Tuesday Morning Briefing: House Democrats expected to unveil formal charges in Trump impeachment

Highlights

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives were expected to unveil two articles of impeachment against Republican President Donald Trump on Tuesday, a senior Democratic aide said, setting the stage for a possible vote this week on impeachment. Democrats were expected to draft articles of impeachment on abuse of power and on obstruction of Congress, the aide told Reuters.

U.S. lawmakers announced an agreement on Monday on a $738-billion bill setting policy for the Department of Defense, including new measures for competing with Russia and China, family leave for federal workers and the creation of President Donald Trump’s long-desired Space Force.

The U.S. Justice Department’s internal watchdog said on Monday that it found numerous errors but no evidence of political bias by the FBI when it opened an investigation into contacts between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia in 2016.

U.S. disruption of the global economic order reaches a major milestone on Tuesday as the World Trade Organization loses its ability to intervene in trade wars, threatening the future of the Geneva-based body. Two years after starting to block appointments, the United States will finally paralyze the WTO’s Appellate Body, which acts as the supreme court for international trade, as two of three members exit and leave it unable to issue rulings.

After 14 conferences, a couple dozen research papers and presentations and some very dense math, the Federal Reserve’s hunt for a better way to reach its inflation target may boil down to a single word: symmetric. The word, meant to convey a tolerance for inflation periodically running a bit hot without the Fed rushing to quash it, is emerging as the touchstone of a concerted push to change how an elusive price goal is understood by the public.

World

New Zealand police launched an investigation on Tuesday after a volcanic eruption on an island popular with tourists killed five people, injured more than 30 and left eight people missing, who are presumed dead. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said reconnaissance flights showed no signs of life on White Island, as eyewitnesses detailed the horrific burns suffered by those caught up in the eruption.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will bolster his argument on Tuesday for leaving the European Union early next year, urging voters to return him to power so Britain can “rip up the EU rule book and write a new one for ourselves”.

A gunman shot dead six people on Tuesday at a hospital waiting room in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava in an unexplained attack, authorities said. Police hunting for the shooter said about three hours after the attack that a man had shot himself in the head in a car they had been looking for.

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice on Tuesday to defend her country over charges of genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority, as back home thousands of people rallied in her support. Gambia launched the proceedings against Buddhist-majority Myanmar in November, accusing it of violating its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The runaway husbands. Kaur isn’t your usual Indian bureaucrat. She isn’t a government employee at all. She and the other women who work in the passport office are abandoned wives, volunteering their hours at the office to help women like them. Read our Wider Image report.

Business

Apple has 'deep concerns' that ex-employees accused of theft will flee to China

Apple on Monday told a federal court it has “deep concerns” that two Chinese-born former employees accused of stealing trade secrets from the company will try to flee before their trials if their locations are not monitored.

5 min read

With hashes and hedges, power-hungry crypto miners court investors

The old image of bitcoin miners is of young techies in their bedrooms, hunched over laptops that solve maths puzzles to earn new coins. Now they’re more likely to be savvy startups with ultra-high-speed chips and massive, power-guzzling machines.

6 min read

Malaysia's Mahathir hopeful of 1MDB settlement with Goldman soon

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is hopeful of reaching an out-of-court settlement with Goldman Sachs over the 1MDB scandal soon, but that compensation of “one point something billion” dollars offered by the bank was too small.

3 min read

Honda's Hachigo seizes the wheel as quality crisis hits profits

At a two-day gathering for Honda’s suppliers in March, Chief Executive Takahiro Hachigo sounded the alarm. Since then, Hachigo has been quietly working on reforms to centralize decision-making by bringing Honda’s standalone research & development division in-house and cutting some senior management roles, according to three Honda insiders.

9 min read

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