Business Highlights

The Associated Press

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Relief over Spain bank rescue fades quickly

NEW YORK (AP) ⿿ A burst of enthusiasm over a rescue of Spanish banks melted within hours on Monday as investor anxiety grew on both sides of the Atlantic about the troubled finances of Europe.

On Wall Street, stocks opened sharply higher but sank all day. Selling accelerated in the last hour of trading, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 142 points.

More alarming, bond investors signaled that they are less confident about lending money to the governments of both Spain and Italy, which investors fear will be next to seek help.

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Youthful rebel targets Greek establishment

ATHENS, Greece (AP) ⿿ Alexis Tsipras has rarely been on good terms with Greece's establishment.

During high school, he was a leader in a student protest against education reform that shook the conservative government of the early 1990s, appearing on television as a confident 16-year-old spokesman for the movement.

Two decades later, he's rattling Europe and the world economy as he campaigns to become Greece's next leader with a simple if startling pledge: to tear up a multibillion-euro international agreement that bailed out Greece as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

The extreme left-wing Tsipras believes the budget-cutting imposed on Greece, which is suffering through its fifth year of recession and an unemployment rate nearly 22 percent, should be cancelled. Global financial markets are on tenterhooks over a possible victory by the tough-talking 37-year-old, who dresses casually and has a portrait of the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara on his office wall.

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Apple kicks Google Maps off iPhone, adds Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ⿿ Apple is kicking an important Google application off its iPhone and buddying up with Facebook rather than Google's social network, as it distances itself from a bitter rival in the phone arena.

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