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Moore: Biden’s killing American dream of homeownership

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

In boasting about Bidenomics two weeks ago in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden declared that his policies are “restoring the American dream.” Then he went into his creepy whispering mode and assured us “it’s working.”Huh?Isn’t a big aspiration of the American dream owning a home? Biden keeps making first-time homeownership harder for young families for two reasons. One is that the overall jump in inflation and the slower increase in wages and salaries means that homes are more expensive. High home prices benefit those who already own their homes, but much of the increased value is due to general inflation, which reached a high of 9% last year and hurts everyone.A bigger killer for first-time homebuyers has been the steady rise in mortgage rates under Biden. When he came into office, the mortgage rate was 2.9% nationally. Now it is 7.1%, thanks in no small part to the Federal Reserve’s 11 interest rate increases prompted by the $6 trillion Bide...

Dear Abby: Teen’s antics leave bad taste with grandma

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

Dear Abby: I generally have an excellent relationship with my 14-year-old granddaughter. However, she thinks it’s funny to tell me outrageous lies with a straight face to see if she can get me to believe them. She laughs when I am unsure of whether she is telling the truth.Once she told me her family was going to Hawaii for a month (she lives with her father rather than with my daughter, so I’m not privy to his plans). Another time, she jerked her arms around and said she has “tics.” When I asked what she was talking about, she announced she had Tourette’s syndrome.Both were untrue. I had epilepsy as a teenager, so I’m especially sensitive about a grandchild developing a neurological condition at the age I was. It felt like a cruel thing for her to do to me, and I was not amused. When I told her I didn’t like it, she giggled and said, “Oh, Grandma!”I had arranged for her to do weekly yard work for me, but now I’m having sec...

The United States marks 22 years since 9/11, from ground zero to Alaska

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.Commemorations stretch from the attack sites — at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — to Alaska and beyond. President Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage.His visit, en route to Washington, D.C., from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote. The hijacked plane attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.On that day, “we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be. That was the feeling — that everyone came together and did what we could, where we were at, to try to help,” said Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland Count...

Stock market today: Asian shares mostly higher as investors await US inflation, China economic data

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

Stock prices were mostly higher in Asia on Monday as investors awaited U.S. inflation figures and China’s latest economic data. Benchmarks fell in Hong Kong and Tokyo but rose in Shanghai, Sydney and Seoul. A surge in oil prices has added to worries that inflation may not be waning as hoped in the U.S and other major economies. That could lead the Federal Reserve and other central banks to keep interest rates higher for longer, which would hurt prices for shares and other investments. Over the weekend, China reported a slight increase in its own inflation data, suggesting deflationary pressures seen as a sign of weakness in its slowing economy might be easing. The government is due to report industrial output for August later in the week. “We expect inflation to rebound further over the coming months, as policy support drives a modest recovery in China’s economic momentum,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a commentary.The Shanghai Composite index gained 0.6% to 3,133.85, w...

Lahaina’s fire-stricken Filipino residents are key to tourism and local culture. Will they stay?

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Ambulance and fire truck sirens wailed outside as Elsie Rosales stripped linens from king-sized mattresses at a beachfront resort in Lahaina.She tried to focus on the work, but was beset by dread: Had a wildfire taken the home she scrimped to buy on a housekeeper’s wages?It had. And now Rosales, like many other Filipino housekeepers used to cleaning hotels, is living in one with her family, a poignant example of how the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century has afflicted Maui’s heavily Filipino population.“All our hard work burned,” Rosales told The Associated Press in an interview conducted in Ilocano, her native language. “There is nothing left.”The disaster has prompted fears about what will become of Lahaina’s community and character as it rebuilds. Many are concerned residents like Rosales won’t be able to afford to live in Lahaina after the community is rebuilt, and that affluent outsiders seeking a home in the oceanfront town will price them ou...

Patients need doctors who look like them. Can medicine diversify without affirmative action?

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — Dr. Starling Tolliver knew she wanted to become a doctor. Yet, as a Black girl growing up in Akron, Ohio, it was a dream that felt out of reach.She rarely saw doctors who looked like her. As a child, she experienced severe hair loss, and struggled to find a dermatologist who could help. Tolliver made a pact with two childhood best friends to become doctors who would care for Black and underserved communities like their own. Now 30, she is in her final year of dermatology residency at Wayne State University in Detroit. She plans to spend her career caring for the body’s largest organ, where differences in melanin give humans the skin colors underpinning the construct of race. In dermatology, only 3% of U.S. doctors are Black.Despite her success, the girls’ pact remains unfulfilled. While her friend Charmaine became a nurse, Maria, who wanted to become a pediatrician, was killed in their hometown at the age of 19. Her friend’s death only strengthened her res...

What to know about the Morocco earthquake and the efforts to help

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

An earthquake has sown destruction and devastation in Morocco, where death and injury counts continue to rise as rescue crews dig out people both alive and dead in villages that were reduced to rubble.Law enforcement and aid workers — both Moroccan and international — have arrived in the region south of Marrakech that was hardest hit by the magnitude-6.8 tremor Friday night and several aftershocks. Residents await food, water and electricity, and giant boulders now block steep mountain roads.Here’s what you need to know:WHAT ARE THE AREAS MOST AFFECTED?The epicenter was high in the Atlas Mountains about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech in Al Haouz province.The region is largely rural, made up of red-rock mountains, picturesque gorges and glistening streams and lakes. For residents like Hamid Idsalah, a 72-year-old mountain guide from the Ouargane Valley, it is unclear what the future holds.Idsalah relies on Moroccan and foreign tourists who visit the region due to its pro...

Pennsylvania Republicans have the candidate they want for US Senate. They just need him to run.

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republicans trying to recapture the U.S. Senate majority have the candidate they want in Pennsylvania. Now they just need David McCormick to run.Almost since the moment he lost last year’s Senate GOP primary, McCormick has floated the possibility that he would again seek the party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate, this time to challenge three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.McCormick has shown up at local party events, raised money for Republican candidates, hired staff, done a publicity tour for his new book and made the rounds of conservative podcasts. In short, everything a candidate might do — except announce his candidacy.“At this point, if Dave McCormick doesn’t run, it’ll be the biggest head fake in Pennsylvania political history,” said Vince Galko, a Republican campaign strategist based in northeastern Pennsylvania.Republicans, perhaps, have done just about everything they can think of to entice McCormick to join a 2024 ticket th...

McCarthy juggles government shutdown and Biden impeachment inquiry as House returns to messy fall

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a man who stays in motion — enthusiastically greeting tourists at the Capitol, dashing overseas last week to the G7 summit of industrial world leaders, raising funds back home to elect fellow Republicans to the House majority.But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota.McCarthy is going to “have his hands full trying to figure out how to navigate a...

UK leader Sunak chides China after a report that a UK Parliament staffer is a suspected Beijing spy

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:44 GMT

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chastised China’s premier on Sunday for “unacceptable” interference in British democracy, after a newspaper reported that a researcher in Parliament was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of spying for Beijing.Sunak said he raised the issue with Premier Li Qiang when the two met at a Group of 20 summit in India. He told British broadcasters in New Delhi that he’d expressed “my very strong concerns about any interference in our parliamentary democracy, which is obviously unacceptable.”The two men met after the Metropolitan Police force confirmed that a man in his 20s and a man in his 30s were arrested in March under the Official Secrets Act. Neither has been charged and both were bailed until October pending further inquiries.A Chinese Embassy statement called the allegations “completely fabricated and nothing but malicious slander.” China urges “relevant parties in the U.K. to stop their anti-China political manipulation,” the statement ...