Wednesday Morning Briefing: Israel's Netanyahu wins reelection with parliamentary majority

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“It is a night of colossal victory,” 69-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu told cheering supporters last night after voting tallies showed he had been reelected prime minister of Israel. With more than 97 percent of votes counted, Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party looked likely to muster enough support to control 65 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and be named to head the next coalition government - a record fifth term as premier.

As Israel secures it’s next prime minister, Britain’s might be on her way out. British Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels today for an emergency EU summit, where European leaders will grant a further extension to the date that Britain will leave the bloc. May has promised not to seek a new term as prime minister at the next election, and has offered to quit sooner if parliament backs her divorce deal. Her goal now is to get a deal through parliament that would allow her to leave with some kind of legacy.

Blizzards and windstorms will punish the U.S. Plains and Midwest on Wednesday and into Thursday as a powerful storm threatens more flooding in areas such as South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and farms along the Missouri River.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers on Tuesday that he intends to release a redacted version of the long-awaited report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “within a week”. During a congressional hearing, Barr was repeatedly challenged by Democrats who raised suspicions that he may have misrepresented Mueller’s report to paint the Republican president in a better light.

Business

Wall Street is bracing for large U.S. companies to report a decline in quarterly profits even after raking in higher revenues, something that has not happened in more than a decade. S&P 500 companies due to report in the coming weeks face tough comparisons with last year, when the U.S. tax code overhaul helped boost profits by more than 20%. But with rising costs, some resulting from tariffs, analysts see profit margins shrinking by 1.1 percentage point, the first year-over-year decline in at least two years, IBES data from Refinitiv showed.

Exclusive: Uber has decided it will seek to sell around $10 billion worth of stock in its initial public offering, and will make public the registration of the offering on Thursday, people familiar with the matter said. An IPO of this size would make Uber one of the biggest technology IPOs of all time. The company is seeking a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion, influenced by the poor performance of smaller rival Lyft’s shares following its IPO last month, the sources said. Investment bankers previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion.

Boeing’s legal troubles grew on Tuesday as a new lawsuit accused the company of defrauding shareholders by concealing safety deficiencies in its 737 MAX planes before two fatal crashes led to their worldwide grounding. The proposed class action filed in Chicago federal court seeks damages for alleged securities fraud violations, after Boeing’s market value tumbled by $34 billion within two weeks of the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX.

World stocks slipped below the six-month high they reached earlier this week as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened more tariffs against the European Union, though the prospect of European Central Bank largesse kept them from falling too far. “Risk assets have been threatening to take their foot off the pedal in recent sessions and yesterday we finally saw that with a delayed reaction to the U.S.-EU tariff headlines,” said Deutsche Bank’s chief market strategist Jim Reid.

World

WikiLeaks says Julian Assange is being spied on in Ecuadorean embassy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been the subject of a sophisticated spying operation in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012, the group said on Wednesday.

3 min read

Thousands flee homes in Tripoli as fighters battle on outskirts

Eastern forces and troops loyal to the government in Tripoli are fighting on the outskirts of Libya’s capital in a battle that has forced thousands to flee their homes. The United Nations said that at least 4,500 Tripoli residents had been displaced, most moving away from conflict areas to safer districts of the city. But many more were trapped, it said.

4 Min Read

New Zealand votes to amend gun laws after Christchurch attack

Lawmakers in New Zealand have voted almost unanimously to change gun laws, less than a month after its worst peacetime mass shooting, in which 50 people were killed in attacks on two mosques in Christchurch. Parliament passed the gun reform bill by 119 votes to 1.

3 min read

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