Author: chicagoinquirer

by Jaques Billeaud PHOENIX  — Republican Kari Lake didn’t offer evidence to back her claims of widespread, intentional misconduct on Election Day at her two-day trial challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona governor’s race, lawyers for the state said Thursday. Lake also never established her claim that printer problems at Maricopa County polling places were intentional acts that would have changed the race’s outcome had they not occurred, said Abha Khanna, a lawyer representing Hobbs, who ultimately won the race by just over 17,000 votes. At the trial’s closing arguments Thursday, Khanna said Lake’s claims were based…

WASHINGTON  — Three buses of recent migrant familiesarrived from Texas near the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in record-setting cold on Christmas Eve. Texas authorities have not confirmed their involvement, but the bus drop-offs are in line with previous actions by border-state governors calling attention to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. The buses that arrived late Saturday outside the vice president’s residence were carrying around 110 to 130 people, according to Tatiana Laborde, managing director of SAMU First Response, a relief agency working with the city of Washington to serve thousands of migrants who have been dropped off in…

by Andrew Seligman CHICAGO  — Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills came into the season with soaring expectations and their sights set on a deep playoff run. They earned one big prize by clinching their third straight division title. It’s just the next step in what they hope is a path toward their ultimate goal. Devin Singletary and James Cook ran for long touchdowns in the third quarter, and the Bills locked up the AFC East title by beating the Bears 35-13 on Saturday in one of the coldest games played in Chicago. Allen ran for a TD and threw…

by Francis D’emilio VATICAN CITY  — Recalling Jesus’ birth in a stable, Pope Francis rebuked those “ravenous” for wealth and power at the expense of the vulnerable, including children, in a Christmas Eve homily decrying war, poverty and greedy consumerism. In the splendor of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the evening Mass attended by about 7,000 faithful, including tourists and pilgrims, who flocked to the church on a warm evening and took their place behind rows of white-robed pontiffs. Francis drew lessons from the humility of Jesus’ first hours of life in a manger. “While animals feed in their…

by Barbara Surk NICE, France — Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system. The strategy is not only threatening a democracy once seen as a model for the Arab world, experts say it is also sending the economy toward a tailspin. The International Monetary Fund has frozen an agreement meant to help the government get loans to pay public sector salaries and fill budget gaps aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and joblessness are…

by Carolyn Thompson and Jake Bleiberg BUFFALO, N.Y. — A battering winter storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the United States on Saturday, left millions more to worry about the prospect of further outages and crippled police, fire departments and an airport in snow-blown New York state. Across the country, officials have attributed at least 17 deaths to exposure, icy car crashes and other effects of the storm, including two people who died in their homes outside Buffalo, New York, when emergency crews couldn’t reach them amid historic blizzard conditions. New York Gov.…

by Mauricio Savarese SAO PAULO  — Family members of Brazilian soccer great Pelé are gathering at the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo where the 82-year-old global icon has been since the end of November. Doctors said earlier this week that Pelé’s cancer had advanced, adding the three-time World Cup winner is under “elevated care” related to “kidney and cardiac dysfunctions.” No other hospital statements have been published since. Edson Cholbi Nascimento, one of Pelé’s sons and known as Edinho, arrived Saturday, one day after he gave a news conference to deny he would visit his father in hospital. Edinho,…

by Eric Tucker WASHINGTON — Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described to the House Jan. 6 committee a wide-ranging pressure campaign from Donald Trump’s allies aimed at influencing her cooperation with Congress and stifling potentially damaging testimony about him. In extraordinary closed-door testimony made public Thursday, Hutchinson recounted how those in the former president’s circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance as she was cooperating with the committee investigating the Capitol riot and how her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — advised her against being fully forthcoming with lawmakers and told her…

by Kevin Freking WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill Thursday that finances federal agencies through September and provides another significant round of military and economic aid to Ukraine one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress. The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5 billion for domestic programs and $858 billion for defense and would finance federal agencies through the fiscal year at the end of September. The bill passed by a vote of 68-29 and now goes to the House for a final vote before…

by Paul Wiseman WASHINGTON  — Shrugging off rampant inflation and rising interest rates, the U.S. economy grew at an unexpectedly strong 3.2% annual pace from July through September, the government reported Thursday in a healthy upgrade from its earlier estimate of third-quarter growth. The rise in gross domestic product — the economy’s output in goods and services — marked a return to growth after consecutive drops in the January-March and April-June periods. Still, many economists expect the economy to slow and probably slip into recession next year under the pressure of higher interest rates being engineered by the Federal Reserve…