Wall Street hits record high

NEW YORK - Wall Street returned to record heights Friday to cap a punishing, two-year round trip dogged by high inflation and worries about a recession that seemed inevitable but hasn’t arrived.

The S&P 500, which is the centerpiece of many 401(k) accounts and the main measure that professional investors use to gauge Wall Street’s health, rallied 1.2% to 4,839.81. It erased the last of its losses since setting its prior record of 4,796.56 at the start of 2022. During that time, it dropped as much as 25% as inflation soared to levels unseen since Thelonious Monk and Ingrid Bergman were still alive in 1981.

Even more than high inflation itself, Wall Street’s fear was focused on the medicine the Federal Reserve traditionally uses to treat it. That’s high interest rates, which press the brakes on the economy by making borrowing more expensive and hurting prices for stocks and other investments. And the Fed rapidly hiked its main interest rate from virtually zero to its highest level since 2001, in a range between 5.25% and 5.50%.

2023 was slowest year for US home sales in nearly 30 years

LOS ANGELES - Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank in 2023 to a nearly 30-year low, as sharply higher mortgage rates, rising prices and a persistently low level of homes on the market combined to push homeownership out of reach for many Americans.

The National Association of Realtors said Friday that existing U.S. home sales totaled 4.09 million last year, an 18.7% decline from 2022. That is the weakest year for home sales since 1995 and the biggest annual decline since 2007, the start of the housing slump of the late 2000s.

The median national home price for all of last year edged up just under 1% to record high $389,800, the NAR said.

Pa. school district brings back Native American logo

GLEN ROCK - A school board in southern Pennsylvania has voted to reinstate the district’s old mascot logo portraying a Native American fighter, despite criticism that it’s outdated and culturally insensitive.

The Southern York County School District voted 7-2 on Thursday to bring back the logo, which had been retired in April 2021 by a previous board that also chose to keep the name of the Susquehannock High School teams as the “Warriors.”

The vote followed a lengthy debate including a nearly two-hour public comment session and an hourlong presentation by the Native American Guardian’s Association (NAGA), a nonprofit organization that lobbies against the removal of Native American mascots.

Several parents spoke against reinstating the logo, saying the board was lacking in humanity and should be focused on education. Some students also said the logo debate has heightened racial bullying.

Texas prosecutor convenes grand jury to investigate Uvalde shooting

UVALDE, Texas - A Texas prosecutor has convened a grand jury to investigate the Uvalde school shooting, multiple media reported Friday, as families of the 19 children and two teachers killed continued their calls for criminal charges against officers involved in the hesitant and haphazard police response to the massacre.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell told the San Antonio Express-News that a grand jury will review evidence related to the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24, 2022. She did not disclose what the grand jury will focus on, the newspaper reported.

Mitchell did not immediately respond to emailed questions and calls to her office Friday. The empaneling of the grand jury was first reported by the Uvalde Leader-News.

Sports Illustrated employees left in limbo

The jobs of people who produce Sports Illustrated were in limbo Friday after the company that paid to maintain the iconic brand’s print and digital products told staff that its license was revoked.

In an email to employees Friday morning, the Arena Group, which operates Sports Illustrated and related properties, said that because of the revocation, “we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand.”

Authentic Brands Group owns the Sports Illustrated brand and had been licensing it to Arena. Authentic later said in a statement it intends to keep Sports Illustrated going. The company is negotiating with Arena and other publishing entities to determine who will do that, according to a person with knowledge of the talks who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

Until those negotiations are resolved, it’s unclear which journalists would actually do the work of making Sports Illustrated. It was not clear how many jobs were affected.

Harvard creates task forces on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

BOSTON - Harvard University, struggling to manage its campus response to the Israel-Hamas war, announced task forces on Friday to combat anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

“Reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic acts on our campus have grown, and the sense of belonging among these groups has been undermined,” Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said in a letter to the school community. “We need to understand why and how that is happening - and what more we might do to prevent it.”

The separate task forces follow the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, who faced a backlash over her congressional testimony on anti-Semitism as well as plagiarism accusations.

Some Jewish students filed a lawsuit against Harvard this month, accusing the school of becoming “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” Arab and Muslim students around the country have also said they feel they’re being punished for their political views on the war.

- The Associated Press