US history

CALIFORNIA: After a surprisingly weak growth forecast in this week’s earnings report, Facebook’s stock price dropped 19 percent. The decline, which erased about $120 billion in market value, is the largest one-day drop in the history of the American stock market. Facebook shares fell as much as 23 percent in after-hours trading when Facebook reported its second-quarter earnings. While revenue increased 42 percent in the quarter, it still missed analysts’ projections. More worrisome was the number of daily active users,…

NEW YORK: Last year was the most expensive in US history for natural disasters, with a barrage of fires, freezes, floods and hurricanes that cost $306 billion, according to a US government report Monday. In 2017, a total of 16 disasters cost $1 billion or more, and led to at least 362 deaths, said the report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The death toll could be substantially higher, once Puerto Rico completes its review of deaths from Hurricane Maria, experts said. The year far outpaced the…

LAS VEGAS: Police sought clues on Tuesday to explain why a retiree with a penchant for gambling but no criminal record set up a sniper’s nest in a high-rise Las Vegas hotel and poured gunfire onto a concert below, slaying dozens of people before killing himself. The Sunday night shooting spree from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay hotel, on the Las Vegas Strip, killed at least 59 people before the gunman turned a weapon on himself. More than 500 were injured, some trampled, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern…