Bedugul Coffee: Thursday Morning Briefing: Blessing the AR-15

Highlights

Hundreds of couples toting AR-15 rifles, some wreathed in crowns made of bullets, packed a Unification church in Pennsylvania yesterday to have their marriages blessed and their weapons celebrated as “rods of iron” that could have saved lives in a recent Florida school shooting.

The massacre has reopened a fierce debate over gun control in America, prompting Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods to raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21 and Trump to buck Republican Party orthodoxy and endorse restrictions on gun sales.

Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s longest-serving and most trusted aides, is resigning from her job as White House communications director. The White House announced Hicks was leaving a day after she spent nine hours in a closed hearing of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on its Russia probe.

Trump will gather rivals today from the oil and corn industries for the second time this week as the administration seeks elusive common ground on reforms to the nation’s controversial biofuels law. In addition, the White House will host several top U.S. steel and aluminum executives for what could be a major trade announcement, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

world

At Pakistan's painful birth in 1947, the ensuing chaos meant little attention was paid to the architecture of British colonial rulers that influenced the country's biggest city, Karachi. More than 70 years later, many architectural gems are either crumbling or under threat from real estate developers in Pakistan's commercial capital which is mushrooming into a mega-city.

A witness in the case of two Reuters reporters jailed in Myanmar told a courtroom that he wrote notes on his hand about where the pair were arrested to jog his memory. The location of the arrests has emerged as a key point of contention in the proceedings to decide whether Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, will be charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

Commentary: Investors' fears that populist forces will win Italy's election are misplaced, writes Paul Wallace in a column on the real reason to worry about the March 4 vote. "Italian political risk is overhyped. By contrast there is undue complacency about Italy’s vulnerable economy, the third biggest in the euro area."