Tuesday morning news - March 3, 2020

Candidates geared up for Super Tuesday » Today is Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the presidential primary process. And it could shape up as a showdown between the frontrunner, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Biden heads into today’s votes with the wind at his back. He’s coming off a resounding 28 point win over Sanders in South Carolina. And two candidates competing with Biden for the center-left vote have called it quits within the past two days. 

BUTTIGIEG: I will no longer seek to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, but I will do everything in my power to make sure that we have a new Democratic president come January. 

Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg heard there on Sunday. A day later, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out. And both are reportedly throwing their support behind Joe Biden. 

Fourteen states will hold primaries today. The biggest prize is California, with 415 pledged delegates up for grabs, followed by Texas with 261.

Exit polls show Netanyahu closer to victory » Meantime, in Israel on Monday, voters went to the polls for the third time in less than a year. And supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party celebrated…

SOUND (Likud NATS): [up just a sec or two, then under and out]

…as exit polls last night gave Netanyahu a solid edge. 

But it was unclear whether he could clinch the majority in Parliament needed to claim victory.

Exit polls have Netanyahu and his nationalist and religious allies winning 60 seats, one short of a parliamentary majority. The center-left bloc, led by former military chief Benny Gantz, was projected to win 52 to 54 seats.

Trump meets with pharmaceutical leaders about COVID-19 vaccine » President Trump huddled with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry in the Oval Office on Monday to discuss what can be done to fast track a vaccine for COVID-19. Emerging from that meeting, the president told reporters …

TRUMP: It’s likely that therapies will be ready before a vaccine is actually ready. Some very good work has been done on the vaccine, however, and they have some good progress. 

Medical officials say it could be more than a year before an effective vaccine hits the market. 

Meantime, a hospital employee who recently traveled to Italy is the first person in New Hampshire to test positive for the coronavirus.

The male patient is experiencing mild symptoms and remains at home in Grafton County while health officials investigate. The patient is an employee of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, which has set up an incident command center.

COVID-19 is characterized by fever and coughing and, in serious cases, shortness of breath or pneumonia. As of Sunday, the United States had at least 80 confirmed cases of the virus.

Supreme Court to hear Obamacare appeal » The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide a lawsuit that targets Obamacare. WORLD Radio’s Anna Johansen has more. 

ANNA JOHANSEN, REPORTER: The court said it would hear an appeal by 20 mainly Democratic states of a lower-court decision. That ruling declared part of Obamacare unconstitutional and cast a cloud over the entire statute. 

For those with insurance under the law, nothing changes while the high court deliberates. The law’s subsidized private insurance coverage and Medicaid expansion remain in place while the issues are litigated.

Defenders of the Affordable Care Act argued that the questions raised by the case are too important to let it drag on for months or years in lower courts. They also said the 5th U-S Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans erred when it struck down the provision that forced Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine.

The case will be the third major Supreme Court battle over the law since President Barack Obama signed it nearly 10 years ago.

Reporting for WORLD Radio, I’m Anna Johansen.  

Judge rules Cuccinelli unlawfully appointed to lead USCIS » A federal judge has ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to lead the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.  

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington found Cuccinelli’s appointment violated a law governing who is eligible to lead federal agencies in an acting capacity. And, as a result, the judge said Cuccinelli lacked authority to give asylum seekers less time to prepare for initial screening interviews.

Cuccinelli told Fox News…

CUCCINELLI: You can expect an appeal, and we’ll take intermediate steps to avoid any challenges, but it doesn’t affect anything we’re doing going forward, and Joe Edlow’s there at the helm. 

Joe Edlow is deputy director for policy at USCIS. The agency grants green cards and other visas and also oversees asylum officers.

Former GE CEO Jack welch dies » Former General Electric CEO and corporate leadership guru Jack Welch has died. 

Welch became a household name during his two decades as GE’s chairman and chief executive, from 1981 to 2001. His results-driven management approach and hands-on style were credited with helping GE turn a financial corner. At one point during his tenure, GE became the most valuable company in the world.

But some of that success came at the expense of thousands of employees who lost their jobs in Welch’s efforts to rid GE of unprofitable businesses. Welch explained in a 2005 interview…

WELCH: Your mission has to be very clear. We wanted to be, clearly at GE, we wanted to be the most competitive enterprise in the world. And we wanted to be number one or number two in every business we were in, or we wanted to fix, sell or close it. 

In 1999, Fortune magazine named Welch as its “Manager of the Century.”

Welch died of renal failure. He was 84 years old.

In this Feb. 24, 2020 file photo, Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and U.S, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., greet eachother at a South Carolina Democratic Party dinner in Charleston, S.C.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.