Today is
Wednesday June 03, 2026
GALVESTON (AP) – Recent outbreaks of hantavirus and norovirus on cruise ships are making headlines, but they’re unlikely to dim the growing popularity of vacation cruises, according to industry representatives and travel experts.
In fact, many within the industry still expect a record number of people worldwide to take cruises this year despite three passengers aboard the MV Hondius dying from hantavirus after the ship stopped in Argentina and a recent norovirus outbreak aboard a British ship docked in Bordeaux, France.
“The cruise consumer seems to be somewhat Teflon when it comes to stories like this,” said Rob Kwortnik, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration who closely watches the cruise industry.
In mid-April, an annual forecast by the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group, estimated that 38.3 million people would travel on ocean-going ships this year, 4% more from a record 37.2 million passengers last year.
Industrywide sales figures are closely held. Asked about potential impacts from what happened aboard the MV Hondius, the trade association said it doesn’t comment or speculate on bookings. Several big cruise companies didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press about customer demand, including Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the Dutch company that owns the MV Hondius, said it doesn’t foresee any changes to its operations. It has a cruise setting sail from Keflavik, Iceland, on May 29.
Veteran cruisegoers said the outbreak would not affect their plans.
“I have eight cruises booked, and I’ll absolutely be booking another,” said Jenni Fielding, who blogs and posts social media videos about cruise trips under the moniker Cruise Mummy. “Cruising is as safe as any other type of holiday, provided travelers follow sensible health advice and stay aware of official guidance.”
Scott Eddy, a hospitality influencer, is currently on a cruise and docked in Monaco. Fellow passengers have not mentioned the hantavirus outbreak, he said.
“The average traveler understands that this is an isolated health situation and not something unique to cruise travel itself,” Eddy said.
CruiseCompete.com, an online marketplace where consumers making vacation plans can compare offers from travel agents, booked 31.7% more cabins in the first half of May compared to the same period last year, CEO Bob Levinstein said.
“I can categorically say that we have not seen any drop in demand,” Levinstein said.
Levinstein said that norovirus — an extremely contagious stomach bug that thrives in crowded environments — is conflated with cruises in the minds of many Americans because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control requires ships to disclose when 3% or more passengers report symptoms.
On a ship with 5,000 passengers, an illness impacting 3% of them “goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of vacationers, and experienced cruisers know this,” he said.
Current news cycles rarely impact passengers’ decisions to join a cruise because the trips generally are booked at least 6 months — and often as much as a year – in advance, Kwortnik said.
“People who are booking cruises tomorrow are thinking about the holidays,” he said.
During a conference call Thursday with investors, Switzerland-based cruise line Viking said demand for its river cruises softened briefly during the first three months of this year after the Iran war began but then quickly rebounded.
Viking said 92% of its 2026 cruises and 38% of its 2027 cruises were booked. The company didn’t mention hantavirus or norovirus.
Andrew Coggins, a cruise industry analyst and professor in Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, said even if travelers set to embark on a cruise soon are unnerved by the latest news, they’re unlikely to get a refund.
“I think if there’s any impact on demand, it would be in the long term. If you’re cruising in the next few months, you’re past the point at which you can get your money back,” he said.
Coggins said he thinks the hantavirus story got a lot of attention because it reminded people of the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan for two weeks in early 2020 after the coronavirus that grew into a global pandemic was detected on board.
The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the cruise industry, shutting down many smaller operators. Cruises didn’t see an upswing in passengers again until 2022, Coggins said.
There are still fewer cruise passengers from China and Japan than there were before COVID, according to CLIA. But Coggins said demand elsewhere is booming.
“There are new ships on order out to 2037. The cruise lines are bullish. They see demand growing and they want to offer new bells and whistles, new ports, new destinations,” he said.
One reason for cruising’s growth is broad appeal across generations and income levels. In a recent U.S. survey, Bank of America found that Generation Z respondents and millennials were the most likely to say they planned to cruise over the next 12 months.
The survey also found that cruise spending rose for lower-income households even as those households spent less on airfare and lodging. Cruise lines have been wooing those passengers in recent years with shorter, more affordable itineraries.
Kwortnik said cruising also offers travelers value for their vacation dollars.
“On average, it costs more just to stay at a hotel in Miami than it does to sail on a cruise out of Miami – and the cruise includes lodging, multiple destinations, food, entertainment, and transportation all in the fare,” he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — China has agreed to ramp up trade for U.S. agricultural products such as beef and poultry, buying at an annualized rate of $17 billion per year for 2026 and at that level for 2027 and 2028, the White House announced Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump returned from a high-stakes summit in Beijing where he sought to ease the impact on American farmers from the trade war he launched last year.
China would restore market access for U.S. beef and resume imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be free of the bird flu, the White House said. The deals are on top of China’s soybean purchase commitments last year.
The agreements offer some hope to American farmers harmed by the trade war as they saw a major export market for soybeans and other products dry up. Farmers also are feeling new pressure from Trump administration policies — the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran has curtailed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade corridor that has restricted global fertilizer supplies and sent those prices soaring.
There was no immediate confirmation of the terms from Beijing.
China’s Ministry of Commerce on Saturday said the two sides would “resolve or make substantial progress toward resolving certain non-tariff barriers and market access issues” regarding agricultural goods.
The U.S. would “actively work” to address China’s concerns regarding detention of its dairy products, seafood, the export of potted bonsai, and the recognition of Shandong province as a bird-flu-free zone, while the Chinese side will “likewise actively work” to address U.S. concerns regarding the registration of beef processing facilities and the export of poultry meat from certain states to China, a ministry spokesperson said.
The two sides also agreed to expand trade, including that of farm goods, through measures such as reciprocal tariff reductions on “a specific range of products,” though the spokesperson did not specify the products.
China, recognizing the link between food security and national security, has diversified its sources of imported soybeans, beef and other farm goods, turning increasingly to Brazil, Argentina and other countries over the U.S.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show China’s imports of U.S. agricultural goods peaked in 2022 with $38 billion but fell to $8 billion in 2025. These figures include nearly $18 billion in soybean purchases in 2022 and $3 billion in 2025.
It’s not immediately clear how much more China would buy from American soybean farmers, who were hit especially hard in the trade war. China, traditionally the largest foreign buyer of American soybeans, stopped purchasing them altogether last year after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods.
The latest agreement builds on a trade truce Trump reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in which China agreed to resume buying U.S. soybeans. The White House said then that China committed to buying 12 million metric tons in the current marketing year and 25 million metric tons for each of the next three years.
According to the White House, hundreds of U.S. beef plants, including those run by Tyson and Cargill, also will be able to export again to China, though it’s not immediately clear how much beef American businesses will be selling to China.
China let licenses for hundreds of U.S. beef plants expire last year, and the import value for 2025 fell to less than $500 million, according to USDA figures. China’s purchases of U.S. beef had peaked at $2.14 billion in 2022, the government data shows.
The U.S. export of poultry meats and products to China was $286 million in 2025, down from more than $1 billion in 2022.
During the summit last week, Trump and Xi discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation, including expanding market access for American businesses in China and increasing Chinese investment into U.S. industries, the White House had said. The two leaders agreed to set up separate boards of trade and investment — though offered few details on the proposals or how they would differ from existing trade dialogues.
The Board of Trade will allow the two governments to manage trade of “non-sensitive goods,” and the Board of Investments would provide a venue for the two sides to discuss investment-related issues, according to the White House.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said the two bodies would address respective concerns regarding trade and investment. The Board of Trade, the ministry spokesperson said, would allow the two sides to discuss issues such as tariff reductions on specific products. “In principle, the two sides agreed to reduce tariff on products of respective concern at equivalent scale,” the spokesperson said.
Xi said last week that China’s door of opportunity will open wider when he met with U.S. business leaders joining Trump on the trip. Among those who traveled to Beijing was Brian Sikes, CEO of the agricultural giant Cargill.
Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed and biofuels in China, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. Soybean exports to China in the past had accounted for about half of U.S. exports of agricultural goods to the Asian nation.
USDA data shows the U.S. exported 10.9 million metric tons of soybeans to China as of May 7, putting China on track to fulfill its previous commitment by the end of the marketing year on Aug. 31. This is well below the 25 million to 30 million metric tons that China purchased in past years.
Before Trump’s initial planned trip to Beijing in late March — which was postponed by the Iran war — the American Soybean Association urged him to prioritize soybeans in the trade talks with Xi.
Scott Metzger, president of the association, said Thursday the group would like to see “additional soybean purchases this marketing year, as well as continued progress toward fulfilling future purchase commitments.”
“Greater certainty and consistency in the marketplace help provide farmers with the confidence they need as they make decisions for the year ahead,” he said.
DALLAS (AP) – Days after Spirit Airlines shut down in the middle of the night, a lawyer for the defunct budget carrier stood before a bankruptcy judge and apologized to the price-conscious customers who might struggle to find affordable flights in its absence.
“We apologize most specifically for those Americans who may now be priced entirely out,” Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner said in court, thanking all the passengers who relied on the airline during its 34-year run, many of whom, he said, “could not otherwise have afforded air travel.”
Spirit’s May 3 demise is not the only curveball confronting people planning trips a week before the summer travel season has its traditional U.S. launch on Memorial Day. Rising jet fuel costs tied to the Iran war have pushed up airfares and associated fees across the commercial aviation industry. Two of the remaining U.S. budget carriers just finalized a merger.
The uncertain outlook for economical air travel reflects how difficult it has become for low-cost, no-frills airlines to operate while squeezed by volatile fuel prices, inflation and increasingly fierce competition. While budget airlines appeal to customers motivated by fare prices alone, traditional carriers can more easily generate revenue to offset fuel costs through premium cabins, membership rewards, corporate travel programs, add-on charges and pricing algorithms.
“Dynamic pricing has taken away one of the last structural advantages that low-cost carriers had,” said Shye Gilad, a former airline captain who now teaches at Georgetown University.
For decades, low-cost carriers thrived by offering fares that traditional airlines often couldn’t match without losing money. But that edge has weakened as the “big three” — American, Delta and United — got better at tailoring prices to different travelers, and as JetBlue, Southwest and other airlines that long positioned themselves as less expensive alternatives began chasing higher-paying customers.
Today, big airlines can sell a handful of bare-bones seats at Spirit-level prices while still charging more for standard and premium tickets elsewhere on their planes. That has made it harder for budget airlines to compete solely on price.
“They can’t just be the cheapest airline anymore,” Gilad said. “They have to be the smartest low-cost airline.”
Like gasoline and diesel prices, the price of jet fuel has jumped since the Iran war put a chokehold on Middle East oil shipments 11 weeks ago. The strain prompted the Association of Value Airlines, a U.S. trade group representing Allegiant Air, Avelo Air, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Sun Country Airlines, to ask the Trump administration in late April for $2.5 billion in temporary financial aid.
Airlines for America, the trade group for Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest, opposed the idea, saying that federal help would give the budget airlines an unfair advantage.
“Government intervention on behalf of those airlines would punish other airlines that have engaged in self-help in order to deal with increased costs and reward airlines who haven’t made those tough decisions,” Airliens for America said in a statement. “And, in the long-term, sustaining businesses that cannot earn their cost of capital harms competition and consumers by making it more difficult for other airlines to compete.”
Transporation Secretary Sean Duffy rejected the request the day Spirit stopped flying.
Even before the latest run-up in fuel costs, consolidation was already underway in the budget airline sector. Alaska Airlines completed its $1 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines in September 2024 after the two carriers agreed to maintain the level of service on key routes within Hawaii and between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland where they didn’t face much competition.
Spirit was an unsuccessful merger target of both Frontier and JetBlue as its losses mounted after the coronavirus pandemic.
Allegiant said last week it had finalized its roughly $1.5 billion acquisition of Sun Country, a deal first announced in January. The combined airline brings together passenger service with Sun Country’s cargo operations and charter business serving sports teams, casinos and the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Consolidation is a signal” of weakness in the industry, Gilad said. “If you can remove a competitor and improve your product offering, you might be able to eke out more profit.”
Other experts note the diversity within the budget airline sector, a factor that could make some carriers more resilient to spiking fuel costs and market disruptions than others.
“Budget airlines are a pretty peculiar creature,” Vikrant Vaze, an aviation systems expert at Dartmouth College’s engineering school, said, describing a category that has encompassed struggling carriers like Spirit to giants like Southwest Airlines, which grew from a low-cost pioneer into one of the largest U.S. airlines.
“Even though they can be clubbed together as budget airlines, if you want a big umbrella term, they’re very different from each other,” Vaze said. “They have very different levels of budget-ness.”
Allegiant’s focus on leisure travel centers on smaller airports with less direct competition. JetBlue, a hybrid low-cost carrier, leans more heavily on premium seating and loyalty perks than Spirit ever did.
Frontier comes closest to Spirit’s model as an ultra low-cost carrier, though analysts say it entered this period of volatility with stronger liquidity and could benefit from Spirit’s exit. It has already begun expanding in former Spirit-heavy markets that include Las Vegas, Detroit and the Florida cities of Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.
Gilad sees echoes of his own experience working as a pilot and flight-training instructor at Independence Air, a short-lived low-cost airline that previously served as a regional carrier for United and Delta. The airline, which launched in mid-2004 as fighting between U.S.-led forces and insurgents in Iraq sent fuel prices soaring, shut down during bankruptcy proceedings in January 2006.
“They burned through almost $200 million in 18 months,” Gilad said. “It was just that quick that they were gone.”
He said the same structural pressures remain in place today, but there are fewer remaining budget airlines to share them.
TECATE, Mexico (AP) — White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence.
“This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,” said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. “Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”
Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles both countries, to make way for new sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration’s rush to build border walls, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.
Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.
In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.
“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that “body” and “land” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.
“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.
The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California.
In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called “Las Playas Intaglio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.
“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.
Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot bollard wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.
The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles of the border.
Trump’s “ big, beautiful bill ” devoted over $46 billion to the effort.
CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along another 370 miles.
In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spiritual guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the DHS waivers.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.
CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”
In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.
“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family’s ranchlands.
After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.
CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction’s impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.
CBP also says 535 miles of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.
Many tribes would prefer that to walls.
Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”
Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain, also called Tecate Peak, in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”
Rising 3,885 feet above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.
“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.
Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.
Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today’s rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa’s healing, she said.
“It’s sad they are ruining the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”
AUSTIN (AP) — Three young people were in custody following at least 10 random weekend shootings in Austin, Texas, that left four people injured, city officials said.
Driving around the city in stolen vehicles, at least two of the suspects fired at two fire stations, apartment buildings and houses during a string of robberies and shootings from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Sunday.
Two boys, ages 15 and 17, were apprehended after they were pulled over in a stolen car and attempted to run. A third person who had been in the car also ran and was detained Sunday night at a gas station in Manor, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Austin. Police said the person was a juvenile, but did not provide an age or any other details.
Davis said earlier that the firearm that was used in the shootings had earlier been stolen by the 15-year old, and that the 17-year old was wanted for a separate firearm theft.
The city ordered residents of a large part of the southern area of Texas’ capital city to shelter in place Sunday while they were searching for the suspects. With two suspects in custody, the order was later lifted.
Four victims were taken to hospitals, including one with critical injuries, officials said.
The suspects stole at least four vehicles as they traveled around the city, Davis said.
“We don’t have any specific motive that has been identified. In fact, these actions appear to be random,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
AUSTIN (AP) — Two teenagers were in custody and a potential third suspect was being sought following at least 10 random weekend shootings in Austin, Texas, that left four people injured, city officials said Sunday.
Driving around the city in stolen vehicles, the suspects fired at two fire stations, apartment buildings and houses during a string of robberies and shootings from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.
The two boys, ages 15 and 17, were apprehended after they were pulled over in a stolen car and attempted to run. A third person who had been in the car also ran and remained at large. Davis said it was unknown if that person was involved in the shootings.
She said the firearm that was used in the shootings had earlier been stolen by the 15-year old, and that the 17-year old was wanted for a separate firearm theft.
The city ordered residents of a large part of the southern area of Texas’ capital city to shelter in place Sunday while they were searching for the suspects. With two suspects in custody, the order was later lifted.
Four victims were taken to hospitals, including one with critical injuries, officials said.
The suspects stole at least four vehicles as they traveled around the city, Davis said.
“We don’t have any specific motive that has been identified. In fact, these actions appear to be random,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
DALLAS (AP) – Small cities in big Texas metro areas were the fastest growing municipalities in the United States last year, as smaller communities in the South outpaced the rest of the nation, which has experienced a population slowdown since the start of the immigration crackdown last year, according to figures released Thursday.
Celina, Princeton, Melissa and Anna — all part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — were the Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 5 fastest-growing U.S. cities with populations of 20,000 residents or more from mid-2024 to mid-2025, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Fulshear, in metro Houston, was the second-fastest growing U.S. city. The five Texas cities’ year-over-year growth rates ranged from almost 15% to almost 25%.
In pure numbers, Celina, with only 64,000 people, grew by more residents — 12,700 — than Seattle and Houston, cities that are 12 times and 37 times larger respectively.
Small- to medium-sized cities hit a sweet spot between the largest U.S. cities, which were most impacted by the loss of immigrants from the crackdown started last year during the second Trump administration, and anemic growth in small towns, according to Matt Erickson, a Census Bureau statistician.
Nine out of 10 of the largest population gainers in pure numbers were cities in the South because of a healthy job market and its comparative affordability. The biggest numeric gainers were Charlotte, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Celina.
Fort Worth leaped over Jacksonville last year as the 10th most populous U.S. city, putting four Texas cities in the nation’s top 10 most populous, with the other cities being Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
Austin skipped over San Jose for the 12th most populous spot, as Texas’ capital city surpassed 1 million residents for the first time. It is now one of a dozen U.S. cities with 1 million residents or more.
Seattle was the only non-Southern city to crack the top 10 in numeric population gains last year, at the No. 5 spot.
Like many large cities, particularly on the coasts, Seattle lost population during the height of the pandemic a half-decade ago. But recent construction of new housing has helped ease the city’s affordability, making it more attractive for residents to stay in the core city rather than move to farther out suburbs in the metro area, according to the Washington State Office of Financial Management.
The growth was driven by immigrants, particularly from China and India. International migration accounted for almost three-quarters of the area’s population gains, according to county-level population estimates released in March.
The two cities with the greatest rates of population loss last year — Twentynine Palms, California, by Joshua Tree National Park and Key West at the southern tip of Florida — were in places with tight housing markets. Their losses ranged from -2.4% to -2.9%.
In Twentynine Palms, a large chunk of the housing stock has been converted into short-term rentals for tourists heading to the national park. Just under 40% of its housing is occupied by its owners, compared with the national average of 65%, according to Census Bureau figures.
Hemmed in on all sides by water, the limited housing stock in Key West, as well as some of the highest home insurance rates in the U.S., have driven up housing costs for the Conch Republic. The median price for a home in Key West was $1.3 million at the start of this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Other cities that had some of the biggest rates of population loss last year were hit by natural disasters.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida’s Gulf Coast within weeks of each other in late 2024. Remnants of Helene blew through western North Carolina, leaving behind damaging tornadoes and flooding. Among the cities with the greatest rates of loss were Asheville, North Carolina, and several cities on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Pinellas Park, Dunedin, Largo and Clearwater.
TYLER — Traffic signal work at the intersection of Troup Hwy and Loop 323 started at 9:00 Tuesday morning and is expected to take several hours. TxDot is doing work on the signal box at that location and the signals will be completely turned off.
Tyler Police will be in the intersection directing traffic during this time. Avoid the area if possible. If you must be there, slow down, and watch for officers in the roadway. KTBB is continuing to monitor this situation and will let you know.
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 20 years after it redefined fast shipping, Amazon is preparing to raise the bar on consumer expectations again by offering to fulfill customers’ most urgent product needs in a half-hour or less for an extra fee.
The company, which revolutionized online shopping in 2005 with two-day deliveries for Prime members, is rapidly opening small order-processing hubs in dozens of U.S. and foreign cities to cater to shoppers who can’t or don’t want to wait for cough medicine to relieve flu symptoms or tomatoes for tonight’s dinner salad.
The ultrafast service, called Amazon Now, first launched in India last June. Amazon says 30-minute deliveries now are also available in urban areas of Brazil, Mexico, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The mini-warehouses devoted to Amazon Now are about the size of a CVS drugstore. They stock about 3,500 products for expedited delivery, including beer, diapers, pet food, meat, nonprescription medications, playing cards and cellphone charging cables.
“We know that customers love speed and always have,” Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s head of transportation, told The Associated Press on Monday. “What we see customers doing, when we offer faster speeds, are they purchase more from Amazon. And Amazon becomes more top of mind for that or other types of items as well.”
In the U.S., the company first tested Amazon Now in Seattle, the home of its headquarters, and in Philadelphia. Most residents of Atlanta and the Dallas-Fort Worth area now have access as well. The service also is live or expected to land by year-end in Houston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Florida, and dozens of other cities, Amazon said.
The service charges for Amazon Now start at $3.99 for Prime members, who pay an annual fee of $139, and $13.99 for non-members. A $1.99 small basket fee applies to orders under $15, Amazon said.
The company’s bet on a need for speed also comes as some consumers are rebelling against rushed deliveries as they weigh the potential impact on the environment and the workers tasked with preparing orders at a rapid rate.
A relentless focus on speed helped Amazon build a logistics and e-commerce empire. After it made two days the new delivery time normal, Amazon moved into one-day and same-day deliveries for its Prime members. This spring, the company began making 90,000 products available in one hour or three hours at an extra cost.
The scaled down and sped up microhubs that are designed to handle 30-minute orders represent another step in Amazon’s pursuit.
Only a handful of people prepare orders from aisles of shelves in the 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot facilities, unlike the sprawling fulfillment centers storing millions of items where Amazon employs a mix of human workers and robotics to pick and pack orders.
Amazon tailors the product inventory to each location and uses artificial intelligence and other technology to analyze what customers buy, as well as when and how often. The most popular U.S. purchases so far include soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, toilet plungers, bananas, limes and wireless earbuds, Amazon said.
Amazon’s attempt to up the instant gratification ante provides direct competition to on-demand food delivery platforms like Instacart, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub, which don’t have the scale of the e-commerce titan, according to independent retail analyst Bruce Winder.
“What Amazon brings is their prowess in supply chain,” Winder said.
These smaller companies said they don’t see Amazon as a threat, though, citing the hundreds of thousands of items they are able to deliver to users’ doorsteps by partnering with various merchants and restaurants.
“DoorDash has a mission to empower grocers and retailers and augment their existing footprint, not to replace them,” DoorDash spokesperson Ali Musa said in an emailed statement. “We win only when they win, which is how we can offer over half a million grocery and retail items in under an hour across the country.”
Amazon also is in a race with Walmart to become the retailer that reliably gets orders to online shoppers in under an hour.
For an additional $10 on top of standard delivery charges, shoppers can place Walmart Express Delivery orders from among more than 100,000 products that are guaranteed to arrive in an hour. Many customers, however, are receiving the items under 30 minutes, Walmart CEO John Furner told analysts in February.
Companies have promised deliveries in 30 minutes or less before, but the landscape also is littered with failed attempts to break the speed barrier.
The COVID-19 pandemic produced a flurry of companies that promised 10- to 15-minute grocery deliveries from microwarehouses in dense neighborhoods, according to Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at market research firm Forrester Research.
But soaring operating costs, low customer loyalty and the drying up of investor money ultimately caused most to fail before the pandemic was over, analysts said.
Domino’s in 1984 pushed a guarantee that customers would receive their pizzas for free if they weren’t delivered in under a half-hour. The company amended the “30 minutes or it’s free” policy after two years, providing only a $3 discount for late deliveries.
The promotion helped Domino’s win market share, but it ended up tarnishing the company’s reputation. It dropped the guarantee in December 1993 after a string of crashes and lawsuits involving drivers racing to meet the deadline.
Brad Jashinsky, a retail analyst at information technology research and consulting firm Gartner, said he thinks Amazon should take the pizza chain’s experience as a cautionary tale.
“You get in trouble when you start overpromising something like that,” he said.
Amazon won’t be making any time guarantees and instead plans to keep customers who chose the 30-minute delivery option updated on the progress of their orders, Tomay said.
“There’s no rushing either in our building workers or the gig workers,” she said.
Kodali thinks Amazon will need a lot of people placing orders around the same time from the same or adjacent apartment buildings for the 30-minute service to be cost-effective.
Consumers may appreciate rapid receipt of products like toilet paper and batteries, but retailers and logistics experts said they also see some online shoppers, especially members of Generation Z, choosing no-rush shipping for products they don’t need in a hurry.
Amazon for several years has invited customers to skip one- or two-day delivery and to receive their orders on the same day in as few parcels as possible. Consolidating orders into fewer packages by electing to have them delivered at the same time cuts down on boxes, shipping envelopes and fuel use, analysts said.
“The millennials who came to age in an era that was on fast delivery came to expect it de facto, whereas … Gen Z is more accepting of a slower speed than previous generations before them,” said Darby Meegan, a general manager at Flexport, a supply chain and logistics company that fulfills orders for thousands of online merchants.
Still, Amazon executives have cited positive early results for Amazon Now in India, where they said Prime members tripled their requests for 30-minute deliveries once they started using the service.
Amazon Now also is attracting more repeat American customers, Tomay said.
“It’s in early days and time will tell,” she said. “I think that it will be interesting to see how it evolves.”
GRAPEVINE (AP) – Online seller eBay is rejecting an unsolicited $56 billion takeover offer from GameStop, calling the proposal “neither credible or attractive.”
Ryan Cohen’s GameStop disclosed earlier this month that it was pursuing a takeover of eBay, seeing it as a vehicle to compete with online retail giant Amazon.
The national gaming retailer said at the time that its approximately 1,600 U.S. stores could become drop-off and shipping locations. One proposal included live sales broadcasts from GameStop locations featuring eBay products.
GameStop’s bid is worth $125 per share in cash and stock. The equity value of the proposed deal is $55 billion on paper. The company previously said that it started accumulating shares in eBay beginning in February and currently has a 5% stake.
In a letter from eBay Chairman Paul Pressler sent to Cohen, eBay’s board said that it had completed its review of GameStop’s offer and believes that eBay is a “strong, resilient business.”
“With its differentiated global marketplace and a clear strategy, eBay’s board is confident that the company, under its current management team, is well-positioned to continue to drive sustainable growth, execute with discipline, and deliver long-term value for our shareholders,” the letter said.
GameStop did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s stock fell 4% before the market open on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. markets hovered near all-time highs Monday and oil rose more than 2% after President Donald Trump appeared to dismiss Iran’s response to a U.S. peace plan.
Futures for the S&P 500 were essentially unchanged, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked down 0.1%. Nasdaq futures rose 0.1%.
With corporate earnings season winding down this week, rising energy prices and new U.S. inflation data will dominate the stage, along with a high-stakes summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Oil prices jumped early Monday after Trump wrote in a social media post that Iran’s response on Sunday to the U.S.’s latest proposal was “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!”
Brent crude, the international standard, gained $2.71 to $104 per barrel. It was roughly $70 per barrel before the war began in late February. Benchmark U.S. crude was $2.55 higher at $98 a barrel.
With the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil and gas transport, still largely closed and as the U.S. is continuing its sea blockade of Iranian ports, analysts believe oil prices are likely to remain higher for longer.
The Iran war will certainly be an important piece of the agenda during the Trump-Xi summit. China has close economic links with Iran and the U.S. has been pressing Beijing to leverage its influence to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“There remains a glimmer of hope that talks between Trump and Xi later this week could yield positive results on Iran,” ING commodities analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote Monday.
“The hope is that China can use its influence over Iran to push it closer towards a peace deal,” they said. “Clearly, this is easier said than done.” The oil market is still very much “heavily headline-driven,” the pair added.
In the U.S. on Monday, April numbers for U.S. existing home sales will be released. Later this week, the U.S. will release data on consumer and wholesale inflation as well as the latest retail sales figures.
At midday in Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 was unchanged, while Germany’s DAX fell 0.2% and France’s CAC 40 lost 1.1%.
In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.5% to 62,417.88 after briefly reaching another record high in intraday trading at above 63,300. Technology-focused investment holding company SoftBank Group, one of Japan’s largest stocks, fell more than 6%.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 4.3% to 7,822.24. It also hit an all-time intraday high, led by gains from tech-related stocks including Samsung Electronics and memory chip maker SK Hynix.
Technology-related stocks and growing artificial intelligence-related interest have supported markets in Japan and South Korea despite the Iran war, with the Nikkei 225 and Kospi rising more than 10% and 30%, respectively, over the past month.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged up less than 0.1% to 26,406.84. The Shanghai Composite index climbed 1.1% to 4,225.02, following official data Monday that showed China’s factory gate prices rose 2.8% in April from a year ago, the highest since 2022, as well as better-than-expected export figures released over the weekend.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.5%. Taiwan’s Taiex traded 0.5% higher, and India’s Sensex fell 1.7%.
NEW YORK (AP) – A new poll finds that younger Americans are more pessimistic than older ones about the state of the job market. This is a sudden reversal from just three years ago, when older Americans were more pessimistic. In the United States until 2023 and in many countries globally, young people tend to be more optimistic about the job market than older people. Gallup found that, typically, around the world, younger people are more likely by 10 percentage points than older ones to report their local job market is good. In the United States, younger people are 21 percentage points less likely to do so than older ones.
For years, younger Americans have been more optimistic about the job market than older Americans, even through the depths of the Great Recession. But in an abrupt shift, a new poll released Monday finds young people’s confidence has plummeted over the past two years — while their elders remain more upbeat.
The gap between young and older Americans’ views of the job market now is greater than in any other country among the 141 surveyed, according to the Gallup World Poll. In the United States, 43% of those aged 15-34 believe it’s “a good time” to find a job in the area where they live, well below the 64% of those aged 55 and over who say the same.
Around the world, it’s the opposite. Globally, the median share of younger people who say it’s “a good time” to find work in their local job market is 48%, compared with 38% among older people.
The findings reveal a generational rift in Americans’ views of economic opportunity, with young people feeling increasingly downtrodden about job prospects, while older people still largely think it’s a good time to find work. The schism is likely to continue fueling generational divides in politics, where younger voters have focused on economic issues such as housing costs and have registered less faith in institutions.
“It’s an incredibly new phenomenon,” Benedict Vigers of Gallup said of young Americans’ pessimism. He added that last year was the first time in Gallup’s decades of polling that young Americans were more pessimistic about the job market than their peers in other developed countries. “Has this happened in most other advanced economies? The answer is a resounding no.”
Young people, with fewer physical limitations and family responsibilities — along with an ability to adapt more quickly than older counterparts — normally are more optimistic about their ability to land work.
But the new Gallup analysis finds the U.S. is one of only five countries where younger people are at least 10 points more pessimistic about the availability of work than older ones, joining China, Hong Kong, Norway, Serbia and the United Arab Emirates.
Among the 141 countries surveyed, younger Americans ranked 87th in job market expectations. Even that is striking, Vigers said, because young Americans have long stood out globally for their optimism about job opportunities. Other countries, such as New Zealand and Canada, had lower levels of optimism among the youngest group, but there was no significant generational divide.
The divergence between younger and older Americans happened suddenly. Every U.S. age group registered a drop in confidence in the job market after 2023 — following a post-COVID rebound in 2021 and 2022 — but those 34 and younger saw the largest decline in recent years. The share of younger Americans saying it was “a good time” to find a job plunged by 27 percentage points from 2023 to 2025. That’s comparable to the rate of decline for young people during the 2008 global financial crisis, which also saw a drastic drop in confidence for older Americans. But that hasn’t happened in the last few years. In fact, older Americans’ views have barely dropped.
Older Americans also have a sunnier view of the economic landscape more generally, according to recent AP-NORC polling. About 8 in 10 adults under 35 describe the U.S. economy as very or somewhat poor, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. Only about 6 in 10 adults 55 and older say the same, although a majority still see the U.S. economy negatively.
John Della Volpe, a pollster who regularly surveys U.S. youth for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, said young people are frequently frustrated at how prior generations don’t understand their current economic challenges.
“It’s just another thing that drains their mental health — ‘my parents don’t understand that their pathway at this stage in life that I’m in was so much easier,’” Della Volpe said.
Younger Americans’ job market views now register close to the level they did in 2010, when the country was still deep in the Great Recession. This is not the first Gallup poll to find striking levels of pessimism among young Americans — they also register notably high levels of anxiety about pocketbook issues compared with people their age in other countries.
A separate Gallup survey on perceived U.S. job prospects found pessimism emerging at the end of 2024 and continuing into 2025. That coincides with the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term and the rise of artificial intelligence, which many fear will transform the labor market and eliminate many entry-level jobs.
The new poll finds the most frustrated groups of young people are those who haven’t secured a first job yet, college graduates and young women. But the heightened pessimism spreads across all subgroups of younger Americans, including men and those who haven’t attended college.
“Whoever they are, they are more pessimistic than they were three years ago,” Vigers said of young Americans.
The older Americans who have a less dire view of the job market are themselves more likely to be retired and not looking for work. They’re also more likely to own their own homes, a longtime building block of American prosperity that has increasingly seemed out of reach to younger people.
Day-to-day financial concerns were a key issue in the 2024 election, particularly for younger voters, and Trump improved on his previous performance among this group as he ran on a platform of economic prosperity, fighting inflation and affordability. But like other groups that were important parts of Trump’s 2024 coalition, some younger Americans have soured on the president as inflation continues, recent AP-NORC polling finds.
About 8 in 10 adults under 35 disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy and the cost of living, the recent AP-NORC poll found, compared with about 6 in 10 older adults.
TYLER — Tyler Police have identified two suspects in a 2017 homicide. According to Tyler PD’s Public Information Officer Andy Erbaugh, detectives recently received information regarding two potential suspects, Jakysia Rodgers (pictured), 33, of Tyler and Quadaverine Allison, 32, of Longview.
On August 11, 2017, officers were called to Christus Mother Frances Hospital ER by staff regarding a victim with a gunshot wound brought in by private vehicle. Officers determined that the shooting occurred on Lawrence Street around 7:30 a.m. that day. After being, shot the victim asked for a neighbor’s help who drove him to the hospital in the victim’s car.
The victim, identified as Joshua Alon McGee, 22, died at the hospital from a single gunshot wound. Investigators believe that narcotics were related to the shooting.
CARROLLTON (AP) — A man shot five people, killing two, in back-to-back shootings Tuesday at a shopping center and then an apartment building because he was angry over business dealings, police said.
The first shooting happened just before 10 a.m. at a shopping center in a Koreatown neighborhood in a suburb north of Dallas, the Carrollton Police Department said. When police arrived, they found four adults who had been shot. While they were investigating, another shooting was reported at an apartment complex roughly 4 miles (6 kilometers) away, and responding officers found a dead man inside one of the apartments.
Investigators determined the suspect, 69-year-old Seung Ho Han, carried out both of the shootings, police said. He was arrested at a nearby grocery store after a short chase on foot. Police say Ho Han acknowledged he was the shooter in an interview with detectives and said he was angry at the people he shot because of financial disagreements over their business dealings.
It was not a random act of violence and the attacker knew both of the people who were fatally shot, Carrollton Police Chief Roberto Arredondo said.
“It was a known business relationship. We’re still trying to work to identify what caused his actions,” Arredondo said.
The three people injured in the shooting were in stable condition, Arredondo said. The names of the victims were not released.
Shortly after the shooting, officers with their guns drawn walked past doors at K Towne Plaza in an area of Carrollton known as Koreatown. Agents from the FBI were among law enforcement collecting evidence in the parking lot.
Carrollton — population 130,000 — is 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Dallas. More than 4,000 residents are of Korean descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“We’re shocked,” said John Jun, who’s active in the Korean American community. “We’re not immune to something like this happening, but we are very generally a peaceful community that works hard.”
In the last 20 years, it has grown into a thriving Koreatown for the metro Dallas area, thanks to Korean investors. It’s anchored by big-box businesses like H Mart as well as dozens of restaurants serving everything from Korean fried chicken to shaved ice desserts.
The city is also home to multiple Korean churches from Baptist to Presbyterian congregations.
DALLAS (AP) — A former FedEx driver was sentenced to death on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to killing a 7-year-old girl he took from her Texas home while delivering a Christmas gift.
Jurors in a Fort Worth courtroom decided on Tanner Horner’s punishment after hearing about a month of testimony and evidence that included audio of Athena Strand’s last moments from inside his delivery van. Horner, 34, pleaded guilty to capital murder last month in the 2022 killing just as his trial began. Athena’s body was found two days after she was reported missing from her home in the rural town of Paradise, near Fort Worth.
Horner didn’t visibly react when the judge read the sentence, according to a livestream of the court proceedings.
Jurors found there was a probability Horner would commit criminal violence and be a continuing threat to society. They said there was nothing in the commission of the crime or in Horner’s background to warrant life without parole instead of death.
Prosecutor James Stainton told jurors in opening statements that Horner had told, “lie upon lie upon lie upon lie” in the case, including telling authorities that he accidentally struck Athena with his van while making the delivery and then killed her in a fit of panic.
Several jurors cried as they were shown video and heard audio from inside the van after Athena was taken. He could be seen lifting her into the van, and then driving away, telling her not to scream or he’d hurt her.
Horner then covered the camera, but the audio continued recording. Horner asks Athena questions, including how old she is and where she goes to school, before stopping the van and telling her they are going to “hang out.” Horner tells her to take off her shirt and she begins crying, and asks whether he’s a kidnapper.
She asks him: “Why are you doing this?” He replies, “Because you are pretty.”
“My mom says I can’t do that to somebody,” she tells him. “And you can’t do that to me either.”
As the recording, which lasts over an hour, continues, Athena’s screams can be heard. At one point he tells her: “If you don’t shut up, I will hurt you worse.”
A medical examiner testified that Athena died of blunt force injuries with smothering and strangulation.
While acknowledging during opening statements that the evidence against Horner was “overwhelming” and “terrible,” Horner’s attorney, Steven Goble, told jurors that Horner’s mother drank while she was pregnant, that he has autism and suffered from “various mental illnesses throughout his life” in addition to being exposed to a “massive amount of lead.”
Goble had asked jurors to sentence Horner to life in prison.
Athena’s family has said that the package Horner had dropped off was a Christmas present for her — a box of “You Can Be Anything” Barbies.
The trial was moved from rural Wise County to Fort Worth after Horner’s attorneys argued that he would not have received a fair trial.