Wednesday Morning Briefing: U.S. Army will fund rare earths plant for weapons development
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December 11, 2019
Reuters News Now
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The U.S. Armyplans to fund construction of rare earths processing facilities, part of an urgent push by Washington to secure domestic supply of the minerals used to make military weapons and electronics, according to a government document seen by Reuters. The move would be the first of this kind since World War Two’s Manhattan Project built the first atomic bomb.
Police in the New Yorkmetropolitan area were put on high alert to protect Jewish neighborhoods after an hours-long gunbattle with two men around a Jersey City kosher market that killed six people, authorities said. The six dead included three civilians, one police officer and both gunmen.
The Pentagonannounced on Tuesday it was halting operational training of all Saudi Arabian military personnel in the United States until further notice after a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people last week at a base in Florida.
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunbergaccused political and business leaders of polishing their images rather than taking aggressive action in the fight against climate change at a United Nations summit on Wednesday. “It seems to have turned into some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition,” the 16-year-old Swede told the meeting in Madrid, drawing applause.
Increasing tremors on a volcanic islandin New Zealand have hampered efforts by authorities to recover the bodies of eight people thought to be left on the island, two days after it erupted, engulfing dozens of tourists in steam and hot ash. An update from geological agency GeoNet showed conditions on the uninhabited island remained dangerous, which would likely delay any recovery.
Saudi Aramco shares surged the maximum permitted 10% above their IPO price on their Riyadh stock market debut on Wednesday, closing in on the $2 trillion valuation long sought by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Like many Uber drivers in Sao Paulo, the ride-hailing app’s busiest city in the world, Augusto Caio Pereira does not actually own or lease the car he nudges through the city’s notorious traffic jams every day.
The U.S. Federal Reserve holds its last policy meeting of 2019 on Wednesday, having completed a year-long U-turn that saw it abandon a tightening cycle and lower borrowing costs three times in response to the global trade war.
After the initial euphoria had subsided, Mexican business leaders emerged bruised and resigned to a new stricter trade deal with the United States and Canada that could usher in more intrusive enforcement of labor rules in Mexico.
