Facebook’s day of reckoning
NEW YORK — Facebook faced a day of reckoning Thursday as its shares plunged in the biggest one-day drop in stock-market history.
The 19 percent drop vaporized $119 billion of the company’s stock-market value; CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth fall by roughly $16 billion as a result. It was Facebook’s worst trading day since going public in 2012; the collapse eclipsed Intel’s decline of $91 billion in September 2000, without adjusting for inflation.
The plunge followed Facebook’s warning late Wednesday that its revenue growth will slow down significantly for at least the remainder of the year and that expenses will continue to skyrocket.
In a sign of just how bullish investor expectations were, though, the collapse merely returned Facebook shares to a level last seen in early May. At that point, the stock was still recovering from an earlier battering over its big privacy scandal, in which a political consulting firm with ties to President Donald Trump improperly accessed the data of tens millions of Facebook users.
US plane leaves for North Korea to pick up US war remains
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — A U.S. military plane left from Osan Air Base for North Korea on Friday to pick up the remains of what are believed to be U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
The U.S. military and South Korean government couldn’t immediately confirm the report, which was based on an unnamed South Korean government source. But there were signs Friday morning of preparations to receive the remains at the base south of Seoul.
If a transfer takes place, Pyongyang will likely return about 55 sets of remains from the 1950-53 Korean War, a step meant to fulfill a commitment made by leader Kim Jong Un during his summit with President Donald Trump in June.
About 7,700 U.S. soldiers are listed as missing from the Korean War, and 5,300 of the remains are believed to still be in North Korea. The war killed millions, including 36,000 American soldiers.
The remains would likely be flown out of an airport in the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan before returning to Osan.
Lawyer who met Trump Jr. tied to Russian officials
LONDON — The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.
From wire sources
The data was obtained through Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center, that is compiling profiles of Russians it accuses of benefiting from corruption.
The AP was unable to reach Veselnitskaya for comment. Messages from a reporter sent to her phone were marked as “read” but were not returned.
Veselnitskaya has been under scrutiny since it emerged last year that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., met with her in June 2016 after being told by an intermediary that she represented the Russian government and was offering Moscow’s help defeating rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
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Administration: 1,820 children reunited after border split
SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration said Thursday that more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors but hundreds remain apart, signaling a potentially long wait for anguished families.
The federal government was under a Thursday deadline to reunify more than 2,500 children who were separated at the border from their parents under a new immigration policy designed to deter immigrants from coming here illegally. The policy quickly backfired amid global outrage from political and religious leaders and daily headlines about crying children taken from their parents.
President Donald Trump ended the practice of taking children from parents, but a federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite all the families by the end of day Thursday, but the efforts will continue. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw has indicated some leeway given the enormity of the job.
As of Thursday morning, the government said it reunited 1,442 children 5 and older with their parents in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. An additional 378 were reunited with parents in different locations around the country or given to sponsors, who are often relatives or close family members.
That leaves about 700 who remain apart, including more than 400 whose parents have been deported, officials say. Those reunions take more time, effort and paperwork as authorities fly children back to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
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Avenatti to attend event frequented by presidential hopefuls
Michael Avenatti, who has gained national attention as the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, is scheduled to speak next month at an Iowa Democratic fundraiser that has been a frequent stop for those seeking the presidential nomination.
Avenatti announced Thursday on Twitter that he will be speaking at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding in on Aug. 10 in Clear Lake, Iowa, a state with caucuses that play a pivotal role in winnowing the presidential field. Previous speakers included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
“Extremely honored to be included as one of the speakers,” Avenatti tweeted. “It promises to be a great event as always!”
Avenatti is best known for representing Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump. For months, he has dominated cable news shows, taunting Trump in interviews and baiting him and his lawyers in tweets.
Earlier this month, Avenatti tweeted that he would run against Trump if the president seeks re-election and no one else with a good chance of defeating him steps up.
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Khan claims win in Pakistan with vows on poverty, US ties
ISLAMABAD — Former cricket star Imran Khan declared victory Thursday in Pakistan’s parliamentary election and vowed to run the country “as it has never before been run” by fighting corruption, seeking regional cooperation and forging a new relationship with the U.S. that was not “one-sided.”
TV stations reported Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, maintained a commanding lead from Wednesday’s balloting. But his leading rival, Shahbaz Sharif, rejected the outcome, citing allegations of vote-rigging.
Pakistan’s election commission struggled with technical problems and had to revert to a manual count, delaying the announcement of final results until Friday. That left unclear whether the PTI will have a simple majority in the National Assembly or have to form a coalition government.
But that didn’t stop the 65-year-old Khan from proclaiming his triumph in an address to the nation, in which he pledged to create an Islamic welfare state to provide education and employment for the poor to fulfill a campaign promise to create 10 million jobs.
“Today in front of you, in front of the people of Pakistan, I pledge I will run Pakistan in such a way as it has never before been run,” Khan said, vowing to wipe out corruption, strengthen institutions he called dysfunctional and regain national pride by developing international relationships based on respect and equality.
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Texas company cleared to put 3D-printed gun designs online
They look futuristic, the type of firearms that would-be assassins use in movies: 3D-printed guns made of a hard plastic that are simple to assemble, easy to conceal and tough to trace.
The future is here.
After spending years fighting the federal government for the right to do so, a Texas company was given the green light to post blueprints online showing people how to make 3D-printed guns from the comfort of their home.
Gun safety advocates and some law enforcement officials are appalled, worried that this is exactly what criminals and terrorists want: guns that can’t be flagged by metal detectors, don’t have serial numbers to trace, and don’t require the usual background checks. A coalition of gun-control groups filed an appeal Thursday in federal court seeking to block a recent Trump administration ruling allowing Cody Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, to post blueprints online to create a 3D-printed firearm.
“There is a market for these guns and it’s not just among enthusiasts and hobbyists,” said Nick Suplina, managing director for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the three groups that have gone to court. “There’s a real desire and profit motive in the criminal underworld as well.”
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Ryan opposes Rosenstein impeachment try, dooming it for now
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan spoke out against an effort by a small group of conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday, dooming the endeavor for now and easing a months-long standoff between House Republicans and the Justice Department.
Ryan said the tussle over document requests between House Republicans and Rosenstein, who oversees the federal Trump-Russia investigation, doesn’t rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that could warrant impeachment under the Constitution.
“I don’t think we should be cavalier with this process or with this term,” Ryan said. He also said he is encouraged by progress on the document production.
Ryan made the comments a day after the group of 11 House Republicans sharply escalated the extended clash with the Justice Department by filing articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Their move late Wednesday came after months of criticism aimed at the department — and the Russia investigation in particular — from President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. Trump has fumed about Mueller’s probe and has repeatedly called it a “witch hunt,” a refrain echoed by some of the lawmakers.
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New to Haiti: Foster care for the nation’s parentless kids
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Like roughly a quarter of Haiti’s children, 11-year-old Franchina has spent much of her short life without parents.
Her mother dead, her father in prison, Franchina was placed in a state-run orphanage as a toddler, remaining illiterate year after year and seemingly destined for a hard life in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.
But this year, Franchina’s fortunes took a hopeful turn.
She has benefited from the newfound resolution of Haiti’s government to improve the deplorable status of the country’s children, and more specifically from a partnership between the state child welfare agency and several international child-service organizations.
In a country and region with no tradition of formal foster-care systems, they are recruiting and training Haitians who buy into the idea that being a foster parent is a noble mission.
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Officials release redacted 911 call about Lovato emergency
LOS ANGELES — Fire officials have released redacted audio of a 911 call that led to Demi Lovato’s hospitalization earlier this week.
The four-and-a-half-minute call does not include details of what led to paramedics to transport Lovato to a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday. Multiple outlets, including TMZ and People, have reported it was because of an overdose.
At one point, the caller requests that paramedics do not use their sirens while responding to the house. The dispatcher tells the woman he doesn’t have any control over that, and that “this is definitely a medical emergency for her.”
He says paramedics have to get to the home as fast as possible.
Lovato’s publicist did not immediately return a message Thursday about the call or an update on Lovato’s condition.