South Korea to halt broadcasts as North Korea expresses ‘regret’ about blasts
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Koreas on Tuesday once again proved their mastery at pulling back from the brink — this time with an accord forged in two marathon negotiating sessions throughout three days.
Authoritarian North Korea previously refused to even admit to, let alone apologize for, Seoul’s accusation that North Korean land mines maimed two South Koreans. Yet, the rivals found a way to save face and avert the war they’ve been threatening, but avoiding, since the real fighting in the Korean War ended with a cease-fire in 1953.
In an artfully crafted statement, Pyongyang provided a vague expression of “regret” about the blasts that allowed Seoul to say it forced an apology. Seoul agreed to stop anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts, which gave the North a win it can trumpet at home.
US stocks slump again because of China slowdown; Dow briefly plunges 1,000 points, ends day down 588
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks slid again Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average briefly plunging more than 1,000 points in a sell-off that sent a shiver of fear from Wall Street to Main Street.
Stocks regained some of that ground as the day wore on, but the Dow finished with a loss of 588 points, the eighth-worst single-day point decline and the second straight fall of more than 500.
The slump — part of a global wave of selling touched off by signs of a slowdown in China — triggered worries among Wall Street professionals and among ordinary Americans who have been saving for retirement or a down payment on a house.
With the lease on her car up, health insurance worker Deirdre Ralph of Wayne, New Jersey, had planned to get a less pricey vehicle and invest the savings. Now she’s having doubts.
“That money, I wanted to take and put it toward my retirement,” said Ralph, 61. “Should I? Or should I just have a great old time?”
Police: Ashley Madison hack might have led to suicides; reward set for info on breach
TORONTO (AP) — The hacking of the cheating website Ashley Madison has triggered extortion crimes and led to two unconfirmed reports of suicides, Canadian police said Monday.
The company behind Ashley Madison is offering a $500,000 Canadian (US $378,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of members of a group that hacked the site.
Hackers last week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website, a month after a break-in at Ashley Madison’s parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website, whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair,” is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.
Toronto Police acting staff Superintendent Bryce Evans said the hack is having an “enormous social and economic fallout.”
“This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world,” Evans said. “This is affecting all of us. The social impact behind this leak, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about children, we’re talking about wives, their male partners.”
Family feud? Obama caught between Clinton and Biden’s White House ambitions
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is the man in the middle, caught between the White House aspirations of two of his closest advisers: Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
For months, White House officials expected Clinton to be the Democratic nominee in the 2016 election. Some of Obama’s top political advisers moved to New York to run her campaign and Obama appeared to give his tacit approval, saying she would be an “excellent president.”
But that bet on Clinton suddenly looks less certain. With Biden weighing his own presidential run more seriously amid signs of weakness in Clinton’s campaign, the White House faces the prospect of a family feud over who will become heir to Obama’s legacy.
“Certainly he’s got something at stake here,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday of Obama’s interest in the 2016 election.
Biden’s recent overtures to donors and Democratic officials have led to palpable awkwardness in the West Wing as aides — many with close ties to Clinton, the vice president or both — try to maintain impartiality.
Tax procrastinators urged to file now to avoid loss of health care subsidies; backstop readied
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sign-up season for President Barack Obama’s health care law doesn’t start for another couple of months, but the next few days are crucial for hundreds of thousands of customers at risk of losing financial aid when they renew coverage for 2016.
Call them tardy tax filers: an estimated 1.8 million households that got subsidies for their premiums last year but failed to file a 2014 tax return as required by the law, or left out key IRS paperwork.
Because of coordination issues between the IRS and marketplaces like HealthCare.gov, consumers who keep procrastinating into the fall are taking chances with their financial aid, according to insurers and the tax agency. That means, for example, that someone who’s been paying a monthly premium of $90 could suddenly get hit with a bill for $360.
Government officials say they have a backstop planned that should help many procrastinators. Nonetheless, insurers and advocacy groups say they’ve been told the best way returning customers can avoid hassles is to file their taxes correctly by Aug. 31.
“You don’t want to get to December and realize that your subsidy amount isn’t there,” said Clare Krusing, spokeswoman for the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans. Sign-up season starts Nov. 1, and insurers typically send bills for January in mid-December.
Protesters in Lebanon, once angered by Beirut’s trash crisis, now want to junk politicians
BEIRUT (AP) — It took a garbage crisis for Lebanon to finally snap.
Anger about the heaps of trash accumulating in Beirut’s streets boiled over this week with thousands protesting in the street against a government so dysfunctional it can’t hold elections or pick a president, much less deliver basic services.
While surviving the Arab Spring and neighboring Syria’s civil war relatively unscathed, tiny Lebanon could find itself plunging into renewed chaos if further violence tears across the capital. And its politicians, many of them warlords from the country’s own brutal 15-year civil war, may be sweating through the end of this long, hot Arab summer.
“It shows the Lebanese society to some extent catching up with the rest of the Arab world in terms of popular protests against the central government,” said Rami Khouri, a senior fellow at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut.
In many ways, Lebanon never got over its civil war, which raged from 1975 until 1990. Some of the country’s aging warlords passed on their power to their sons and relatives. Consecutive governments neglected to improve the country’s infrastructure, leading to chronic water shortages and electricity cuts even now, 25 years after the war ended.
