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Much of West Coast faces ban to fish salmon amid low stocks

SAN DIEGO (AP) — As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific. The surreal and desperate scramble boosted the survival rate of the hatchery-raised fish, but still it was not enough to reverse the declining stocks in the face of added challenges. River water temperatures rose with warm weather, and a Trump-era rollback of federal protections for waterways allowed more water to be diverted to farms. Climate ...

Wall Street ends higher, marking second winning week in a row

The Associated Press Stocks shook off a weak start and ended higher on Wall Street even as worries about banks on both sides of the Atlantic continue to weigh on markets. The S&P 500 rose 0.6% Friday, marking its second straight weekly gain. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq composite also rose. Treasury yields stabilized after an early drop. Markets have been turbulent recently on worries that banks are weakening under the pressure of much higher interest rates. That’s led to rising concerns about a recession and uncertainty about what central banks will do with ...

EU leaders play down bank risks as economy weakens

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders Friday played down the risk of a banking crisis developing from recent global financial turbulence and hitting the economy even harder than the energy crunch tied to Russia’s war in Ukraine. After a meeting in Brussels, the EU government heads said lenders in Europe are generally in sound health and in a position to weather a combination of rising interest rates and slowing economic growth. “The banking system is stable in Europe,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters after the summit. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: ...

Asian shares decline after Fed hints rate hikes may end soon

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mostly lower Thursday after the Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate, while noting the end may be near for its economy-crunching hikes to interest rates. The Fed raised its key overnight rate by a quarter of a percentage point, the same size as its last increase, in its campaign to drive down inflation. That effort has been complicated by turmoil in the banking sector, with investors worried that more banks might fail after Silicon Valley Bank’s recent collapse. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.2% to in morning trading to 27,400.37. ...

Stocks rise, claw back some of the prior day’s steep loss

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are clawing back some of their steep losses from a day before, when markets tumbled into the close. The S&P 500 was 0.6% higher in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 146 points, or 0.5%, at 32,181 as of 2:18 p.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher. A day earlier, stocks fell sharply after the Federal Reserve indicated that while the end may be near for its market-rattling hikes to interest rates, it still doesn’t expect to cut rates this year. Markets lost momentum after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that, along ...

GameStop leads meme stock rally in pandemic trade comeback

The Associated Press Meme stocks jumped Wednesday after GameStop, one of the most heavily traded off-brand stocks during the pandemic, posted a surprise profit for the fourth quarter, its first quarterly profit in two years. Rather than a per-share loss of 16 cents as Wall Street had expected, the video game retailer reported a profit of 16 cents per share, or $48.2 million in all. GameStop’s revenue fell and much of the profit gain came from aggressive cost cutting, including store closures and layoffs. However, as was the case during the pandemic, fundamentals that typically ...