Trump tariff threats alarm Mexico growers, economists
CULIACAN, Mexico — Tomato exporter Sergio Esquer Peiro spent much of Friday in hastily called meetings with other stunned growers, trying to evaluate the potential fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to slap coercive tariffs on all imports from Mexico.
The sudden announcement caught observers on both sides of the border by surprise and prompted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to dispatch his top diplomat to Washington for talks seeking to head off the proposed tariffs.
Obrador said Mexico won’t panic over the threatened hike, but economists and those whose livelihoods depend on the trade relationship worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year worry that stiff duties could have dramatic, negative consequences and potentially spark a trade war between the neighboring countries.
Already, Esquer and other exporters were having to contend with a 17.56% tariff on tomatoes imposed after Washington announced in March it was ending a longstanding agreement over alleged Mexican dumping of the fruit. If the new duties do take effect, Esquer is looking at another 5% being slapped on his products — potentially increasing to 25% in subsequent months — unless Mexico does more to stop illegal migration through its territory by a June 10 deadline per Trump’s demand.
“Right now more than anything there is a reaction of disbelief with everything that is going on,” Esquer, who’s been sending tomatoes and other crops to the United States for 60 years, told The Associated Press by phone during a break in the meetings.
Judge says Missouri clinic can keep providing abortions
ST. LOUIS — A judge issued an order Friday to keep Missouri’s only abortion clinic operating over the objections of state health officials, delivering abortion-rights advocates a courtroom victory after a string of setbacks in legislatures around the U.S.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer said Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic can continue providing abortions despite the Missouri health department’s refusal to renew its license over a variety of patient safety concerns. He said the temporary restraining order was necessary to “prevent irreparable injury” to Planned Parenthood.
With the abortion license set to expire at midnight Friday, Planned Parenthood pre-emptively sued this week and argued that the state was “weaponizing” the licensing process. Planned Parenthood said that absent court intervention, Missouri would become the first state without an abortion clinic since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.
The clinic’s license will remain in effect until a ruling is issued on Planned Parenthood’s request for a permanent injunction, Stelzer’s ruling says. A hearing is set for Tuesday morning.
“Today is a victory for women across Missouri, but this fight is far from over,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Dr. Leana Wen said in a statement. “We have seen just how vulnerable access to abortion care is here — and in the rest of the country.”
Police searching for missing girl say body of child found
HOUSTON — The remains of a child were found Friday near a freeway in Arkansas where a community activist says a man told him he had dumped the body of a missing 4-year-old Houston girl, police said Friday.
Houston police went to Arkansas on Friday after community activist Quanell X told authorities the man arrested in connection with the disappearance of Maleah Davis confessed he disposed of her body there just before he reported her missing in early May.
Houston Police Commander Michael Skillern, one of the officers who traveled to Arkansas, told reporters that authorities had found a child’s remains in a garbage bag near Interstate 30 close to Hope.
Quanell X said he spoke on Friday in jail with Derion Vence, the ex-fiance of Maleah’s mother, who had claimed Maleah was abducted. Quanell X said that Vence told him he dumped her body in Arkansas.
Sheriff James Singleton in Arkansas’ Hempstead County said workers found the bag, which had a foul odor coming from it, near Hope, about 30 miles northeast of the Texas-Arkansas border.
From wire sources
___
US Catholic Church reports big rise in sex-abuse allegations
NEW YORK — Quantifying its vast sex-abuse crisis, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church said Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that its spending on victim compensation and child protection surged above $300 million.
During the period from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 allegations of abuse, according to the annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. That was up from 693 allegations in the previous year. The report attributed much of the increase to a victim compensation program implemented in five dioceses in New York state.
According to the report, Catholic dioceses and religious orders spent $301.6 million during the reporting period on payments to victims, legal fees and child-protection efforts. That was up 14% from the previous year and double the amount spent in the 2014 fiscal year.
The number of allegations is likely to rise further during the current fiscal year, given that Catholic dioceses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have started large compensation programs in the wake of a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August. The grand jury identified more than 300 priests in six of the state’s dioceses who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse committed over many decades.
Since then, attorneys general in numerous states have set up abuse hotlines and launched investigations, and a growing number of dioceses and Catholic religious orders have released names of priests accused of abuse.
___
Huawei retaliation? China draws up list of ‘unreliables’
In an ominous but vague warning, China said Friday that it was drawing up a list of “unreliable” foreign companies, organizations and individuals for targeting in what could signal retaliation for U.S. sanctions on the Chinese tech powerhouse Huawei.
“We think it may be the beginning of Beijing’s attempt to roll out a retaliatory framework,” said Paul Triolo of the global risk assessment firm Eurasia Group. “That could include a number of other elements, such as restrictions on rare earth shipments” — minerals that are crucial in many mobile devices and electric cars made by U.S. companies.
The move follows additional measures this week that deepen the bite of U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei in mid-May amid an escalating trade war, whose backdrop is the two powers’ struggle for long-term technological and economic dominance.
Several leading U.S.-based global technology standards-setting groups announced restrictions on Huawei’s participation in their activities under the U.S. Commerce Department restrictions, which bar the sale and transfer of U.S. technology to Huawei without government approval.
Such groups are vital battlegrounds for industry players, who use them to try to influence the development of next-generation technologies in their favor. Excluding Huawei would put the company at serious disadvantage against rivals outside China.
