House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pictured with her husband, Paul Pelosi, on Capitol Hill on January 3, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Zach Gibson | Getty Images News | Getty Images
In her first public comments since her husband was attacked, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her family was “heartbroken and traumatized” by the brutal assault — but his condition is improving.
“Yesterday morning, a violent man broke into our family home, demanded to confront me and brutally attacked my husband Paul,” she said in a letter addressed to House colleagues.
“Our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop.”
Paul Pelosi was violently attacked with a hammer by an intruder who broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday morning. The House Speaker was not in San Francisco at the time of the attack.
The 82-year-old has since gone through a successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands, Pelosi’s spokesman said on Friday.
“His condition continues to improve,” Pelosi said in the letter.
The 42-year-old-assailant, David DePape, is being charged with attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse “and several other additional felonies,” according to San Francisco Police Chief William Scott.
A source told CNBC the attacker was looking for the House Speaker, shouting: “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?” before he assaulted Paul Pelosi.
“Please know that the prayers and warm wishes from so many are a comfort to our family and are helping Paul make progress with his recovery,” the House Speaker said on Twitter late Saturday.
Rescue teams work at the scene where dozens of people were injured in a stampede during a Halloween festival in Seoul, South Korea, October 29, 2022.
Kim Hong-ji | Reuters
At least 146 people were killed and 150 more were injured as they were crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in the capital of Seoul, South Korean officials said.
Choi Seong-beom, chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, said the death toll could rise and that an unspecified number among the injured were in critical conditions following the stampede in Itaewon on Saturday night.
Officials say people were crushed to death after a large crowd began pushing forward in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel, a major party spot in Seoul.
More than 800 emergency workers and police officers from around the nation, including all available personnel in Seoul, were deployed to the streets to treat the injured.
The National Fire Agency separately said in a statement that officials were still trying to determine the exact number of emergency patients.
TV footage and photos showed ambulance vehicles lined up in streets amid a heavy police presence and emergency workers moving the injured in stretchers. Emergency workers and pedestrians were also seen performing CPR on people lying in the streets.
In one section, paramedics were seen checking the status of a dozen or more people who lied motionless under blue blankets.
Police, which were restricting traffic in nearby areas to speed up the transportation of the injured to hospitals across the city, also confirmed that dozens of people were being given CPR on Itaewon streets. The Seoul Metropolitan Government issued emergency text messages urging people in the area to swiftly return home.
Some local media reports earlier said the crush happened after a large number of people rushed to an Itaewon bar after hearing an unidentified celebrity visited there.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a statement calling for officials to ensure swift treatment for those injured and review the safety of the festivity sites. He also instructed the Health Ministry to swiftly deploy disaster medical assistance teams and secure beds in nearby hospital to treat the injured.
Local media said around 100,000 people flocked to Itaewon streets for the Halloween festivities, which were the biggest since the start of the pandemic following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.
The Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship Razoni, carrying Ukrainian grain, is seen in the Black Sea off Kilyos, near Istanbul, Turkey August 3, 2022.
Mehmet Caliskan | Reuters
WASHINGTON – Moscow suspended its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement brokered earlier this year that reopened Ukrainian ports for agricultural product export.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that it would halt participation, citing retaliation for Kyiv’s “act of terrorism” against Russian warships. Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Ukrainian armed forces launched “massive air and sea strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles against ships and infrastructure of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at the naval base in Sevastopol.”
Russia also said British operators helped Ukraine’s military carry out the predawn attack, adding that at least 15 drones were involved.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia was using the attack as a “false pretext” for blocking the “grain corridor which ensures food security for millions of people.”
“We have warned of Russia’s plans to ruin the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” Kuleba wrote in a tweet. “I call on all states to demand Russia to stop its hunger games and recommit to its obligations.”
Before the war, Ukraine and Russia accounted for almost a quarter of global grain exports until those shipments came to a severe halt for nearly six months.
Ukraine is typically the world’s top producer and exporter of sunflower meal, oil and seed, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Ukraine is also the world’s seventh-largest wheat producer.
The grain harvester collects wheat on the field near the village of Zgurivka in the Kyiv region, while Russia continues the war against Ukraine. August 9, 2022.
Maxym Marusenko | Nurphoto | Getty Images
The Black Sea Grain Initiative, a United Nations-backed deal brokered in July, eased Russia’s naval blockade and saw the reopening of three key Ukrainian ports. The first vessel left Ukraine’s port of Odesa on Aug. 1 carrying more than 26,000 metric tons of corn. Since then, nearly 400 ships carrying a total of 9 million metric tons have departed Ukraine’s ports.
Of the 40 countries receiving Ukrainian foodstuffs from the initiative, Spain has accepted the majority of agricultural products totaling 1.8 million metric tons.
Representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the U.N. and Turkey held negotiations to create the sea corridor in Istanbul earlier this year and signed the landmark deal in July. The agreement, which is set to expire next month, has helped address the mounting food crisis triggered, in part, by Russia’s war on its ex-Soviet neighbor.
The U.N. said in a statement that they are in touch with Russian authorities on the matter.
“It is vital that all parties refrain from any action that would imperil the Black Sea Grain Initiative which is a critical humanitarian effort that is clearly having a positive impact on access to food for millions of people around the world,” wrote Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, in a statement.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that it delivered relevant instructions to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul, which oversees the export of agricultural products from Ukraine.
In this photo illustration, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s archived Twitter account is shown on a phone screen with the Twitter logo in the background.
Sheldon Cooper | Lightrocket | Getty Images
A decade ago, Twitter’s future was looking bright. The company was benefiting from a flood of funding into the social-networking space, eventually leading to an IPO in 2013 that raised $1.8 billion.
Now the company is back in private hands. And they happen to be the hands of Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and one of the app’s most high-profile provocateurs.
It’s a massive moment. Twitter has become a key place for people to debate, joke and pontificate in their own circles of politics, sports, tech and finance. It’s also served as a platform that gives voice to the voiceless, helping protesters organize and express themselves in repressed regimes around the world.
In recent years, however, Twitter and social media rivals like Facebook have been at the center of controversy over the distribution of fake news and misinformation, sometimes leading to bullying and violence.
Investors had grown concerned about Twitter as a business. The company was generally unprofitable, struggled to keep pace with Google and Facebook, and often killed popular products with no real explanation.
What follows is a brief history of Twitter, which — despite its many flaws — is one of the most iconic companies to come out of Silicon Valley in the past 20 years.
2006
In March, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams created Twitter, which was originally a side project stemming from the podcasting tool Odeo. That month, Dorsey would send the first Tweet that read, “just setting up my twttr.”
2007
In July, Twitter received a $100,000 Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. The app’s popularity started to explode after being heavily promoted by the tech community during the annual South by Southwest conference.
2008
Dorsey stepped down as CEO in October, and was replaced by Williams. According to the book “Hatching Twitter” by journalist Nick Bilton, Twitter’s board fired Dorsey over concerns about the executive’s management style and public boastings.
2009
Twitter’s popularity continued to soar, leading to a high-profile appearance from Williams on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show alongside celebrity Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher would also write about Williams and Stone as part of Time Magazine’sTime 100 issue. Twitter was now a mainstream phenomenon.
2010
Twitter reached space, with NASA Astronaut Timothy Creamer sending the first tweet live from outer orbit. Behind the scenes, however, management woes continued with Williams stepping down as CEO, replaced by operating chief Dick Costolo.
2011
Twitter became an essential social media tool used during the Arab Spring, the wave of antigovernmental protests throughout Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Protesters used the site to post reports and to organize. As the Pew Research Center noted, Twitter’s role in “disseminating breaking news” was not “not limited to the Arab uprisings – the death of Whitney Houston, for example, was announced on Twitter 55 minutes prior to the AP confirming the story.”
2012
Twitter’s reach expanded to 200 million active users. Barack Obama used the “platform to first declare victory publicly in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, with a Tweet that was viewed approximately 25 million times on our platform and widely distributed offline in print and broadcast media,” according to corporate filings.
2013
Twitter went public in November. The combined wealth of Williams, Dorsey, and Costolo hit roughly $4 billion.
“I think we’ve got a tremendous set of thoughts and strategies to increase the slope of the growth curve,” Costolo told CNBC at the time. “I would consider some of them tactics, some of them broader strategies, in service of doing what I referred to as bridge the gap between the massive awareness of Twitter and deep engagement of the platform.”
2014
Slowing user growth led to several stock drops and analyst downgrades. Twitter also deemed 2014 the year of the “selfie.”
2015
Compared to rivals like Google, Facebook, and even LinkedIn, Twitter was starting to look like the runt of the Internet litter. Twitter was still unprofitable as its ad business struggled mightily against its larger competitors. Dorsey would also return as CEO of the company, while still maintaining the top job at his other company, Square (now Block).
2016
Rumors began circulating that Twitter was looking to be acquired, with Salesforce as a potential suitor. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook were criticized for their role in letting prominent users like Donald Trump, who would win the U.S. presidential election that year, spread misleading information without consequence.
“Having the president-elect on our service using it as a direct line of communication allows everyone to see what is on his mind in the moment,” Dorsey said at the time. “We’re definitely entering a new world where everything is on the surface and we can all see that in real time and we can have conversations about it.”
2017
For a moment, Twitter appeared to be on the upswing. Its stock was finally trending upward as the company’s finances were improving. Meanwhile, Trump as president continued to use Twitter as his megaphone. According to Twitter’s own data, “Trump was the most-tweeted-about global leader in the world and in the United States” that year, CNBC reported.
2018
Dorsey and Facebook’s then-operating chief Sheryl Sandberg testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about alleged interference by Russia-linked actors in the 2016 election. Trump and fellow Republicans became increasingly vocal about alleged political bias by Twitter and other social media sites.
“In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform,” Dorsey said at the time.
2019
Analysts found correlations between President Trump’s voracious use of Twitter and various markets, including gold, underscoring the cultural power of Twitter. Trump met with Dorsey — a Twitter spokesperson said “Jack had a constructive meeting with the President of the United States today at the president’s invitation.”
“They discussed Twitter’s commitment to protecting the health of the public conversation ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections and efforts underway to respond to the opioid crisis,” the spokesperson said.
2020
As Covid-19 spread across the globe, the spread of misinformation dominated the online conversation. And Twitter continued to struggle to grow its business. The service was also hacked that year, and miscreants gained access to over a dozen high-profile accounts, including those controlled by Joe Biden, Jeff Bezos, and Musk
2021
Twitter permanently banned Trump over inflammatory comments the president made during the U.S. Capitol riots in January that the company said could lead to “further incitement of violence.” Trump would allege that Twitter workers “coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me.” Later, Dorsey suddenly stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer.
2022
Musk took over Twitter after a protracted legal spat that would have culminated this week in a trial in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. The Tesla CEO agreed in April to pay $44 billion for Twitter, but then attempted to renege on the deal. He changed course and opted to proceed, walking into the company’s San Francisco office on Wednesday with what appeared to be a porcelain bathroom sink in his hands.
“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” he tweeted, with a video of his entrance.
Musk immediately began making changes, firing Agrawal, finance head Ned Segal, and head of legal policy Vijaya Gadde.
Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attends a reception for G7 presidents at the Brandenburg State Parliament. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa (Photo by Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Soeren Stache | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
The suspect accused of violently attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband early Friday appeared to have far-reaching and at times contradictory political positions, according to an early dive into his background.
While a motive for the attack against 82-year-old Paul Pelosi was unclear Friday evening, a picture of the suspect, identified by San Francisco police as 42-year-old David DePape, began to emerge.
Blog posts that are being investigated in connection with DePape describe someone with sprawling and contradictory views, multiple senior law enforcement officials familiar with the case told NBC News. The posts take aspects of liberal anti-establishment ideas to more recent posts that espouse positions typically associated with far-right extremism, the sources said.
He appeared to operate a website on which he wrote a wide variety of posts touching on almost all manner of modern conspiracy thinking: aliens, Jewish people, communism, vaccines, voter fraud and many other topics.
Many of the posts were published in the last few months.
The website, which was registered under “david depape” and to a ZIP code in the Bay Area, according to registration records, did not mention Nancy Pelosi.
Inti Gonzalez, 21, identified herself in a phone call Friday as DePape’s daughter. She said she wrote in a blog post that her mother kicked DePape out when she was 13 because of alleged “toxic” behavior.
Gonzalez wrote that she and DePape remained estranged until a few months ago when she reached out to him to see how he was doing.
“This attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband came as a shock to me,” she wrote. “I didn’t see this coming.”
She said that she had read his website but did not agree with all of his views.
“It made me happy to see that he had strong opinions about important issues that our world is facing today,” Gonzalez wrote. “He wanted to make a difference.”
“There is some part of him that is a good person even though he has been very consumed by darkness.”
A motive in Friday’s attack remains unclear, and DePape had expressed sometimes conflicting political opinions.
Police Chief William Scott said during a Friday news conference that officers arrived at the Pelosi home for a well-being check shortly before 2:30 a.m. PT. Police then witnessed an attack on Paul Pelosi. Both DePape and Paul Pelosi held a hammer moments before a violent confrontation, Scott said.
“The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it,” he said. “Our officers immediately tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took him into custody, requested emergency backup and rendered medical aid.”
Paul Pelosi underwent successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands, Drew Hammill, spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in a Friday afternoon statement.
“His doctors expect a full recovery,” Hammill said.
DePape remained in the hospital Friday evening, the police chief said.
The House speaker was not in San Francisco at the time of the attack, according to her office. U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., with her protective detail at the time of the break-in.
People watch a television broadcast showing a file image of a North Korean missile launch at the Seoul Railway Station on October 28, 2022 in Seoul, South Korea. North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) toward the East Sea on Friday, the South Korean military said, as Seoul’s major military exercise drew to a close.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The United States said on Friday its policy towards North Korea had not changed after a senior U.S. official responsible for nuclear policy raised some eyebrows by saying Washington would be willing to engage in arms-control talks with Pyongyang.
Some experts argue that recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, something Pyongyang seeks, is a prerequisite for such talks. But Washington has long argued that the North Korean nuclear program is illegal and subject to United Nations sanctions.
Bonnie Jenkins, State Department under secretary for arms control, was asked at a Washington nuclear conference on Thursday at which point North Korea should be treated as an arms-control problem.
“If they would have a conversation with us … arms control can always be an option if you have two willing countries willing to sit down at the table and talk,” she replied.
“And not just arms control, but risk reduction – everything that leads up to a traditional arms-control treaty and all the different aspects of arms control that we can have with them. We’ve made it very clear to the DPRK … that we’re ready to talk to them – we have no pre-conditions,” she said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name.
Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, she added: “If he picked up the phone and said, ‘I want to talk about arms control,’ we’re not going to say no. I think, if anything, we would want to explore what that means.”
The United States and its allies are concerned that North Korea may be about to resume nuclear bomb testing for the first time since 2017, something that would be highly unwelcome to the Biden administration ahead of mid-term elections early next month. North Korea has rejected U.S. calls to return to talks.
Asked about Jenkins’ comment, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: “I want to be very clear about this. There has been no change to U.S. policy.”
Price said U.S. policy remained “the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” while adding, “we continue to be open to diplomacy with the DPRK, we continue to reach out to the DPRK, we’re committed to pursuing a diplomatic approach. We’re prepared to meet without preconditions and we call on the DPRK to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy.”
Speaking on Friday at the same nuclear policy conference Jenkins addressed, Alexandra Bell, another senior State Department arms-control official, also stressed there was no change in U.S. policy.
Asked if it was time to accept North Korea as a nuclear state, she replied: “Wording aside, we are committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We do not accept North Korea with that status. But we are interested in having a conversation with the North Koreans.”
Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia under then-President Barack Obama and now with the Asia Society, told Reuters Jenkins had “fallen straight into Kim Jong Un’s trap” with her remarks.
“Suggesting that North Korea only has to agree to have a conversation with the U.S. about arms control and risk reduction is a terrible mistake, because it moves the issue from North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons to the question of how many it should have and how they are used,” he said.
“Kim would love nothing better than to push his risk reduction agenda — the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea.”
Other experts played down Jenkins’ remarks.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, said she was not making a statement recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapons state under the international Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“She was acknowledging, as other officials in other administrations have, that North Korea does have nuclear weapons, but in violation of its commitments under the NPT not to pursue nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters.
Kimball and Toby Dalton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which hosted the nuclear conference, said they did not see formal recognition as a nuclear-armed state as a prerequisite for arms-control talks. Dalton said Jenkins appeared essentially to be restating the U.S. position that it was willing to talk to Pyongyang without preconditions.
DETROIT — General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, the company told CNBC on Friday.
The Detroit automaker, a rival to Musk-led electric vehicle maker Tesla, said it is “pausing” advertising as it evaluates Twitter’s new direction. It will continue to use the platform to interact with customers but not pay for advertising, GM added.
“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Under CEO Mary Barra, the Detroit company was among the first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to better compete against Tesla in the battery electric vehicle segment.
A General Motors sign is seen during an event on January 25, 2022 in Lansing, Michigan. – General Motors will create 4,000 new jobs and retaining 1,000, and significantly increasing battery cell and electric truck manufacturing capacity.
Jeff Kowalsky | AFP | Getty Images
A spokesperson for Ford Motor, another Tesla rival, told CNBC that the automaker is not currently advertising on Twitter, and had not been doing so prior to Elon Musk’s take-private deal. They added, “We will continue to evaluate the direction of the platform under the new ownership.”
However, when presented with a screenshot of a promoted tweet from Ford CEO Jim Farley, the spokesperson could not confirm when was the last time Ford or its collaborators may have paid for ads, including promoted tweets, on the platform.
Ford is continuing to engage with its customers on Twitter.
Other auto companies, including Rivian, Stellantis and Alphabet-owned Waymo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they plan to suspend advertising or discontinue using the social media platform in wake of Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter.
Electric truck maker Nikola said it had no plans to change anything regarding the platform.
The future direction of Twitter has been central to the takeover story. Musk has said he is a “free speech absolutist,” who would restore the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned over his tweets during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Musk said on Friday that he plans a “content moderation council” and will not reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it is convened. Musk also said in a statement to advertisers this week that he cannot let Twitter become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Henrik Fisker, CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc., deleted his Twitter account earlier this year when Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s bid to buy the company and take it private. Fisker Inc. continues to use Twitter, which every major automotive brand utilizes for customer engagement and marketing.
Musk has long boasted that Tesla does not pay for traditional advertising, a cost that has added up for conventional automakers’ brands through the years.
Instead, Tesla rewards people who run, or are members of, Tesla owners’ clubs as well as other social media influencers who promote the company’s products, stock and Musk on social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube as well as on fan blogs.
They are often granted early access to Tesla products, like the company’s Full Self Driving Beta software, and given passes to company events where attendance is limited.
In September 2020, Tesla weighed a stockholder proposal to begin strategic, paid advertising to educate the public about its vehicles and charging network. The Tesla board recommended against it, and shareholders voted with the board against starting to pay for traditional ad campaigns.
In the company’s annual report for 2021, Tesla wrote: “Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our products, and we believe we will continue to do so. Such media coverage and word of mouth are the current primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs.”
It reported marketing, promotional and advertising costs were “immaterial” for the years ended Dec. 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
— CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.
Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was violently assaulted with a hammer by a man who broke into the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday morning, local police said.
The assailant was searching for the House speaker, shouting, “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?” before assaulting 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, a source briefed on the attack told CNBC. Nancy Pelosi was not in San Francisco at the time.
The attacker, identified as 42-year-old David DePape, is being charged with attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse “and several other additional felonies,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said at a news conference later Friday.
Both men were taken to the hospital for treatment, Scott said, adding that police are still investigating DePape’s motive. He was booked Friday afternoon in San Francisco County Jail.
In a press conference Friday evening, Scott said, “This was not a random attack. This was intentional. And it’s wrong,” He added, “Our elected officials are here to do the business of their cities, their counties, and their states, and this nation. Their families don’t sign up for this — to be harmed. And it’s wrong.”
Paul Pelosi underwent a successful surgery to repair “a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement later Friday. “His doctors expect a full recovery.”
San Francisco police officers and F.B.I. agents gather in front of the home of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on October 28, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Paul Pelosi, the husband of U.S. Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, was violently attacked in their home by an intruder.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The U.S. Capitol Police said it is assisting the San Francisco police and the FBI with a joint investigation.
The department noted that Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., with her protective detail when the break-in occurred.
Scott said that police were dispatched to the Pelosi residence at 2:27 a.m. PT. When they arrived at the scene, the officers saw the suspect and Paul Pelosi both holding a hammer. DePape pulled the hammer away from Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it before being tackled to the ground by police, Scott said.
Police took no questions at the news conference.
San Francisco police chief Bill Scott (R) speaks to reporters about the break in and attack at the home of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on October 28, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The White House said that President Joe Biden is “praying for Paul Pelosi and for Speaker Pelosi’s whole family.”
The president called Nancy Pelosi on Friday morning to “express his support after this horrible attack,” the White House said in a statement, adding that Biden “continues to condemn all violence, and asks that the family’s desire for privacy be respected.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the attack “a dastardly act.”
“I spoke with Speaker Pelosi earlier this morning and conveyed my deepest concern and heartfelt wishes to her husband and their family, and I wish him a speedy recovery,” Schumer said in a statement.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s Republican leader, said he was “horrified and disgusted by the reports.”
It’s not the first time the Democratic House speaker, also 82, has been targeted with threats.
A North Carolina man, Cleveland Meredith, was sentenced last December to 28 months in prison after pleading guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi. Meredith, 53, had traveled to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, planning to attend rallies on that day, but didn’t arrive until the evening, when the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol had been tamped down.
Another man, 77-year-old Steven Martis of Arizona, was sentenced in February to 21 months behind bars for threatening to kill Pelosi in messages to her D.C. office.
San Francisco police officers and F.B.I. agents gather in front of the home of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on October 28, 2022 in San Francisco, California. Paul Pelosi, the husband of U.S. Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, was violently attacked in their home by an intruder.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
And in April, Florida man Paul Hoeffer, 60, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for phone calls in which he threatened to behead Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., another frequent target of criticism from the political right.
The attack on Paul Pelosi comes as the U.S. Capitol Police recorded a drastic rise in threat cases — a 144% increase from 2017 to 2021, according to the department.
Other high-profile public figures have also recently come under threat. In June, California man Nicholas Roske, 26, was arrested and charged with attempted murder after allegedly traveling to the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and telling police he intended to kill him.
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The Department of Homeland Security said in June that the U.S. is in a “heightened threat environment” that was expected to grow “more dynamic” in the coming months.
Both Paul and Nancy Pelosi have also come under scrutiny for their investment activities, after the House speaker said she opposed legislation that would ban members of Congress from owning individual stocks. She later reversed her stance on the stock trading ban.
In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
After closing a $44 billion transaction to take Twitter private, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now the de facto CEO of Twitter — announced that he plans to form a “content moderation council” at the social networking company. He says he will not make any “major content decisions” or reinstate any accounts that were previously banned before the council convenes.
In May 2022, after Musk had agreed to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, he said he would reverse Twitter’s lifetime ban on former President Donald Trump if the acquisition went through.
At the time, Musk said, “I would reverse the permanent ban… I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?”
Musk has not yet offered details about how his content moderation council will work, who will be invited to it and whether Twitter’s will be more or less independent or powerful than Facebook’s oversight board.
One of Musk’s first big moves after closing the deal was to fire Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, and other executives including its prior head of safety, Vijaya Gadde, who was involved in the decision to suspend Trump, and ban political advertising on Twitter.
Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol, which occurred just as a joint session of Congress met to certify the election of President Joe Biden. The riot was intended to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes.
As CNBC previously reported, Trump was issued a subpoena earlier this month by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
The committee, which voted unanimously on this move, is requiring Trump’s testimony under oath next month and records relevant to their probe into the attack, which the panel noted came after weeks of his denying losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in a letter to Trump cited what they called his central role in a deliberate effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election and to remain in power.
As NBC News previously reported, a Twitter employee named Anika Navaroli provided testimony to the Jan. 6 committee suggesting that the social network did not do everything in its power in time to prevent violence on that day.
It was clear that individuals using Twitter were plotting violence, according to her testimony, and Twitter detected a surge in violent tags like “Execute Mike Pence” around Jan. 6, for example. Trump had “fanned the flames” of violent users’ persistent calls to hang Mike Pence, she testified.
CNBC could not immediately ascertain whether Navaroli is still employed at Twitter.
Early in the Trump presidency, Musk served on a White House economic advisory board and a manufacturing jobs initiative council. But he stepped down from both in 2017, after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords.
Despite this, Trump praised Musk effusively in 2020, calling him “one of our great geniuses” during an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump praised Musk again on Friday for taking Twitter private. The former president previously said he would not return to the platform, but that could change now that the company is run by Musk.
In May, Musk tweeted, “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
NFL superstar Tom Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen are getting divorced after 13 years of marriage, they announced Friday.
“We arrived at this decision amicably and with gratitude for the time we spent together,” the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, 45, said on Instagram. “We are blessed with beautiful and wonderful children who will continue to be the center of our world in every way. We will continue to work together as parents to always ensure they receive the love and attention they deserve.”
The celebrity couple married in 2009 and have two children together: Benjamin, 12, and Vivian, 9. Brady has another son, Jack, 15, with former girlfriend Bridget Moynahan. Combined, Brady and Bündchen have a reported net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Bündchen, 42, said in a statement posted to her Instagram, “The decision to end a marriage is never easy but we have grown apart and while it is, of course, difficult to go through something like this, I feel blessed for the time we had together and only wish the best for Tom always.”
Brady returned to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season weeks after announcing his retirement back in February. In an interview with Elle Magazine in September, Bundchen expressed her concerns about Brady returning to football for a 23rd season, and his third with the Buccaneers.
“Obviously, I have my concerns—this is a very violent sport, and I have my children and I would like him to be more present,” she said. “I have definitely had those conversations with him over and over again. But ultimately, I feel that everybody has to make a decision that works for [them]. He needs to follow his joy, too.”
Brady’s Bucs are 3-5 this year, an uncharacteristically bad record for the quarterback, who’s won seven Super Bowls, including six with the New England Patriots and one with Tampa.
The Buccaneers lost to the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday night.
Other than Apple, it was a brutal earnings week for Big Tech.
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft combined lost over $350 billion in market cap after offering concerning commentary for the third quarter and the remainder of the year. Between slowing revenue growth — or declines in Meta’s case — and efforts to control costs, the tech giants have found themselves in an unfamiliar position after unbridled growth in the past decade.
Third-quarter results this week came against the backdrop of soaring inflation, rising interest rates and a looming recession. Apple bucked the trend after beating expectations for revenue and profit. The stock on Friday had its best day in over two years.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was Meta, which has seen its stock price collapse in 2022. Facebook’s parent came up short on earnings, recorded its lowest average revenue per user in two years and said sales in the fourth quarter will likely decline for a third straight period.
“There are a lot of things going on right now in the business and in the world, and so it’s hard to have a simple ‘We’re going to do this one thing, and that’s going to solve all the issues,’” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday.
Meta’s stock had its worst week since the company’s IPO in 2012, plunging 24% over the past five days. Microsoft fell 2.6% for the week, due to a 7.7% decline on Wednesday after the company gave weak guidance for the year-end period and missed estimates for cloud revenue.
Things were also bleak at Amazon, which dropped 13%. A gloomy fourth-quarter forecast along with a dramatic slowdown in its cloud-computing unit were largely to blame for the sell-off.
While Amazon Web Services saw expansion slow to 27.5% from 33% in the prior period, Google’s cloud group, which is significantly smaller, sped up to almost 38% growth from around 36%. Google plans to keep spending in cloud even as it intends to rein in headcount overall growth in the next few quarters.
“We are excited about the opportunity, given that businesses and governments are still in the early days of public cloud adoption, and we continue to invest accordingly,” Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO, said on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. “We remain focused on the longer-term path to profitability.”
However, results from the rest of Google parent Alphabet were less impressive. The company’s core advertising business grew just slightly, and YouTube’s ad revenue dropped from the prior year. The reverse was true for Amazon, which is playing catchup to Google and Facebook in digital advertising. In Amazon’s ad business, revenue growth accelerated to 30% from 21%, topping analysts’ estimates.
“Advertisers are looking for effective advertising, and our advertising is at the point where consumers are ready to spend,” said Brian Olsavsky, the company’s finance chief. “We have a lot of advantages that we feel that will help both consumers and also our partners like sellers and advertisers.”
Analyst Aaron Kessler at Raymond James lowered his price target on Amazon stock to $130 from $164 after the results. But he maintained his equivalent of a buy rating on the stock and said the company’s “robust advertising growth” has the potential to help Amazon fatten up its margin.
As investors continue to rotate away from tech, they’re finding money-making opportunities in other parts of the market that had previously lagged behind software and internet names. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 3% this week, the fourth weekly gain in a row for the index. Prior to 2021, the Dow had underperformed the Nasdaq for five straight years.
If your rent spiked this year, as it did for many Americans, 2023 could give you reason to celebrate.
Tom Lawler, a former Fannie Mae economist, wrote in a recent real estate newsletter that he expects rents across the country to not just slow down, but to experience a rare “actual decline” in real dollar amounts next year. And those declines are likely to spread and accelerate in 2023.
In fact, rents across the US have already started to decline in some markets. Data shows that in the third quarter of 2022, national asking rents declined by 0.4%, reflecting a shift from just a year ago when demand drove prices to historical highs.
Lawler’s forecast hinges on the fact that US builders are still ramping up construction despite there being fewer renters who want — and can afford — new rental units. It’s a rare storyline of excess supply in a housing market that has been weighed down by shortages for years.
Financial and economic fear among Americans are also driving the declines, says Anthemos Georgiades, CEO of Zumper, an online rental database.
“We saw historic levels of migration throughout the pandemic, as people switched to working from home and re-imagined their living situations,” he said in a statement. “Now — with a turbulent, unpredictable economy causing fear of recession, migrations are slowing, occupancy rates are falling and rent prices are following suit.”
These predictions are already materializing in the rental market. According to RentCafe, although multifamily housing construction hit a 50-year high, apartment demand is evaporating. Data from real estate database RealPage shows that in the third quarter of the year — a typically robust leasing period — rental demand turned “moderately negative” as leasing traffic plummeted. October’s decline marked the first time in the company’s tracking history that demand turned negative during the third quarter.
The decline in rent prices might not only be a lifesaver for Americans’ bank accounts, but for the entire US economy as the Federal Reserve continues raising interest rates in an effort to cool prices. Falling rents could go a long way to convincing the Fed that inflation is under control and helping the US avoid a significant downturn that could include mass layoffs and plunging home values.
“Right now, it’s a race against the Fed,” former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm told Insider. “The faster those things show up in consumer price inflation, the faster the inflation steps down, the sooner the Fed will back off.”
The economic downturn is already translating to cheaper rents for Americans
On a personal level, American renters will rejoice in lower rents following a record 17.6% increase in 2021 and additional hikes earlier this year.
In a harbinger of what could happen across the US next year, many big cities are already seeing declines. According to Zumper, more than half of the 100 US cities measured in its monthly national rent report posted month-over-month price declines in October. Falling 0.8% and 0.7% from September, the national median rent for a one and two-bedroom unit now stands at $1,491 and $1,832, respectively.
Cities that experienced rapid rent growth in recent years, including San Jose, Tulsa, and Seattle, all saw their rents fall compared to the prior month. Even New York City, which has reported booming rents in recent months, saw the median price for both one and two-bedroom apartments fall over 2%.
And on a national level, the quicker price growth slows, the sooner the Fed is likely to scale back the pace of its rate hikes that are weighing on the economy. Given that housing accounts for roughly a third of the Consumer Price Index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly inflation report, falling rents could go a long way to convincing the Fed inflation is under control.
While most economists expect a recession in 2023, the severity of the downturn may depend on just how quickly prices ease.
Lawler’s analysis, as well as the recent rental market data, both suggest things are trending in the right direction.
War crime prosecutor of Kharkiv Oblast stands with forensic technician and policeman at the site of a mass burial in a forest during exhumation on September 16, 2022 in Izium, Ukraine.
Editor’s note: The following article contains graphic photos of dead bodies and extremely graphic material detailing reports of executions, rape and torture of people in Ukraine, including of young children.
UNITED NATIONS — A report commissioned by the United Nations this month found Russian forces in Ukraine committed an array of war crimes, including summary executions, torture, rape and other acts of sexual violence against Ukrainian civilians.
The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine details violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in four regions occupied by Russian armed forces. The commission focused its investigations largely in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy.
In preparing the report, the commission conducted 191 interviews and traveled to 27 cities over five separate visits. In some cases, the commission found that Ukrainian forces committed war crimes against Russian troops, though those incidents were less frequent.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that its forces deliberately target civilians since the full-scale invasion began in late February.
In one of the most disturbing examples of sexual violence, the commission details an incident involving a 4-year-old girl:
In Kyiv region, in March 2022, two Russian soldiers entered a home, raped a 22-year-old woman several times, committed acts of sexual violence on her husband and forced the couple to have sexual intercourse in their presence.
Then, one of the soldiers forced their four-year-old daughter to perform oral sex on him, which is rape
The commission said that the ages of victims of sexual assault ranged from 4 years of age to over 80 years old.
“Perpetrators raped the women and girls in their homes or took them and raped them in unoccupied dwellings,” the group wrote in the Oct. 18 report.
The group also wrote that spouses and family members, including children, were sometimes forced to witness the crimes committed by Russian troops who “frequently seemed under the influence of alcohol.”
The commission detailed separate incidents in March involving both a middle-aged and an elderly woman in a village outside of Kyiv:
A 56-year-old woman explained how two of the three Russian armed forces who broke into her home gang-raped her as the third one watched while masturbating. They stole food and money from her. She learned a couple of weeks later that, in a separate incident, her husband had been tortured and executed.
An 83-year-old woman described how, while her village was occupied by Russian armed forces, she was raped by a Russian armed forces serviceman in her house where her physically disabled husband was also present.
The commission wrote that some victims declined to be interviewed while others have considered suicide. One psychologist who spoke with the commission said that “all victims with whom I am working are blaming themselves for being spotted by perpetrators and being raped.”
The report also documents Russian forces unlawfully confining Ukrainian civilians in overcrowded makeshift facilities before carrying out interrogation sessions which involved methods of torture:
The conditions of detention were inhumane. According to the victims, the space was so crowded that some were forced to stand or sleep on chairs for weeks. There was no light or ventilation, and the air was hot and suffocating.
Water was dripping from ceilings and walls and there were no showers or toilets. There was very limited access to food and water, and close to no access to medical care … The soldiers randomly shot near the victims to scare them.
A Ukrainian police officer examines a cell as the words of the Lord’s Prayer are written on the wall at the District Police Department used by Russian occupiers for torture, Balakliia, Kharkiv Region, northeastern Ukraine.
The report added that Russian soldiers referred to Ukrainian civilians as “fascists” or “livestock” during interrogation sessions.
The individuals were handcuffed, tied, blindfolded and sustained prolonged beatings with rifle butts or batons. Russian forces also administered electric shocks with tasers and carried out mock executions, according to the commission.
“Victims also described acts of forced nudity during prolonged times, in front of others, which also amount to sexual violence,” the report said.
One victim was severely beaten during two days after refusing to declare support for the Russian Federation on camera.
Another victim was forced to stand naked and shout “glory to Russia” while being beaten and described beatings as a “punishment for speaking Ukrainian” and “not remembering the lyrics of the anthem of the Russian Federation.”
The commission wrote that following initial detention in Ukraine, individuals were forcibly transferred to Belarus or Russia, which is a violation of international humanitarian law. Once civilians reached Russia, they were held in detention facilities, known as filtration camps, before being issued Russian identity cards. Moscow has denied those charges.
The report also outlines events in which victims in “civilian clothes, driving civilian cars and unarmed” were targeted and killed by Russian troops.
The left hand of a senior man killed in a deadly Russian missile strike on a humanitarian convoy remains on the steering wheel of a car in Zaporizhzhia, southeastern Ukraine.
“Most of the incidents took place during daylight, which means that the civilian appearance should have been clear to the attacker,” the commission wrote, adding that soldiers shot civilians using assault rifles, or in some cases vehicle-mounted weapons.
The majority of the summary executions occurred in places where Russian armed forces were located for an extended period of time, according to the commission’s findings.
Some victims’ dead bodies were found with hands tied behind their back, a clear indication that the victim was in custody and posed no threat at the time of death.
The Commission’s investigations show that the cause of death of the victims is consistent with methods typically used during executions: gunshot wounds to the heads, blunt trauma, or slit throats. In some cases, there was also evidence of torture on the bodies, such as bruises, wounds and fractures.
Investigators carry away a body bag in a forest near Izyum, eastern Ukraine, on September 23, 2022, where Ukrainian investigators have uncovered more than 440 graves after the city was recaptured from Russian forces, bringing fresh claims of war atrocities.
Sergey Bobok | Afp | Getty Images
The commission concluded in its report that through its investigations in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy, it found that Russian armed forces carried out an “array of war crimes, violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”
The group wrote that it will expand its investigations to include a broader geographical region in a future report.
In a lawsuit filed last week, a Los Angeles-based company called Balmuccino claimed (again) that the coffee chain had stolen its ideas and suppliers for a coffee lip balm product.
Starbucks said via email that it “firmly believe[s] these claims to be without merit, and we look forward to presenting our case in court.”
This is the company’s second try at a suit. According to Reuters, the first suit was filed in 2019, but it was dismissed because the court found it “lacked jurisdiction” or didn’t have the authority to hear the case.
Balmuccino’s suit claims Starbucks “effectively stole” the lip balm idea after Balmuccino took a meeting with Mesh Gelman, who was then the company’s head of product development and an SVP in 2017. The suit says Gelman asked for a lot of information on the product and said he would “run the idea ‘up the flagpole.’” The idea was that Balmuccino would be “duly compensated and given proper credit” for the idea.
Then, the company claims that in 2018, a supplier for the lip balm told Balmuccino it received outreach from Starbucks for a product with “identical,” specifications that Balmuccino had given Gelman. In April 2019, as the suit notes, Starbucks released a line of lip balms based on the S’mores Frappuccino.
The original meeting came together, the suit says, because one of Balmuccino’s employees, Samantha Lemole, “was” a sister-in-law of Dr. Oz who then connected her with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (who is currently transitioning out of the role).
Balmuccino says that in the original meeting with Gelman, they asked the executives to sign an NDA and Gelman declined, saying that “the meeting and the items discussed therein were completely confidential and that the relationship between Mr. Schultz and Dr. Oz, who had brokered the meeting, should provide the necessary comfort and protections Plaintiff was seeking via the Non-Disclosure Agreement.”
Thus, the suit claims the company broke its verbal agreement to follow an NDA.
Lemole filed for divorce from George Griffith, who is related to Dr. Oz, based on IMDB pages in December 2020. But on her website biography, she says she is still married to Griffith and that Dr. Oz is her “brother-in-law.”
On Elon Musk’s first day in control of Twitter, the company has started laying off employees, including data engineers, according to CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Iranians protest to demand justice and highlight the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police and subsequently died in hospital in Tehran under suspicious circumstances.
Mike Kemp | In Pictures via Getty Images
A bipartisan group of 13 lawmakers urged several U.S. tech CEOs to do more to help Iranian people stay connected to the internet as their government seeks to censor communications amid ongoing protests.
The Iranian regime has taken aggressive measures to block citizens from the internet and anti-government messages as people across the country continue to protest its restrictive standards. The protests began after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of Iran’s so-called morality police, who had accused her of improperly wearing her hijab, an Islamic head-covering for women.
In the letter to the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and cloud service DigitalOcean, the lawmakers asked the executives to be “more proactive” in getting important services to Iran. The Treasury Department last month issued guidance on U.S. sanctions on Iran to make clear that social media platforms, video conferencing and cloud-based services that deliver virtual private networks can operate in Iran.
“While we appreciate some of the steps your companies have taken, we believe your companies can be more proactive in acting pursuant to the broad authorization provided in GLD-2,” the lawmakers wrote, referencing the general license used to issue sanctions guidance.
They specifically pointed to four different types of tools they’d like to see the companies work to get into the hands of the Iranian people: cloud and hosting services, messaging and communication tools, developer and analytics tools and access to app stores.
The lawmakers said these types of tools would help Iranian citizens stay connected to the internet in secure ways amid government-imposed shutdowns and reduce their reliance on domestic infrastructure. The availability of multiple secure communications tools would make it harder for the Iranian regime to shut down all of them at once, they wrote.
The lawmakers also said that giving the Iranian people access to developer tools and app stores would allow them to “create and harden” their own communications apps and security tools and give them a place to distribute them without government surveillance.
Reps. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., and Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., took the lead in the letter.
“Iranians are fearlessly risking their lives for their fundamental rights and dignity,” they wrote. “Your tools and services may be vital in their efforts to pursue these aspirations, and the United States should continue to make every effort to assist them.”
A Google spokesperson said in a statement the company is working on ways to “ensure continued access to generally available communications tools like Google Meet and our other Internet services.” Google launched location sharing in Iran on Google Maps in September to let people let loved ones know where they are and the Jigsaw team within Google is working to make its tool more widely available so users in Iran can run their own VPNs that resist blocking, the spokesperson added.
Meta did not provide a comment. The Facebook-owner had made Instagram and WhatsApp available in Iran, but the services have been restricted by the government.
The other companies named in the letter did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
CNBC’s Rick Santelli joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to report on October’s consumer sentiment print reaching its best levels since February, as well as the massive miss for September pending home sales.
Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped a much worse-than-expected 10.2% in September from August, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Economists had predicted a 4% decline. Sales were down 31% year over year.
This marks the lowest level on the pending sales index since June 2010, excluding April 2020, when the Covid pandemic was in its early days.
Realtors point squarely to sharply higher mortgage rates, which had sat at record lows for the first two years of the pandemic. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage was right around 3% at the start of this year, but then rose swiftly, crossing 6% in June, according to Mortgage News Daily. It pulled back a bit in July and August, but then began rising again, crossing 7% in September, when these contracts were signed.
A Coldwell Banker “Under Contract” sign stands outside a property in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“Persistent inflation has proven quite harmful to the housing market,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “The Federal Reserve has had to drastically raise interest rates to quell inflation, which has resulted in far fewer buyers and even fewer sellers.”
Mortgage demand and new listings are dropping, too, because homeowners are unwilling to give up their record-low interest rates to trade up to a much higher one. For potential buyers, the increase in rates means the monthly payment on a median-priced home, with a 20% down payment, is now close to $1,000 higher than it was in January.
“With wages falling behind on account of inflation, and rates rising, buyers’ purchasing power has been reduced by over $100,000,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com.
“As we look to the remainder of the year, we can expect interest rates to continue their upward trajectory. The Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening has not yet made a dent in inflation, which means that the bank is expected to hike its policy rate further,” he added.
While red-hot home prices are starting to cool and even drop in some local markets, the decline is not enough to make up for the increase in interest rates. Home prices are up more than 40% since the start of the pandemic, fueled largely by those rock-bottom interest rates early on.
Regionally, pending home sales dropped 16.2% month to month in the Northeast and were down 30.1% year over year. In the Midwest, sales were down 8.8% for the month and 26.7% from one year ago.
In the South, sales retreated 8.1% for the month and were down 30.0% year over year, and in the West, the most expensive region in the nation, sales fell 11.7% for the month and were down 38.7% from the year before.
Amazon ‘s disappointing quarterly results signaled to analysts that even the giants aren’t immune to a macro slowdown. The technology behemoth reported results after the bell Thursday that fell short of analysts’ revenue expectations. Amazon also signaled a slowdown in its Amazon Web Services division, which recorded its slowest growth since at least 2014 , and shared weaker-than-expected guidance for the current period. The stock was last down more than 13% in premarket trading. Analysts trimmed price targets and estimates to reflect a broader macro slowdown at the e-commerce giant following the results, with analysts at Deutsche Bank and Wolfe Research saying it’s time to “batten down the hatches.” However, most analysts remain bullish on the company’s long-term trajectory, maintaining their outperform and buy ratings on the stock. “Combined with wobbles on revenue momentum for both AWS and Retail, and suddenly the Amazon hiding place doesn’t look good,” wrote Bernstein’s Mark Shmulik in a note to clients Friday, believing a “redemption story” is ahead for the company and equating the recent tech meltdown to “trying to turn a big freight ship.” “The good news here is that the story isn’t broken, it’s just pushed out into 2023 while Q4 may get worse before it gets better… pretty much Google 2.0,” the analyst wrote. That said, analysts across the board trimmed price targets and estimates to reflect the broader macro pressures. Goldman Sachs analyst Eric Sheridan said in a note to clients Friday that the bank remains a believer in the company’s long-term trajectory and its cloud computing business despite the results. He trimmed the company’s price target to $165 from $175 a share, suggesting a near 50% upside for the stock. “Based on our work, we remain convinced in a multi-year operating income margin expansion story for Amazon on the back of improved eCommerce margins, less International losses & higher profit margin mix contribution from AWS and advertising,” he wrote. RBC Capital Markets’ Brad Erickson called the company a “long-term secular winner” with strong earnings power and margin leverage once it can overcome macro pressures. Despite current setbacks expect Amazon to resurge as a winner coming out of a recession, said Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak in a note to clients Friday. “AMZN is seeing the consumer/enterprise slowdown more than thought, leading to lower rev and a flatter slope of volume-based efficiencies,” he said, reducing his price target to $140 a share. “But we think AMZN is positioned to take share through a downturn, see forward investment levels low, and the potential for cost rationalization.” Bank of America’s Justin Post said the weak outlook at Amazon may also signal that the feared recession looming ahead is already underway. He trimmed his price target on the stock to $137 from $157 a share, suggesting 23% upside ahead for the stocks. “It is evident from the 4Q guide that AMZN is not immune to the challenging macroeconomic environment worldwide,” said Wolfe Research’s Deepak Mathivanan in a note to clients. “However, we think the company is well positioned to navigate a choppy demand environment with minimal disruption to operations and potentially gain share from sub-scale players.” Shares are down more than 33% this year. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting
