Business

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s employers added just 235,000 jobs in August, a surprisingly weak gain after two months of robust hiring and the clearest sign to date that the delta variant’s spread has discouraged some people from flying, shopping and eating out.

Major stock indexes on Wall Street closed mostly lower Friday, though a rally in Big Tech companies nudged the Nasdaq to another all-time high.

The S&P 500 fell less than 0.1% a day after notching a record high.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Growth in the services sector, where most Americans work, slowed in August after setting a record pace in July.

The Institute for Supply Management reported Friday that its monthly survey of service industries decreased to a reading of 61.7 in August after hitting a record high of 64.1 in July.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Apple is indefinitely delaying plans to scan iPhones in the U.S. for images of child sexual abuse following an outcry from security and privacy experts who warned the technology could be exploited for other surveillance purposes by hackers and intrusive governments.

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby.

STATELINE, Nev. (AP) — As fearful Lake Tahoe residents packed up belongings and fled a raging wildfire burning toward the California-Nevada border, some encountered an unexpected obstacle: price gouging.

Over the past week or so, Apple has eased some longstanding restrictions that helped make its App Store into a big moneymaker for the company. The company has long required app developers to pay high commissions to Apple on the sales of paid apps as well as purchases of subscriptions or digital items inside their apps.

BERLIN (AP) — German automaker Daimler on Friday dismissed a “cease and desist” demand from two environmental groups to commit to ending the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Lawyers for Greenpeace and the group Deutsche Umwelthilfe have threatened to sue Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen unless they sign a legal pledge not to put new gas-fueled vehicles onto the market from the end of this decade.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft said Friday they will cover the legal fees of any driver who is sued under the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas.

The Texas law bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know they’re pregnant.

NEW YORK (AP) — Tyson Foods is offering its front-line workers paid sick leave for the first time, part of an agreement that secured union support for its mandate that all U.S. employees get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

ISTANBUL — An official at Emergency Hospital in Kabul says two people were killed and 12 wounded after Taliban fighters in the capital fired their weapons into the air in celebration.

Taliban in Kabul fired into the air Friday night to celebrate gains on the battlefield in Panjshir province, which still remains under the control of anti-Taliban fighters.

The idea behind the HBCU Open House staged annually by the NFL is simple: providing opportunities.

Reactions from the recent event indicate the league is on the right track in opening off-the-field paths for students and alumni from the historically Black schools that provide so many players to pro football.

LAPLACE, La. (AP) — Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs.

Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood and told local residents, “I know you're hurting, I know you're hurting.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Trapped deep in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, Will Jimeno lived through the unthinkable. Twenty years later, he’s still living with it.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Health authorities said the woman who died was in her 90s and had underlying health problems.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Power should be restored to New Orleans by the middle of next week, utility officials said Friday, and sheriff's deputies warned people returning to communities outside the city to come equipped like survivalists because of the lack of basic services in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

HONOLULU (AP) — Health care workers in Hawaii say a lack of government action is worsening an already crippling surge of coronavirus cases in the islands, and without effective policy changes the state’s limited hospitals could face a grim crisis.

LAPLACE, La. (AP) — Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs.

Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood on Friday and told local residents, “I know you're hurting, I know you're hurting.”

ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP) — Police went door to door in search of more possible victims and drew up lists of the missing as the death toll rose to 49 on Friday in the catastrophic flooding set off across the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

NEW YORK (AP) — It took just a few days for Monica Muquinche to reach New York after leaving Ecuador’s Andean highlands with her 10-year-old son.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch sent state “bodyguards” to intimidate her stepmother during an ongoing legal feud over control of the attorney general's 88-year-old father and family assets, an attorney for her stepmother says.

CHICAGO (AP) — After he was ejected, Chicago Cubs bench coach Andy Green contemplated how he might pass along his fine to manager David Ross or president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer.

“It'll probably fall to me though, truth be told,” a grinning Green said.

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago Cubs manager David Ross and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer have tested positive for COVID-19.

A spokesman for the team said Ross and Hoyer are feeling fine in isolation.

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A Marine from Kenosha is recovering after being injured in the blast outside the Kabul airport that left 13 U.S. service members dead.

Lance Cpl. Romel Finley III was critically injured in the suicide bombing Aug.

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government's road safety agency has added another fatality involving a Tesla to the list of crashes it is probing due to the use of partially automated driving systems.

A special crash investigation team was dispatched to a July 26 crash on the Long Island Expressway in New York in which a man was killed by a Tesla Model Y SUV, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina General Assembly is two months late on finalizing a two-year budget, even as the state expects to take in billions of dollars more than it had earlier forecast.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and her progressive congressional allies urged President Joe Biden on Friday to stop construction on Enbridge Energy's Line 3 replacement, even as the project nears completion and the options to stop it dwindle.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes that were evacuated to a warehouse where four residents died after Hurricane Ida amid conditions deemed squalid faced criticism after a prior evacuation-related death two decades ago.

SACRAMENTO (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has made his leadership during the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign to keep his job, warning in life-and-death terms that his Republican rivals in the recall election are anti-vaccine crusaders who would expose people to a new wave of COVID risks.

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on Sept. 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the country’s 38 million people need assistance.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — U.S. wildfire managers have started shifting from seasonal to full-time firefighting crews to deal with what has become a year-round wildfire season as climate change has made the American West warmer and drier.

NEW YORK (AP) — Landing a waitressing job or bartending gig at a Lost Dog Cafe in Northern Virginia had never been easy.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Tests confirmed Friday that a bleeding ulcer was the cause of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu's flulike symptoms, his chief of staff said.

Sununu was admitted to a hospital earlier in the day after having flulike symptoms since Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's plans to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received the COVID-19 vaccines are facing new complications that could delay the availability of third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of a decades-old parasite drug to treat COVID-19, warning that it can cause harmful side effects and that there’s little evidence it helps.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Government and Venezuelan opposition representatives on Friday continued a dialogue aimed at finding a common path out of their country’s political standoff.

The groups met in Mexico City two weeks after signing a memorandum of understanding that marked the start of the negotiations.