From wine country to London, bank's failure shakes worldwide

NEW YORK (AP) — It was called Silicon Valley Bank, but its collapse is causing shockwaves around the world.

From winemakers in California to startups across the Atlantic Ocean, companies are scrambling to figure out how to manage their finances after their bank suddenly shut down Friday. The meltdown means distress not only for businesses but also for all their workers whose paychecks may get tied up in the chaos.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday that he's talking with the White House to help "stabilize the situation as quickly as possible, to protect jobs, people's livelihoods, and the entire innovation ecosystem that has served as a tent pole for our economy.”

U.S. customers with less than $250,000 in the bank can count on insurance provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regulators are trying to find a buyer for the bank in hopes customers with more than that can be made whole.

That includes customers like Circle, a big player in the cryptocurrency industry. It said it has about $3.3 billion of the roughly $40 billion in reserves for its USDC coin at SVB. That caused USD Coin’s value, which tries to stay firmly at $1, to briefly plunge below 87 cents Saturday. It later rose back above 97 cents, according to CoinDesk.

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Will it take market crash for Congress to raise debt limit?

WASHINGTON (AP) — There's one way to force President Joe Biden and Congress to solve the looming crisis over the debt limit: a financial market crash.

That's a view held by several economists and a former White House official, mindful that Congress rarely acts unless an emergency forces lawmakers to.

“For that drama not ending in tragedy, key actors have to play their roles,” said Daleep Singh, who was Biden's national security adviser for international economics and deputy director of the National Economic Council. “Market participants have a lead role of playing the victim. They have to produce pain. They have to produce a sea of red on their Bloomberg screens because politicians need to look at those screens.”

Republicans and Democrats have been dancing around each other about the need to raise the government's legal borrowing authority. Biden tried to edge closer on Thursday by releasing his budget plan that cuts deficits by $2.9 trillion over 10 years, an offer that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, quickly dismissed as woefully insufficient. Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus on Friday proposed their own demands, which the White House quickly rejected.

This fandango could persist for several more months until the last possible moment, when the federal government would hit a currently unknown “X-date” — possibly as early as June — and be unable to pay its bills, possibly setting off a default that would suddenly wash away millions of jobs.

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Americans' fun road trip to Mexico became days of horror

LAKE CITY, S.C. (AP) — It was supposed to be a fun road trip to Mexico, a post-pandemic adventure for a group of childhood friends.

One was treating herself to cosmetic surgery after having six children. It was a 34th birthday celebration for another.

They rented a white van in South Carolina and set out on the nearly 22-hour trip, shooting silly videos and driving straight through to Brownsville, on the tip of Texas.

“Good morning, America!” Eric Williams said into the camera in the early morning hours after the all-night drive. “Mexico, here we come.”

But once they got to Mexico, the trip took a terrible turn. Two members of the group would never make it home, victims of the ruthless Gulf cartel, a drug gang tied to brutal killings and kidnappings in the violent border city of Matamoros, a city of a half-million people that has long been a stronghold of the powerful cartel.

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Saudi deal with Iran worries Israel, shakes up Middle East

JERUSALEM (AP) — News of the rapprochement between long-time regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran sent shock waves through the Middle East on Saturday and dealt a symbolic blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the threat posed by Tehran a public diplomacy priority and personal crusade.

The breakthrough — a culmination of more than a year of negotiations in Baghdad and more recent talks in China — also became ensnared in Israel’s internal politics, reflecting the country’s divisions at a moment of national turmoil.

The agreement, which gives Iran and Saudi Arabia two months to reopen their respective embassies and re-establish ties after seven years of rupture, more broadly represents one of the most striking shifts in Middle Eastern diplomacy over recent years. In countries like Yemen and Syria, long caught between the Sunni kingdom and the Shiite powerhouse, the announcement stirred cautious optimism.

In Israel, it caused disappointment — along with finger-pointing.

One of Netanyahu's greatest foreign policy triumphs remains Israel’s U.S.-brokered normalization deals in 2020 with four Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. They were part of a wider push to isolate and oppose Iran in the region.

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Pence says Trump 'endangered my family' on Jan. 6

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday harshly criticized former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, widening the rift between the two men as they prepare to battle over the Republican nomination in next year's election.

“President Trump was wrong," Pence said during remarks at the annual white-tie Gridiron Dinner attended by politicians and journalists. "I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”

Pence's remarks were the sharpest condemnation yet from the once-loyal lieutenant who has often shied away from confronting his former boss. Trump has already declared his candidacy. Pence has not, but he's been laying the groundwork to run.

In the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Trump pressured Pence to overturn President Joe Biden's election victory as he presided over the ceremonial certification of the results. Pence refused, and when rioters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

The House committee that investigated the attack said in its final report that “the President of the United States had riled up a mob that hunted his own Vice President."

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UK: Russian advance in Bakhmut could come with heavy losses

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have made progress in their campaign to capture the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the focus of the war's longest ground battle, but their assault will be difficult to sustain without more significant personnel losses, British military officials said Saturday.

The U.K. Defense Ministry said in its latest assessment that paramilitary units from the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group have seized most of eastern Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city now marking the front line of the fighting.

The mining city is located in Donetsk province, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year. Russia's military opened the campaign to take control of Bakhmut in August, and both sides have experienced staggering casualties.

Ukrainian troops and supply lines remain vulnerable to “continued Russian attempts to outflank the defenders from the north and south” as the Wagner Group's forces try to close in on them in a pincer movement, the U.K. ministry said.

However, the ministry added, it will be “highly challenging” for Wagner's soldiers to push ahead because Ukraine has destroyed key bridges over the river, while Ukrainian sniper fire from fortified buildings further west has made the thin strip of open ground in the city's center “a killing zone.”

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Storm breaches California river's levee, thousands evacuate

WATSONVILLE, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California agricultural community famous for its strawberry crop was forced to evacuate early Saturday after the Pajaro River’s levee was breached by flooding from a new atmospheric river that pummeled the state.

Across the Central Coast's Monterey County, more than 8,500 people were under evacuation orders and warnings Saturday, including roughly 1,700 residents — many of them Latino farmworkers — from the unincorporated community of Pajaro.

Officials said the Pajaro River's levee breach is about 100 feet (30.48 meters) wide. Crews had gone door to door Friday afternoon to urge residents to leave before the rains came but some stayed and had to be pulled from floodwaters early Saturday.

First responders and the California National Guard rescued more than 50 people overnight. One video showed a member of the Guard helping a driver out of a car trapped by water up to their waists.

“We were hoping to avoid and prevent this situation, but the worst case scenario has arrived with the Pajaro River overtopping and levee breaching at about midnight," wrote Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, on Twitter.

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Records in Fox defamation case show pressures on reporters

NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn't critics, political foes or their bosses that united Fox News stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham when they gathered via text message for a gripe session shortly after the 2020 election.

It was their own network's news division.

“They're pathetic,” Carlson wrote.

“THEY AREN'T SMART,” Ingraham emphasized.

“What news have they broken the last four years?” Hannity asked.

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Four astronauts fly SpaceX back home, end 5-month mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four space station astronauts returned to Earth late Saturday after a quick SpaceX flight home.

Their capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast near Tampa.

The U.S.-Russian-Japanese crew spent five months at the International Space Station, arriving last October. Besides dodging space junk, the astronauts had to deal with a pair of leaking Russian capsules docked to the orbiting outpost and the urgent delivery of a replacement craft for the station's other crew members.

Led by NASA's Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman to fly in space, the astronauts checked out of the station early Saturday morning. Less than 19 hours later, their Dragon capsule was bobbing in the sea as they awaited pickup.

Earlier in the week, high wind and waves in the splashdown zones kept them at the station a few extra days. Their replacements arrived more than a week ago.

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No. 1 Houston in AAC tourney final again, but Sasser's hurt

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — When Marcus Sasser crumbled awkwardly to the court after his feet slipped from under him while dribbling past midcourt, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson knew something was wrong even without really seeing what had happened.

“Marcus goes down, it means he’s hurt,” Sampson said. "We always say pain is an opinion. Some kids have a high opinion. Some kids have a low opinion. But Marcus doesn’t go down. He never misses practice, never misses a rep. He’s always there.”

Sasser, the American Athletic Conference player of the year, suffered an apparent groin injury with about 6 1/2 minutes left in the first half of the top-ranked Cougars’ 69-48 win over Cincinnati in their AAC tournament semifinal game Saturday.

Houston (31-2), which led throughout, was up by eight when Sasser got hurt and expanded that to 15 by halftime.

Sampson said Sasser would be re-evaluated, but indicated that the senior guard might not play when the two-time reigning regular-season champion Cougars try to win their third consecutive AAC tournament title against Memphis on Sunday.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023