POLITICS

With President Donald Trump set to deliver a State of the Union speech today, he will likely stir contention with remarks on immigration policy. Millions of Americans are expected to watch the address on television, giving Trump his biggest opportunity to date to explain why he believes a barrier is needed on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. Stacey Abrams, who has emerged as a ‘bona fide leader’ among Democrats, will deliver a response to Trump’s address, test-driving the party’s 2020 challenge.

“We have just received a subpoena for documents,” a spokesperson for President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee has said. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating whether the committee misspent some of the record $107 million it had raised from donors. Prosecutors have shown interest in whether donations were given in exchange for policy concessions and if any foreigners illegally donated to the committee.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the federal judge presiding over Paul Manafort's case has announced that Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, will be sentenced on March 13. He is being sentenced for attempted witness tampering and conspiring against the United States, according to a court filing on Monday.

Embattled Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s political future remains in limbo. Pressure continues to mount for Northam, a Democrat, to resign after the revelation of a racist photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. The photo shows one person in blackface standing beside a masked individual in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan. Northam initially apologized and said he was one of the two people in the photo. He then changed his story on Saturday, saying he did not appear in the picture.

World

North Korea is working to ensure its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities cannot be destroyed by military strikes, U.N. monitors said ahead of a meeting between U.S. and North Korean officials to prepare a second denuclearization summit. The U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, will meet his North Korean counterpart on Wednesday in Pyongyang to prepare for a summit later this month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has said that only secure technology could be installed to build Germany’s 5G network, adding that clear rules applied to all providers. Chancellor Angela Merkel, on a visit to Japan, said earlier on Tuesday that Germany needed guarantees that China’s Huawei Technologies “doesn’t just simply hand the data to the state” before the telecoms equipment supplier can participate in building its 5G network.

Flames tore through an apartment block in Paris, killing at least 10 residents in the early hours of Tuesday. Police said they arrested a 40-year-old woman who lived in the building on suspicion of starting the blaze in the upscale 16th arrondissement.

Britain’s financial services industry has emerged largely unscathed so far from the build-up to Brexit, a new Reuters survey showed. Many bankers and politicians predicted Britain’s vote to leave the European Union would prompt a mass exodus of jobs and business, but the number of jobs UK-based financial institutions say they expect to shift overseas has fallen steeply. At around 2,000, the new estimate is about a fifth of the 10,000 flagged in first survey in September 2017. “The City is always changing and it will find a way to thrive,” said Catherine McGuinness, the de facto political leader of the municipal body that helps to run London’s financial district, known as the City.

Two @Reuters journalists have been detained in Myanmar since Dec. 12, 2017. See our coverage of the case: https://reut.rs/2DSXM0B

12:27 PM - 4 Feb 2019