TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly declined Thursday as investors awaited a flood of global earnings reports, including updates from U.S. tech companies known as the “Magnificent Seven.”

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slid 2.1% to 37,670.50. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.4% to 2,637.18. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained nearly 0.1% to 17,215.51, while the Shanghai Composite was virtually unchanged at 3,044.41.

Trading was closed in Australia for a national holiday, Anzac Day.

Attention is also turning to the Bank of Japan, whose two-day monetary policy meeting started Thursday.

“For the record, heading into tomorrow’s policy decision, exceptional Japanese yen weakness is the agitated elephant in the room for the BOJ,” Tan Jing Yi of Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 155.67 Japanese yen from 155.31 yen. The euro cost $1.0715, up from $1.0697.

The yen has been trading at 155 yen-levels lately, its lowest level in 34 years. That helps Japanese exporters by raising the value of their overseas earnings, but it also raises the price of imports. Speculation has been growing Japan may intervene to prop up the yen.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was virtually flat and edged up by less than 0.1% to 5,071.63. It had jumped sharply in the first two days of the week to claw back nearly two-thirds of last week’s steep loss.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1% to 38,460.92, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.1%, to 15,712.75.

Tesla jumped 12.1% after saying the night before that it would accelerate production of new, more affordable vehicles, which investors have been hoping will kickstart growth. The announcement helped investors look past the 55% drop in profit that Tesla reported.

Tesla is the first of the group of stocks among the Magnificent Seven to report its results for the start of 2024. The focus is on the small group of stocks because they drove most of the U.S. stock market’s gain last year, and they’ll need to perform to justify their high prices.

Meta Platforms also reported its latest results after trading ended Wednesday. Alphabet and Microsoft will follow it a day later.

The hope is that profit growth will broaden beyond the Magnificent Seven to other types of companies, in large part because a remarkably solid U.S. economy. They’ll likely need to deliver fatter profits if they want their stock prices to rise. That’s because they’re unlikely to get much help from the other lever that can lift stock prices: interest rates.

“A strong earnings season looks likely to help restore market confidence,” according to Solita Marcelli, chief investment officer Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management.

A report Wednesday said orders for machinery, airplanes and other long-lasting manufactured goods were stronger last month than expected. A recent string of such reports has quashed hopes that the Federal Reserve may deliver the three cuts to interest rates this year that it had earlier signaled.

Boeing lost 2.9% despite reporting results that weren’t as bad as analysts feared. The company, which is battling criticism about the safety of its airplanes, said it’s taking steps to improve its manufacturing quality, which has slowed down production.

Teledyne Technologies tumbled 10.9% for one of the market’s largest losses after the seller of digital imaging sensors, cameras and other equipment reported weaker profit and revenue than forecast. It said demand from the industrial automation and test and measurement markets was weaker than it expected.

On the winning side of the market, Hasbro jumped 11.9% after the toy and game company reported better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It benefited from growth delivered by its Baldur Gate 3 and Magic: The Gathering games, as well as by its Peppa Pig content.

Texas Instruments climbed 5.6% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than forecast. Boston Scientific was another one of the stronger forces pushing upward on the S&P 500. It rose 5.7% after topping forecasts for profit and revenue.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude added 14 cents to $82.95 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 17 cents to $88.19 a barrel.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nearly 282 million people in 59 countries suffered from acute hunger in 2023, with war-torn Gaza as the territory with the largest number of people facing famine, according to the Global Report on Food Crises released Wednesday.

The U.N. report said 24 million more people faced an acute lack of food than in 2022, due to the sharp deterioration in food security, especially in the Gaza Strip and Sudan. The number of nations with food crises that are monitored has also been expanded.

Máximo Torero, chief economist for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, said 705,000 people in five countries are at Phase 5, the highest level, on a scale of hunger determined by international experts — the highest number since the global report began in 2016 and quadruple the number that year.

Over 80% of those facing imminent famine — 577,000 people — were in Gaza, he said. South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali each host many thousands also facing catastrophic hunger.

According to the report’s future outlook, around 1.1 million people in Gaza, where the Israel-Hamas war is now in its seventh month, and 79,000 in South Sudan are projected to be in Phase 5 and facing famine by July.

It said conflict will also continue to drive food insecurity in Haiti, where gangs control large portions of the capital.

Additionally, while the El Nino phenomenon peaked in early 2024, “its full impact on food security – including flooding and poor rain in parts of east Africa and drought in southern Africa, especially Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe – are like to manifest throughout the year.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the report “a roll call of human failings,” and that “in a world of plenty, children are starving to death.”

“The conflicts erupting over the past 12 months compound a dire global situation,” he wrote in the report’s foreword.

Guterres highlighted the conflict in the Gaza Strip, as the enclave holds the highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger. There is also the year-old conflict in Sudan, which has created the world’s largest internal displacement crisis “with atrocious impacts on hunger and nutrition,” he added.

According to the report, over 36 million people in 39 countries and territories are facing an acute hunger emergency, a step below the famine level in Phase 4, with more than a third in Sudan and Afghanistan. It’s an increase of a million people from 2022, the report said.

Arif Husain, the U.N. World Food Program’s chief economist, said every year since 2016 the numbers of people acutely food insecure have gone up, and they are now more than double the numbers before the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the report looks at 59 countries, he said the target is to get data from 73 countries where there are people who are acutely food insecure.

Secretary-General Guterres called for an urgent response to the report’s findings that addresses the underlying causes of acute hunger and malnutrition while transforming the systems that supply food. Funding is also not keeping pace with the needs, he stressed.

“We must have the funding, and we also must have the access,” WFP’s Husain said, stressing that both “go hand-in-hand” and are essential to tackle acute food insecurity.

The report is the flagship publication of the Food Security Information Network and is based on a collaboration of 16 partners including U.N. agencies, regional and multinational bodies, the European Union, the U.S. Agency for International Development, technical organizations and others.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — It looks like the third time is the charm as the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival prepares, again, for The Rolling Stones to perform.

The festival, which spans two weekends, is set to open Thursday with dozens of acts playing daily on 14 stages spread throughout the historic Fair Grounds race course. The Stones play next Thursday, May 2, tickets for which have long been sold out.

In 2019, festival organizers thought they had landed the legendary rock band, but the appearance was canceled because lead singer Mick Jagger had heart surgery. They tried again in 2021, but a surge in COVID-19 cases ultimately forced the fest to cancel.

Now, says festival producer Quint Davis, “It’s gonna be special.”

This will be the first time the Stones play Jazz Fest.

Opening day acts include rock bands Widespread Panic and The Beach Boys, reggae artist Stephen Marley and jazz vocalist John Boutte.

“The talent is great, the weather is projected to be good and people’s expectations are going to be met,” Davis said.

Blue skies, sunshine and temperatures in the 80s were forecast for opening day Thursday. Similar weather was expected for the rest of the first weekend, which runs through Sunday and showcases performances by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Jon Batiste, country megastar Chris Stapleton, R&B singer Fantasia, rock band Heart, Cajun fiddler Amanda Shaw and The Cute Guys, jazz pianist Patrice Rushen, and blues and folk artist Ruthie Foster.

Anticipation for the Stones’ performance is palpable, Davis said.

“All I’m hearing is ‘How can I get a ticket?’” he said of fans trying to see the marquee performance. “Unfortunately for some, that day sold out in like a day-and-a-half after tickets went on sale. I think people have just waited so long for this.”

The Rolling Stones in October released “ Hackney Diamonds,” their first album of original material since 2005 and their first without drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021. Though he hasn’t seen a set list, Davis said fans can expect to hear a mix of greatest hits and new releases. No special guests are expected to perform with the Rolling Stones, but Davis said “never say never.”

“Just expect euphoria,” he said laughing. “I think maybe we’re going to need some ambulances on site because people are going to spontaneously combust from the excitement. And, they’re playing in a daylight event. They’re gonna be able to make eye contact with the audience. That’s going to create a really special bond.”

Acts on the festival’s 14 stages usually play simultaneously beginning when gates open at 11 a.m. and continuing until the music ends at 7 p.m. But the other stages will shut down next week when the Stones take the stage.

“We didn’t want to have 13 empty stages and no people in front of them when the Stones start singing favorites like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,'” Davis said. “Everyone who bought a ticket for that day primarily bought one to see The Stones.”

Davis said tickets for the festival’s other days remain available and can be purchased online through their website.

Much of Jazz Fest celebrates the Indigenous music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana but the music encompasses nearly every style imaginable: blues, R&B, gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, folk, Latin, rock, rap, contemporary and traditional jazz, country, bluegrass and everything in between.

Colombia’s rhythms, from music to dance and food, also will be highlighted this year as part of the festival’s cultural exchange. Close to 200 Colombian artists are scheduled to participate, including headliners Bomba Estéreo on Saturday, ChocQuibTown’s lead singer Goyo in a guest appearance with local band ÌFÉ on Sunday, and salsa legends Grupo Niche closing the celebration on May 5.

And don’t forget the food. During the festival, food available on site includes crawfish bread, pecan catfish meuniere and catfish almondine, cochon de lait and turducken po-boys, boudin, crawfish étouffée, jambalaya, crawfish Monica and shrimp and grits.

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik is no stranger to navigating complex international issues, having worked at some of the world’s most prominent global financial institutions.

At the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for example, she tackled both the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring.

It remains to be seen, however, if her experience with world conflicts has sufficiently equipped her to navigate the thorny challenges she faces amid ongoing student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

“The reason you protest is to call attention to an issue,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. “And you do that by challenging the normal order of things. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a tension to be managed.”

The task before her — to balance the demands of students, faculty and politicians — is also a reflection of just how complex governing universities has become in this day and age, when college footprints have grown ever larger, observers say. And it echoes the experience of a growing number of university leaders who, like Shafik, come from nonacademic backgrounds.

Thus far, it seems no one is happy with Shafik’s responses to the protests that began last week at Columbia.

Her decision to ask New York City police to intervene, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 protesters, only served to motivate the demonstrators, who quickly regrouped — and to inspire other students at campuses around the country.

Shafik initially appeared to have weathered the grilling by Republican lawmakers who have expressed growing concern about antisemitism on college campuses. She struck a more conciliatory tone before the House Education and Workforce Committee than the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who were forced to step down after they were widely criticized for emphasizing free speech protections during their appearances before the same panel.

But Columbia’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors responded angrily to her congressional testimony, accusing her of capitulating to demands from lawmakers who they said made “slanderous assaults” on faculty and students. The AAUP submitted a motion of censure against Shafik. While it does not call for her resignation and is largely symbolic, it reflects the intensity of anger on campus toward her actions.

And now lawmakers are piling on again.

Republicans in New York’s delegation to the U.S. House on Monday wrote a letter urging Shafik to resign, saying she had failed to provide a safe learning environment in recent days as “anarchy has engulfed the campus.” During a visit to Columbia on Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called for Shafik to resign “if she cannot bring order to this chaos.”

In a written statement to Congress preceding her in-person testimony, Shafik described a childhood in Egypt and then in the Southeast as schools were desegregating, saying those experiences gave her the skills necessary “to engage with and learn from people with a wide array of backgrounds and experience overcoming discrimination firsthand.”

But that may not be enough; Shafik’s position at Columbia also appears to require a fair amount of political finesse.

It’s not only that she must try to balance principles of free speech and academic freedom with creating a safe environment on campus. Like other college presidents these days, she also is charged with balancing the pillars of shared governance between the faculty, the board and the administration, said Katherine Cho, assistant professor of higher education at Loyola University Chicago.

“Oftentimes, all three groups have different ideas of what the college is and how well the president is doing their job … and the president might have a different definition of how they think that they’re successful,” Cho said.

When she arrived at Columbia last year, Shafik was the first woman to take on the role of president and one of several women newly appointed to take the reins at Ivy League institutions.

Her experience in finance, rather than academia, puts her in line with more and more university leaders who come from nonfaculty backgrounds.

After obtaining her master’s degree at the London School of Economics, she went on to earn a doctorate at Oxford University. She rose through the ranks at the World Bank, eventually becoming the bank’s youngest-ever vice president.

Shafik also worked at the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, followed by stints at the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, before taking over the leadership of the London School of Economics.

At the time of Shafik’s appointment, Columbia Board of Trustees chair Jonathan Lavine described her as a leader who deeply understood “the academy and the world beyond it.”

“What set Minouche apart as a candidate,” Lavine said in a statement, “is her unshakable confidence in the vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems.”

Shafik also framed her international experience as foundational to her leadership of Columbia in her testimony to lawmakers.

“These experiences have shown me that education is the single most powerful tool to make our communities and our world better,” she said in her written statement. “And, amid these challenging times, I believe it is important for the Columbia community to realize the powerful impact of our core educational mission.”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Coming off a robust end to 2023, the U.S. economy is thought to have extended its surprisingly healthy streak at the start of this year, with consumers still spending freely despite the pressure of high interest rates.

The Commerce Department is expected to report Thursday that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — grew at a slow but still-decent 2.2% annual pace from January through March, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

Some economists envision a stronger expansion than that. A forecasting model issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta points to a first-quarter annual pace of 2.7%, propelled by a 3.3% increase in consumer spending, the principal driver of economic growth.

Either way, the economy’s growth is widely expected to have decelerated from the vigorous 3.4% annual pace of October through December. The slowdown reflects, in large part, the much higher borrowing rates for home and auto loans, credit cards and many business loans that have resulted from the 11 interest rate hikes the Federal Reserve imposed in its drive to tame inflation.

Even so, the United States has continued to outpace the rest of the world’s advanced economies. The International Monetary Fund has projected that the world’s largest economy will grow 2.7% for all of 2024, up from 2.5% last year and more than double the growth the IMF expects this year for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Americans, who emerged from the pandemic recession with plenty of money in reserve, have been spending energetically, a significant trend because consumers account for roughly 70% of the nation’s GDP. From February to March, retail sales surged 0.7% — almost double what economists had expected.

Businesses have been pouring money into factories, warehouses and other buildings, encouraged by federal incentives to manufacture computer chips and green technology in the United States. On the other hand, their spending on equipment has been weak. And as imports outpace exports, international trade is also thought to have been a drag on the economy’s first-quarter growth.

Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, cautioned last week that the “flipside” of strong U.S. economic growth was that it was ”taking longer than expected” for inflation to reach the Fed’s 2% target, although price pressures have sharply slowed from their mid-2022 peak.

Inflation flared up in the spring of 2021 as the economy rebounded with unexpected speed from the COVID-19 recession, causing severe supply shortages. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 made things significantly worse by inflating prices for the energy and grains the world depends on.

The Fed responded by aggressively raising its benchmark rate between March 2022 and July 2023. Despite widespread predictions of a recession, the economy has proved unexpectedly resilient. Economic growth has come in at a 2% annual rate for six straight quarters — seven, if forecasters are correct about the January-March GDP growth.

Hiring so far this year is even stronger than it was in 2023. And unemployment has remained below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.

“Overall, US economic activity remains resilient, powered by consumers’ ongoing ability and willingness to spend,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm EY. ”A robust labor market, along with positive real wage growth, continues to provide a solid foundation.”

Inflation, the main source of Americans’ discontent about the economy, has slowed from 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.5%. But progress has stalled lately. Republican critics of President Joe Biden have sought to pin the blame for high prices on the president and use it as a cudgel to derail his re-election bid. Polls show that despite a healthy job market, a near-record-high stock market and the sharp slowdown in inflation, many Americans blame Biden for high prices.

Though the Fed’s policymakers signaled last month that they expect to cut rates three times this year, they have lately signaled that they’re in no hurry to reduce rates in the face of continued inflationary pressure. Now, a majority of Wall Street traders don’t expect them to start until the Fed’s September meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

___

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A memorial at the National Cathedral in Washington on Thursday will honor the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza earlier this month.

José Andrés, the celebrity chef and philanthropist behind the Washington-based World Central Kitchen disaster relief group, is expected to speak at the celebration of life service, and famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma will perform, organizers said.

The Biden administration said Thursday that Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, and U.S. Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell would be among senior administration figures attending.

The aid workers were killed April 1 when a succession of Israeli armed drones ripped through vehicles in their convoy as they left one of World Central Kitchen’s warehouses on a food delivery mission. Those who died were Palestinian Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha; Britons John Chapman, James Kirby and James Henderson; dual U.S.-Canadian citizen Jacob Flickinger; Australian Lalzawmi Frankcom; and Polish citizen Damiam Sobol.

After an unusually swift investigation, Israel said the military officials involved in the strike had violated policy by acting based on a single grainy photo that one officer had contended — incorrectly — showed one of the seven workers was armed. The Israeli military dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others.

The aid workers, whose trip had been coordinated with Israeli officials, are among more than 220 humanitarian workers killed in the six-month-old Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nations. That includes at least 30 killed in the line of duty.

The international prominence and popularity of Andres and his nonprofit work galvanized widespread outrage over the killings of the World Central Kitchen workers. The slayings intensified demands from the Biden administration and others that Israel’s military change how it operates in Gaza to spare aid workers and Palestinian civilians at large, who are facing a humanitarian crisis and desperately need aid from relief organizations as the U.N. warns of looming famine.

World Central Kitchen, along with several other humanitarian aid agencies, suspended work in Gaza after the attack. “We haven’t given up,” World Central Kitchen spokesperson Linda Roth said last week. “We are in funeral mode right now.”

Religious leaders of a range of faiths are set to participate in Thursday’s services. Funerals were held earlier in the workers’ home countries.

___

AP writer Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

Action in courts and state capitals around the U.S. this week have made it clear again: The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion did not settle the issue.

One iteration of the issue was back before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday for the second time in a month.

Meanwhile, Arizona lawmakers took a step toward repealing a near-total ban before enforcement can begin; California’s governor pitched providing an outlet to abortion providers and patients from neighboring Arizona if that ban takes take effect; and Tennessee moved closer to criminalizing helping a minor go out of state for an abortion without parental consent.

Here’s what to know about the latest developments.

Three Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in the Arizona House to advance a bill repealing an abortion ban that was first put on the books in 1864, decades before Arizona became a state.

Democrats, including Gov. Katie Hobbs, had been pushing for a repeal since the Arizona Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that found the ban can be enforced since Roe v. Wade’s overturning. Republicans had used procedural moves to block a vote on a repeal, which appears to have enough support to pass the state Senate.

The state’s attorney general, also a Democrat, said enforcement won’t begin until at least June 8.

There’s been pressure on Arizona lawmakers to repeal from the state’s governor, President Joe Biden, and the governor of neighboring state California. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced a measure that would allow doctors from Arizona to provide abortions for Arizona patients in California.

Under the proposed California legislation, Arizona providers could work in California without additional licenses though November.

Fourteen other states are already enforcing bans on abortion in all stages of pregnancy. But California has not proposed this kind of help for any of them, possibly because none shares a border with it.

At least one ballot measure on abortion could be before Arizona voters in November in the political battleground state.

The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade less than two years ago, seemed skeptical about the Biden administration’s contention in arguments Wednesday that Idaho should be forced to allow abortion during medical emergencies.

The administration argued that a federal law that requires care hospitals that accept Medicaid provide emergency care even when patients cannot pay means that hospitals must also provide abortions in emergency situations when a patient’s health is at serious risk.

Idaho’s exceptions are narrower than that, allowing abortion only when the woman’s life is at risk.

It was the second time in a month that abortion was before the high court. It’s also considering whether to roll back the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approvals for a drug that’s often used in combination with a second drug for medication abortions — which are now the most common method of abortion in the U.S.

Rulings on both cases are expected by June.

With a state Senate vote Wednesday, Tennessee became the second state to give full legislative passage to a measure banning taking a minor out of the state without parental consent to obtain an abortion.

If Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signs it into law, it would impact only the part of the journey in Tennessee — not the actual crossing of a state line.

Abortion is banned in all stages of pregnancy in Tennessee and five of the eight states it borders.

Idaho passed a similar law last year, but a court has put enforcement on hold because of a legal challenge. A Tennessee law would also likely also face court challenges.

California’s governor has also fought against this measure and others like it that were proposed in other states, launching an ad campaign against them earlier this year.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Monday signed a bill making her state at least the 14th with a law intended to protect those who provide abortion for out-of-state patients from legal action in those other states.

Maine’s law will take effect in the summer.

It’s a reminder that abortion policy has flowed in two directions since the end of Roe v. Wade in 2022: Most GOP-dominated states have sought to tighten access, while most Democrat-controlled ones have moved to protect or expand it.

Like several of the others, Maine’s measure also applies to gender-affirming health care. In addition to imposing abortion bans or restrictions, most Republican-controlled states have also adopted bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

NEW YORK (AP) — A reluctant Donald Trump will be back in a New York City courtroom Thursday as his hush money trial resumes at the same time that the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in Washington over whether he should be immune from prosecution for actions he took during his time as president.

Jurors will hear more witness testimony from a veteran tabloid publisher, and Trump faces a looming decision over whether he violated a gag order imposed by the judge. But he had asked to skip out on his criminal trial for the day so he could sit in on the high court’s special session, where the justices will weigh whether he can be prosecuted over his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

That request was denied by New York state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the trial on the hush money scheme that was meant to prevent harmful stories about Trump from surfacing in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

“Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly appreciate why your client would want to be there, but a trial in New York Supreme Court … is also a big deal,” Merchan told Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche last week when he nixed the idea.

Though 200 miles apart — and entirely separate cases — the proceedings Thursday were jumbled together in one big legal and political puzzle that has implications not just for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but for the American presidency writ large.

In both instances, Trump is trying to get himself out of legal jeopardy as he makes another bid for the White House. But the outcome of the Supreme Court case will have lasting implications for future presidents, because the justices will be answering the never-before-asked question of “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

The high court’s decision may not impact the New York City case, which hinges mostly on Trump’s conduct as a presidential candidate in 2016 — not as a president. He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments meant to stifle embarrassing stories from surfacing. It is the first of four criminal cases against Trump to go before a jury.

The New York trial resumes after a scheduled day off with more testimony from the Manhattan District Attorney’s first witness, David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime friend of Trump’s who pledged to be his “eyes and ears” during his 2016 presidential campaign.

In testimony earlier this week, Pecker explained how he and the tabloid parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump, including a porn actor’s claim of an extramarital sexual encounter years earlier.

Pecker traced the origins of their relationship to a 1980s meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and said the friendship bloomed alongside the success of the real estate developer’s TV show “The Apprentice” and the program’s subsequent celebrity version.

Pecker recounted how he promised then-candidate Trump that he would help suppress harmful stories and even arranged to purchase the silence of a doorman.

“I made the decision to purchase the story because of the potential embarrassment it had to the campaign and to Mr. Trump,” Pecker said of the doorman’s story that his publication later determined wasn’t true.

Judge Merchan may also decide whether or not to hold Trump in contempt and fine him for violating a gag order that barred the GOP leader from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and others connected to the case.

Some of Trump’s recent online posts in question included one describing prosecution witnesses Michael Cohen, his former attorney, and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress, as “sleaze bags” and another repeating a false claim that liberal activists had tried to infiltrate the jury.

Merchan criticized Blanche this week for excusing the posts as Trump simply responding to political attacks and commenting on his experience with the criminal justice system.

“When your client is violating the gag order I expect more than one word,” Merchan said.

A conviction by the jury in the hush money probe would not preclude Trump from becoming president again, but because it is a state case, he would not be able to pardon himself if found guilty. The charge is punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if the judge would seek to put him behind bars.

The Supreme Court’s arguments, meanwhile, are related to charges in federal court in Washington, where Trump has been accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. The case stems from Trump’s attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim immunity for actions that, prosecutors say, illegally sought to interfere with the election results.

The high court is moving faster than usual in taking up the case, though not as quickly as special counsel Jack Smith wanted, raising questions about whether there will be time to hold a trial before the November election, if the justices agree with lower courts that Trump can be prosecuted.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. births fell last year, resuming a long national slide.

A little under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, according to provisional statistics released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 76,000 fewer than the year before and the lowest one-year tally since 1979.

U.S. births were slipping for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then dropped 4% from 2019 to 2020. They ticked up for two straight years after that, an increase experts attributed, in part, to pregnancies that couples had put off amid the pandemic’s early days.

But “the 2023 numbers seem to indicate that bump is over and we’re back to the trends we were in before,” said Nicholas Mark, a University of Wisconsin researcher who studies how social policy and other factors influence health and fertility.

Birth rates have long been falling for teenagers and younger women, but rising for women in their 30s and 40s — a reflection of women pursuing education and careers before trying to start families, experts say. But last year, birth rates fell for all women younger than 40, and were flat for women in their 40s.

Mark called that development surprising and said “there’s some evidence that not just postponement is going on.”

Rates fell across almost all racial and ethnic groups.

The numbers released Thursday are based on more than 99.9% of the birth certificates filed in 2023, but they are provisional and the final birth count can change as they are finalized. For example, the provisional 2022 birth count appeared to show a dip, but ended up being higher than 2021’s tally when the analysis was completed.

There could be an adjustment to the 2023 data, but it won’t be enough to erase the “sizeable” decline seen in the provisional numbers, said the CDC’s Brady Hamilton, the new report’s first author.

Experts have wondered how births might be affected by the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to ban or restrict abortion. Experts estimate that nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, so limits to abortion access could affect the number of births.

The new report indicates that the decision didn’t lead to a national increase in births, but the researchers didn’t analyze birth trends in individual states or dissect data among all demographic groups.

The new data does raise the possibility of an impact on teens. The U.S. teen birth rate has been falling decades, but the decline has been less dramatic in recent years, and the drop seems to have stopped for teen girls ages 15 to 17.

“That could be Dobbs,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics. Or it could be related to changes in sex education or access to contraception, he added.

Whatever the case, the flattening of birth rates for high school students is worrisome and indicates that “whatever we’re doing for kids in middle and high school is faltering,” Santelli said.

More findings from the report:

—From 2022 to 2023, the provisional number of births fell 5% for American Indian and Alaska Native women, 4% for Black women, 3% for white women and 2% for Asian American women. Births rose 1% for Hispanic women.

—The percentage of babies born preterm held about steady.

—The cesarean section birth rate rose again, to 32.4% of births. Some experts worry that C-sections are done more often than medically necessary.

—The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it’s been sliding, and in 2023 dropped to about 1.6, the lowest rate on record.

Surveys suggest many U.S. couples would prefer to have two or more kids but see housing, job security and the cost of child care as significant obstacles to having more children.

“There’s something getting in the way of them being able to achieve those goals,” Mark said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WASHINGTON (AP) — On the left and right, Supreme Court justices seem to agree on a basic truth about the American system of government: No one is above the law, not even the president.

“The law applies equally to all persons, including a person who happens for a period of time to occupy the Presidency,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in 2020.

Less than a year earlier, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then a federal trial judge, wrote, “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings.”

But former President Donald Trump and his legal team are putting that foundational belief to the test on Thursday when the high court takes up Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander-in-chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

Lower courts so far have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C. And even if the high court resoundingly follows suit, the timing of its decision may be as important as the outcome. That’s because Trump has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.

The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, which is roughly four months before the election.

The election interference conspiracy case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump, the first former president to face prosecution. He already is standing trial in New York on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.

Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties.

Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.

“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.

The lack of apparent support on the court for the sort of blanket immunity Trump seeks has caused commentators to speculate about why the court has taken up the case in the first place.

Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”

The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.

But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.

“If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election. Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree,” Roosevelt said.

The court has several options for deciding the case. The justices could reject Trump’s arguments and unfreeze the case so that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan can resume trial preparations, which she has indicated may last up to three months.

The court could end Smith’s prosecution by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for official acts they took while in office.

It also might spell out when former presidents are shielded for prosecution and either declare that Trump’s alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so that she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial.