By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting near their record heights on Monday as Wall Street waits for an upcoming update on inflation.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged and flirting with its all-time high set two weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 77 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was down 0.2%, coming off its own record.

The highlight of this week for Wall Street is likely to arrive on Tuesday, when the government will report how bad inflation was across the country in July. Economists expect it to show U.S. consumers had to pay prices for groceries, gasoline and other costs of living that were 2.8% higher in July from a year earlier, a slight acceleration from June’s 2.7% inflation.

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Inflation has remained stuck above 2%, even if it has improved substantially from its peak above 9% three years ago. And the worry is that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push it higher.

That in turn is raising fears about a potential worst-case scenario called “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates but inflation remains high. The Federal Reserve has no good tool to fix both problems at once, and it would likely need to concentrate on either the job market or inflation first. But helping one of those areas by raising or lowering interest rates would likely hurt the other.

A top Fed official, Michelle Bowman, said on Saturday that she believes the job market is the bigger concern. She is still backing three cuts to interest rates by the Fed this year following this month’s stunning, weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market. Trump himself has also been angrily calling for cuts to interest rates to support the economy.

Other Fed officials, led by Chair Jerome Powell, are more hesitant. Powell has said he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs are affecting inflation before the Fed makes its next move, and Tuesday’s update on the consumer price index may offer a big clue about that.

Strategists at Stifel are warning that stagflation may already be on the way, with spending by U.S. consumers slowing, and they warn that it could cause the U.S. economy to slow to a crawl by the second half of the year. That in turn could create a reckoning for investors after they sent stock prices soaring to records from their low point in April.

“Rate cuts cannot save an overvalued S&P 500,” according to the strategists, led by Thomas Carroll and Barry Bannister.

One way companies can make their stock prices look less expensive is by delivering bigger profits.

Micron Technology climbed 4.8% Monday after raising its forecasts for profit and revenue in the current quarter, which will end later this month. The maker of memory for computers said it’s benefiting from higher prices for its products.

AMC Entertainment jumped 7.5% to shave its loss for the year so far, which came into the day at 26.4% after it reported better results for the spring than analysts expected. The movie-theater chain said each customer paid more for their tickets than ever before, while also spending more on food and drinks.

On the losing side of Wall Street was C3ai after the artificial-intelligence application software company warned it may report an operating loss as large as $124.9 million for its first quarter. CEO Thomas Siebel called the first-quarter sales results “completely unacceptable,” and its stock tumbled 31%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements across Europe and Asia.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.27%, where it was late Friday.

AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Transcripts of the secret grand jury testimony that led to the sex trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell won’t be released, a judge decided Monday.

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Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said in a written ruling that the government had suggested that the materials could be released publicly “casually or promiscuously,” which would risk “unraveling the foundations of secrecy upon which the grand jury is premised” and eroding confidence by persons called to testify before future grand juries,

“And it is no answer to argue that releasing the grand jury materials, because they are redundant of the evidence at Maxwell’s trial, would be innocuous. The same could be said for almost any grand jury testimony, by summary witnesses or others, given in support of charges that later proceeded to trial,” he added.

Federal prosecutors had asked to unseal the documents, in an effort to calm a whirlpool of suspicions about what the government knows about Epstein, a well-connected financier who died behind bars while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell, his socialite ex-girlfriend, was later convicted of helping him prey on underage girls.

It’s unclear how much the transcripts would have revealed since the Justice Department has acknowledged that they contained no testimony from witnesses who were not members of law enforcement.

Maxwell recently was interviewed by the Justice Department and was moved from a prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas. Her attorney says she testified truthfully.

Prosecutors have said much of what was discussed behind the grand jury’s closed doors ultimately became public at Maxwell’s 2021 trial in 2021, in victims’ civil lawsuits or in public statements from victims and witnesses. The only grand jury witnesses were law enforcement officers.

The decision about the grand jury transcripts doesn’t affect thousands of other pages that the government possesses but has declined to release. The Justice Department has said much of the material was court-sealed to protect victims and little of it would have come out if Epstein had gone to trial.

Another federal judge still is weighing whether to release the transcripts from the grand jury testimony that led to Epstein’s indictment.

A federal judge in Florida declined to release grand jury documents from an investigation there in 2005 and 2007.

Some Epstein victims supported releasing the grand jury transcripts with some redactions. Other accusers said the debate over the material was causing them anguish.

Maxwell, who’s appealing her conviction, opposed unsealing the documents. Her lawyers said she hasn’t seen them but believed they were full of questionable statements that her defense had no opportunity to challenge.

The Epstein saga has again become a national flashpoint six years after authorities said the financier killed himself. The 66-year-old was facing federal sex trafficking charges involving dozens of teenage girls and young women, some as young as 14.

Epstein already had served jail time and registered as a sex offender after pleading guilty to Florida prostitution offenses in a 2008 deal that let him avoid federal charges at the time.

President Donald Trump later raised questions about Epstein’s death, and Trump allies stoked conspiracy theories that dark secrets were covered up to protect powerful people. Some of those allies got powerful positions in Trump’s Justice Department and promised to pull back the curtain on the Epstein investigation — but then announced this summer that nothing more would be released and that a long-rumored Epstein “client list” doesn’t exist.

The about-face only amplified the clamor for transparency. After trying unsuccessfully to change the subject and denigrating his own supporters for not moving on, the president told Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask courts to unseal the grand jury transcripts.

Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department for files in the case. The committee also issued subpoenas to conduct sworn questioning of former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and eight former top law enforcement officials.

Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was one of Epstein’s many famous former friends. So was Trump, a Republican. Both men have said they knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes until he was charged, and Epstein’s accusers have not alleged any wrongdoing by Trump or Clinton.

By SAM METZ and SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military targeted and killed an Al Jazeera correspondent and others with an airstrike late Sunday in Gaza, after press advocates said an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up when Anas al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.

Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.

It was the first time during the 22-month war that Israel’s military swiftly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.

Colleagues and friends mourn over the body Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qureiqa who was killed with his colleague Anas al-Sharif and other journalists by an Israeli airstrike, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed while sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex also included Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh. The strike also killed four other journalists and two other people, hospital administrative director Rami Mohanna told The Associated Press. The strike damaged the entrance to the hospital complex’s emergency building.

The airstrike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing.

Al Jazeera calls strike ‘assassination’

Al Jazeera called the strike a “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.

“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.

Palestinians pray over the bodies of journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreiqeh, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, during their funeral outside Gaza City’s Shifa hospital complex, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.

Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year, ordering them closed.

The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.

Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.

Al-Sharif’s death comes weeks after a U.N. expert and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel had targeted him with a smear campaign.

Irene Khan, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”

The U.N. human rights office on Monday condemned Sunday’s airstrike targeting the journalists’ tent “in grave breach of international humanitarian law.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Sunday that at least 186 journalists have been killed in Gaza, and Brown University’s Watson Institute in April said the war was “quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters.”

Funeral-goers call to protect journalists

Al-Sharif reported a nearby bombardment minutes before his death. In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, he bemoaned the devastation and destruction that war had wrought and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.

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“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.

Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qreiqeh and their colleagues. The bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at the Shifa Hospital complex.

Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.

Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population.

In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.

“I am talking about slow death of those people,” he said at the time.

Qreiqeh, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.

Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognize them, according to video footage they posted at the time.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Sunday it was appalled by the airstrike.

“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director, said in a statement.

Magdy reported from Cairo.

By LORNE COOK, Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — Ukraine and its backers in Europe insist that the United States and Russia cannot decide on land swaps behind their backs at a summit this week, but the Europeans concede that Moscow is unlikely to give up control of Ukrainian land it holds.

Ahead of the summit in Alaska on Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that a peace deal could include “some swapping of territories,” but the Europeans see no sign that Russia will offer anything to swap. Europeans and Ukrainians so far are not invited to the summit.

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European Union foreign ministers are meeting on Monday following talks on Ukraine among U.S. and European security advisers over the weekend. They are wary that President Vladimir Putin will try to claim a political victory by portraying Ukraine as inflexible.

Concerns have mounted in Europe and Ukraine that Kyiv may be pressed to give up land or accept other curbs on its sovereignty. Ukraine and its European allies reject the notion that Putin should lay claim to any territory even before agreeing to a ceasefire.

“As we work towards a sustainable and just peace, international law is clear: All temporarily occupied territories belong to Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said ahead of the ministerial meeting.

“A sustainable peace also means that aggression cannot be rewarded,” Kallas said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said “it must be obvious to Poland and our European partners — and I hope to all of NATO — that state borders cannot be changed by force.” Any land swaps or peace terms “must be agreed upon with Ukraine’s participation,” he said, according to Polish news agency PAP.

On Sunday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany would not accept that territorial issues be discussed or decided by Russia and the United States “over the heads” of Europeans or Ukrainians.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the reality on the ground.

Russia in 2022 illegally annexed the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Ukraine’s east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south, even though it doesn’t fully control them. It also occupies the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014.

On the 620-mile front line, Russia’s bigger army has made slow but costly progress with its summer offensive. The relentless pounding of urban areas has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to U.N. estimates.

“In the end, the issue of the fact that the Russians are controlling at this moment, factually, a part of Ukraine has to be on the table” in any peace talks after the Alaska summit, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on CBS on Sunday.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte accompanied by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., left and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., right, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Rutte said Ukraine’s Western backers “can never accept that in a legal sense,” but he suggested that they might tacitly acknowledge Russian control.

He compared it to the way that the U.S. hosted the diplomatic missions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1940 to 1991, “acknowledging that the Soviet Union was controlling those territories, but never accepting (it) in a legal sense.”

Giving up any territory, especially without a ceasefire agreement first, would be almost impossible for Zelenskyy to sell at home after thousands of troops have died defending their land.

Ultimately, Putin is seen as being not so much interested in land itself, but rather in a more “Russia-friendly” Ukraine with a malleable government that would be unlikely to try to join NATO, just as pro-Russian regions in Georgia stymied that country’s hopes of becoming a member.

Zelenskyy insists that a halt to fighting on the front line should be the starting point for negotiations, and the Europeans back him. They say that any future land swaps should be for Ukraine to decide and not be a precondition for a ceasefire.

Claims on land could also be part of negotiations on the kind of security guarantees that Ukraine might receive to ensure another war does not break out.

The Europeans believe Kyiv’s best defense is strong armed forces to deter Russia from striking again. They insist there should be no restrictions on the size of Ukraine’s army and the equipment, arms and ammunition it can possess or sell.

Beyond that, they say Ukraine should not be constrained in its choice of joining the EU or being forced to become a neutral country. The Trump administration has already taken Ukraine’s membership of NATO off the table for the foreseeable future.

Associated Press writers Dasha Litvinova, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.