Tuesday Morning Briefing: In warehouse of horrors, broker kept stacks of heads

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A boy dressed as Pennywise from the movie "It" poses for a photo during a Halloween party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

 


Russia probe

 

Federal investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election charged President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering. It was a sharp escalation of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s five-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the election in Trump’s favor and into potential collusion by Trump aides. 

 

Facebook, Twitter and Google head before U.S. lawmakers for two days of grueling hearings on how Russia allegedly used their services to try to sway the election. At stake for the Silicon Valley companies are their public images and the threat of tougher advertising regulations in the United States, where the technology sector has grown accustomed to light treatment from the government. 

 

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Democrats over a uranium deal during the Obama administration and a dossier compiled on Trump during the presidential campaign. 

 


U.S.

 

A top U.S. business lobby in China said it was concerned Trump’s administration was not making sufficient preparation for talks on imbalances in the bilateral economic relationship ahead of his November visit. 

 

Trump’s top national security aides pushed back against U.S. lawmakers calling for a new congressional war authorization, saying it would be a mistake to impose geographic or time limits on the campaign against Islamic State and other militant groups. 

 

Virginia Democrat Danica Roem has been called a man by conservative opponents attacking her views on LGBT rights as she campaigns to become the United States’ only transgender state legislator. Roem does not shy away from her gender identity, but rather than focus on the politics of running as a transgender woman, she prefers to discuss traffic gridlock and other issues in the Nov. 7 election for the Virginia House of Delegates. 

 


Special Report

 

Arthur Rathburn is accused of dismembering donated bodies with a chainsaw and renting HIV-infected parts to medical professionals. Prosecutors hailed his arrest as a crackdown. But for years, Reuters found, authorities let him do business despite signs of his bizarre practices. This is Part Four of an investigative series that goes inside the body broker industry.

 

Criminals, slaves and minorities: the unseemly past of the body trade.

 


Health

 

A year-long audit of the program overseeing U.S. labs that handle lethal pathogens such as Ebola and anthrax found overworked safety inspectors, an absence of independent review and weak biosafety protections that could expose lab workers and the public to harm, a government report will say. Read the exclusive.

 

Pfizer reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly profit, benefiting from strong demand for its newer drugs.

 


 

A red squirrel collects a walnut from a tree in Pitlochry, Scotland, Britain October 29, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

 


Tech

 

Alphabet’s self-driving car unit stopped developing features that required drivers to take control in dangerous situations, its chief executive said, as autopilot reliance left users prone to distractions and ill-prepared to maneuver. 

 

Apple has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm, according to two people familiar with the matter. The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. 

 


Business

 

SoftBank and Deutsche Telekom AG have reached an impasse in their talks to merge Sprint Corp and T-Mobile, sources said, sending shares in the Japanese Internet giant sliding. 

 

Airbus said it had uncovered problems involving the use of sales agents to sell U.S. arms technology, dragging the United States for the first time into a growing corruption scandal at Europe’s largest aerospace firm. 

 

U.S. agricultural trader Archer Daniels Midland reported a nearly 44 percent fall in quarterly profit, hurt by weak margins from agricultural services and oilseeds processing businesses. 

 

Aetna cut losses in its Obamacare business in the third quarter, helping the U.S. health insurer post a higher-than-expected profit and raise its full-year earnings forecast. 

 

Breakingviews - Twin tailwinds help Ryanair weather pilot crisis 

 


World

 

Spain’s foreign minister said he would be surprised if Belgium granted political asylum to Catalan secessionist leader Carles Puigdemont, who turned up there following Madrid’s dismissal and takeover of Catalonia’s regional government. 

 

Seoul and Beijing agreed to move beyond a year-long stand-off over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, a dispute that has been devastating to South Korean businesses that rely on Chinese consumers. 

 

China has quietly undertaken more construction and reclamation in the South China Sea, recent satellite images show, and is likely to more powerfully reassert its claims over the waterway soon, regional diplomats and military officers say. 

 

Efforts to restore electricity to Puerto Rico nearly six weeks after Hurricane Maria are shifting as the island’s utility and its regulators, along with U.S. authorities, removed a key contractor and moved to triple the funding of another. 

 

Video: Meet Saudi Arabia’s first robot citizen.

 

German police arrested a 19-year-old Syrian suspected of planning an Islamist-motivated bomb attack in Germany with the aim of killing as many people as possible, the federal prosecutor’s office said. 

 

Reuters TV: The wife of a man accused by Russia of plotting to kill President Vladimir Putin was shot dead outside Kiev.

 

What you need to know about the fallout from the Mueller indictments

Monday Morning Briefing: Former Trump campaign chief to turn himself in

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U.S. President Donald Trump gives out Halloween treats to children of members of press and White House staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

 


Russia probe

 

The first charges from the probe of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election could be unsealed as early as today and a target taken into custody, possibly marking a dramatic turn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 

 

U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, said Democrats should be called again to testify about reports that their party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid for parts of a dossier that detailed accusations about Trump’s ties to Russia. 

 

Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort will surrender to federal authorities amid the ongoing probe, CNN and the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources. 

 

Reuters TV: Charges filed in Russia probe 

 


U.S.

 

Trump’s plan for overhauling the U.S. tax system faced growing opposition from interest groups, as Republicans prepare to unveil sweeping legislation that could eliminate some of the most popular tax breaks to help pay for lower taxes. 

 

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy goes on trial for his role in leading a 2014 armed standoff against federal agents that became a rallying point for militia groups challenging U.S. government authority in the American West. 

 

The wife of a U.S. soldier who suffered a debilitating brain injury during the search for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan is expected to be one of prosecutors’ last witnesses when the deserter’s sentencing hearing resumes. 

 

Kevin Spacey apologized to fellow actor Anthony Rapp for a 1986 incident in which Rapp said Spacey made a sexual advance to him when Rapp was only 14. Spacey said in a post on Twitter he was horrified to hear Rapp’s story of the encounter, which he said he did not remember. He wrote that he owed Rapp a “sincere apology” for what he said would have been “deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” 

 


Cyber

 

Nasdaq was removed earlier this year from its role supporting a $1.1 billion cyber security exchange-traded fund (ETF), partly over concerns about their management of the fund’s index, the ETF’s management company told Reuters.  

 

U.S. tech firms such as Facebook and Twitter Inc should be more aggressive in tackling extremism and political misinformation if they want to avoid government action, a report from the World Economic Forum said. 

 


 

Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki celebrates after winning the final against USA's Venus Williams at the WTA Tour Finals in Singapore, October 29, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su

 


Business

 

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a lower opening for Wall Street as investors held back from making big bets ahead of a decision on the next Federal Reserve head

 

A leading U.S. regulator wants to make it easier for Wells Fargo to pay employees when they leave, loosening a restriction in place since a phony accounts scandal hit the bank last year, according to people familiar with the matter. 

 

Tankers carrying record levels of crude are leaving in droves from Texas and Louisiana ports, and more growth in the fledgling U.S. oil export market may before long test the limits of infrastructure like pipelines, dock space and ship traffic. 

 

A series of safety scandals at Japanese companies have put the country’s lionized factory floor under scrutiny as manufacturers struggle with increased pressure on costs, stricter enforcement of standards and growing competition. 

 

Breakingviews - HSBC investors to new CEO: more of the same please.

 

Kobe Steel is seeking 50 billion yen ($440 million) in loans from banks, a banking source said, while a shareholder said it was ready to offer support as the company grapples with a scandal over falsified product specifications. 

 

General Motors agreed to a $13.9 million settlement with Orange County, California after prosecutors accused the Detroit automaker of intentionally concealing serious safety defects including those involving faulty ignition switches tied to nearly 400 deaths and injuries, the company said.

 


World

 

Work resumed normally in Catalonia and calm reigned on the streets despite calls for civil disobedience from secessionist politicians, in early signs the direct rule imposed to stop an independence bid was taking hold. 

 

Puerto Rico’s government power company said it will cancel a $300 million contract with a tiny Montana company to restore power to the storm-hit U.S. territory after an uproar over the deal.

 

Iran is fulfilling its commitments under the nuclear deal with world powers and U.N. inspectors are facing no problems in their verification efforts, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general said. 

 

The Afghan Taliban said that Kevin King, one of two professors from the American University of Afghanistan who were kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul last year, is seriously ill and needs urgent medical attention.

 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere grew at record rate in 2016 to a level not seen for millions of years, potentially fuelling a 20-metre rise in sea levels and adding 3 degrees to temperatures, the United Nations said. 

 

British Prime Minister Theresa May has ordered an investigation into a report that one of her ministers asked a female secretary to buy sex toys for him, as she tries to tackle a culture of sexual harassment in politics. 

 

After reading a painful series of “Me Too” stories about sexual harassment and assault on social media, Amanda Crone realized she needed to have a conversation with her husband. So an anxious Crone, 29, a stay-at-home mother of two young children, put on a movie for her kids and went upstairs to the bedroom of her Hanover, Pennsylvania, home to tell him about being sexually assaulted nine years ago, before they had met.