Wall Street capped a day of wild swings Friday with a late-afternoon rally that reversed steep early losses and sent the Dow Jones industrial average 330 points higher. Even with the rebound, this was the worst week for the market in about two years.
Stocks struggled to stabilize much of the day as investors sent prices climbing, then slumping in unsteady trading a day after the market entered its first correction in two years.
The up-and-down swings followed a drop of 10 percent from the latest record highs set by major U.S. indexes just two weeks ago. At midday, the market was on pace for its worst weekly decline since October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis.
The Dow briefly sank 500 points in afternoon trading after surging more than 349 points earlier in the day. The blue chip average suffered its second 1,000-point drop in a week on Thursday.
NEW YORK — The flu has further tightened its grip on the U.S. This season is now as bad as the swine flu epidemic nine years ago.
A government report out Friday shows 1 of every 13 visits to the doctor last week was for fever, cough and other symptoms of the flu. That ties the highest level seen in the U.S. during swine flu in 2009.
And it surpasses every winter flu season since 2003, when the government changed the way it measures flu.
“I wish that there were better news this week, but almost everything we’re looking at is bad news,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Flu season usually takes off in late December and peaks around February. This season started early and was widespread in many states by December. Early last month, it hit what seemed like peak levels — but then continued to surge.
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s younger sister took her place among dignitaries from around the world, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on Friday in an unprecedented visit to South Korea.
The trip by Kim Yo Jong is the latest move in an extraordinary show of Olympic diplomacy with Seoul that could prove to be a major challenge to the Trump administration’s hard-line Korea policies.
As the opening ceremony began, she and South Korean President Moon Jae-in exchanged a historic handshake and spoke briefly. They smiled broadly, though it was not immediately known what they said.
She and Kim Yong Nam, the North’s 90-year-old nominal head of state, were seated behind Moon and his wife, while Pence and his wife were seated beside the Moons and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
PARIS — Snow and freezing rain pummeled parts of France on Friday, shutting down the Eiffel Tower but covering Paris in a gorgeous coat of white.
The Eiffel Tower, France’s most-visited monument, was closed all day Friday and was staying closed Saturday “to ensure the security of visitors,” the company that manages the 19th-century landmark said.
Workers with hand shovels were carefully clearing snow from the monument’s intricate ironwork and de-icing stairs and platforms. The company said they can’t use salt because it could corrode the Eiffel Tower’s metal and damage its heavily used elevators.
Heavy snowfall earlier this week trapped hundreds of drivers in cars and caused the worst-ever traffic jams in the Paris region.
Yet Friday’s snowfall in the capital was a bit less dramatic and gave way to some fun. Snowboarders glided down the hills of the city’s Montmartre neighborhood as tourists gaped.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The NASA spacecraft that gave us close-ups of Pluto has set a record for the farthest photos ever taken.
In December — while 3.79 billion miles from Earth — the New Horizons spacecraft snapped a picture of a star cluster. The photo surpassed the “Pale Blue Dot” images of Earth taken in 1990 by NASA’s Voyager 1.
The images for “Pale Blue Dot” — part of a composite — were taken 3.75 billion miles away.
New Horizons took more photos as it sped deeper into the cosmos in December. These pictures show two objects in the Kuiper Belt, the so-called twilight zone on the fringes of our solar system.
From Associated Press