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Stock market today: Asian shares gain after Wall Street ticks higher amid rate-cut hopes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

Asian shares mostly advanced on Wednesday after Wall Street ticked higher amid hopes that Japan’s moves to keep interest rates easy for investors could augur similar trends in the rest of the world.U.S. futures rose while oil prices were virtually unchanged after two days of gains.Building on gains from Tuesday, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 1.8% to reach 33,799.41 despite Japan experiencing a slight decline in its export performance for the first time in three months in November, a worrisome slowdown for the world’s third-largest economy.Exports to China, Japan’s biggest single market, fell 2.2%, while shipments to the U.S. rose 5.3% from a year earlier. Total imports fell nearly 12%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 1% to 16,669.44 while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4% to 2,920.63 after China kept its benchmark lending rates unchanged at the monthly fixing on Wednesday.The S&P/ASX 200 in Sydney gained 0.6% to 7,533.90, while South Korea’s Kospi was 1.4% h...

Lillard joins 20,000-point club, Giannis has triple-double as Bucks defeat Spurs 132-119

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Damian Lillard didn’t bother hiding what his latest career milestone meant to him.Lillard scored a season-high 40 points to push his career total over 20,000, Giannis Antetokounmpo had a triple-double and the Milwaukee Bucks trounced San Antonio 132-119 on Tuesday night as the Spurs played without Victor Wembanyama due to a sore right ankle.“I don’t want to fake downplay it like it’s nothing,” Lillard said. “I know it’s a big deal. It’s a great accomplishment. It’s a rare space to be in.”Lillard increased his career point total to 20,034 and became the 51st person in NBA history — and eighth active player — to reach 20,000 points. Lillard, who was playing his 794th career game, became the 17th-fastest player to reach that milestone.“When you look at Dame, obviously he can shoot the ball,” Bucks coach Adrian Griffin said. “He can stretch the floor. He just puts a lot of pressure on your defense. If you bring your bigs up, he can drive around them. He’s st...

Devin Carter scores 22, leads Providence to 72-57 win over No. 6 Marquette

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Devin Carter scored 22 points with eight rebounds to lead Providence to a 72-57 victory over No. 6 Marquette on Tuesday night — the third time in five seasons that the unranked Friars have beaten a Golden Eagles team in The Associated Press Top 25.Carter made five 3-pointers and Ticket Gaines also hit five from beyond the arc to score 18 for Providence, which has not lost at home to Marquette since 2019.In the first Big East game for new Providence coach Kim English, the Friars posted their largest win over a Top 10 opponent since beating No. 8 Villanova 83-68 in January 2011.Reigning Big East Player of the Year Tyler Kolek had 21 points, nine rebounds and five assists for Marquette.No. 20 JAMES MADISON 87, COPPIN STATE 48HARRISONBURG, Va. (AP) — TJ Bickerstaff scored 18 points on 8-of-9 shooting and grabbed seven rebounds to lead James Madison to the victory over Coppin State.Terrence Edwards Jr. added 16 points and Julien Wooden finished with 13 points, six...

Pedestrian crashes see slight uptick in Centennial

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. (KDVR) — The FOX31 and Channel 2 crew rode along with a traffic safety deputy Tuesday to take a deeper dive into vehicle crashes with pedestrians in Centennial."We have a ton of big intersections and neighborhoods where people are walking everywhere," said Deputy Ben Sears, with the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Traffic Safety Unit. 'Real-life version of the Grinch’ caught on camera slashing holiday inflatables Sears investigates dozens of crashes involving people on foot, scooters, bikes and other modes of transportation versus vehicles. He said when it comes to who's at fault, it's about 50-50.“I think sometimes people don’t want to go to a crosswalk. They just want to cross right away," Sears said.He said in the evening or when it's dark outside, pedestrians are more likely to get hit because they are harder to see. He said it's important for pedestrians to follow the street rules and wear something bright or reflective at night so drivers can see you....

Taylor Swift & Donna Kelce share cookie recipes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

As Swifties try to imagine what the upcoming holidays will look like for the families of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, we’re got visions of cookie baking dancing in our heads.It’s not really a stretch. Swift and Donna Kelce, Travis’ mother, are both bakers known for specific cookie recipes: Kelce’s version of traditional chocolate chip cookies and Swift’s chai sugar cookies.Kelce sweetly gave her sons containers of her homemade chocolate chippers before they played each other in the Super Bowl this year.“I always bring cookies to the games. All their friends want them. It’s just love from home,” Kelce explains in that TikTok posted by Serious Food Fetish. “Everybody has a basic chocolate chip recipe … with brown sugar and flour. I use both cake flour and regular flour, you know, one cup of each.“I basically take the butter and melt it in the microwave and it just makes the cookies creamier.“One thing that I do is I have white chocolate and milk chocolate and I also put in a l...

Celtics suffer some deja vu, fall in overtime loss to Steph Curry and Warriors

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

About one year ago, the Celtics went to the Bay Area and got a reality check.Last December, the C’s entered with a league-best 21-5 record into their NBA Finals rematch with the Warriors and were handed a painful loss, a reminder of how far they still had to go to reach their championship goal. It set off a losing stretch that exposed some of their biggest flaws and inconsistencies.On Tuesday, the Celtics brought their league-best 20-5 mark to the Chase Center. They left with some more learning to do after another loss to Steph Curry.It’s too early to say this is the same wake-up call they suffered last December. But as good, consistent and focused the Celtics have looked through the first two months of the season, it was a night that showed they still have growth to do, the kind of night that can’t be repeated too many times when the playoffs come. The Celtics blew a 17-point lead. They let their foot off the gas. They struggled in crunch time. All the things that have prevented th...

Gaskin: Use ARPA funds to crowdsource problem-solving

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

As American Rescue Plan Act funds dwindle and the time to use them draws down, here’s an idea worth pursuing: Set aside $1 million from Boston’s ARPA funds to crowdsource solutions to the city’s biggest problems.This money would fund $100,000 worth of prizes in each of 10 categories: violence and shootings, homelessness and the affordable housing shortage, economic development in poor areas, health care disparities, recidivism, food insecurity, the mental health crisis, education inequality, immigration, and climate change, including environmental and energy justice. The first prize in each area would be $50,000, with $30,000 and $20,000 prizes for the second and third-place ideas.In addition to prize money, there should be a budget for an extensive media campaign to get the word out, plus some money to manage the contest.Ideas could range from policy recommendations to specific projects that cost anywhere from $0 to $2 million to implement. We could use ARPA money for implementatio...

Scherer: Airport rideshare fee repeal good for consumers

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

Americans already have enough to worry about when flying. The last thing passengers need is to spend more money to get to the airport. Yet, in many cases, that is precisely what happens when they use popular rideshare services.In a new study, the American Consumer Institute highlights how airports nationwide increasingly impose fees on ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft. Airports say these fees — which consist of pickup fees and occasionally drop-off fees — are needed to subsidize ground transportation services, fund road maintenance and reduce traffic congestion. However, such arguments are unconvincing.Consumers should be free to choose the transportation service that best fits their needs. That requires airports to treat all services individually and sometimes be willing to scale down less popular transportation offerings. In addition, private vehicles, taxis and limousines each use airport roads but, in most cases, they are not subject to fees or are subject to lower fees. ...

Editorial: Many programs could use $915M planned for shelters

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

Thanks to Joe Biden & Co.’s spending sprees, $915 million doesn’t elicit the sticker shock it once did when attached to a government budget item. But it’s still a hell of a lot of money, especially when so many worthy projects need funding.That almost-a-billion is what the Healey administration expects it will need to fund emergency assistance shelters in Massachusetts in fiscal year 2025, according to a report executive officials prepared for the Legislature’s two budget writing committees.That $915 million has to cover a lot: shelter and associated services, staffing, intake sites, clinical and safety risk assessment sites, school district reimbursements, immigration and refugee health, community, and workforce supports, and municipal supports, according to the report, a copy of which was provided to the Herald on Monday.To be fair, the report did some math and determined that after fiddling with projected costs and assumed budget resources, the figure is mor...

‘American Fiction’ familiar story for Jeffrey Wright

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:58:45 GMT

“American Fiction,” which stars Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown as warring brothers, scored in its September world premiere at Toronto’s international film festival by taking home the coveted People’s Choice Award, often a precursor to Oscar attention.A satirical look at contemporary race relations, “Fiction” has Wright, 57, as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a frustrated novelist who, in disgust, writes an outrageous cliché-ridden “Black” book – only to see it become a critically acclaimed bestseller.Along the way, Monk becomes caretaker for his aging mother (Leslie Uggams) and roommate to his brother Cliff who has left his wife and two kids to come out as a party-hearty, drug and disco indulging homosexual.For Wright, Monk was a man he knew intimately. “I can tell this man’s story, I know this man’s journey. There were just a number of overlaps,” Wright said at an LA press conference.  “Particularly his becoming the caretaker. That was an experience I knew probably too intimately....