BitGou: Wednesday Morning Briefing: Foreign groups likely behind Sri Lanka attacks, U.S. ambassador says

2019年4月24日星期三

Wednesday Morning Briefing: Foreign groups likely behind Sri Lanka attacks, U.S. ambassador says

World

The scale and sophistication of the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka suggested the involvement of an external group such as Islamic State, the U.S. ambassador said as the death toll jumped to 359. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera released the toll but did not give a breakdown of casualties from the three churches and four hotels hit by suicide bombers. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that her government was not aware of any intelligence suggesting that a devastating attack in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for deadly shootings on a mosques in Christchurch.

Exclusive: Artisanal mining began as small-time ventures. But the 'romantic' era of individual mining has given way to 'large-scale and dangerous' operations run by foreign-controlled criminal syndicates – the President of Ghana, Africa’s second-largest gold producer, told a mining conference in February. A new Reuters analysis can now give an estimate of the scale of gold being smuggled out of Africa every year.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in the Russian city of Vladivostok for a summit he is likely to use to seek support from Russian President Vladimir Putin while Pyongyang’s nuclear talks with Washington are in limbo. Earlier, at a stop on the border, Kim told Russian state television he was hoping for useful and successful discussions with Putin.

A Hong Kong court jailed four leaders of 2014 pro-democracy protests amid heightened concerns over the decline of freedoms in the China-ruled city nearly five years after activists took to the streets in mass protests. Occupy Central is the name given to the protests that paralyzed parts of Hong Kong for 79 days in late 2014. Here are key facts about the protest and the trial.

South Korea unveiled a proposed 6.7 trillion won ($5.87 billion) supplementary budget the government says is needed to tackle unprecedented air pollution levels and boost exports bruised by weak demand.

Simon Lewis

@Simondlewis

Here’s a thread on the story @Reuters published today by @poppymcp @ReutersRuma and I (with great images by @mponirhossain), on the emerging politics in the world’s largest refugee settlement 1/9 https://reut.rs/2XH5bY6

4:34 AM - Apr 24, 2019

U.S. Politics

President Donald Trump, who bemoaned his treatment by the news media in a flurry of tweets on Tuesday, has barred members of his staff and administration from attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, officials said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads all other candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and draws his strongest levels of support from minorities and older adults, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public poll released.

A federal judge in the U.S. state of Oregon will block a move by the Trump administration to cut off federal money to family planning clinics that offer abortion or refer women to abortion providers, activists and media reports said late on Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to hand President Donald Trump a victory on his administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a move opponents call a Republican effort to deter immigrants from taking part.

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Business

U.S. accuses pair of stealing secrets, spying on GE to aid China

A former engineer and a Chinese businessman have been charged with economic espionage and conspiring to steal trade secrets from General Electric to benefit China, according to an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday.

4 min read

Exclusive: Behind Airbnb's bet on show business to hook travelers

Hollywood has a new suitor in Silicon Valley. Airbnb, the high-flying startup for booking home rentals around the world, has ambitions to develop a slate of original shows to whet customers’ appetite for travel, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

6 Min Read

Five Eyes will not use Huawei in sensitive networks: senior U.S. official

None of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing nations will use technology from Huawei in the “sensitive” parts of their telecoms networks, a senior U.S. official said. A British security source said earlier on Wednesday that Britain would allow China’s Huawei access to non-core parts of the 5G network, but block it from all core parts of the system.

2 min read

Boeing abandons 2019 outlook after 737 MAX groundings

Boeing missed sharply-lowered Wall Street estimates for revenue and cashflow in the first quarter and suspended its 2019 outlook, as the world’s largest planemaker continued to suffer from the grounding of its 737 MAX jets.

2 min read