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NASA astronaut Jonny Kim flew home from the International Space Station packed tight with two Roscosmos cosmonauts, their Soyuz spacecraft landing Tuesday in the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan to complete an eight-month stay in space.

Kim launched to to the station back on April 8 with cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky aboard the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft and spent nearly 245 days in space, as part of Expeditions 72 and 73 on board the station.

It was Kim’s first spaceflight, and he was the penultimate member of his 11-member NASA astronaut class, known as The Turtles, to make it to space. The final member, Zena Cardman, remains on board the station having flown up as a member of Crew-11, which isn’t slated to return until early 2026.

Kim and his Soyuz crewmates landed at 12:03 a.m. EST (10:03 a.m. local time) in near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan having departed the station a little more than three hours earlier.

Their tiny capsule, with a snug fit for the three humans, came in for a parachute-assisted touchdown but tipped to one side before recovery crews were able to converge on the spacecraft and help the three space travelers out. read more

By KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — Google faces fresh antitrust scrutiny from European Union regulators, who opened an investigation Tuesday into the company’s use of online content for its artificial intelligence models and services.

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The latest regulatory flexing by Brussels risks antagonizing President Donald Trump’s administration, though EU officials denied they were singling out American Big Tech companies.

The European Commission, which is the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said it’s examining whether Google has breached competition rules through its use of content from web publishers and material uploaded to YouTube for AI purposes. read more

By PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. job openings barely budged in October, coming in at 7.7 million with ongoing uncertainty over the direction of the American economy.

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The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 7.67 million vacancies in October, close to September’s 7.66 million.

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which was delayed by the extended government shutdown, also showed that the layoffs rose to almost 1.9 million, most since January 2023. And the number of people quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in the labor market — fell in October, suggesting that “businesses seeking to control labor costs will have to pivot to active layoffs, lifting unemployment, rather than rely on natural attrition,” Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon, wrote in a commentary. read more

MARGARET GILES and CHRISTINE BENZ of Morningstar

As 2025 winds down, here are some moves to help you finish the year strong financially. Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning, Christine Benz, discusses strategies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Benefits of Rebalancing Your Portfolio

Q: What are the benefits of portfolio rebalancing, and who most needs to do it?

A: The main benefit of rebalancing is risk reduction. You trim securities that have performed really well, presumably ones with higher valuations today. And you redirect the money into securities where returns have lagged, but valuations might be more attractive. It’s also important to rebalance on an ongoing basis as you get closer to your spending target.

As retirement approaches, we need to spend that money, so you want to de-risk your portfolio and build safer asset reserves. Investors age 50 and above really need to take notice of rebalancing. It’s time to take some winnings and build safer assets that you could access if you needed to spend from your portfolio. Moving money into high-quality bonds removes risk and takes advantage of current attractive yields. read more

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting on Tuesday as Wall Street waits to hear what the Federal Reserve will say on Wednesday about where interest rates are heading.

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The S&P 500 rose 0.1%, coming off just its second loss in the last 11 days, and pulled closer to its all-time high set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 89 points, or 0.2%, as of 12:49 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.

Exxon Mobil was one of the strongest forces lifting the market. It climbed 2.5% after increasing its forecast for profit over the next five years, thanks in part to strength for its fields in the Permian basin in the United States and off Guyana’s shore. read more