Oil drops,

Dow surges

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices plunged below $95 per barrel, and stock markets surged worldwide after President Donald Trump pulled back from his threat of devastating attacks against Iran.

The S&P 500 leaped 2.5% Wednesday after Trump announced a two-week ceasefire. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,325 points, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.8%.

To be sure, stock prices are still below where they were before the war. And oil prices are still higher because the threat remains that the war could continue. Prices for both stocks and oil pared big moves as trading progressed Wednesday.

Heuermann

pleads guilty

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A Long Island architect has pleaded guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings. Rex Heuermann entered the pleas on Wednesday in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives.

His decision brings finality to a case that bedeviled investigators, tantalized the public and spawned true-crime documentaries, podcasts and a Hollywood movie. Authorities say Heuermann killed the women over a 17-year span. Many of them were sex workers whose deaths received little attention until their remains were found buried together along an isolated beach highway.

Heuermann faces life in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.

Sheriff ordered

to save ballots

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The California Supreme Court has ordered a Republican county sheriff who seized more than half a million 2025 election ballots to pause his probe into election fraud allegations while the judges review the legal challenge against it.

The Wednesday order came after California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, last month asked the court to step in. A voting rights group is also challenging the ballot seizure. The dispute started earlier this year and escalated last month when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.

‘Ketamine Queen’

sentenced

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal judge has handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling “Friends” star Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him in a 2023 overdose. Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett sentenced 42-year-old Jasveen Sangha on Wednesday.

Sangha is the third defendant to be sentenced of the five people who have pleaded guilty in connection with the 54-year-old “Friends” star’s death. Prosecutors had recommend a 15-year sentence for Sangha. They cast her in court filings as a “Ketamine Queen” who had an elaborate drug operation catering to high-end clients.