Bedugul Coffee: US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Trump

Weekend Briefing

From Reuters Daily Briefing

By Robert MacMillan, Reuters.com Weekend Editor

Welcome to the Weekend Briefing. Rather than my usual overture, I'll spare your patience apart from pointing to you our latest City Memo, which takes us to Shanghai. Plenty of news awaits below.

US charges Iranian man in plot to kill Trump

Majid Asgaripour/WANA

The latest: The Justice Department said Farhad Shakeri told law enforcement that the Revolutionary Guards told him to come up with a plan, but that he was going to blow his deadline. Republicans meanwhile hold a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, and prosecutors are doing some heavy thinking about what comes next in the Donald Trump election-subversion case.
The once-and-future president-elect: I had a plan to write a newsletter full of every "what it means" story on our file. Events, as Harold Macmillan* put it, intervened. I urge you to visit our elections page instead. I also like these stories about how Hispanic and working-class voter support helped Republicans, how Democrats are soul searching and blaming one another, and what Black Americans think of it all. Trump opponents, what are your most attractive exile destinations?

Biden's last chance for Middle East peace

Leverage: The White House will make a final push for a deal to stop the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, but officials likely will face counterparts reluctant to take big steps. Trump promised to bring peace, but has not said how. Israel said it will reopen a crossing into the strip to increase the flow of aid. Food-security experts say famine likely is imminent in northern Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The front: Vladimir Putin is ready to talk peace in Ukraine with Trump, but his demands for Ukraine to drop its NATO ambitions and remove troops from territory that Russia claims remain. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was not aware of any details for Trump's plan to quickly end the war. Listen to our weekend edition of the World News podcast for more.

Raise that stock price or fall on your sword

Fire the boss: U.S. companies with lagging stock prices have taken less time to fire their top executives. That should sharpen the mind of the new CEO at Burberry, where sales have fallen and the share price is down 40% this year.
Fire the workers: Boeing employees furloughed during a seven-week factory-worker strike will receive their lost wages, but the plane maker still plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce. Stellantis will lay off 1,100 workers at an Ohio jeep plant and 400 workers at a Detroit parts facility. Nissan will cut 9,000 jobs.

China throws a twist into COP29 climate-talk agenda

Consensus: China wants to talk trade at the climate summit, which raises the possibility that talks on the big issue – approving billions in new funding to address climate change – might be delayed. What is COP29 and why do we care about it? What is a carbon credit and what is Article 6?
Steps forward and back: Canada proposed a sharp cut in oil and gas emissions by 2030 while Britain's grid operator said the country faces huge challenges to meet its clean-power goal by the same year. Hurricane Rafael took down Cuba's notoriously unreliable power grid. Here's why Spain's flash floods turned into a deadly catastrophe.

Before I forget…

- Amsterdam banned demonstrations for three days after attacks on Israeli soccer supporters by what the mayor called antisemitic hit-and-run squads. Did the Dutch government miss warnings from Israel? Jewish students in Vienna prevented an Austrian far-right leader from laying a wreath to commemorate Kristallnacht.
- Germany's coalition government fell apart. Olaf Scholz promised elections in March. His opponents want them sooner. How did support for Ukraine set things in motion? What does it mean? I'm glad you asked.
- The NAACP and the White House condemned text messages sent anonymously to Black Americans in multiple states that told them to report to a plantation to pick cotton.
- Separatists demanding a Naga homeland carved out from India and Myanmar threatened to resume violence after a decades-long truce with New Delhi.
- The world's biggest food and beverage companies sell products in low-income countries that are less healthy than what they sell in high-income countries.
- Lash yourself to the mast, Ulysses: China's navy told young officers and personnel to guard themselves against online-dating scams and gambling.
- Equatorial Guinea ordered a crackdown on sex in government offices after videos that appeared to show a finance-ministry official doing just that with several women.
  
  * We're not related.

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