内容摘要：AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A push in Texas to ban social media accounts for children under 18 has failed after lawmakers did not take a key vote on creating one of the nation’s toughest restrictions aimed at keeping minors off platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A push in Texas to ban social media accounts for children under 18 has failed after lawmakers did not take a key vote on creating one of the nation’s toughest restrictions aimed at keeping minors off platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Albert Stumm writes about wellness, food and travel. Find his work at https://www.albertstumm.comspiked to its highest level for more than a year in April amid a raft of higher domestic bills, such as energy and water, official figures showed Wednesday.

The Office for National Statistics said that its key measure of inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, rose by 3.5% in the year to April, up from 2.6% in March.April’s rate was the highest since January 2024 and above expectations for a more modest increase to 3.3%.The scale of the rise was also the largest since October 2022, at the height of the energy crisis in the wake of

Economists had anticipated a sizeable increase as April saw hefty annual price rises for an array of household bills, as well as the impact of higher taxes on businesses and a sizeable increase in the minimum wage.Inflation is widely expected to stay above 3% for the rest of the year, which could rein in expectations of further interest rate reductions from the Bank of England, whose target for inflation is 2%.

On Tuesday, the bank’s chief economist, Huw Pill, said that borrowing rates have been cut too quickly, in a sign that he’s concerned about underlying inflation pressures.

Since it started cutting borrowing costs last August from the 16-year high of 5.25%, the bank has proceeded on a gradual basis by lowering its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point every three months. Earlier this month,A top Hamas official, Bassem Naim, accused Israel of disagreeing with agreed-upon provisions and alleged a “complete bias toward the other side” that he said violates the fairness of mediation.

“We want the bloodshed to stop,” Motasim, a man from the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, said of the talks. ”I swear to God, we are tired.”Palestinians in Gaza blocked and offloaded 77 food trucks, the U.N. World Food Program said, as hunger

of the territory. The WFP said the aid, mostly flour, was taken before the trucks could reach their destination.A witness in the southern city of Khan Younis, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told the AP the U.N. convoy was stopped at a makeshift roadblock and offloaded by desperate civilians in their thousands.