By KANIS LEUNG

HONG KONG (AP) — Southern Chinese cities scaled back many aspects of daily life on Tuesday with school and business closures and flight cancellations as they braced for one of the strongest typhoons in years that has already killed three people and displaced thousands in the Philippines.

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Residents living in flood-prone areas put sandbags and barriers at their doors, while others taped windows and glass doors to brace for strong winds. Many people stockpiled food and other supplies, and some market vendors reported their goods were selling out fast.

Some Hong Kongers gathered on a promenade to watch waves as high as 6.5 to 9.8 feet splash onto the pedestrian area before the weather worsens. Authorities rescued three people, including a child, from the sea and police said they were watching the waves.

Hong Kong’ s observatory said Super Typhoon Ragasa, which was packing maximum sustained winds near the center of about 120 mph, is expected to move west-northwest at about 13.7 mph across the northern part of the South China Sea and edge closer to the coast of Guangdong province, the southern Chinese economic powerhouse. Over one million people were relocated in the province, according to the Department of Emergency Management of Guangdong province.

China’s National Meteorological Center forecast the typhoon would make landfall in the coastal area between Taishan and Zhanjiang cities in Guangdong between midday and evening on Wednesday. Heavy rainfalls are tagging along in the majority of Guangdong and nearby Fujian province.

Schools, transport, factories halted

The observatory in Hong Kong issued storm warning signal No. 8, the third-highest in the city’s weather alert system. The city categorizes tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds near the center of 185 kph or above as super typhoons to make residents extra vigilant about the approach of more intense storms.

The water level was forecast to rise about 2 meters over coastal areas in the Asian financial hub on Wednesday morning, and the maximum level in some areas could hit 4 to 5 meters above the typical lowest sea level.

The government said the water levels could be similar to those recorded during Typhoon Hato in 2017 and Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018 — estimated to have caused the city direct economic losses worth over 1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($154 million) and 4.6 billion Hong Kong dollars, respectively.

Schools were closed in Hong Kong and the neighboring casino city of Macao. Hundreds of residents sought refuge at temporary shelters in the financial hub and three injured people were treated at hospitals. Other cities such as the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Foshan in Guangdong province and Haikou in Hainan province ordered class cancellations and a gradual suspension of other businesses, production and transportation.

Hundreds of flights were canceled in Hong Kong. Shenzhen airport will halt all flights from Tuesday night. The Macao government was evacuating residents and tourists and ordered bridges to close in the evening.

Trail of destruction in Philippines, Taiwan

Heavy rain caused a barrier lake in Taiwan’s eastern Hualien County to overflow and torrents of water rushed downstream and swept away a bridge, the Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported. Local authorities said two people died and 30 others were missing.

Another 28 were injured across the island and over 7,000 people were evacuated, authorities said.

Roads in Guangfu township in Hualien turned into churning rivers that carried away vehicles.

In the northern Philippines, Ragasa left at least three people dead, five others missing and displaced more than 17,500 in flooding and landslides, officials said.

The dead included a 74-year-old man, who was pinned in one of four vehicles that were partly buried by mud, rocks and trees that cascaded down a mountainside onto a narrow road on Monday in the mountain town of Tuba in Benguet province, officials said. Two other villagers died in the storm, including a resident in Calayan town, a cluster of islands off northern Cagayan province where the super typhoon made landfall on Monday.

Ragasa, which means scramble in Tagalog, prompted the Philippine government on Monday to close schools and government offices in the densely populated capital region and 29 northern provinces. Fishing boats and ferries were prohibited from venturing into very rough seas and domestic flights were canceled.

Associated Press journalists Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan, Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this report.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS

NEW YORK (AP) — Tariffs and years of teetering mall traffic have roiled much of the toy industry. But Build-A-Bear investors are continuing to reap sizeable gains.

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Shares of Build-A-Bear Workshop are up more than 60% since the start of 2025, trading at just under $72 apiece as of Tuesday afternoon. That compares to just 13% for the S&P 500 since the start of the year, and marks dramatic growth from five years ago, when the St. Louis-based retailer’s stock sat under $3.

The toy industry overall has been “reasonably soft” in recent years, notes Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData — but certain categories, including craft-oriented products, have done very well following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And that’s key to Build-A-Bear’s core business model: welcoming consumers into their brick-and-mortar stores to make their own plush animals.

That may also set Build-A-Bear apart from the malls its stores are often inside, many of which have struggled to see overall traffic rebound over the years.

“The mall may not be a destination, but Build-A-Bear often is — because it’s often a planned trip,” Saunders said. “It’s a store within a mall that many consumers make a beeline for.”

Build-A-Bear is still not isn’t entirely immune to macroeconomic pressures, but the company’s profit has soared to record after record in recent quarters. Last month, the retailer reported what it said were the best results for a second quarter and first half of a fiscal year in the history of the Build-A-Bear, which opened its first store in 1997. Company executives pointed to strong store performance and other expansion efforts.

In the first half of its 2025 fiscal year, the company’s revenues hit $252.6 million and its pre-tax income climbed to $34.9 million — up 11.5% and 31.5%, respectively, year-over-year.

The company also raised its financial outlook for the full year, despite anticipated costs of President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. from around the world and other headwinds.

“Tariffs are a real cost that we are facing,” Voin Todorovic, chief financial officer at Build-A-Bear, said in the company’s Aug. 28 earnings call — pointing to current U.S. import tax rates of 30% on China and 20% on Vietnam, where the retailer sources much of its products. Some of that has already trickled down to the cost of Build-A-Bear’s merchandise in North America, but Todorovic noted that such levies would impact the company “even more in the second half of the year.”

Still, he and other executives pointed to preparations Build-A-Bear had made to lessen the blow, including previous inventory increases. The company also maintained that consumer-facing price impacts would be limited.

While the retailer offers some ready-made toys and toy clothing, “what Build-A-Bear generally buys is materials,” Saunders noted. This can “hedge against tariffs much more effectively,” he explained, as they reduce labor costs and potentially allow for more flexibility on sourcing.

Still, Saunders notes that everyone is going to be affected by tariffs and Build-A-Bear isn’t an exception. He adds that consumers will probably “eat that extra cost because they’re paying for the entertainment value.”

Barring any significant changes, Todorovic said in August’s earnings call that tariffs are anticipated to cost Build-A-Bear under $11 million for the 2025 fiscal year. But despite that and other costs, he noted that the company is still on track to approach or slightly beat last year’s earnings.

The company’s latest guidance expects its pre-tax income to reach between $62 million to $70 million for the full 2025 fiscal year, compared to just over $67 million reported in 2024.

By TRAVIS LOLLER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bobby Cain, who helped integrate one of the first high schools in the South in 1956 as one of the so-called Clinton 12, died Monday in Nashville at the age of 85, according to his nephew J. Kelvin Cain.

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Bobby Cain was a senior when he entered the formerly all-white Clinton High School in Tennessee on a court order. He had previously attended a Black high school about 20 miles away in Knoxville and was not happy about leaving his friends to spend his senior year at a new school in a hostile environment.

“He had no interest in doing it because, you know, he’d gotten to rise up through the ranks at Austin High School as the senior and was finally big fish in the pond. And to have to go to this all-white high school — it was tough,” said Adam Velk, executive director of the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, which promotes the legacy of the Clinton 12. Velk added that the 16-year-old had to do it “with the entire world watching him.”

This was a couple of years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that separating public school children on the basis of race was unconstitutional and a year before Little Rock Central High School was desegregated by force. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, the Clinton 12 students were not hand-picked and trained for the job of desegregation. They just happed to live within the Anderson County school district at the time, Velk said.

Although the court-ordered desegregation in Clinton was accepted by state and local authorities, many in the local white community were against it. They were soon joined by Ku Klux Klan members and other segregationists from outside the community in a series of protests that led to the National Guard being called in to restore order.

Cain managed to stick out the year, becoming the first Black student in Tennessee to graduate from an integrated state-run school. What should have been a triumphant moment was marred by violence. After receiving his diploma, Cain was jumped and beaten up by a group of white students. In the end, only one other member of the Clinton 12 made it to graduation. Gail Ann Epps graduated the following year, according to the Tennessee State Museum.

Cain had a lot of anger around his experience at the school and didn’t talk about it for many years.

Bobby Cain poses poses for a photo in the Civil Rights Room of the Nashville, Tenn., Public Library in October 2017. (Robin Conover/The Tennessee Magazine via AP)

“He didn’t want to remember it,” his nephew said.

He received a scholarship to attend Tennessee State University in Nashville, where he met his wife. After graduation, he worked for the Tennessee Department of Human Services and was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. He never joined in the sit-in protests of the era, quipping to The Tennessee Magazine in a 2017 interview that it was because “you had to agree to be nonviolent.”

Cain told the magazine that he had no white friends at Clinton High School.

“You have to realize that if any white students had gone out of their way to be nice to us, they would have been jumped on,” he said.

He also had to stop playing sports because “the coaches at Clinton told me that none of the other high schools would play against us if I was on the field at the game.”

Velk calls Cain a reluctant hero.

“This is a normal, everyday human being who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and acted above those circumstances,” Velk said. “This is a person who dealt with this tremendous difficulty and rose to the occasion.”

Cain is survived by a daughter, Yvette Cain-Frank, and grandson Tobias Cain-Frank.

By MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Trump administration Tuesday designated the Barrio 18 gang as a foreign terrorist organization, joining other Latin American criminal groups receiving the designation in recent months.

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Barrio 18, largely based in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, originated in the United States as a street gang in Los Angeles created by young Salvadoran immigrants as a way to protect themselves. When many of their members were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador, the gang expanded and gained power across Central America, where it continues to terrorize communities.

In recent years, the gang has been dealt a powerful blow by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has waged war on the country’s gangs, imprisoning more than 1% of El Salvador’s population for alleged gang ties with little evidence or access to due process. That has sharply dropped crime rates in El Salvador, but also fueled accusations of mass human rights abuses by the government.

In a statement on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the designation “further demonstrates the Trump administration’s unwavering commitment to dismantling cartels and gangs and ensuring the safety of the American people.”

Bukele has long referred to members of the gang as “terrorists” and even built a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. It was that same lockup where 200 Venezuelan deportees were held earlier this year as part of an agreement with Trump.

On Tuesday, Trump thanked Bukele, an ally, on the stage of the United Nations General Assembly “for the successful and professional job they have done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.”

Bukele’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s unclear what the designation would mean for law enforcement in the region. The Trump administration has ruffled feathers in Latin America as it has drastically expanded military actions by firing on boats in the Caribbean that it alleges were carrying drugs to the U.S. A number of people have been killed in those strikes.

Barrio 18 joins its rival, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and a number of Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in holding the foreign terrorist organization designation.

The designation has long been applied to groups that are more political in nature. While the Latin American groups have sown terror in the populations they lord over, they also are largely not political in nature and instead focus their efforts on raking in money through drug trafficking, extortion and other illegal activities.