Monday Morning Briefing: More than 2,000 people pay their respects to the victims of Illinois shooting
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February 18, 2019
Reuters News Now
Highlights
More than 2,000 people braved icy rain in sub-freezing temperatures in Illinois on Sunday for a vigilpaying respects to five people killed and five police officers wounded by a factory worker Gary Martin who opened fire on Friday after losing his job. Martin was a violent felon with a 1995 conviction for aggravated assault in Mississippi, which reportedly involved the bludgeoning and stabbing of a girlfriend. He obtained a state permit to buy a firearm despite being legally barred from owning one, officials said.
Activists have called for nationwide protests todayto demonstrate against President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. Trump invoked the emergency powers on Friday after Congress declined to fulfill his request for $5.7 billion to help build a border wall. The move was designed to let him spend money appropriated by Congress for other purposes. Democrats have vowed to challenge it as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. “Come and voice your outrage,” said the organizers of the demonstrations.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden won a standing ovationat the Munich Security Conference by promising that “America will be back” once Donald Trump leaves office. Biden’s words were a comfort to delegates who find the president’s brusque foreign policy stance hard to like. But their elation also exposed the weakened state of Western diplomacy in the face of Trump’s assertiveness.
Deeply troubled by military housing conditionsexposed by Reuters reporting, the U.S. Army’s top leadership vowed Friday to renegotiate its housing contracts with private real estate firms. The Reuters reporting described rampant mold and pest infestations, childhood lead poisoning, and service families often powerless to challenge private landlords. “It is frankly unconscionable that our soldiers and their families would be living in these types of conditions,” said the Secretary of the Army Mark Esper.
World
Seven lawmakers have quit Britain’s main opposition party,saying the party had been 'hijacked by the machine politics of the hard left'. Their departure also underlines the mounting frustration with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance to change his Brexit strategy and start campaigning for a second referendum. The seven will continue to sit as lawmakers in parliament under the banner ‘The Independent Group’.
The Vatican will gather senior bishopsfrom around the world later this week for a conference on sex abuse. The meeting is designed to guide them on how best to tackle a problem that has decimated the Church’s credibility, but critics say it is too little, too late.
Residential prices in Qatar are down about 10 percent from June 2017 and office prices have fallen by a similar rate, according to analysts and economists. Rents are down 20 percent from three years ago, they say. An oversupplied Qatar property market, a real estate downturn after a drop in oil prices and the boycott by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt are said to be the cause.
New Zealand said on Monday that it plans to update its laws so it can tax revenue earned by multinational digital firms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, extending a global effort to bring global tech giants into the tax net.
Hopes of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks and expectations of policy stimulus from central banks lifted world stocks to 2-1/2 month highs on Monday, though European gains were dampened by concerns over the car sector’s outlook.
