Author: chicagoinquirer

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…

by Fatima Hussein WASHINGTON  — An IRS policy governing the audits of tax returns filed by U.S. presidents is under new scrutiny after a report published by a congressional panel found the agency failed to perform the mandatory inspection of Donald Trump’s returns until Congress pressed for information about the process. The three-point policy states that individual returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review, “should always be kept in an orange folder,” should be kept from the eyes of IRS employees and “should be locked in a secure drawer or cabinet when the examiner…

by Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro and Eduardo Castilo WASHINGTON  — Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy told cheering U.S. legislators during a defiant wartime visit to the nation’s capital on Wednesday that against all odds his country still stands, thanking Americans for helping to fund the war effort with money that is “not charity,” but an “investment” in global security and democracy. The whirlwind stop in Washington — his first known trip outside his country since Russia invaded in February — was aimed at reinvigorating support for his country in the U.S. and around the world at a time when there is concern…

by George Henry ATLANTA — Ayo Dosunmu banked in a putback jumper as time expired and the Chicago Bulls rallied after blowing an 18-point lead to win their second straight game, 110-108 over the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night. Dosunmu inbounded a pass from the Chicago sideline with four seconds remaining to DeMar DeRozan, who missed a jumper with an airball from the left baseline with De’Andre Hunter defending, but Dosunmu was in place to grab the rebound to beat John Collins to the ball in the paint and score at the buzzer. “Once I hit DeMar and once he…

y StoryMore OptionsClose by Dee-Ann Durbin Concerns about illness or inflation aren’t stopping Americans from hitting the roads and airports this holiday season. But a massive winter storm might. Forecasters predict an onslaught of heavy snow, ice, flooding and powerful winds from Thursday to Saturday in a broad swath of the country, from the Plains and Midwest to the East Coast. A surge of Arctic air will follow. The Christmas weekend could be the coldest in decades. The National Weather Service said Wednesday the storm was so large and encompassing that around 190 million people are currently under some type…