US-China trade truce seen boosting US stock market
WASHINGTON — The truce in the trade dispute between the U.S. and China should boost rattled financial markets, at least likely through year’s end, experts say. But the stock market’s wild gyrations of recent months likely will persist as the two countries strain to reach a permanent accord.
“The all-clear sign hasn’t flashed yet but it’s certainly positive news,” says Mike Loewengart, vice president of investment strategy at E-Trade.
The U.S. was set to raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods Jan. 1. President Donald Trump agreed Saturday in a meeting with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit to hold off for 90 days while the two sides try to settle their differences.
That looming deadline, as well as Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on an additional $267 billion of goods from China, possibly including iPhones and laptops, had contributed to sharp declines in stocks since early October.
The agreement buys time for the two countries to work out their differences in a fight over China’s aggressive drive to supplant U.S. technological dominance.
Paris assesses injuries, damage after worst riot in decade
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron asked for an evaluation of possible protest security measures Sunday, a day after a Paris demonstration against increased taxes and living costs devolved into France’s worst urban riot in a decade.
Hours after he flew back to the French capital from the G-20 summit in Argentina, Macron held an emergency meeting at the Elysee presidential palace while crews worked to remove charred cars, broken glass and graffiti from the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue and other top Paris sites.
Paris police said 133 people were injured, including 23 police officers, as crowds trashed the streets of the capital Saturday. Officers fired tear gas and used water cannon to tamp down the violence as protesters torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with spray paint.
Paris police Prefect Michel Delpuech said some officers described encountering “unprecedented” violence, including protesters using hammers, gardening tools, bolts, aerosol cans as well as rocks in physical confrontations.
Some radical far-right and far-left activists were involved in the riot, as well as a “great number” of protesters wearing yellow jackets, Delpuech said. The fluorescent jackets, which French motorists are required to have in their cars for emergencies, are an emblem of a grassroots citizens’ movement protesting fuel taxes.
Coal question looms large as climate talks begin in Poland
KATOWICE, Poland — Negotiators from around the world opened the United Nations’ annual climate change conference Sunday in a Polish city built around mining coal, widely seen as a main culprit behind global warming.
Arriving for two weeks of talks on tackling climate change, conference participants cast off hats, scarves and heavy coats as they entered cavernous halls in Katowice heated by coal-fired power plants nearby.
Coal is center-stage at the U.N. summit, which is taking place three years after a landmark deal in Paris set a goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
While the Polish government claims Katowice is in the process of transforming into a green city , power plant chimneys pumped plumes of smoke into a dull December sky and monitoring sites showed elevated levels of air pollution.
Poland, which is presiding over the meeting, plans to use Monday’s official opening event to promote a declaration calling for a “just transition” for fossil fuel industries that face cuts and closures amid efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
From wire sources
Earthquake doesn’t disrupt food, fuel supply to Alaska
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The supply chain of food and other goods delivered to the Port of Anchorage from the Lower 48 has not been disrupted by the powerful earthquake that caused widespread damage to roads in the Anchorage area.
“The ships are coming in on schedule, the supply lines are at this point uninterrupted,” Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz said Sunday at a news conference.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake rattled the state’s largest city early Friday morning swaying buildings and fraying nerves. There were no reports of deaths, serious injuries or structural damage to buildings.
Roads, however, took the brunt of the damage, especially the scenic Glenn Highway, the closest thing Alaska has to an interstate and links the state’s largest city to suburban communities to the north.
Traffic has been snarled since the quake. Delays came as drivers were diverted around road damage on temporary detours or the highway was reduced to one lane while crews try to reconstruct the roadway after the temblor caused sinkholes and buckled pavement.
Border village grinds to a halt amid Ukraine-Russia tensions
CHERTKOVO, Russia/ MILOVE, Ukraine — Valentina Boldyreva stepped out of her two-story house on an overcast and snowy Sunday afternoon to say hello to her 76-year-old sister who lives on the other side of Friendship of People’s Street, a tall barbed-wire fence separating them.
“You see my sister is walking up to the wire,” Boldyreva said. “How are we going to talk to each other?”
“I’m not allowed to come close,” her sister, Raisa Yakovleva, said as she stood just 100 meters (yards) away on the other side of the fence.
“Our windows are facing the barbed wire day and night as if looking out at a prison,” Boldyreva said.
But it’s not a prison camp. It’s a border fence built by Russia earlier this year, marking what was once an invisible border in a symbolic shutdown of nearly all ties between the two neighboring nations.
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Synagogue holds Hannukah ceremony at mass shooting site
PITTSBURGH — Sunday’s public lighting of a Menorah outside a Pittsburgh synagogue where 11 people were killed in a mass shooting was an opportunity to honor the dead, mark Hanukkah’s theme of survival and allow the community to reinforce its solidarity.
“To me, it’s a simple message: The light is the message,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said, pointing to the Menorah standing at the corner where a makeshift memorial for the 11 victims once stood and was visited by thousands paying their respects.
Five weeks after the massacre — believed to be the deadliest attack on Jews in the U.S. — about 500 people gathered outside Tree of Life to pray, sing songs and witness the lighting of the Menorah.
“We are practicing our Jewish faith publicly and proudly,” said Stephen Cohen, co-president of New Light, whose congregation, along with congregants from Dor Hadash and Tree of Life, had gathered at the synagogue when the shooting occurred Oct. 27.
The fact that hundreds of people showed up for the ceremony came as no surprise to officials of the three congregations.