NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are skidding Tuesday as weak results from retailers and mounting losses for big technology companies push the market back into the red for the year. Energy companies are slumping because of a 7 percent plunge in the price of oil. Crude is on track for its biggest loss in three years. Industrial companies are also dropping as the downward momentum in stocks carries into a second day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 3.7 percent in the last two days, and the S&P 500 is off 3.4 percent. The Nasdaq, heavily populated with technology stocks, is off close to 5 percent. As of 3 p.m., the S&P is down nearly 10 percent from the peak it reached in September. Investors are measuring a number of headwinds and increasingly playing it safe. The global eco...
Colts Neck, NJ - Multiple people have perished in a fire at a mansion in Monmouth County. Video showed smoke pouring from the roof of the multi-floored structure in Colts Neck at firefighters battled the blaze. The house is surrounded by fields and has an adjacent swimming pool. The Monmouth County prosecutor’s office says the fire has taken multiple victims but didn’t specify how many. Firefighters responded to the house near Route 34 at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. Investigators from the prosecutor’s office are on the scene.
New York - Americans may need an extra helping of patience this Thanksgiving weekend, with the largest number of travelers in a decade expected to hit the road or board flights to celebrate with family and friends after a prosperous year for many. The weather could complicate the journey in many parts of the country, as bitter, record-breaking cold blankets much of the Northeast on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, and heavy rain in Northern California threatens to bring mudslides. Beginning on Tuesday, more than 54 million Americans are expected to travel 50 miles or more for the traditional feast, jamming highways, airports, railroads and waterways, according to the American Automobile Association, the largest U.S. automotive advocacy group. That would rank as the highest travel volume since...
CHICAGO (AP) — A man who fatally shot his ex-fiancee outside a Chicago hospital before killing two people inside the building was once kicked out of the city’s firefighting academy after threatening a female cadet, officials said Tuesday. Juan Lopez, who died following the shooting Monday at Mercy Hospital, was also the subject of a protection order request filed four years ago, and he legally purchased several guns in recent years, police said. It was unclear whether Lopez shot himself or was fatally shot by police. Four years ago, fire department officials learned of the threats to the cadet and told Lopez that he would be disciplined. He was dismissed after he went AWOL, fire department spokesman Larry Merritt said. Merritt did not have any details of the past threats. B...
Seoul - North Korea on Tuesday blew up some of its front-line guard posts as part of an agreement to ease tensions along its heavily fortified border with South Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said. In September, the Koreas’ militaries agreed at a leaders’ summit in Pyongyang to eventually dismantle all guard posts inside the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border. They later withdrew weapons and troops from 11 of their guard posts and decided to completely dismantle 10 of them by the end of November. Seoul’s Defense Ministry said it confirmed the dismantling of 10 North Korean guard posts on Tuesday. It said North Korean soldiers had used hammers to tear down parts of the guard posts ahead of Tuesday’s near-simultaneous demoliti...
Chicago - Chicago police have identified the gunman who killed three people at a hospital as 32-year-old Juan Lopez. Lopez also died. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says it’s unclear whether Lopez killed himself or was fatally shot by officers Monday at Mercy Hospital. He says it was a “disturbing crime scene.” The victims were Dr. Tamara O’Neal, pharmacy resident Dayna Less and Chicago Police Officer Samuel Jimenez. The shooting is being investigated as a domestic dispute between Lopez and O’Neal, who knew each other. Guglielmi says Jimenez didn’t typically work in the hospital area, but that the officer responded when he heard that shots were fired. He says it “speaks volumes about his character.”
Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have discovered new malware being used by the Kremlin-backed hacking group Fancy Bear. Cannon is a new early phase of a multi-stage attack — it communicates basic information with command and control servers and downloads new malware. The “cannon” malware uses email to communicate with its command and control server. It has only been observed in a single campaign. The malware was sent to government officials in North America, Europe and a former Soviet state, according to the Palo Alto Networks write-up. Read more at AXIOS.
New York - Two private equity owners of the iconic Toys R Us toy chain will be handing over a $20 million hardship fund to the thousands of former workers left jobless and without severance after the chain liquidated in June. The move by KKR and Bain Capital announced Tuesday is aimed at helping the 30,000 workers affected by the store closures and comes following efforts by worker-backed groups. The fund wasn’t legally required and the groups call the move “unprecedented” to help families caught in the crossfires of a slew of retail store closures and bankruptcies in a fast-changing retail industry. Workers are pushing to get an additional $55 million they believe they’re owed and are looking to other firms that had a stake in Toys R Us and that they believed pla...
New York - Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that a 50-year-old Brooklyn man was arraigned on two separate indictments for allegedly committing a string of six burglaries in Borough Park in September and October 2018, including breaking into two synagogues and a religious school. District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This defendant is allegedly a professional burglar whose crime spree violated the sanctity of religious institutions, among other places, from which he stole cash and religious items. We will now seek to hold him accountable.”The District Attorney identified the defendant as Charles Cajigas, 50, of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. He was arraigned yesterday before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice William Miller on two indictments in which he is charge...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says the U.S. will not levy additional punitive measures at this time against Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi (jah-MAHL' khahr-SHOHK'-jee). Trump said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. does not condone the killing of the U.S-based Saudi columnist, but that "foolishly" canceling $110 billion in arms sales — as some in Congress have suggested — would only mean that Saudi Arabia would go to other countries to acquire them. Trump says the king and crown prince of Saudi Arabia "vigorously deny" any knowledge of the planning and execution of the Oct. 2 murder of The Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. He says "it could well be that the crown prince had knowledge." Trump says "ma...
MALAKA, Gaza Strip (AP) — Atalla Fayoumi hobbles on crutches across the sunbaked plain near Israel’s perimeter fence in the Gaza Strip, gazing toward plumes of smoke that have begun rising from a clutch of burning tires in the distance. The 18-year-old Palestinian’s right leg was amputated after Israeli soldiers shot him here in April at one of the mass demonstrations against Israel’s long blockade of Gaza that are held every week. Yet he has kept returning to the protests — just like thousands of other desperate, unemployed men who feel they have nothing left to lose. Eight months after the demonstrations began, there appears to be no end to what has become a predictable routine that yields dozens of new casualties each week. Over the next few hours, Fayoum...
Noah’s Ark has been discovered on top of a mountain in Iran after petrified wooden beams were found on the summit, according to the latest conspiracy theories. Researchers from the Bible Archaeology, Search & Exploration Institute claim there is strong evidence that the ship is on the mountain of Takht-e-Suleiman. The BASE group says they found wood fragments at the 15,000-foot elevation and took the samples to be analyzed in a lab. Furthermore, they found microscopic sea life in a rock sample, which is normally found at the bottom of the ocean. Read more at NY POST.
Washington - Democrats called on Tuesday for an investigation into U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter and top White House adviser Ivanka Trump following reports that she repeatedly used a personal email account last year for government business. A White House review of Ivanka Trump’s email found she used her personal account up to 100 times to contact other Trump administration officials, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the review. Use of a personal account for government business could potentially violate a law requiring preservation of all presidential records. Representatives for the White House did not respond to a request for comment. President Trump, a Republican, repeatedly blasted his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 20...
Global markets tumbled Tuesday heading toward the Thanksgiving holiday as the weeks-long swoon in technology stocks deepened and dragged other sectors – including retail – with it. All three major U.S. indexes were likely to see their 2018 gains erased if the market decline holds through the session. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 450 points out of the gate. The Nasdaq composite continued to sell off as the technology majors powering the bull mark markets over the last year continue to sell off on fears of a slowdown. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is now firmly in correction territory and at a seven-month low. It is down 15 percent from its recent peak. A correction is considered a decline of 10 percent from its high. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock i...
Trump says he's taking no new punitive measures against Saudi Arabia over the killing of US-based Saudi columnist
Houston - A federal judge barred the Trump administration from refusing asylum to immigrants who cross the southern border illegally. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on Nov. 9 that said anyone who crossed the southern border between official ports of entry would be ineligible for asylum. As the first of several caravans of migrants have started arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump said an asylum ban was necessary to stop what he’s attacked as a national security threat. But in his ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar agreed with legal groups that immediately sued, arguing that U.S. immigration law clearly allows someone to seek asylum even if they enter the country between official ports of entry. “Whatever the scope of the President’s authori...
Washington - The Senate’s top Democrat asked the Justice Department’s watchdog on Tuesday to open an investigation into communications between acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and the White House. Sen. Charles Schumer wants the Justice Department’s inspector general to look into Whitaker’s communications beginning in 2017, when Whitaker was appointed chief of staff to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Whitaker was elevated to the top job after Sessions was ousted by President Donald Trump earlier this month. In a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Schumer, D-N.Y., said he wants inspector general’s investigators to look into whether Whitaker had access to confidential grand jury information in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russi...
Bucharest - Romania’s government said Tuesday that diplomat Mihnea Constanescu, praised internationally for his efforts to combat anti-Semitism, has died. He was 57. The foreign ministry said Constantinescu, who advised Romanian prime ministers from 1990-2012, died Sunday in Nice, France after a long illness. US-based Jewish rights group Simon Wiesenthal Center called Constantinescu one of the “great figures of our generation in the fight against anti-Semitism.” Constantinescu chaired the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016, contributing to the adoption of a working definition of anti-Semitism that year. Calin Popescu Tariceanu, premier from 2004 to 2008, described Constantinescu as “Romania’s best ever public servant.” He said his na...
In Breishis, Perek Lamed Bais, posuk yud alef Yaakov said,“Kotonti - I was not deserving of all the kindness of Hashem.” The Gemara in Meseches Taanis, daf chof, amud bais learns from this that a person should not place himself in a place of danger and rely on a miracle occurring. If a miracle occurs he will lose some of his “zechuyos.” There is also the possibility that a miracle will not happen. The Rema in OrachChaim, siman kuf peh zayin says that if one forgets to say “Al Hanisim” on Chanuka and Purim he should add a tefillah during the “Horachamans” saying that “Hashem should perform miracles like he did in the days of Chanukah and Purim.” How could we daven for miracles? The gemara in Brachos, daf lamed gimmel, a...
Berlin - A former Nazi concentration camp guard on trial on hundreds of counts of being an accessory to murder says that although he served more than two years at Stutthof he was unaware prisoners were being executed there. Johann Rehbogen told the Muenster state court Tuesday he knew “the treatment by the Nazis led to unspeakable suffering of the prisoners and led to many deaths.” But news agency dpa reported that the 94-year-old said in a written response to a question read by his attorney: “It isn’t the case that I had any knowledge of concrete operations.” More than 60,000 people were killed in a gas chamber at Stutthof, shot or killed by other methods. Prosecutors argue that Rehbogen is an accessory because he helped the camp operate from June 1942 to ...
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