By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global economy is holding up better than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last.

“Buckle up,” Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech at a think tank Wednesday. “Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay.”

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Her comments at the Milken Institute come on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump’s trade penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and central bankers gather.

The worldwide economy is forecast to grow by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the private sector has adapted and the tariffs have proved less severe than originally feared.

“But before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global demand for gold,” she said.

On Trump’s tariffs, she says “the full effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary policy and growth.”

The Republican administration imposed import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. “We’re the king of being screwed by tariffs,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

While the U.S. has announced some trade frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs have created uncertainty worldwide.

“Elsewhere, a flood of goods previously destined for the U.S. market could trigger a second round of tariff hikes,” Georgieva said.

The Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about whether Trump has the authority to impose some of his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In her wide-ranging remarks, Georgieva pointed to youth discontent around the world as many young people foresee a future where they earn less than their parents.

“The young are taking their disappointment to the streets from Lima to Rabat, from Paris to Nairobi, from Kathmandu to Jakarta, all are demanding better opportunities,” she said. “And here in the U.S., the chances of growing up to earn more than your parents keeps falling and here too, discontent has been evident — and it has helped precipitate the policy revolution that is now unfolding, reshaping trade, immigration and many international frameworks.”

She also called for greater internal trade in Asia, more business friendly changes in Africa and more competitiveness in Europe.

For the United States, Georgieva urged the government to address the federal debt and to encourage household saving.

The national debt is the total amount of money that the federal government owes to its creditors. The federal debt has increased from $380 billion in 1925 to $37.64 trillion in 2025, according to Treasury Department data.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in July that Trump’s new tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to that total through 2034.

The IMF is a 191-country lending organization that seeks to promote global growth and financial stability and to reduce poverty.

By JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press

BISHOPVILLE, S.C. (AP) — When J.D. Stevens flips on the lights in the shed by his South Carolina home, he feels the presence of his dad, who died nearly a decade ago. He also sees hundreds of thousands of buttons.

They are sewn onto the original button suit on the mannequin that started it all. Nearby is the Chevrolet Chevette covered in buttons of all colors, big and small. There’s a walk-in outhouse with a toilet covered in buttons and a piano with buttons everywhere but the keys. There’s a button-covered hearse not too far from the coffin where white buttons stand out from all the rest, spelling out “BUTTON KING.”

Dalton Stevens started on the road to become the Button King one night in 1983 while battling insomnia and, after retiring, a feeling of worthlessness and withdrawal from the world. He got an epiphany to start sewing buttons onto a denim suit because, as he said, “television went off at two in the morning back then.”

Fame in the 1980s, thanks to Johnny Carson

Back in the 1980s, one didn’t trend to the top overnight. Once Stevens finished the original button suit, a tiny newspaper in Bishopville wrote a story. Then the local TV station did its own package. Stevens kept sewing and gluing buttons and once he finished covering the entire Chevette there was a second local TV story picked up by that fledgling all-news network CNN.

National attention grew after he was featured in magazines. One day the phone rang in his Bishopville home. It was “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Carson made it a point not to see Stevens in 1987 before he walked onto the stage, wearing a suit covered in 16,333 buttons — everywhere but the butt and the back of the thighs. Carson laughed at the sight. Stevens then sang a little ditty while playing his 3,005-button guitar.

“If you like the color of my clothes, would you give me buttons instead of a rose,” Stevens sang with his South Carolina twang. “Buttons can be square or round. They keep my pants from falling down.”

The Button King on the talk show circuit

Carson gave Stevens the honor of staying over a commercial break. Then Stevens made the king of late night roar with laughter at a joke about his three ex-wives.

“Once you make it to the Johnny Carson show one time, that’s about as big as you can get without being in the movies. That was high for an old country boy like me,” Stevens told South Carolina Educational Television in an early 2000s interview.

Life was never the same. He was on talk shows hosted by David Letterman, Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford and Geraldo Rivera.

Stevens and his button suit made trips to Japan and Canada. The appearances kept rolling in for two decades. Stevens’ fame lasted long enough for an eponymous website to pop up. It has since disappeared.

The Button King’s museum in South Carolina

Eventually the Button King finished all his folk art pieces and needed a place to store them. With his family’s help he built a shed on his land and called it the “S.C. Button Museum.”

From the start, it’s been open to the public 24/7. After Stevens died in 2016 his son kept his promise to keep the museum open.

“It makes me feel good because it’s daddy’s stuff, you know.” J.D. Stevens said, remembering a couple who visited from Pennsylvania and smiled while looking around the small shed.

Nine years after the Button King died, people still visit.

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J.D. Stevens will greet them if he’s home. If not, they can just flip on the lights themselves and look around. The guest book shows about a dozen visitors over the past month.

It’s almost exactly as the Button King left it — all the way down to the board with nails where he hung 25 buttons at a time to keep count and plan his art projects. The buttons aren’t as vibrant as they once were. And the Stevens family has added extra buttons to the walls as decoration. But it is mostly the same.

One item is missing though — the second casket Stevens made.

He’s buried in that one beside his wife, Ruby, who died eight years before him.

“He was an entertainer, you know,” J.D. Stevens said. “He liked to entertain people except for that period where he had withdrawn, but he loved to make people laugh and so when he saw somebody smiled and it was on.”

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Joan B. Kennedy, the former wife of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy who endured a long and troubled marriage marked by family tragedies, her husband’s infidelities and her own struggles with alcoholism and mental health, died on Wednesday. She was 89.

The former Joan Bennett was a model and classically-trained pianist when she married Ted Kennedy in 1958. Their lives would change unimaginably over the next decade and a half. Brother-in-law John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later. Brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under JFK, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 and assassinated while seeking the presidency.

Her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and became among the country’s most respected legislators despite initial misgivings that he was capitalizing on his family connections. But Ted Kennedy also lived through scandals of his own making. In 1969, the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his young female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kennedy, who swam to safety and waited hours before alerting police, later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Chappaquiddick shadowed him for the rest of his life, weighing against his own chances for the presidency.

Joan Kennedy had three children with her husband, but also had miscarriages, including one shortly after the Chappaquiddick accident. She stood by her husband through the scandal, but their estrangement was nearly impossible to hide by the time of his unsuccessful effort to defeat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries. They had been separated by then, and would later divorce. One bumper sticker from the campaign read “Vote for Jimmy Carter, Free Joan Kennedy.”

Her love of piano would be a trademark for much of her life. She was known for opening her husband’s campaign rallies with a piano serenade and, after they divorced, touring with orchestras around the world. Her family said she would combine her masterful playing with a message about the transformational potential of the arts and the need for equitable arts education.

In a 1992 Associated Press interview, she recalled playing piano for brother-in-law Bobby when he ran for president in 1968. “He took me with him and encouraged me,” she said. “He had a theme, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ the Woody Guthrie song. I’d play that on the piano and everybody would come in, feeling really great about everything.”

“It seems like a long time ago, but it’s part of my memories,” she said softly.

In a statement, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island praised his mother for her courage and talent.

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“Besides being a loving mother, talented musician, and instrumental partner to my father as he launched his successful political career, Mom was a power of example to millions of people with mental health conditions,” his statement said. “She will be missed not just by the entire Kennedy Family, but by the arts community in the City of Boston and the many people whose lives that she touched.”

She also became one of the first women to publicly acknowledge her struggles with alcoholism and depression.

“I will always admire my mother for the way that she faced up to her challenges with grace, courage, humility, and honesty,” Ted Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “She taught me how to be more truthful with myself and how careful listening is a more powerful communication skill than public speaking.”

By KATIE WORKMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Some flavor crazes flirt with us and fade. Others stay and make themselves at home.

It’s too soon to tell for sure, but the Dubai chocolate movement seems to have put down roots and is spreading at a brisk clip. The sweet flavors and thick texture that have made Dubai chocolate bars a hit are morphing into other kinds of confections, too.

Pieces of Dubai chocolate by Chocolove are displayed in New York. (Katie Workman via AP)

Let’s back up for a minute. The original and now-classic Dubai chocolate bar was created by Fix Chocolatier in the United Arab Emirates in 2021, and by 2023 had exploded on social media. Rich and indulgent, it features a thick, milk chocolate shell usually encasing a creamy pistachio (and often tahini) filling mixed with crispy, shredded, phyllo-like pastry called kadayif.

Global brands and small bakers alike are riffing on the concept, translating it to croissants, milkshakes and more. Fillings range from peanut butter and jelly to s’mores to matcha.

“I don’t call this a ‘trend’ anymore — it’s a whole new thing,” said Din Allall, whose family business, The Nuts Factory, has about 150 U.S. stores featuring nuts, dried fruits and candies.

The craze has even contributed to a pistachio shortage this year, the Iranian nut producer Keinia has reported. It said the primary reason for the shortage is “the explosive surge in demand fueled by the viral ’Dubai chocolate’ TikTok trend, compounded by underlying supply constraint.”

Leonessa Dubai chocolate bars are displayed in New York. (Katie Workman via AP)

Globally, Google searches for “Dubai chocolate” shot up quickly at the start of the year before peaking in March. They’ve remained elevated since then, according to Google Trends.

In the U.S., Dubai chocolate is still a relatively niche product. In the 52 weeks ending June 28, U.S. retail sales of pistachio-filled chocolate totaled $822,900, according to the market research company NielsenIQ. By comparison, sales of all chocolates totaled $16.27 billion.

Still, demand for Dubai chocolate is growing much faster than demand for other varieties. Unit sales of pistachio-filled chocolates were up 1,234% compared to the previous year, NielsenIQ said, while unit sales of all chocolates fell less than 1%.

Allall carries 12 flavors of Dubai chocolate bar, as well as chocolate- and pistachio-covered Dubai dates, Dubai-coated roasted nuts, a layered Dubai chocolate strawberry parfait, and a Dubai Golden Chocolate bar infused with edible 24-karat gold for $79.99 (their regular 6.5-ounce bars sell for $18.99).

It’s not just the flavors that make Dubai chocolate different, Allall says, but the bar’s structure too — “huge, thick, with lots of filling.”

Big retailers and restaurants have gotten on board

Trader Joe’s carries a Dubai chocolate bar made by Patislove. IHOP introduced a limited-time Dubai pancake stack in some locations in August. Baskin-Robbins has some Dubai-inspired ice cream products on its menu, while Costco sells a range of Dubai chocolate confections, including a Dubai chocolate cake. Walmart and QVC also sell Dubai chocolate.

Swiss chocolate giant Lindt has a bar, and drew crowds when it debuted a limited number of them in Europe last fall.

FILE – Pieces of Dubai chocolate appear in a Lindt shop in Aachen, Germany on Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Daniel Niemann, File)

“For me, it’s the crunch,” said Erica Lefkowits, who was buying some Dubai chocolate recently in Dublin. “The chocolate is soft and melty, and the filling is creamy, and then the crunch of the kadayif. It’s all about the texture. Plus, it’s sugar.”

She was a little annoyed at the price, higher than your average chocolate bar. Part of Dubai chocolate’s appeal, though, is the way it feels simultaneously indulgent and worldly. Pistachios, rose, saffron and cardamom bring luxury, travel and exoticism to the chocolate party.

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Despite the price, “I’ve never seen a single item sell like this in my 50 years of retailing,” said Stew Leonard, Jr., CEO of Stew Leonard’s grocery stores in the New York metropolitan area. The chain introduced the BeeMax Dubai chocolate bar in March, watched it fly out the doors, he said, and then launched their own house-branded version (made by the company Chocopologie).

They’ve introduced a Dubai chocolate gift box for the holidays, which includes teeny Dubai ice cream cones, Dubai pralines and two bars.

Some other widely distributed brands in the U.S. are Moda, Magno and Leonessa. Other iterations of Dubai chocolate include Chocolove’s little candies and Matteo’s Coffee Syrups’ sugar-free chocolate coffee syrup.

Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, “Dinner Solved!” and “The Mom 100 Cookbook.” She blogs at https://themom100.com/. She can be reached at Katie@themom100.com.