A brutal sell-off for AI stocks sends Wall Street reeling, and the S&P 500 tumbles 4.4%
NEW YORK (AP) — A brutal sell-off swept through Wall Street Thursday, led by stocks tied to the buildout of AI data centers. The wipeout more than erased the U.S. stock market’s gain from the day before, which was its best in three months.
The S&P 500 fell 4.4% for its worst day since President Donald Trump shook markets worldwide in April 2025 with his “Liberation Day” tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank 1,833 points, or 3.4%, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 5.5%.
The Nasdaq, which is full of AI-related and other tech stocks, sank 11.9% below its all-time high set last month. Stock geeks call a loss of more than 10% a “correction.”
Stock markets around the world felt pressure from continued drops for companies that had benefited from the boom in the artificial-intelligence technology industry, and South Korea’s Kospi index tumbled 5.3%. Such stocks have been swinging for months on worries that the construction of further AI data centers may slow because of how expensive it’s become to borrow money. Critics also said AI stock prices had shot too high and were in a bubble.
Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections added another challenge. The nationwide victories for Democrats raised the possibility that governments could force pauses in construction of more data centers. Voters across political parties say they’re wary about AI and don’t like the increases to power bills caused by data centers.
___
Paraguay President Peña under investigation, faces removal from office over bank collapse
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — Paraguayan President Santiago Peña is under criminal investigation following the collapse of a major digital bank, prosecutors announced, as the South American leader prepares to defend himself before the Senate against possible removal from office on Friday.
The crisis at Ueno Bank turned Peña’s long-ruling Colorado Party against him, a stunning reversal for the former International Monetary Fund economist who had enjoyed the backing of the country's most powerful politicians and was welcomed in Washington just weeks ago as a key ally of the Trump administration.
In a day of lightning-speed developments, Peña offered his resignation Thursday via X, with the lower house voting unanimously to impeach him moments later. Both houses declined to accept Peña's offer to resign, with the Senate instead deciding to press forward with a trial that could result in the president's removal from office.
Opposition senators are continuing to demand that Peña be removed from office, arguing that allowing him to resign would preserve his eligibility to become a senator for life, with legal protections that could prevent his prosecution, should Paraguay’s Attorney General Emiliano Rolón Fernández opt to file charges.
Rolón has ordered three criminal investigations into the Ueno Bank crisis, including allegations involving Peña and other current and former government officials, the prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
___
Trump meets with top Putin envoy at the White House — but not visiting Ukrainian officials
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump met at the White House on Thursday with a Russian envoy who was on the premises for an event with first lady Melania Trump and suggested that some kind of grand deal about European security was in the works, but said he did not meet with visiting Ukrainian officials who also were on hand.
Trump, who has long boasted he could quickly broker an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, has lately blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to make concessions to end the conflict. During the closing weeks of the midterm election campaign, Trump struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove sanctions from Russian diesel exports.
Trump told reporters he met with Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev but declined to give details. The meeting took place as Trump’s own envoys held talks with other Ukrainian and European officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“There’s going to be an agreement, it’s going to be a big agreement and it’s going to involve more than Ukraine,” Trump said, adding that it might include all of Europe.
One of the U.S. envoys in Brussels, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said on social media that Thursday’s talks with Ukraine, NATO and European allies were productive and focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and a broader security structure for Europe. The United States is holding three-way talks next week in Abu Dhabi with Ukraine and Russia, the first trilateral peace discussions since February.
___
Democratic socialist Nithya Raman ousts embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nithya Raman, a little-known Los Angeles City Council member backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, has defeated Mayor Karen Bass, an upset that will alter the trajectory of the nation’s second-largest city.
The India-born Raman's upstart campaign marked a generational shift at City Hall as voters followed the lead of New York, where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected last year. Raman, though, never attracted the same level of national attention and stressed her willingness to break with the progressive party at times during the campaign.
When she takes office next month, Raman will join the vanguard of democratic socialists in municipal government. In addition to Mamdani, Janeese Lewis George was elected Tuesday as mayor of Washington, D.C., and Katie Wilson is mayor in Seattle.
Asked about the success of democratic socialists in mayoral contests, President Donald Trump said “we’ll see what happens” but warned the impact of the changes they make might be irreversible.
“There’ll be a point at which if people are unhappy, they’ll be changed,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “But unfortunately, usually that happens so late that you’ll never be able to bring back a city or a country or a state. You know — when it goes too far.”
___
Florida carries out its 19th execution of year as 3 states administer the death penalty in a day
Florida carried out a record-tying 19th execution of the year in an unusual instance of three states administering the death penalty on the same day.
Jesse Guardado was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a lethal injection at a state prison in Starke. He had pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing 75-year-old Jackie Malone inside her Walton County home in 2004 before stealing her jewelry box, $80 and other valuables to buy drugs. The woman had helped him get a job and housing.
Hours earlier, Indiana executed a man for killing two children by setting a house fire in 2010, and in Alabama, a man received the last lethal injection of the day for his conviction in the killing of an elderly man and woman in a home robbery.
The executions took place the same day California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced he will commute all 548 death sentences in his state, saying he believes “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values."
That contrasted sharply with the stance of Florida's outgoing GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, who has made aggressive use of the death penalty like few other governors. His state has carried out more than half of the 35 executions so far this year in the U.S., where capital punishment has come under renewed scrutiny following Tennessee's failed execution of Christa Pike in September.
___
Senate Democrats will not let Trump put a 'right-winger' on the Supreme Court, Schumer vows
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is vowing that Democrats will not allow President Donald Trump to put “a right-winger” on the Supreme Court once they take power, raising the possibility that his party could block a presidential nominee if there is a vacancy in the next two years.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Schumer would not say if he would hold a Supreme Court vacancy open until after the next presidential election, as former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell did in 2016. But he said that Democrats are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” to be confirmed to the Supreme Court — or to the lower courts or Trump’s Cabinet, either.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to allow a right-winger on the court,” Schumer said.
Schumer’s pledge came two days after Democrats won a decisive Senate majority in the midterm elections — a feat few predicted a year ago, when Schumer was facing intense criticism from progressives within his party and Senate Republicans were betting that a favorable map and backing from Trump would help them keep power.
While there is still frustration with Schumer in some corners of the party, the New Yorker is expected to easily be reelected as leader by his caucus after leading them to wins in Republican-leaning states across the country. Democrats could have as many as 56 seats in the Senate if they win Mississippi and Alaska, which still have not been called — “a durable majority,” Schumer predicts, that has been 20 years in the making as he has been directly or indirectly in charge of his party’s Senate campaign operation.
___
AP Exclusive: Trump administration held talks with Iran on deporting Iranians during the war
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration held secret talks with Iran on deporting Iranians even as the war there dragged on, court documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
The court documents unsealed Thursday show the Republican administration as recently as mid-October said it had plans to deport the Iranians through an unnamed third country, although they did not specify when that would be carried out. The judge in the case ordered the government to give the court 24-hour notice of any finalized plans to deport Iranians to Iran or to any other country and five days' written notice before any such deportation is carried out.
A legal group representing Iranians held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement said at least a dozen Iranian detainees had been notified over the past week that they were being deported to Iran, with some told it could be as soon as this coming Sunday. The legal group, the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, brought the lawsuit in which the new court documents were released.
Earlier court filings and emails show the administration held talks with Iran on deportations that took place last year and shortly before the war. But the revelation that it was maintaining those contacts even after the war broke out highlighted the administration's resolve in carrying out its hardline immigration crackdown, which has involved ramping up removals, including to places that critics say could endanger the lives of the returnees.
“We are at war with a country where the President of the United States has said, as recently as two or three days ago, if not yesterday, that it is essentially lawless ... A country that is an enemy of the United States, according to the current president. A country that, according to our president, murdered tens of thousands of protestors,” Judge Ana Reyes said according to the Oct. 15 transcript.
___
California Gov. Newsom says he will commute all death sentences in state to life without parole
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he’ll change more than 500 death sentences in the state to life in prison without the possibility of parole, though the state Supreme Court will have the final say in hundreds of those cases.
“I take this action because I firmly believe that state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes each of us,” Newsom said in a public letter.
Newsom’s decision comes as he prepares to leave office after eight years and considers a run for president. The Democrat, who’s long been opposed to the death penalty, placed a moratorium on executions in California in 2019.
His latest move came after he realized “the limits of what government can justly accomplish,” he said.
Newsom moved to grant clemency to 548 people currently sentenced to death in California, of whom 529 are men and 19 are women, according to numbers provided by his office.
___
Citibank office shooter targeted company over a $2,500 debt collection, Florida sheriff says
A gunman who killed a woman before being fatally shot by a security guard at Citibank’s sprawling office complex in Tampa targeted the campus because he was angry over a $2,500 debt collection, a sheriff said Thursday.
About three hours before Wednesday's shooting, Jacob Pearson called an attorney affiliated with Citibank and threatened violence, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told a news conference.
On the phone, Pearson demanded that the lawyer cancel a court hearing over Pearson's unpaid credit card debt “unless you want me to go over there with my AR-15, my bulletproof vest and my insanity,” Chronister said.
The sheriff said Pearson, 35, had no criminal history. Pearson’s father, Richard Pearson, told The Associated Press that he had never seen an indication that his son was capable of carrying out a violent shooting.
The attack unfolded as many of the 3,200 employees at Citibank's campus in suburban Tampa were eating lunch.
___
Anthropic is rapidly accelerating AI development amid slowdown calls, outside research group says
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anthropic is developing its artificial intelligence systems around twice as quickly as it was a year ago amid the CEO’s calls to slow down the technology’s pace of improvement, according to an analysis released Thursday by an independent monitoring group.
Anthropic invited researchers from the Berkeley, California-based nonprofit, Model Evaluation and Threat Research, to review its internal data and interview staff as it prepares for its Wall Street debut with debate swirling over the potential for AI models to elude human control with catastrophic consequences.
The findings are significant because details about the technology — and its risks — have been provided primarily by AI companies, which have been encouraged by President Donald Trump’s administration to police themselves on matters of safety.
It was during the research group’s assessment period that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the AI industry to slow its work so safety measures can catch up. In a Sept. 12 essay responding to mounting concerns about runaway AI, he urged the AI world to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.”
Sam McCandlish, one of Anthropic’s co-founders, responded to the report Thursday in a lengthy post on X, writing that many of METR’s conclusions match his own. “AI is speeding up our research, but it’s hard to say exactly how much,” he wrote.
