Pelosi sees ‘new dawn’ as diverse 116th Congress begins
WASHINGTON — Cheering Democrats returned Nancy Pelosi to the House speaker’s post Thursday as the 116th Congress took office and ushered in a historically diverse class of freshmen ready to confront President Donald Trump in a new era of divided government.
Trump congratulated Pelosi during a rare appearance in the White House briefing room.
The president, who has tangled with Pelosi and is sure to do so again, called her election by House colleagues “a tremendous, tremendous achievement.”
Pelosi, elected speaker 220-192, took the gavel saying U.S. voters “demanded a new dawn” in the November election and are looking to “the beauty of our Constitution” to provide checks and balances on power. She invited scores of lawmakers’ kids to join her on the dais as she was sworn in, calling the House to order “on behalf of all of America’s children.” She faced 15 dissenting votes from fellow Democrats.
The new Congress is like none other. There are more women than ever before, and a new generation of Muslims, Latinos, Native Americans and African-Americans in the House is creating what academics call a reflective democracy, more aligned with the population of the United States. The Republican side in the House is still made up mostly of white men, and in the Senate Republicans bolstered their ranks in the majority.
Stocks take a beating after iPhone sales slip; Dow falls 660
NEW YORK — Stocks tumbled Thursday on Wall Street, with technology companies suffering their worst loss in seven years, after Apple reported that iPhone sales are slipping in China.
The rare warning of disappointing results from Apple stoked investors’ fears that the world’s second-biggest economy is losing steam and that trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are making things worse. The sell-off also came after a surprisingly weak report on U.S. manufacturing.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 660 points, or 2.8 percent, and the broader S&P 500 index fell 2.5 percent.
Apple stock plummeted 10 percent, wiping out more than $74 billion of the company’s market value. That’s almost as much as Starbucks is worth and more than Lockheed Martin, Lowe’s, Caterpillar, General Electric or Morgan Stanley.
Other major exporters, including heavy-machinery manufacturers and tech companies like Intel and Microsoft, also took big losses.
From wire sources
North Korean envoy to Italy vanishes — did he defect?
ROME — North Korea’s top diplomat in Italy has gone into hiding along with his wife, according to a South Korean lawmaker, raising the possibility of a defection of a senior North Korean official.
The news came from South Korea’s spy agency, which briefed lawmakers in Seoul on Thursday on the status of North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song Gil. It said he went into hiding with his wife in November before his posting to Italy ended late that month.
A high-profile defection by one of North Korea’s elite would be a huge embarrassment for leader Kim Jong Un as he pursues diplomacy with Seoul and Washington and seeks to portray himself as a geopolitical player.
South Korean lawmaker Kim Min-ki said an official from Seoul’s National Intelligence Service shared the information during a closed-door briefing. Kim did not say whether the spy agency revealed anything about Jo’s current whereabouts or whether he had plans to defect to South Korea.
Kim said the NIS said it has not been contacted by Jo.
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Powerful Chicago council member charged in federal probe
CHICAGO — One of the most powerful City Council members in Chicago was charged Thursday in federal court with trying to shake down a fast-food restaurant seeking city remodeling permits.
Alderman Ed Burke, 75, is charged with one count of attempted extortion for conveying to company executives in 2017 that they’d get the permits if they signed on as clients at Burke’s private property-tax law firm in Chicago, the 37-page complaint says. A conviction carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
The Democrat’s law firm, Klafter &Burke, represented the high-rise tower that bears President Donald Trump’s name. There’s no indication the case is at all tied to his firm’s work for Trump.
Burke is one of the last of the old Chicago machine politicians. He’s been on the council for 50 years and has chaired its finance committee for the last three decades.
Burke was scheduled to make an initial appearance later Thursday in U.S. District Court in Chicago. A message seeking comment left at his law office was not returned.
Worries grow about impact of a prolonged government shutdown
WASHINGTON — With President Donald Trump warning that it “could be a long time” before the partial shutdown of the government ends, concerns are rising about potential economic damage given that the shutdown is coinciding with other threats.
Most analysts don’t regard the shutdown alone as severe enough to imperil an economic expansion that has lasted nearly a decade. But should it drag into February, the slowdown in government activity could help shake confidence and cause businesses and consumers to stop spending.
“The shutdown is coming on top of lots of other problems — the trade war, the slump in the stock market, Brexit, Trump’s political problems,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “By itself, the shutdown may not be a big deal, but if you add it up and mix it with all this other noxious stuff, it could become a real problem.”
Though he still foresees only a minimal impact from the shutdown, Zandi said that “if the trade war isn’t settled soon, that will be a real problem, and if it conflates with a prolonged shutdown, that could be fodder for a recession.”
The shutdown has already suspended the government’s release of some economic data, making it harder to fully assess the state of the economy. And the risk is growing that tax refunds could be delayed if furloughed IRS workers aren’t around to process returns.