By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage edged higher for the third week in a row, though it remains close to its low point this year.

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The average long-term mortgage rate ticked up to 6.26% from 6.24% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.84%.

Three weeks ago, the average rate was at 6.17%, its lowest level in more than a year.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also inched up this week. The rate averaged 5.54%, up from 5.49% last week. A year ago, it was 6.02%, Freddie Mac said.

When mortgage rates rise they reduce homebuyers’ purchasing power. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has been stuck above 6% since September 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows.

That’s helped kept sales of previously occupied U.S. homes stuck at around a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023. Historically, sales have typically hovered around 5.2 million a year.

While sales have been sluggish this year, they received a boost this fall as mortgage rates eased, remaining below 6.4% since early September. Last month, they accelerated to their fastest pace since February.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The 10-year yield was at 4.10% at midday Thursday. That’s down slightly from from a week ago, but up from around 3.95% on Oct. 22.

Mortgage rates began declining this summer ahead of the Federal Reserve’s decision in September to cut its main interest rate for the first time in a year amid signs the labor market was slowing. The Fed lowered its key interest rate again last month, although Fed Chair Jerome Powell cautioned that further rate cuts weren’t guaranteed.

Wall Street traders have reduced their bets that the Fed will cut its main interest rate at its next meeting in December, now giving it a roughly 44% probability, according to data from CME Group. That’s down from nearly 70% a couple of weeks ago, but better than the 30% chance before the release Thursday of the delayed September jobs report.

The central bank doesn’t set mortgage rates, and even when it cuts its short-term rates that doesn’t necessarily mean rates on home loans will necessarily decline.

Waymo, the driverless “robotaxi” rideshare company, has rolled into Minneapolis for testing — with humans at the wheel.

The Mountainview, Calif.-based company began mapping the city with a small fleet of “less than 10” Waymo vehicles to start, said company spokesperson Chris Bonelli, in anticipation of expanding their numbers and eventually taking human hands off the steering wheel.

“We’ll be driving them ourselves, by humans, in the early stages of testing,” he said.

Waymo, which first rolled out driverless ride-hailing service in downtown Phoenix in 2022, hopes to win city and state approval to begin offering autonomous ridesharing in the Twin Cities in coming months. That will take convincing state lawmakers and regulators that an autonomous vehicle can handle Minnesota winters, the third-coldest in the nation behind Alaska and North Dakota.

To date, most Waymo testing and all commercial launches have occurred in warm weather climates. The company services five cities — Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco — and will expand to Miami this week, followed soon by Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and Orlando. In addition to Minneapolis, the company has announced its intent to enter New Orleans, Tampa and Las Vegas, among other cities.

Prep for wintry climates

To prep for the wintry challenge that is Minnesota, Waymo tested cars in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, California’s Sierra Nevada and upstate New York. According to Waymo, the fleet of Jaguar I-PACE and Zeekr RT vehicles feature “sixth-generation” Waymo drivers — a combination of artificial intelligence and self-cleaning mechanisms designed to sustain the cars through snow and ice.

“We don’t need permits to begin this testing operation, but we do look forward to working with the state and city officials as we define a path toward operating this commercial ride-hailing service in Minneapolis,” Bonelli said. “We’re laying the groundwork for a future operation.”

Some lawmakers are already on board, so to speak.

A written statement released by Waymo on Thursday has supportive words from state Rep. Erin Koegel, a DFLer, and Rep. Jon Koznick, a Republican, who both co-chair the Minnesota House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee. Koegel said she looked forward to “a more efficient, environmentally sustainable, and equitable transportation future for our communities” and said the “deployment in Minneapolis is a great step forward.”

Koznick hailed the future of a “cleaner, more efficient transportation system.”

Lauren Johnson, regional executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Minnesota, said “autonomous vehicles play an important role by providing another tool in the toolbox to help end impaired driving.”

Will it service the entire city?

If Waymo does get the green light to roll into Minneapolis, will it service the entire city? Can it cross city borders and head to St. Paul or the Mall of America in Bloomington? How about hitting the highway to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport?

To answer those questions, Bonelli pointed to the example of San Francisco, where Waymo started a consumer testing program in a small pilot area in 2021. In June 2024, the company began offering Waymos across all 49 square miles of the city. As of last week, the driverless cars can now take passengers from San Francisco by freeway to San Jose and San Jose Mineta International Airport.

“We just last week expanded and connected our territory,” Bonelli said.

The company has had a similar progression in Phoenix, where it began circulating downtown and now serves Tempe, Scottsdale and the airport.

“Last week, we announced we’ve started to allow riders on the freeway,” Bonelli said. “We’re currently doing that in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix.”

Getting a similar foothold in Minneapolis would allow proof of concept to lawmakers, local elected officials and the general public, laying the groundwork for expansion to surrounding areas — if the driverless cars can maneuver safely through snowy, pothole-encrusted Twin Cities roads.

Given how quickly technology is changing, Waymo officials believe the question is “when,” not “if.” Bonelli said the company already has offices in Europe, where it has its eyes on London, Tokyo and other potential international markets, with the goal of taking autonomous ridesharing worldwide.

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By MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to contradict the longtime scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism, spurring outrage among a number of public health and autism experts.

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The CDC “vaccine safety” webpage was updated Wednesday, saying “the statement ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim.”

The change is the latest move by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to revisit — and foster uncertainty about — long-held scientific consensus about the safety of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.

It was immediately decried by scientists and advocates who have long been focused on finding the causes of autism.

“We are appalled to find that the content on the CDC webpage ‘Autism and Vaccines’ has been changed and distorted, and is now filled with anti-vaccine rhetoric and outright lies about vaccines and autism,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement Thursday.

Widespread scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link between vaccines and autism. “The conclusion is clear and unambiguous,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement Thursday.

“We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations,” she said.

The CDC has, until now, echoed the absence of a link in promoting Food and Drug Administration-licensed vaccines.

But anti-vaccines activists — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who this year became secretary of Health and Human Services — have long claimed there is one.

It’s unclear if anyone at CDC was actually involved in the change, or whether it was done by Kennedy’s HHS, which oversees the CDC.

Many at CDC were surprised.

“I spoke with several scientists at CDC yesterday and none were aware of this change in content,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was part of a group of CDC top officials who resigned from the agency in August. “When scientists are cut out of scientific reviews, then inaccurate and ideologic information results.”

The updated page does not cite any new research. It instead argues that past studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

“HHS has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links. Additionally, we are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science,” said HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon, in an email Thursday.

A number of former CDC officials have said that what CDC posts about certain subjects — including vaccine safety — can no longer be trusted.

Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who also resigned from the agency in August, told reporters Wednesday that Kennedy seems to be “going from evidence-based decision making to decision-based evidence making.”

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, earlier this year played a decisive role in approving Kennedy’s nomination for HHS secretary. Cassidy initially voiced misgivings about Kennedy, but in February said Kennedy had pledged — among other things — not to remove language from the CDC website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.

The new site continues to have a headline that says “Vaccines do not cause autism,” but HHS officials put an asterisk next to it. A note at the bottom of the page says the phrasing “has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

Cassidy’s spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By Lori Rackl, Tribune News Service

On my right, Jurassic fern fronds and violet morning glories cascade over a steep cliff. I can hear the crystalline water smashing into the craggy shore hundreds of feet below.

To my left, lime-green succulents cling to a wall of volcanic rock.

“You can see why Portuguese call this ‘The Garden in the Ocean,’” says Sílvia Mota, a Backroads guide for the tour operator’s new walking and hiking trip in Madeira.

This lush, 286-square-mile island — almost three times the size of Martha’s Vineyard — has inspired a lot of nicknames. The Portuguese isle has been dubbed The Pearl of the Atlantic, a nod to the ocean that surrounds its namesake archipelago. Madeira’s reputation for comfortable year-round temperatures spawned another dreamy moniker: The Island of Eternal Spring.

The word madeira means “wood” in Portuguese. That’s what explorers found when they discovered this densely forested, uninhabited island in the 15th century. Six hundred years later, it’s tourists who are discovering this so-called Hawaii of Europe. The island of roughly 260,000 residents welcomed a record-breaking 2.2 million overnight visitors in 2024.

Earlier this year, United Airlines became the first U.S. carrier to fly nonstop between the States (New Jersey’s Newark Airport) and Madeira’s Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport, named for the soccer superstar who hails from the island’s capital city of Funchal. United recently announced plans to resume these seasonal flights in mid-May, three weeks earlier than its inaugural 2025 schedule.

Backroads added Madeira to its thick portfolio of trips this year. From March through December, the active travel company offers six-day, guided itineraries that take small groups on adventures spanning the coast to the clouds. Actually, above the clouds. One trek along a portion of the island’s most famous hike — Stairway to Heaven — had us hovering around 6,000 feet above sea level, peering down at what looked like a fluffy, white duvet tucked between jagged peaks.

(The majority of this iconic trail remains closed after a 2024 wildfire, but the portion that’s open doesn’t disappoint with its panoramic views.)

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Hiking is a huge draw to this natural playground, home to the planet’s largest surviving expanse of laurel forest. This prehistoric type of subtropical vegetation once covered much of southern Europe and North Africa but largely disappeared after the last Ice Age. An estimated 20% of Madeira is still covered by this evergreen-rich, biodiverse ecosystem that’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Our group of nine headed to São Vicente on the north side of the island, where the laurel forest is more concentrated, to check it out. We wandered through nearly 5 miles of movie set-worthy scenery, a tableau of mossy waterfalls, ancient laurel trees and flowering plants. Sílvia handed out headlamps for us to wear in the dark tunnels that are so prevalent on this mountainous island.

Another highlight of hiking in Madeira is that many footpaths follow a network of irrigation canals called levadas. These narrow channels were built to funnel much-needed water from the northern highlands to the towns and farms in the dry south. The levadas’ origins date back to the 15th century, but this engineering feat is still used today to distribute water — and to guide hikers through the island’s diverse terrain.

Walking next to these slow-moving aqueducts added a calming, peaceful vibe to our hikes, which we typically did in the morning, followed by another trek in the afternoon. In between, we’d stop at a local restaurant or winery for a hearty lunch of fried cornmeal cubes, skewers of beef, fresh-caught tuna and tender scabbardfish. Seafood was sometimes topped with bananas, which are next-level good when grown in Madeira.

“They’re smaller and sweeter,” says Sílvia, as she treats us to a post-hike snack of her homemade banana bread. We wash it down with cups of poncha, a citrusy cocktail made with sugarcane juice.

We walked next to hanging clusters of “bananas de Madeira” growing at Fajã dos Padres, an organic farm on the coast. It’s only accessible by boat or with a cable car ride down the sheer rock face of a mountain. The cable car dropped us off for a farm tour, lunch and a refreshing dip in the ocean.

Even though it’s billed as a hiking trip, our itinerary had time for us to be in and on the water. We took two rides on inflatable Zodiac boats, including a “sea safari” that had us traveling with a playful pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins, their babies in tow. Two of the three hotels we stayed in fronted the ocean (and they all had inviting pools), making it easy to go for a swim.

When it came time to fly home, I peered out the plane’s window for a bird’s-eye view of Madeira. The terra cotta-tiled roofs slowly disappeared. Soon, all I could see was a blanket of green surrounded by chalk-white clouds and cobalt blue water, a garden in the ocean.

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