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NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are slipping in early trading on Wall Street as investors look over earnings from big companies including McDonald's, American Airlines and General Electric. Technology companies are falling the most after Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet reported disappointing earnings. Oil and gas companies are benefiting from a pickup in energy prices.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A real estate data firm says Americans paid more to rent homes last month, but broader measures suggest that the surging increases of prior years have moderated in much of the country. Zillow says the median U.S. monthly rent rose a seasonally adjusted 2.6 percent in March from a year ago, to $1,389. That was slightly more than the year-over-year increase of 2.5 percent in February. Prices ticked up slightly last month in the Los Angeles, Boston, Phoenix and Portland, Oregon, metro areas. Rents fell in Cleveland, Memphis and Oklahoma City.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — China's Ministry of Justice has sent back a lawsuit in which thousands of U.S. homeowners say a Cabinet-level agency should pay for damage to their homes from defective drywall made in China. The ministry says it won't serve the legal papers because the agency is immune to such lawsuits and the legal service would infringe on China's sovereignty. The six states involved in the suit are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia.
MIAMI (AP) — Carnival Corp. has announced that its cruise to Cuba will sail as planned after an agreement was reached with the Havana government allowing Cuban-born people to disembark on the island. Carnival CEO Arnold Donald says the first cruise in over 50 years between the U.S. and Cuba will go forward May 1 from Miami. Donald says Carnival has negotiated a change in Cuban policy, which previously prohibited Cuban-born people from departing from or arriving on the island by sea.
LONDON (AP) — Campaigners for a British exit from the European Union are blasting President Barack Obama's call for the U.K to stay in the bloc. In an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Obama says the EU "enhances Britain's global leadership." London Mayor Boris Johnson, a leader of the exit campaign, says Americans "would never contemplate anything like the EU for themselves." The leader of the U.K. Independence Party says Obama should "butt out."
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