The spring homebuying season is off to a sluggish start as home shoppers contend with elevated mortgage rates and rising prices. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell 4.3% in March from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.19 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That's the first monthly decline in sales since December and follows a nearly 10% monthly sales jump in February. Existing home sales also fell 3.7% compared with March last year. The latest sales still came in slightly higher than the 4.16 million pace economists were expecting, a ..read more

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has completed a book about her years in public life, from legislation she helped enact to such traumatizing moments as the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol and the assault at her San Francisco home that left her husband with a fractured skull. Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that Pelosi's “The Art of Power” will be released Aug. 6. “People always ask me how I did what I did in the House,” Pelosi, the first woman to become speaker, said in a statement. “In ‘The Art of Power,’ I reveal how — and more importantly, why.” Pelosi, 84, was first elected to th ..read more

Thousands of Black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring bash at Georgia's largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of extra police officers and barricades closing off neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to nearby parking. Tybee Island east of Savannah has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically Black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly groused about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in y ..read more

The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran as concern grows that Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could fuel a wider war in the Middle East. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted 16 people and two entities in Iran that produce engines that power the drones used in the April 13 attack on Israel. OFAC also sanctioned five firms involved in steel production and three subsidiaries of Iranian automaker Bahman Group — which is accused of materially supporting Iran's military and other sanctioned groups. A representative from Bahman was not immediatel ..read more

The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the world economy has proven surprisingly resilient in the face of higher interest rates and the shock of war in Ukraine and Gaza, but "there is plenty to worry about,'' including stubborn inflation and rising levels of government debt. “ Inflation is down but not gone,'' Kristalina Georgieva told reporters at the spring meeting of the IMF and its sister organization, the World Bank. In the United States, she said, “the flipside'' of unexpectedly strong economic growth is that it ”taking longer than expected'' to bring inflation do ..read more

Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s unprecedented weekend attack, leaving the region bracing for further escalation after months of fighting in Gaza. Israel’s allies have been urging Israel to hold back on any response to the attack that could spiral. Officials at a Group of Seven meeting in Italy on Thursday are calling for new sanctions against Iran over the attack. The Iranian attack on Saturday marked the first time that Tehran has launched a direct military assault on Israel. Israeli authorities said Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles, 99% of which were intercepted by air d ..read more

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits didn't change last week as the labor market continues to defy efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool hiring. The Labor Department reported Thursday that unemployment claims for the week ending April 13 were unchanged from the previous week’s 212,000. The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the weekly volatility, was also unchanged at 214,500. Weekly unemployment claims are considered a proxy for the number of U.S. layoffs in a given week and a sign of where the job market is headed. They have remained at historically low levels ..read more

Like many Americans, Ron Theusch is getting more worried about climate change. A resident of Alden, Minnesota, Theusch has noticed increasingly dry and mild winters punctuated by short periods of severe cold — symptoms of a warming planet. As he thinks about that, future generations are on his mind. “We have four children that are in their 20s,” the 56-year-old truck driver and moderate Democrat said. "It's like, what’s our grandkids' world going to be like?” A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 45% of adults in the United States say they have ..read more

Jeffrey Gibson’s takeover of the U.S. pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show is a celebration of color, pattern and craft, which is immediately evident on approaching the bright red facade decorated by a colorful clash of geometry and a foreground dominated by a riot of gigantic red podiums. Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw with Cherokee descent, is the first Native American to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art show. For context, the last time Native American artists were included was in 1932. Gibson, 52, accepts t ..read more

Wall Street pointed higher in premarket trading Thursday as bond markets stabilized and more corporate earnings trickled in. Futures for the S&P; 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% before the bell. Alaska Air, the carrier that suffered a midflight blowout of a door plug on a Boeing aircraft in January, took a $162 million hit in its most recent quarter after it grounded its entire Boeing 737 Max fleet, but it projected better-than-expected profits the current quarter. Its losses for the most recent quarter shrank as well, and shares rose more than 1% early Thursday. Boeing ..read more