Bedugul Coffee: Tuesday Morning Briefing: Trump faces political test in Ohio

Highlights

Trump faces a test of his political influence in a special congressional election in Ohio that has become a referendum on his leadership and a last chance to gauge Democratic strength ahead of November’s midterm elections.

New U.S. sanctions against Iran took effect today and Trump, who defied Washington’s allies to impose them, pledged that firms doing business with Tehran would be barred from doing business with the United States.

Rick Gates, a former business associate to Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort, will continue to testify against his former boss and is expected to face a tough cross examination today.

Environment

California’s biggest wildfire on record raged as hot and windy conditions challenged thousands of fire crews battling eight major blazes burning out of control across the state.

The world is at risk of entering “hothouse” conditions where global average temperatures will be 4-5 degrees Celsius higher even if emissions reduction targets under a global climate deal are met, scientists said in a study.

World

The death toll from a powerful earthquake that hit Indonesia’s tourist island of Lombok topped 100 as rescuers found victims under wrecked buildings, while thousands left homeless in the worst-affected areas waited for aid to arrive.

A Japanese medical school deliberately cut women’s entrance test scores for at least a decade, an investigation panel said, calling it a “very serious” instance of discrimination, but school officials denied having known of the manipulations.

"We haven’t seen any stories they wrote which have violated media ethics," said Yangon Journalism School's director as he vouched for the integrity of two Reuters journalists accused of obtaining secret state documents in Myanmar. Read the latest updates on the case.

Commentary: If you want to know why Trump shouldn’t expect to win his trade crusade against China, look no further than Alibaba, the country’s giant e-commerce version of Amazon, writes David A. Andelman, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and CBS News and visiting scholar at Fordham University's Center on National Security. While the U.S. president seems to think that the U.S. can stand the pain of tariffs longer than China, "that reflects little understanding of either the Chinese mindset or the underlying strength of the Chinese economy."