White House to extend student-loan payment pause
President Joe Biden announced that his administration would extend the pandemic-era pause in student loan repayments through June 30 amid legal challenges to his college debt-forgiveness plan. Payments now set to resume Jan. 1 won’t be required again until 60 days after court challenges to Biden’s loan forgiveness plan are settled. If the litigation is not resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that, the Education Department said in a statement. A federal appeals court last week blocked the administration from carrying out Biden’s plan to cancel as much as $20,000 in debt for some borrowers.
Accountant testifies Trump claimed decade of huge tax losses
Donald Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010, his longtime accountant testified Tuesday, confirming long-held suspicions about the former president’s tax practices. Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through his Trump Organization. The short exchange amounted to a rare public discussion of Trump’s taxes — which the Republican has fought to keep secret — even if there was no obvious connection to the case at hand. Bender’s testimony echoed The New York Times’ reporting on Trump’s taxes in 2020.
A rail strike looms and impact on US economy could be broad
American consumers and nearly every industry will be affected if freight trains grind to a halt next month. One of the biggest rail unions rejected its deal Monday over concerns about demanding schedules and the lack of paid sick time. The U.S. hasn’t seen an extended rail strike in a century. Many businesses only have a few days’ worth of raw materials and space for finished goods. If a strike goes past a few days, makers of food, fuel, cars and chemicals would all feel the squeeze, as would their customers. That’s not to mention the commuters who would be left stranded because many passenger railroads use tracks owned by the freight railroads.
US stocks rise, strong earnings send retailers higher
Stocks rose on Wall Street and solid earnings helped jolt a mix of retailers higher ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. The S&P 500 rose 1.4% Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 1.2% and the Nasdaq added 1.4%. Financial and technology companies gained ground. Energy stocks rose along with oil prices. Treasury yields slipped. Best Buy soared more than 12% after the Minneapolis-based consumer electronics chain did better than analysts expected and said a decline in sales for the year will not be as bad as it had projected earlier.
Bolsonaro contests Brazil election loss, wants votes voided
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is contesting his defeat in the October election and calling on the electoral authority to annul votes cast on more than half of electronic voting machines used. Bolsonaro cited a software bug that independent experts have said didn’t affect results. The leader of Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation found all machines dating from before 2020 lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs. Neither clarified how that bug might have affected election results, but said they were asking the electoral authority to invalidate all votes cast on the machines.
Kim’s sister warns US of ‘a more fatal security crisis’
The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has warned the United States that it would face “a more fatal security crisis” as Washington pushes for U.N. condemnation of the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile test. Kim Yo Jong’s warning Tuesday came hours after the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations read a statement by 14 countries which supported action to limit North Korea’s advancement of its weapons programs. Kim called that statement “disgusting” and “a wanton violation of our sovereignty.” North Korea on Friday tested it most powerful Hwasong-17 missile, which some experts say could potentially strike anywhere in the U.S. mainland.
Indonesian rescuers search through rubble of quake; 268 dead
Indonesian rescuers used jackhammers, circular saws and sometimes their bare hands to shift the rubble of flattened buildings as they searched for the dead and missing from an earthquake. The 5.6 magnitude quake has killed at least 268 people. With many missing, some remote areas still unreachable and more than 1,000 people injured, the death toll was likely to rise. Hospitals near the epicenter on the densely populated island of Java were already overwhelmed. Patients hooked up to IV drips lay on stretchers and cots in tents set up outside.
By wire sources