By EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations on Thursday forecast slower global economic growth this year and next, pointing to the impact of the surge in U.S. tariffs and increasing trade tensions.

Related Articles

Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?

Coinbase said cyber crooks stole customer information and demanded $20 million ransom payment

US lost business travelers in April as economic anxiety and border detentions cooled demand

European Union accuses TikTok of breaching digital rules with lack of transparency on ads

Average rate on a US 30-year mortgage rises to 6.81%, its highest level since late April

U.N. economists also cited the volatile geopolitical landscape and threats of rising production costs, supply chain disruptions and financial turbulence.

“These days, there’s so much uncertainty in the air,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, director of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

“It’s been a nervous time for the global economy,” he told reporters while launching the midyear forecast. “In January this year, we were expecting two years of stable — if subpar — growth, and since then, prospects have diminished, accompanied by significant volatility across various dimensions.”

The U.N. is now forecasting global economic growth of 2.4% this year and 2.5% next year — a drop of 0.4 percentage point each year from its projections in January. Last year, the global economy grew 2.9%.

Mukherjee said the slowing is affecting most countries and regions, but among the most severely hit are the poorest and least developed countries, whose growth prospects have fallen from 4.6% to 4.1% just since January.

“That translates into a loss of billions in economic output for the most disadvantaged of countries,” which are home to over half the global population living in extreme poverty, he said.

The world’s developed and developing countries also are projected to suffer, according to the U.N. report.

Economic growth in the United States is now projected to drop significantly, from 2.8% last year to 1.6% this year, it said, noting that higher tariffs and policy uncertainty are expected to weigh on private investment and consumption.

China’s growth is expected to slow to 4.6% this year from 5% in 2024 as a result of subdued consumer sentiment, disruptions in its export-oriented manufacturing companies, and continuing challenges in its property sector, the report said.

The European Union’s growth is forecast to remain the same this year as it was last year — just 1%, the report said, citing weaker net exports and higher trade barriers. The United Kingdom’s economic growth of 1.1% last year is projected to fall to 0.9%.

Weakening trade, slowing investments and falling commodity prices are also forecast to erode growth in other major developing economies, including Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

India will remain one of the world’s fastest-growing large economies, but the U.N. forecast said its growth is expected to drop from 7.1% in 2024 to 6.3% this year.

The U.N.’s global economic growth forecast is lower than the International Monetary Fund’s.

On a more positive note, Mukherjee said the U.N. is expecting that bilateral negotiations will lead to lower tariffs, although he said they won’t return to the levels before U.S. President Donald Trump’s February announcement.

Nonetheless, Mukherjee said, resolving uncertainties would help individuals and businesses move forward with economic decisions and that would have a positive impact on the global economy.

An emergency alert for Lakeville was sent to a wider area than intended Thursday, setting off alarms on cellphones — including for St. Paul residents.

Dakota 911 Executive Director Heidi Hieserich said “an error” was “made in selecting the location. This caused the notification to extend beyond the intended range and go county wide.”

As for St. Paul residents receiving the alert, Hieserich said “sometimes there can be overreach due to the involvement of cellular towers relaying the message.”

Lakeville police were in the area southeast of 190th Street and Highview Avenue searching for a suspect who ran away from a stolen vehicle, the police department posted on X (formerly Twitter) at 2:40 p.m. They told people who live in the area to stay inside their homes and call 911 to report anything suspicious.

An emergency alert, saying the “shelter in place is clear,” was received on phones at 4:08 p.m. Lakeville police posted they’d done “an extensive search” and hadn’t located the suspect.

In an update, police said they took the suspect into custody in the 19200 block of Harappa Avenue shortly before 5 p.m. “after an observant resident contacted police.”

Related Articles

Charges: St. Paul driver had 0.37 BAC four hours after crash that killed passenger

‘Hero’ gamer thwarted a mass school shooting being planned in California town, sheriff says

Robbinsdale park homicide victim ID’d as North St. Paul woman

West Seventh restaurant windows broken; man accused of swinging stick at one owner

Former Tartan band director admits to sexually assaulting DeLaSalle student

By MICHAEL HILL

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — For decades, a carveout in New York’s child labor laws allowed kids as young as 11 to legally partake in the time-honored tradition of a paper route.

Flipping papers into suburban hedges, bicycling through snow squalls, dodging dogs and getting stiffed for tips became a rite of passage for generations of youths.

But a change to the law quietly made via the state budget this month makes clear the job is now not allowed for anyone under 14 years old. The move was first reported by Politico.

The change comes even though paper boys and girls have mostly gone the way of phone booths, mimeograph machines and their urban “newsie” forebears who shouted “Extra! Extra!” on street corners.

While many teens used to take on paper routes as after-school jobs, that became rarer decades ago as more daily newspapers switched to early morning deliveries. Newspapers are now increasingly online and tend to rely on adults with cars to make home deliveries, according to industry watchers.

“The need for a workforce of kids to go throwing newspapers on stoops is just a thing of the past,” said attorney Allan Bloom, an employment law expert with the Proskauer firm.

Lawmakers made the change as part of a broader update of child labor laws. Bloom likened it to a “cleanup” as lawmakers streamlined the process for employing minors and increased penalties for violating child labor laws.

Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association, said she was not aware of any newspapers in New York using youth carriers.

Christopher Page recalled buying his first guitar on earnings from a paper route started in the late ’70s in suburban Clifton Park, north of Albany.

“I just had a 10-speed that I destroyed,” said Page. “It was truly rain or shine, I’m out there riding the bike. Or even in the winter, I would still ride the bike in the snow through all the potholes and the ice.”

When dogs chased him on his bike, Page would ward them off with his shoulder bag full of newspapers.

At age 13, Jon Sorensen delivered the Syracuse Herald-American on Sunday with his 11-year old brother in the Finger Lakes town of Owasco from the back of their mother’s Chevy station wagon.

“That was back when papers were papers — a lot of sections and a lot of weight,” recalled Sorensen, now 68 and Kennedy’s partner. “I can remember trudging through the snow. … I don’t think I ever dropped one, because if you did you had to be heading back to the car and pick up another copy.”

Related Articles

Why was Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok preoccupied with South Africa’s racial politics?

Space Force, governors at odds over plans to pull talent from National Guard units

Military commanders will be told to send transgender troops to medical checks to oust them

The FBI is disbanding one of its Washington-based public corruption squads, AP sources say

Seattle judge rescinds order directing Trump administration to admit 12,000 refugees

Sorensen stayed in the newspaper business as an adult, covering state government and politics for papers including New York Daily News and The Buffalo News.

“The hardest part of the job wasn’t delivering the paper, it was collecting,” Sorensen recalled. “It wasn’t always easy to get people to pay up.”

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — When the Vermilion Valley Resort in California’s eastern Sierra shut down for the winter, the staff left cabin doors unlocked just in case a wayward hiker needed shelter during the frequent mountain snowstorms. That decision may have saved the life of Tiffany Slaton, the 27-year-old Georgia woman who was missing for nearly three weeks in remote wilderness.

Owner Christopher Gutierrez spotted a cabin door ajar and a pair of shoes nearby when he arrived Wednesday morning to begin reopening the resort for spring. Suddenly, a young woman appeared in the doorway.

“She pops out, didn’t say a word, just ran up and all she wanted was a hug,” Gutierrez said during a Wednesday evening news conference. “It was a pretty surreal moment, and that’s when I realized who this was.”

It was Slaton, whose parents had reported her missing on April 29 after not hearing from her for more than a week. The Fresno County Sheriff’s office launched a search, and deputies and volunteers scoured more than 600 square miles of the Sierra National Forest, with no luck. Searchers were hampered by heavy snow blocking many roads.

On Monday, the sheriff’s office had announced it was scaling back the search effort. Two days later, she emerged from the cabin.

Gutierrez gave Slaton a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and called authorities, who brought her to a hospital for evaluation. She was hungry and dehydrated, but otherwise in good condition, sheriff’s officials said.

Sheriff’s spokesperson Tony Botti said it was the longest period of time he’s seen someone be missing in the wilderness and survive.

“Three weeks, it’s unheard of,” he said. “It speaks to the tenacity that Tiffany has, that she’s a fighter.”

Thanks to tips from the public, investigators determined that Slaton had been spotted around April 20 near Huntington Lake, more than 20 miles to the southwest through rough terrain. But authorities didn’t provide details about when or where Slaton’s trek began, what her plans were, and what route she took to end up at Vermilion Valley Resort, which sits the Sierra Nevada about halfway between Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon national parks.

This image provide by the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, shows Tiffany Slaton, of Jeffersonville, Ga., when she was rescued in Fresno County, Calif., Wednesday, May 14, 2025 after being reported missing in the High Sierra for three weeks. (Fresno County Sheriff’s Office via AP)

Botti said sheriff’s officials planned to interview Slaton to learn the details of her experience, and how she survived in icy conditions at elevations topping 6,500 feet.

Across the country in Jeffersonville, Georgia, her parents were out shopping when they got word that their daughter had been found.

“I just grabbed somebody and I said, ‘Can I hug you?’ And I did,” said her mother, Fredrina Slaton. “I was crying and hugging.”

Tiffany’s father, Bobby Slaton, said “a ton of weight has been lifted.” He thanked the search-and-rescue team and all the community members who helped in the effort to find her.

Sheriff’s officials said snowplows cleared a key mountain pass earlier Wednesday, which allowed Gutierrez to access the resort on Lake Edison for the first time this year. Gutierrez said he had to spend about an hour and a half breaking up ice before he could get into the property.

Related Articles

US lost business travelers in April as economic anxiety and border detentions cooled demand

A boy likely died from drinking too much olive brine. A Colorado county tried to make the suspicious case disappear

Mihir Sharma: How the US gave India and Pakistan an excuse to stand down

U.S. Says ‘Substantial Progress’ Made in Trade Talks With China

Hamas Says It Will Release Its Last American Hostage

Slaton’s parents said Tiffany was raised with a love of the outdoors, and they always stressed the importance of being able to fend for yourself in a tough situation.

“So it’s nice to know, as parents, that all the things that we’ve taught her, she actually did,” her mother said. “We believe that life is an adventure.”