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Hong Kong court begins Day 2 of activist publisher Jimmy Lai’s trial

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

HONG KONG (AP) — The national security trial of Hong Kong’s famous activist publisher Jimmy Lai entered its second day Tuesday, with judges expected to rule by the end of the week on his lawyers’ bid to throw out a sedition charge that has been increasingly used to target dissidents. Lai, 76, was arrested in August 2020 during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following massive protests in 2019. He faces a possible life sentence if convicted under a national security law imposed by Beijing. He was charged with colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security and conspiring with others to put out seditious publications.His landmark trial — tied to the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily that Lai founded — is widely seen as a trial for press freedom and a test for judicial independence in the former British colony, which was promised to have its Western-style civil liberties remain intact for 50 years after returning to Chinese rule ...

Japan’s central bank keeps its negative interest rate unchanged, says it’s watching wage trends

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — The Bank of Japan kept its longstanding easy credit policy unchanged on Tuesday, saying it will watch price and wage trends before raising its negative benchmark interest rate. The BOJ policy decision was widely expected. But investors and analysts believe the central bank is tip-toeing toward a shift due to price increases that have left inflation above its 2% target. The U.S. dollar gained against the Japanese yen and stock prices surged after Tuesday’s decision. The benchmark rate of negative 0.1% is meant to encourage banks to lend more and businesses and consumers to borrow more to spur the economy, the world’s third-largest. The central bank also has purchased trillions of dollars worth of government bonds and other assets as part of its strategy of injecting more cash to spur growth as the Japanese population shrinks and grows older.Inflation has risen in Japan but at a much slower pace than in the U.S. and other major economies, most recently at about 3%...

How many students are still missing from American schools? Here’s what the data says

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

Since the pandemic first upended American education, an estimated 50,000 students are still missing from any kind of U.S. school. That’s according to an Associated Press analysis of public, private and homeschool enrollment as of fall 2022, and U.S. Census data in 22 states, plus Washington, D.C.The reasons students left during the pandemic are varied, and still not fully understood. Some experienced homelessness, lost interest or motivation, or struggled with mental health. Some needed to work or assume adult responsibilities. Some fell behind in online school and didn’t see the point of re-engaging. The number of missing students has fallen from fall 2021, when over 230,000 students were still unaccounted for in an analysis by AP, Big Local News and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee. Slowly, many students returned to some form of schooling, or aged out of the system. The decline in missing students is a hopeful sign the education system is moving toward recovery. Still, not...

Thousands of lights at Chicago Botanic Garden illuminate tunnels, lilies and art

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

GLENCOE, Ill. (AP) — Chicago Botanic Garden is dazzling patrons and visitors from around the world with their fifth annual holiday display of light and music: Lightscape. Clusters of multigenerational households push strollers, carry children and walk arm in arm with older relatives as they navigate the 1.3-mile (2.1-kilometer) experience in the village of Glencoe, near Chicago. More than 22 light installations by various local and international artists light a path through established gardens that snake around the Great Basin in the core of the garden’s 385 acres. Highlights of the experience include passing through the “Electric Ribbon Tunnel” created by Culture Creative; “Sea of Light,” created by UK artist Ithaca, which has 4,800 individually controlled balls of LED light; “Lilies,” by UK artist Jigantics, with 22 illuminated 5-foot (1.5-meter) lilies that float in and around the darkness of the Great Basin; and “Laser Lake,” projecting a rainbow of light dancing across th...

California set to become 2nd state to OK rules for turning wastewater into drinking water

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — After a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: An ice skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the Central Valley.And — coming soon — your kitchen faucet.California regulators on Tuesday are set to vote on new rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it right back into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools and businesses.It’s a big step for a state that has struggled for decades to have a reliable source of drinking water for its more than 39 million residents. And it signals a shift in public opinion on a subject that as recently as two decades ago prompted backlash that scuttled similar projects.Since then, California has been through multiple extreme droughts, including the most recent one that scientists say was the driest three-year period on record and left the state’s reservoirs at dangerously low levels.“Water is so precious in California. It is im...

Elf Bar and other e-cigarette makers dodged US customs and taxes after China’s ban on vaping flavors

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — In only two years, a small, colorful vaping device called Elf Bar has become the most popular disposable e-cigarette in the world, generating billions in sales and quickly emerging as the overwhelming favorite of underage U.S. teens who vape.Last week, U.S. authorities publicly announced the first seizure of some of the company’s products, part of an operation confiscating 1.4 million illegal, flavored e-cigarettes from China. Officials pegged the value of the items at $18 million, including brands other than Elf Bar.But the makers of Elf Bar and other Chinese e-cigarettes have imported products worth hundreds of millions of dollars while repeatedly dodging customs and avoiding taxes and import fees, according to public records and court documents reviewed by The Associated Press.Records show the makers of disposable vapes routinely mislabel their shipments as “battery chargers,” “flashlights” and other items, hampering efforts to block products that are driving te...

Ja Morant lawsuit provides glimpse into his youth, family and a contentious pickup game

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A pickup basketball game at Ja Morant’s parents’ home near Memphis two summers ago quickly turned a day of fun, food, family and friends into chaos.Under the hot July sun, the trash-talking escalated between the Memphis Grizzlies star and a local high school player who was friends with Morant’s sister and had been guarding him that day, according to witnesses.During a check-ball sequence to start a game, Joshua Holloway hurled a hard pass from in close that hit Morant in the face, leading Morant to punch the 17-year-old in the chin. Morant’s childhood friend Davonte Pack then punched him again, knocking him to the ground, witnesses said. As Holloway was being escorted away, he said he was going to “light up” the place like “fireworks,” according to people who were there.On Wednesday, lawyers for Morant, 24, and Holloway, now 18, will return to court for a pretrial hearing in a lawsuit the teen filed against the mercurial player. Morant, ...

Many kids are still skipping kindergarten. Since the pandemic, some parents don’t see the point

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

CONCORD, Calif. (AP) — Aylah Levy had some catching up to do this fall when she started first grade.After spending her kindergarten year at an alternative program that met exclusively outdoors, Aylah, 6, had to adjust to being inside a classroom. She knew only a handful of numbers and was not printing her letters clearly. To help her along, the teacher at her Bay Area elementary school has been showing her the right way to hold a pencil.“It’s harder. Way, way harder,” Aylah said of the new grip.Still, her mother, Hannah Levy, says it was the right decision to skip kindergarten. She wanted Aylah to enjoy being a kid. There is plenty of time, she reasoned, for her daughter to develop study skills.The number of kindergartners in public school plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerned about the virus or wanting to avoid online school, hundreds of thousands of families delayed the start of school for their young children. Most have returned to schooling of some kind, but even three...

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court, to be laid to rest at funeral Tuesday

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona native and consistent voice of moderate conservatism as the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, will be laid to rest with funeral services Tuesday. President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts are scheduled to speak at the funeral held at Washington National Cathedral. O’Connor retired from the high court in 2006 after more than two decades, and died Dec. 1 at age 93. O’Connor was nominated in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. A rancher’s daughter who was largely unknown on the national scene until her appointment, she would come to be referred to by commentators as the nation’s most powerful woman.O’Connor wielded considerable influence on the nine-member court, generally favoring states in disputes with the federal government and often siding with police when they faced claims of violating people’s rights. Her impact could perhaps best be seen, though, on the court’s rulings on abortion. She twice helped fo...

Illegal crossings surge in remote areas as Congress, White House weigh major asylum limits

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 10:05:16 GMT

LUKEVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — Hundreds of dates are written on concrete-filled steel columns erected along the U.S. border with Mexico to memorialize when the Border Patrol has repaired illicit openings in the would-be barriers. Yet no sooner are fixes made than another column is sawed, torched and chiseled for large groups of migrants to enter, usually with no agents in sight.The breaches stretch about 30 miles (48 kilometers) on a washboard gravel road west of Lukeville, an Arizona desert town that consists of an official border crossing, restaurant and duty-free shop. The repair dates are mostly since spring, when the flat desert region dotted with saguaro cactus became the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.A Border Patrol tour in Arizona for news organizations, including The Associated Press, showed improvements in custody conditions and processing times, but flows are overwhelming. Chaotic scenes, including when daily arrivals averaged more than 7,000 across the border a week in...