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The World
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed Taiwan's parliament and met with its president as well as human rights activists during a visit to the island that has infuriated Beijing. (Reuters)
China has threatened to hold major military exercises around Taiwan this week in an angry riposte to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi becoming the highest-profile American official to visit the island in a quarter of a century. Shortly after Pelosi landed in Taipei late on Tuesday, China announced that the People’s Liberation Army would hold live-fire drills — exercises using live ammunition — at several points around Taiwan, including off the east coast where the PLA has become much more active over the past year. (Financial Times)
This Is How China Could Hit Back Over Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit. (Bloomberg)
China stocks gain as investors monitor Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. (CNBC)
Liz Truss has extended her lead over Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership race to 34 points, with 60 per cent of party members now saying they will vote for the foreign secretary to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister. A YouGov poll for The Times and Times Radio found that almost nine in ten Tory members had made up their minds. Twenty-six per cent said they would support Sunak. The rest were undecided or said they would not vote. (The Times)
U.S. Sanctions Woman It Calls Vladimir Putin’s Girlfriend: Alina Kabaeva is sanctioned along with other prominent Russian business leaders and officials. (Wall Street Journal)
Supreme court could strike blow against affirmative action in Harvard case ruling: Court’s conservative supermajority threatens to overturn yet another longstanding precedent as it hears arguments in two cases. (The Guardian)
More than 10 inches of rain falls in Illinois, another exceptional deluge. It’s the third 1-in-1,000-year rain event in the Lower 48 states in about a week. (Washington Post)
Why the High Plains turns off its turbines to limit wind production while the Texas power grid is stressed: While wind farms in the region could help power and lower energy costs for at least 9 million homes, significant infrastructure upgrades would be needed to supply electricity from the region to other parts of the state. (Texas Tribune)
Economy
Fed’s James Bullard expresses confidence that the economy can achieve a ‘soft landing’. Markets lately have been making the opposite bet, namely that a hawkish Fed will hike rates so much that an economy will fall into a recession. (CNBC)
Equifax provided inaccurate credit scores on millions of U.S. consumers seeking loans during a three-week period earlier this year, according to bank executives and others familiar with the errors. Equifax sent the erroneous scores on people applying for auto loans, mortgages and credit cards to banks and nonbank lenders big and small—including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and Ally Financial Inc., the people said. The scores were sometimes off by 20 points or more in either direction, the people said, enough to alter the interest rates consumers were offered or to result in their applications being rejected altogether. (Wall Street Journal)
Robinhood Markets is slashing about 23% of its full-time staff as the flashy online brokerage continues to reel from a sharp slowdown in customer trading activity. The job cuts mark the second round of layoffs this year at Robinhood, which in April reduced its staff by about 9%. Together, the two rounds have cut more than 1,000 jobs from the company. (Wall Street Journal)
Yellen Says Manchin Bill Won’t Raise Taxes for Families Earning Less Than $400,000 a Year: An analysis found some middle- and low-income households could pay additional taxes. (Bloomberg)
Technology
Advanced Micro Devices reported a sharp increase in quarterly sales, driven by strength in its data-center business where rival Intel has been stumbling, but issued a muted outlook for the current period. AMD said sales reached $6.6 billion in its second quarter, up 70% from a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street expectations. Profit fell 37% to $447 million, reflecting adjustments linked to AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx Inc. (Wall Street Journal)
Nancy Pelosi is set to meet with TSMC's chairman Mark Liu to discuss implementation of the Chips and Science Act during her visit to Taiwan. (Washington Post)
Y Combinator narrows its Summer cohort size by 40% to ~250 companies, down from 414 in its Winter cohort, due to a downturn in the economy and in VC funding. (TechCrunch)
Inside Downtown San Francisco’s Plan to Reinvent Itself: The city’s pre-pandemic office culture may never return. A new plan considers how its half-empty financial district could adapt. (Bloomberg)
Airbnb benefits from high booking prices and predicts ‘strong’ summer. (Financial Times)
Smart Links
Los Angeles Shopping Center Shows Strength of Bricks-and-Mortar Retail. (Wall Street Journal)
Londoners Are Still Leaving the City in Droves: The trend sparked by the coronavirus pandemic shows no sign of slowing. (Bloomberg)
Nick Clegg becomes latest Meta executive bound for London. (Financial Times)
How the Senate Climate Bill Will Boost Clean Energy. (Scientific American)
Japan is open to travel. So why aren’t tourists coming back? (CNN)
Tiger Woods Was Offered $700 Million to $800 Million to Join LIV Golf. (Wall Street Journal)