in some places, concerns that were amplified after six staffers helping to set up the event tested positive for the virus.
State and city health department officials were already bracing for a possible surge in COVID-19 cases from large outdoor demonstrations against police brutality held across the country. Now the Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shaped up to be the first indoor event of such a massive scale since the coronavirus pandemic took hold and many states issued stay-at-home orders.
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NEW DELHI (AP) — China said the Galwan Valley high up in the Himalayan border region where Chinese and Indian troops engaged in a deadly brawl this week falls entirely within China, boldly renewing claims on the disputed area as the Asian giants continued using military and diplomatic channels to try to reduce tensions on Saturday.
The confrontation in the Galwan Valley, part of the disputed Ladakh region along the Himalayan frontier, was the deadliest between the two countries in 45 years. India blames China for instigating the fight by developing infrastructure in the valley, which it said was a breach of the agreement of what area remained in dispute.
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TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Hundreds of unemployed Tunisians from around the country tried to march on parliament Wednesday to demand a law guaranteeing jobs, and skirmished with police who blocked their way.
Virus confinement measures are worsening joblessness and poverty in Tunisia, where the economy had already been struggling for years. Unemployment was a key driver of protests that overthrew Tunisia’s autocratic president and unleashed the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011.
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