Bhinneka News Online: Thursday Morning Briefing: Beto O’Rourke has joined the 2020 presidential race

Thursday, 14 March 2019

Thursday Morning Briefing: Beto O’Rourke has joined the 2020 presidential race

Highlights

Beto O’Rourke has joined the 2020 presidential race. O’Rourke, who gained a national following with his long-shot election battle against U.S. Senator Ted Cruz last year, joins a sprawling field of Democrats vying for the chance to run against President Donald Trump. “This moment of peril produces, perhaps, the greatest moment of promise for this country,” he said, announcing his candidacy in an online video.

Two black boxes from the Boeing 737 MAX airplane that crashed in Ethiopia have arrived in Paris for expert analysis, officials said, as regulators around the world awaited word on whether it was safe to resume flying the jets. Yesterday, the United States became the latest to join the long list of countries around the globe to ground Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft.

Britain’s parliament is due to vote today on whether to delay Brexit beyond March 29th. Prime Minister Theresa May is preparing to push lawmakers to vote again on her EU divorce deal, which they have twice rejected. Key to May’s plan will be an attempt to persuade the most pro-Brexit lawmakers to reverse their opposition to her deal in the face of a possibly long delay that could mean Britain ends up with a closer relationship with the EU than May’s plan foresees or that Brexit is overturned in a second referendum.

Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, the reported crime boss of the New York Mafia’s Gambino family, was gunned down in front of his Staten Island home late Wednesday, police and media said. The Gambino crime operation is one of the five historic Italian-American Mafia families in New York, and it makes money through violence and extortion. Media reported that Cali was shot at least six or seven times and also run over by a blue pickup truck driven by the shooter.

Chinese trade

China’s customs authority has lifted their suspension on imports of Tesla’s Model 3, after the U.S. electric car maker made the necessary rectifications. China’s General Administration of Customs stopped clearing Tesla Model 3 imports last week, saying that they did not have the required Chinese language warning signs and had missing or incorrect nameplate labels.

Despite failing to sell a mountain of soybeans in the last harvest due to the U.S.-China trade war, U.S. farmers are gearing up to plant what could be their third-largest soybean crop ever. Chinese tariffs have almost halted the trade, taking the biggest buyer out of the market and leaving farmers with crops they cannot sell. According to estimates, approximately $8 billion worth of last year’s soybean harvest will sit in storage silos around the country when the next harvest starts. As winter ends farmers say there are simply no better options but to begin planting again.

Growth in China’s industrial output fell to a 17-year low in the first two months of the year and the jobless rate rose, pointing to further weakness in the world’s second-biggest economy. Capital Economics and others noted that infrastructure investment has not improved as much as hoped after the government began fast-tracking road and rail projects last year, and data last week showed exports tumbled the most in three years in February. This suggests U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and cooling global demand were taking a toll.

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6:45 AM - 14 Mar 2019

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