Mary shares her big move and the sweet rescue dog she named after our own Murphy – prisms, neck injections and all. With the World Cup bringing in international travelers, we break down when and how much you should really tip in America. Plus, butchers reveal the one burger trick Murphy’s been missing, and Jodi gives a heartfelt update on her mom’s recovery.
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TOKYO (AP) — Business sentiment among major Japanese manufacturers has improved for a fifth straight quarter, the Bank of Japan said in its quarterly “tankan” survey released Wednesday.
The survey’s so-called diffusion index rose to 22 from 17 in the previous quarter, the BOJ said. The index for large non-manufacturers, such as services, edged up to 37 from the last tankan ‘s 36.
The survey is an indicator of companies foreseeing good conditions minus those feeling pessimistic.
Higher fuel prices due to the Iran war have added to inflationary pressures in Japan, though crude oil prices have fallen since the U.S. and Iran agreed on an interim deal to end the war.
Although a weak yen raises the value of exports’ earnings when converted into yen, a boon for Japan’s giant exporters, that positive is starting to be countered by the big negative of rising energy prices.
Japan imports nearly all of its oil and gas, and the yen’s recent decline to near a 40-year low has added to those concerns given recent high oil prices.
The U.S. dollar was trading at about 162 yen on Wednesday.
Last month the Bank of Japan raised its benchmark interest rate to 1%, a three-decade high, citing challenges stemming from a weak Japanese yen and higher prices. The central bank has been trying to normalize monetary policy lately after decades of keeping interest rates near or below zero.
Analysts say Japan’s economic indicators, such as investments, remain relatively strong despite longer term problems such as a chronic labor shortage due to an aging and declining population.
“Sales remain firm, especially for large enterprises, but profits are expected to weaken,” said Amova Asset Management Chief Global Strategist and Chief Economist Naomi Fink said about the tankan.
“Fixed investment plans are strong for large and mid-size firms but less so for small firms.”
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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Ecuador’s Piero Hincapié became the second player to be issued a red card at the World Cup under FIFA’s new rule that calls for a player to be sent off for covering their mouth during a confrontational exchange with an opponent.
Hincapié was sent off in the 95th minute of Ecuador’s 2-0 loss to Mexico Tuesday in the round of 32. He was shown the red card following an exchange with Mexico forward Santi Giménez.
FIFA established the new rule to prevent players from hiding abusive comments to opponents by covering their mouth.
Paraguay’s Miguel Almirón was the first player to be punished under the new rule when he was sent off in a group stage match against Turkey last week.
While Ecuador’s tournament is over, Hincapié will be suspended for the team’s next international match.
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Jack Little is a student in the University of Georgia’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.
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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here
WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration.
Last month, the Education Department announced it would offload oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, following a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.
Taken together, the actions signal a worrying return to a reality where people with disabilities are pushed to the margins of society, advocates said.
“It’s a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities to live their lives the way that people who are nondisabled live their lives,” said Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. “I can’t imagine that as a country, that would be something that we would agree we should go back to.”
Since the 1960s, legislation and court decisions have progressively expanded supports and protections for people with disabilities to go to school with nondisabled peers and to live and work in their communities. Before that, people with mental illnesses or developmental and intellectual disabilities were largely confined to institutions.
Advocates have pushed back on what’s known as the “medical model,” where an individual’s disability is viewed as a defect to be cured. Instead, under a “social model” of disability, differences can be accommodated and supported, as people with and without disabilities learn and work alongside each other.
Families and advocates have warned that moving special education to a health department marks a return to the medical model. They’ve also been angered by Kennedy’s attempts to link vaccines to autism, going against decades of research that show no such link, and his framing of autism as a debilitating disease.
Kennedy’s comments last year, where he said children with autism would never write a poem, pay taxes or hold a job, raised questions about how he would oversee an agency meant to help students develop those skills. Kennedy later said he was referring to people with ” severe autism ″ or those who are nonverbal.
“Many of the things he said autistic people will never do, (special education) is in charge of making sure students with disabilities have the opportunity to do,” said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. “Will he execute that faithfully, or does he consider disabled students a lost cause until we find some medical cure?”
In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that segregating disabled people who are otherwise able to live in their community with proper supports was a form of discrimination. The Olmstead v. L.C. decision led to requirements that government agencies provide disability services in the most integrated setting possible — in mainstream schools, homes and workplaces.
But in a memo issued in June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel upended that guidance. It argued that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504, two major disability rights laws, requires states to provide services in the most mainstream setting. While the memo does not change the law, it signals how federal agencies may interpret and enforce civil rights issues related to the topic — and it could embolden states or school districts to decline to support people with disabilities in mainstream environments.
The White House has already acted on a similar philosophy. Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness that endorsed civil commitment, where a court orders individuals into involuntary hospitalization or treatment programs. Trump directed HHS to reduce barriers to institutionalizing people with mental illnesses.
In its memo, the Justice Department acknowledged its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision is “out of step” with the common understanding. If a state starts to provide services in institutional settings, legal challenges likely would follow, the DOJ said.
The Trump administration’s steps fit a worldview in which the government has no obligation to support people with disabilities, said Claudia Center, legal director at Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.
“It’s dark, and it’s awful,” Center said. “And I think it’s contrary to the majority view in our country. … It’s out of touch with where our society is.”
The moves have created a deep sense of uncertainty for students with disabilities.
Lindsey Althaus says home and community-based services in northwest Ohio have been instrumental to her family. Her 12-year-old son, Whitman, has autism and a neurological disorder called apraxia, in which the brain struggles to tell muscles how to move to form words or perform other motor skills. For some of his school career, with proper support services, Whitman was able to spend much of his school day in a classroom that included kids without disabilities.
Through a Medicaid waiver program, Althaus pays her mother to care for Whitman in her absence. That allows him to spend time out in the community with his grandmother while Althaus and her husband are working or away with their daughter.
Under the Justice Department’s new interpretation of Olmsted, states would have fewer obligations to fund and support those programs. And Kennedy, in testimony to lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, criticized similar programs as subject to fraud.
“We want to be able to have him in the community,” said Althaus, who works as a disability rights advocate. “It’s just starting to feel like Whitman’s not going to be welcome anymore. We’re going back to this: You’re either perfect, or you’re not in the light.”
For many students with disabilities, schools are where they receive the majority of support services and where they are integrated among their peers. Before Magda Nakassis’s 8-year-old son, who is autistic and nonverbal, started public school in Maryland, his preschool experience had largely been defined by being kicked out of things, she said.
In school, Nakassis said, she found teachers and staff members who understood her son’s needs and told her to stop apologizing for them. A program at his school called Fantastic Friends teaches mainstream fifth graders about autism, and they spend recesses with children in the autism program. Every year, Nakassis said, there is a waitlist to be a Fantastic Friend.
Nakassis said that it has been difficult to see the ways autism in particular has become politicized. Every child is entitled to a public education in this country, Nakassis said, and special education is a response to the fact that some children have differences that require additional support.
Regardless of his diagnosis, his right to an education is not a medical issue, she said, but rather a question of equity and access in a society that often pushes disabled people to the margins.
“There are lots of kids like him out there, and I sometimes wonder, ‘what did we use to do?’” Nakassis said. “I can’t believe it was better.”
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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
DALLAS (AP) — More people awaited sentencing Wednesday over a shooting outside a Texas immigration center that has already resulted decades-long prison sentences for others, including a former Marine who received 100 years in prison.
The hearing comes nearly a year after the shooting last July outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, which wounded a police officer and included the group setting off fireworks during a demonstration against President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In all, more than a dozen people have been convicted or pleaded guilty over the shooting at the facility, which the U.S. Justice Department has alleged was carried out by members of the leftist militant group antifa.
Attorneys for the protesters have denied antifa links, and family members have expressed shock over the stiff sentences handed down in Texas.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor called the protest an “assault on democracy” before he and another judge handed down lengthy prison sentences to eight demonstrators who were convicted by a federal jury on terrorism charges.
On Wednesday, six other defendants faced sentences of up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty instead of going to trial. Each pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to terrorists, including a man who testified at the trial of the other demonstrators that he spray-painted a guard shack and vehicles in the parking lot.
The case has been closely watched by critics who say the prosecution could have wide-reaching impact on protests and First Amendment free-speech rights.
For the past year, attorneys for the defendants have said there was no planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms only did so for their own protection. They argued the gathering was planned as a late-night demonstration with fireworks to show support for immigrants.
Prosecutors told jurors at trial that the group’s actions — including bringing firearms, first aid kits and wearing body armor — were signals of nefarious intent.
Benjamin Song, a former U.S. Marine reservist who was convicted of attempted murder in the shooting, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, and seven others received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years in prison.
Another person awaiting sentencing on Wednesday was convicted at trial. Ines Soto, whose wife was also convicted, faces up to 60 years in prison after being convicted on charges of providing material support to terrorists, riot and explosives. At trial, attorneys for the couple said they arrived late and left when confronted by guards.
The lines are growing at Russian gas stations — and so is the frustration and uncertainty as several months of Ukrainian attacks have set oil refineries ablaze and choked supplies for motorists across the vast country.
Fuel rationing has been introduced in many regions, with hourslong queues of cars snaking beside roads. Social media videos show drivers aghast at the lines or swearing at empty gas pumps and rising prices. The mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk even ordered portable toilets brought in to accommodate those in line.
The fuel crisis — unprecedented for a nation that is one of the world’s biggest energy producers — has brought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine home to ordinary Russians like few other events in the war, now in its fifth year.
It drew a rare admission from President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged that “problems persist for both motorists and businesses,” and “there are still queues at petrol stations, and finding the right grade of petrol isn’t always easy.”
Putin insisted the shortages are “not critical” and “temporary.”
But that appeared to do little to reassure at least one motorist in Moscow, the wealthy capital typically better-insulated from economic shocks than the rest of the country.
“I think the situation is not very good,” the motorist waiting in line told The Associated Press on Monday, the day after Putin’s televised remarks.
“They say one thing on television, and in reality it’s another. … People are queueing everywhere,” he added, declining to identify himself out of concern for his safety.
An AP count shows over 50 reported attacks by Ukraine on oil refineries, depots, terminals and other oil infrastructure in Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula since late March. Often, the same facility is hit more than once -– such as the refinery in the Black Sea town of Tuapse, which was struck four times in just over two weeks.
As a result, the amount of crude oil Russia processed into fuel in June was down 25% from a year ago, to 3.95 million barrels per day — the lowest level in over two decades, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence.
“The outages are extraordinary,” he said.
Gasoline production has fallen 17% to 850,000 barrels a day, from 1.03 million a day a year ago — far short of what’s needed for the domestic market. Russia exports relatively little gasoline.
About a third of Russia’s oil refining capacity is offline, said Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy, noting that because refineries don’t publicly confirm the extent of the damage, his estimate comes from anecdotal evidence and oil industry sources.
“It comes at a very critical time for the Russian economy, in that the agriculture season, particularly the harvest season, is now starting to ratchet up,” increasing demand, Weafer said.
Ukrainian officials describe the strikes as a campaign to pressure Moscow to end the war by undermining its military logistics and supply lines and weakening its ability to mount assaults along the front.
In particular, Kyiv has sought to isolate Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that most nations do not recognize. Attacks earlier this year forced the Moscow-installed authorities to enact fuel rationing on the peninsula in May and halt sales to civilians there altogether several weeks later. Limited sales later resumed in the city of Sevastopol.
Ukraine has carried out major drone strikes on Russia’s two largest cities, embarrassing the Kremlin with images of black plumes of smoke that circulated widely online, despite regulations restricting their publication.
A June 3 attack on an oil terminal in St. Petersburg darkened the sky as Putin prepared to host his annual economic forum to attract foreign investment. On June 18, a similar cloud rose from the Moscow Oil Refinery on the outskirts of the capital, sending greasy black droplets raining down.
By late June, some form of gas rationing was reported in over half of Russia’s regions. Some of them slapped strict limits on all gas stations; in others, gas station chains limited how much fuel could be bought.
Officials blamed hoarding and panic-buying, urging motorists to fill their tanks only when needed.
Exports of gasoline and aviation fuel have been restricted, and authorities weighed banning diesel fuel exports, too.
Importing fuel was being considered, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying contacts with some countries were “underway.” He described the move as “another step toward stabilizing the market and aimed at reducing panic-buying.”
The shortages have reached distant Russian regions where no refineries have been hit by Ukraine’s drones.
Viktor Shkurenko, who owns retail stores in the Omsk region and other businesses, called announcement on limits on gasoline sales there to 40 liters (10.5 gallons) per vehicle “unexpected.”
“Nothing was bombed here. We have the biggest oil refinery in Siberia right here, and it gave us confidence that this fuel crisis won’t come to us,” he said, expressing worry about how limits could affect his businesses. As of Saturday, however, he said his company has not had any problems refueling its vehicles.
In the Siberian region of Zabayakalye, east of Lake Baikal, media reports said a garbage hauler suspended pickups and some bus services were curtailed.
In addition to ordering portable toilets outside gas stations, the city of Irkutsk raised public transport fares as of Wednesday, citing rising fuel costs.
Pavel Kharitonenko, acting head of the Irkutsk branch of the opposition Yabloko party, told AP he now finds it easier to walk or use public transport.
“I don’t have the fuel, and I don’t want to queue at gas stations,” he said. The Irkutsk region, home to a Rosneft oil refinery, has experienced acute shortages for several days, with lines growing, Kharitonenko said.
Putin said Russia’s stockpiles of gasoline are only 4% lower than what it had last year. Weafer, the analyst, says that “reportedly, there are good supplies of fuel around the country. The problem is it’s in the wrong place.”
Supplies need to be reallocated to regions experiencing shortages, and in a big country like Russia, “it’s not something that can be done overnight,” Weafer said.
“There should be enough, but it will take several weeks to get it from where it is to where it’s needed,” he says. “It’s just a huge logistics operation to do that.”
Fixing the war-damaged refineries is complicated. Ukraine’s attacks damaged specialized equipment that is often sourced abroad, making repairs time-consuming and expensive as workarounds or replacements are sought by evading sanctions.
“They manage to get these things up and running, not necessarily at full capacity,” Peach said. “But the extent of the damage this time is so extensive that they won’t get back to winter levels of refining this summer.”
Some refineries won’t be worth repairing until there’s a ceasefire or armistice, he said, because they will just “get knocked down again.”
Repairing the Moscow Oil Refinery, which supplied 40% of the fuel to the capital and the surrounding region, is expected to take at least three months, Weafer said.
If there’s no further damage to Russia’s oil infrastructure, he estimated the shortages will last “probably throughout the summer” because demand from agriculture will likely remain high into September.
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Associated Press writers David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In Kimberley Kausen’s home, a passed “sell by” date on a jug of milk means different things to different family members. For her daughter, it means the jug belongs in the trash. For her husband, it means the milk is still good for a few more days.
Kausen, a chef and cooking teacher in Irvine, California, is more discerning and often uses her sense of smell before deciding what to do with the milk.
“I’ll put some thought into it, and if we’re talking about meat and poultry, I’m very cautious about that and for sure will do the smell test and the touch test,” she said.
The debate playing out in Kausen’s kitchen is repeated in homes across California and the country, where varying phrases on food packaging have long left shoppers unsure whether food is simply past its peak quality or unsafe to eat. The state is aiming to cut down on confusion — and the food waste it creates when people throw away food early — with a new food labeling law starting Wednesday.
It bans the use of “sell by” labels on food packaging, which experts say act as a guide for retailers on how long to display products on the shelves but are not an indicator of whether they are still safe to consume. Now, manufacturers selling food in California must use two standardized labels — a “Best if Used By” label for peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety.
Food manufacturers can choose to use either label or both, said Democratic Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, the author of the bill.
California became the first state in the U.S. to standardize food labels when it approved the law in 2024 that seeks to reduce food waste and the state’s climate-warming emissions. New York state lawmakers recently approved a similar law that’s awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.
Legislation addressing food labeling also has been proposed in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and South Carolina, though it has not passed in those states.
Nick Lapis, director of advocacy at Californians Against Waste, which co-sponsored the bill, said food labels are the leading cause of household food waste. The “sell by” date labels have also been a problem for food banks in California because people consider those dates as meaning the food has expired, he said.
“We don’t need to build some kind of huge infrastructure and invest tons of money to solve this. We just need companies to use the same words across brands,” he said.
There are more than 50 different date labels on packaged food sold in stores, according to a 2022 report on food waste published by the University of Maryland. The information in the labels is largely unregulated and often does not relate to food safety.
“Consumers get confused and they just default to assuming that whatever date is on the package means ‘don’t eat it and throw it away’,” said Kumar Chandran, policy director at ReFED, a nonprofit focused on reducing food waste.
Chandran said California and New York’s approval of food-labeling laws has added momentum to the push for a national standard. A bipartisan bill that would establish uniform food labels is pending in Congress. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommended a decade ago that food sellers should switch to “Best if Used By” labeling.
Currently, the only product that is regulated federally with date labels is infant formula.
With no federal regulations dictating what information labels should include, the stamps have led to consumer confusion — and nearly 20% of the nation’s food waste, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In California, that’s about 6 million tons of unexpired food that’s tossed in the trash each year.
Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association, said some grocers have had to overhaul their labeling systems, but as a whole, the association has been supportive of the change.
The new labels will result in “a win-win where we can reduce food waste and consumers will find these decisions a little bit simpler,” he said, adding that shoppers will still find old labels in stores for months to come as grocers sell through the products that already have them.
BOSTON (AP) — Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras was tossed for a second straight game on Tuesday after throwing his helmet toward Washington Nationals pitcher Cade Cavalli during a heated exchange that ended with the benches clearing and multiple ejections.
Cavalli struck out Contreras looking on a full-count pitch in the top of the fourth of what eventually became an 8-1 victory by the Nationals. The 27-year-old right-hander then shouted at Contreras as Contreras made his way back to the Boston dugout.
Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said he heard Cavalli yell “Sit down, boy” after fanning Contreras.
Asked what his specific words to Contreras were, Cavalli told reporters, “I don’t know. I just lose my head in it. I’m competitive. I just told him to sit down.”
The term “boy” has a racially charged history in the U.S. Contreras, who is Venezuelan, demurred when asked if he felt there was a racial component to Cavalli’s word choice.
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Contreras said, later adding he plans to “let MLB handle that.”
Contreras, who hit a three-run homer off Washington’s Miles Mikolas on Monday and celebrated with a massive bat flip that he later apologized fo r, then approached Cavalli on the mound. The two jawed at each other as both dugouts emptied.
“He struck me on a good pitch, I was walking back to the dugout, and then he did what did, and the rest was history,” Contreras told reporters afterward, later adding, “He was like, instigating, and I snapped.”
Boston catcher Carlos Narvaez tried to hold Contreras back, but Contreras broke loose long enough to leap and throw his batting helmet in Cavalli’s direction.
Things settled down quickly after that, though the brief dustup ended with Contreras, Boston interim manager Chad Tracy, Boston outfielder Nate Eaton and Mikolas being ejected.
Cavalli pointed to an incident at the end of the top of the first when Contreras nearly ran into the pitcher as both exited the field as the spark that set things in motion.
“He’s just been doing stuff,” Cavalli said of Contreras. “In the first inning, he just runs past me and brushes me. It’s just something you don’t do in baseball. I think he knows that. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him. And a few words were said after the strikeout. It’s part of the game. And he’s going to let everybody run out there and try and do whatever he does, throw a helmet and get himself tossed.”
Cavalli stayed in the game and allowed one run on one hit with 13 strikeouts over seven innings in what became an 8-1 romp.
“After everything that happened, the people that they chose that were going to leave the game, I just felt like the other pitcher should have been one of them too,” Tracy said. “That was my biggest complaint.”
The early exit was the second in as many nights for Contreras, the first time that’s happened to a Red Sox player in the club’s 126-year history. The 34-year-old Venezuela native — who acknowledged he is having a difficult time while his native country tries to recover from a pair of devastating earthquakes last week — was ejected in the second inning on Monday for mimicking an appeal call after striking out on a checked swing.
“I feel like everything is against me right now,” Contreras said. “I got ejected last night from nothing. I got ejected today even though I was walking back to the dugout.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Authorities arrested four adults on felony child endangerment charges after discovering 16 children in dire need of medical treatment Tuesday in a rural southern Ohio home.
The Ohio Bureau of Investigation and local sheriff’s department searched a home in the small village of Hamden, where they found the kids in what officials called “deplorable” conditions.”
“Conditions you cannot even imagine people being in, let alone children being in,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said at a news conference.
Law enforcement arrested Gary Siders Jr., Gary Siders Sr., Christina Siders and Elizabeth Siders. They have not yet been arraigned and assigned public defenders.
Vinton County prosecuting attorney William Archer said they were being charged with second-degree felony child endangering because it involves “serious physical harm.”
Officials did not confirm if the children were related but said it was not a human trafficking situation. They said the adults were not locals and appeared to have been traveling.
Hamden has a population of less than 1,000 people and is about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Columbus.
The children ranged from ages 1.5 to 18 and included both boys and girls, officials said. Several were in serious conditions when found, and two had to be flown to level one trauma centers because of their injuries.
Wilson said it was the worst scene he had ever encountered in his entire career, describing what he saw as “pure evil.”
Law enforcement were also executing a secondary search warrant at the home Tuesday, and the investigation is ongoing. The four adults will appear in court Wednesday morning.
“Justice will be served for these children,” Wilson said.
TOKYO (AP) — Global shares were mixed on Wednesday as uncertainty persisted over conflict in the Middle East and access to the crucial Strait of Hormuz despite an initial deal to end the U.S.-Iran war.
France’s CAC 40 declined 0.3% in early trading to 8,379.92, while the German DAX added 0.3% to 25,069.53. Britain’s FTSE 100 dipped 0.1% to 10,484.53.
The futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.3%.
The U.S. dollar rose to 162.65 Japanese yen from 162.55 yen, hitting a 40-year high as traders remained wary over risks of an intervention in the market by Tokyo.
The euro cost $1.1403, down from $1.1426.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.6% to finish at 70,474.96. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.6% to 8,722.90. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.0% to 8,303.41. The Shanghai Composite edged up 0.4% to 4,112.45. Trading was closed in Hong Kong.
Crude oil prices drifted as two U.S. envoys arrived in Qatar for talks with mediators about the implementation of the deal with Iran. The Americans will not be having direct negotiations with Iranian diplomats while in Doha.
“While oil markets are currently priced for a gradual return to supply normalization, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has yet to recover to pre-war levels,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.
Benchmark U.S. crude lost 70 cents to $68.80 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 63 cents to $72.32 a barrel.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 gained 0.8%, though it still recorded its first losing month following two fabulous ones. The Dow added 0.3%, to its record, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.5%.
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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama