WASHINGTON — Investigators searched coast-to-coast Thursday for clues to the motives behind a mail bomb plot apparently aimed at critics of the president, analyzing the mechanics of the crude devices to reveal whether they were intended to detonate or simply sow fear two weeks before Election Day.
Law enforcement officials said the devices, containing timers and batteries, were not rigged like a booby-trapped package bomb that would explode upon opening. But the officials were still uncertain whether the devices were poorly designed or never intended to cause physical harm. A search of a postal database suggested at least some of packages may have been mailed from Florida, one official said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name.
New details about the devices came as the four-day mail-bomb scare spread nationwide, drawing investigators from dozens of federal, state and local agencies in the effort to identify one or more perpetrators. In all, 10 packages had been discovered through Thursday containing similar explosives. The would-be targets included former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, actor Robert De Niro, CNN and others. The common thread between them was harsh criticism from President Donald Trump.
At a press conference Thursday, officials in New York would not discuss possible motives, or details on how the packages found their way into the U.S. postal system. Nor would they say why none of the packages had detonated, but they stressed they were still treating them as “live devices.”
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A candidate for statewide office in Rhode Island told supporters not to volunteer or donate to his campaign: It was pointless since he had little chance of winning.
A candidate for Congress in Connecticut disappeared from his own campaign, saying he’d rather spend time coaching T-ball. The state Democratic Party in South Carolina, desperate for candidates, resorted to a robo-call asking for people to run.
Even in a year being portrayed as the most important midterm race in a generation, races for some of the most important positions in states across the country aren’t even contests. Democrats in red states and Republicans in blue states are failing to field viable candidates for a number of statewide offices and congressional seats, and in some cases they won’t have anyone on the ballot for powerful offices such as attorney general.
In Rhode Island, where Republicans have not won statewide office since 2006 and failed to run anyone for an open attorney general seat, GOP candidate for general treasurer Michael Riley told The Associated Press that he asked supporters not to give to his campaign because he didn’t want them to spend their hard-earned money on a lost cause.
“If you’re running as a Republican, you’re going to lose, period. That’s how you have to approach it. That’s how every Republican here approaches it,” said Riley, who also ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2012.
NEW YORK — If you’re an investor who was lulled to sleep by the stock market’s calm, steady gains this summer, you’re wide awake by now.
Stocks have swooned over the last three weeks as investors worried about a sea of troubles, including rising interest rates, the trade tensions between the U.S. and China and slowing economies outside the U.S. All of which could impair profit growth for U.S. companies.
As of Thursday, the S&P 500 index had plunged 7.5 percent in about three weeks, with two separate six-day losing streaks. It hadn’t had a streak of losses that long since right before the November 2016 presidential election. There have been a few big gains recently, including Thursday, but with four trading days left in October the index is on track for its worst month in seven years.
Another big loss could push the index into what Wall Street calls a “correction” — a drop of 10 percent or more from the latest high.
The recent turbulence in financial markets is a contrast to what investors have grown accustomed to in a bull market that has lasted more than 10 years, the longest in history. A hallmark of the past decade has been ultra-low interest rates, which the Federal Reserve used to promote growth in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Signaling a major pivot in its narrative, Saudi Arabia on Thursday said evidence shows that the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, an apparent effort to ease international outrage over the death of a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudi prosecutors cited Turkish evidence that the slaying was planned, contradicting a Saudi assertion just days ago that rogue officials from the kingdom killed him by mistake in a brawl inside their Istanbul consulate. That earlier assertion, in turn, backtracked from an initial statement that Saudi authorities knew nothing about what happened to the columnist for The Washington Post, who vanished after entering the consulate Oct. 2.
The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the world’s largest oil exporter and a major U.S. ally in the Middle East. But a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening skepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s heir apparent.
At a conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, the crown prince said the killing was a “heinous crime that cannot be justified” and warned against any efforts to “manipulate” the crisis and drive a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are regional rivals but also diplomatic and business partners.
On Thursday, Prince Mohammed attended the first meeting of a committee aiming to restructure the kingdom’s intelligence services after the killing of Khashoggi, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.
From Associated Press