Bhinneka News Online: Tuesday Morning Briefing: Trump administration sued over migrant detention

Tuesday 27 August 2019

Tuesday Morning Briefing: Trump administration sued over migrant detention

Top Stories

Attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia sued President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday to block a sweeping new rule to indefinitely detain migrant families seeking to settle in the United States. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was the first in an expected flurry of litigation seeking to stop the rule from taking effect in October.

The U.S. government plans to launch a program that narrowly focuses on protecting voter registration databases and systems ahead of the 2020 presidential election. These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Violence in Hong Kong’s anti-government protests is becoming more serious but the government is confident it can handle the crisis itself, the embattled leader of the former British colony said. Carrie Lam was speaking in public for the first time since demonstrations escalated on Sunday, when police fired water cannon and volleys of tear gas in running battles with protesters who threw bricks and petrol bombs.

Iran will not talk to the United States until all sanctions imposed on Tehran are lifted, President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday, a day after President Donald Trump said he would meet his Iranian counterpart to try to end a nuclear standoff. Trump also said talks were under way to see how countries could open credit lines to keep Iran’s economy afloat.

Environment

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations offered $20 million of emergency aid to help battle wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, a gesture Brazil slammed as colonialist. Global anger and concern has been steadily rising as the blazes have raged because of the rainforest’s importance to the environment. Read our explainer on the Amazon fires.

Donald Trump, responding to a question about climate change after skipping a G7 session on the issue, said that American wealth is based on energy and he will not jeopardize that for dreams and windmills. Trump’s administration has reversed U.S. environmental protections put in place by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama and has weakened the Endangered Species Act wildlife conservation law.

Can power napping solve electric car charging challenge? Automakers around the world are pushing hard for new networks that can charge electric cars fast. In Europe, some power companies and grid operators are testing whether it might be smarter and cheaper to move into the slow lane.

Business

J&J liable for $572 million in Oklahoma opioid epidemic trial

An Oklahoma judge on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572.1 million to the state for its part in fueling an opioid epidemic by deceptively marketing addictive painkillers, a sum that was substantially less than investors had expected, driving up J&J’s shares.

5 min read

Trump's aggressive, mixed signals on China whiplash Wall Street

President Donald Trump’s aggressive stance and often mixed signals in his trade war with China are taking a toll on the shares of U.S. companies that are most reliant on the world’s second largest economy. A basket of companies impacted by the trade war, created by Barclays, has sharply underperformed the S&P 500 this month after tracking evenly with the broader market for the three previous months.

4 Min Read

Three U.S. bond kings wield same strategy, get same result - lag their peers

Three names dominate the U.S. world of bond investing - Jeffrey Gundlach, Dan Ivascyn and Scott Minerd. But funds run by these star investors are lagging their respective benchmarks this year. The proximate cause for the underperformance of these high-profile bond investors: the monstrous rally in U.S. corporate bonds and Treasuries.

2 min read