DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The European Union will not renew a fishing agreement with Senegal that has been criticized by many Senegalese, the EU delegation in the West African country announced Tuesday.
The decision comes after the EU identified Senegal as a “non-cooperating country" in the fight against illegal fishing earlier this year, citing "failures in monitoring, control and surveillance systems" on Senegalese ships in extraterritorial waters as well as on foreign vessels in the port of Dakar, the capital.
“Awaiting encouraging developments, the agreement between the EU and Senegal will not be renewed,” the statement said. European vessels will have to leave Senegalese waters when the agreement expires on Sunday, and Senegal will no longer receive any financial contribution under the agreement.
There was no immediate response from Senegal's government.
The current agreement signed in 2019 allows European vessels to fish in Senegalese waters but has been criticized in the country where fishing stocks have been depleting for more than a decade due to overfishing.
One in six people in Senegal work in the fisheries sector, according to the United States Agency for International Development.
But many local fishermen say they can’t compete with the foreign industrial trawlers and barely catch enough fish to make a living.
The EU has said the agreement's impact on overfishing is minimal. It has said catches by European vessels represent less than 1% of the total catches declared by all fleets in Senegalese waters over the last five years.
The renegotiation of the EU-Senegal fishing agreement was a key campaign promise of Senegal's President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was elected in March. In May, he announced an audit of the fishing sector and of the EU-Senegal agreement. The results have not been released.
FILE - Fishing boats line the shore of Bargny beach, some 35 kilomters (22 miles) east of Dakar, Senegal, April 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street's weak end to last year appears to be carrying into 2025, and U.S. stock indexes are slipping on Thursday.
The S&P 500 was down 0.5% in Thursday afternoon trading and on track to extend the four-day losing streak that dimmed the close of its stellar 2024. The main gauge of Wall Street’s health lost a gain of 0.9% from early in the morning and is heading toward its longest losing streak since April.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 223 points, or 0.5%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, after an early gain of 360 points disappeared. The Nasdaq composite was 0.6% lower.
Tesla helped drag the market lower after disclosing it delivered fewer vehicles in the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The electric-vehicle company’s stock slumped 6.7%.
Tesla was one of the big winners of 2024, particularly after Donald Trump’s Election Day victory raised speculation that Elon Musk’s close relationship with the president-elect could help the company. But critics have been warning that prices across the stock market have run too high, too quickly and are at risk of a pullback.
Consider a measure tracked by Bank of America of how heavily Wall Street analysts are recommending stocks, which recently hit its highest level since early 2022, according to strategist Savita Subramanian. She says the measure has been a reliable contrarian indicator in the past, and it’s only a bit shy of triggering a signal to sell for those who are leery when much of Wall Street herds in the same direction.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, H.B. Fuller sank 7.4% after the seller of adhesives, sealants and other specialty chemical products said it’s recently seen a slowdown in sales to a number of its customer categories.
On the winning side of Wall Street were companies tied to the energy industry after prices rose for crude oil and natural gas.
Constellation Energy jumped 6.2% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after announcing it won more than $1 billion in combined contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration to supply power and perform energy savings and conservation measures.
Some Big Tech stocks also helped limit the market's losses. Nvidia, whose chips are powering the world’s move into artificial-intelligence technology, rose 2.1% after following up its nearly 240% surge in 2023 with a better than 170% jump last year.
Some investors and analysts are counting on the AI rush to continue, even though critics say it’s made stock prices too expensive. As the calendar flips to a new year, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says it’s the ”same tech playbook in year 3 of this tech AI driven bull market,” for example.
Some pages of the playbook do seem to be changing. Investors have ratcheted back expectations for how many cuts to interest rates the Federal Reserve may deliver in 2025, for example.
The economy has held up remarkably well despite the high rates brought by the Fed in recent years to stifle inflation. But inflation has recently appeared to become more resistant to slowing the last bit to the Fed's 2% target, and Trump's pushing for tariffs and other policies have raised worries about potentially more upward pressure on prices.
That pushed the Fed to say recently it will likely deliver fewer of the economy-juicing cuts to interest rates in 2025 than it had earlier thought.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.57%, where it was late Tuesday, after a report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected. It’s the latest signal that the job market remains solid.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell 2.2% in Hong Kong and 2.7% in Shanghai after a survey of factory managers showed Chinese activity expanding at a slower pace in December. New orders, employment and business sentiment weakened.
Upbeat talk by Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a New Year’s address did little to raise optimism among investors who are hoping for more aggressive action to support the world’s second-largest economy and boost stock prices.
“We have adopted a full range of policies to make solid gains in pursuing high-quality development. China’s economy has rebounded and is on an upward trajectory,” Xi said in a New Year message, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Stock indexes were mostly higher in Europe, while Japan's market remained closed.
AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.
FILE - The New York Stock Exchange is shown in New York's Financial District on Dec. 31, 2024. American flags flew at half-staff there following the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
FILE - People pass the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
FILE - Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
FILE - A sign outside the New York Stock Exchange marks the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets, Dec. 12, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
