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The World
Major drug makers are getting into mRNA, the technology behind the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccines, in a big way. Sanofi, one of the largest vaccine makers, announced it will spend $3.2 billion to purchase Translate Bio, its partner in an effort to create an mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine. That follows a June announcement that Sanofi would create an mRNA vaccines center of excellence, funded with almost $500 million annually, with the goal of creating six experimental vaccine candidates by 2025. (STAT News)
South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency said that it had recorded at least two cases of the new coronavirus delta-plus variant, which some experts believe to be more transmissible than the original delta variant that was first detected in India and has since thwarted plans for returning to life before the pandemic. (Washington Post)
China suspended flights and trains, canceled professional basketball league games and announced mass coronavirus testing in Wuhan amid widening outbreaks of the delta variant. While the total number of cases is still in the hundreds, they are far more widespread than anything China has dealt with since Wuhan’s initial outbreak. (Associated Press)
New York City will become the first U.S. city to require proof of vaccination for a variety of activities for workers and customers — indoor dining, gyms and movie theaters. Microsoft will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter its U.S. buildings, with the full opening of offices ‘no earlier’ than October 4. (New York Times, The Verge)
The Taliban commander overseeing an assault on the key southern city of Lashkargah is one of 5,000 former prisoners released by the Afghan government last year under pressure from the U.S., Afghan and Western officials say. The commander, Mawlavi Talib, is one of thousands of former prisoners freed to further peace talks who have returned to the battlefield to join the Taliban onslaught against cities around the country. (Wall Street Journal)
As Taliban gain ground, fears of Afghanistan civil war grow. (Nikkei Asian Review)
President Macron has been accused of stonewalling plans for an Anglo-French summit amid a “toxic” diplomatic relationship between London and Paris. Amid recriminations on both sides the French are understood to be refusing to agree a date for the summit, with one source saying the relationship was “appalling.” (The Times)
Iran was suspected of being behind the apparent hijacking of an asphalt tanker in the Gulf of Oman, days after the country was blamed for a deadly drone attack on another vessel in the Arabian Sea. British government sources said that the Asphalt Princess was thought to have been seized off the coast of Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, by a “squad” of eight or nine armed men. (The Times)
Americans increased their mortgage borrowings in 2Q21, adding fuel to a housing boom that has seen US prices surge at a record pace. Federal Reserve data showed that mortgage originations reached $1.2tn in 2Q21, exceeding volumes seen in the previous three quarters and well above the $752bn level reached in the 4Q19. Taken together, mortgage originations over the four quarters to June 30 — which include refinancing — amounted to nearly $4.6tn, a historic high. (Financial Times)
NY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, including current and former government workers, whose accounts of unwanted touching and inappropriate comments were corroborated in a damning report released by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James. The 165-page report prompted multiple calls for Cuomo to resign, including from President Biden, a longtime ally of the governor, and it cast doubt on Cuomo’s political future. The Democratic speaker of the State Assembly said he intended to quicken the pace of a separate impeachment inquiry, adding that Cuomo “can no longer remain in office.” (New York Times)
Cities all over the country are adopting new building codes in an effort to reduce climate concerns, following the Bay Area first implementing these regulations last year. Energy consumed in buildings produced more than 30% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. The International Energy Agency has said that new construction worldwise will need to start switching to all-electric around 2025 if nations are to limit global warming to below 1.5 C (2.7 F) in this century. (Undark)
Heat waves to drastically worsen in Northern Hemisphere, studies warn. As global temperatures have increased, extreme heat events in the Northern Hemisphere have occurred with greater frequency and intensity. Climate models project that heat waves will regularly break records and induce more heat stress before the end of the century. (Washington Post)
Record wildfire burns at least 40,000 acres on Hawaii’s Big Island, sets up mudslide danger. (Washington Post)
Economy
Crypto’s ‘Wild West’ needs stronger investor protection, SEC Chief Gary Gensler said, adding the SEC will regulate cryptocurrency markets to the maximum extent possible using its existing authority. He also called on Congress to grant the agency more scope and resources to oversee the sector. Calling the asset class rife with “fraud, scams and abuse,” Gensler signaled the SEC is likely to become more active in policing crypto trading and lending platforms, as well as so-called stablecoins. (Wall Street Journal)
SEC Chair Gary Gensler wants more crypto oversight to protect investors and will help the tech go mainstream: "It's only with bringing things inside—and sort of clearly within our public policy goals—that a technology has a chance of broader adoption.” Gensler offered no timetable for a Bitcoin ETF. (Bloomberg)
Goldman Sachs raked in record revenue from asset management in the past quarter thanks to a business that invests the Wall Street bank’s own capital. But rather than expand it, Goldman is seeking to make the business smaller. The US bank has said it hopes to shrink its “equity investments” portfolio by almost 20 per cent, turning instead to fees from clients such as pension funds and wealthy people to bring in more asset management revenue. (Financial Times)
Sales of securities backed by riskier commercial real-estate loans have surged to a record, highlighting investors’ demand for higher-yielding debt and expectations for a recovery in business properties. (Wall Street Journal)
British businesses are set to come under fresh pressure to appoint more women to senior leadership positions, as ministers prepare to relaunch the Hampton Alexander equality review with an expanded remit later this year. The five-year review came to an end in February after a final report showed its target of a third of women in board positions had been achieved on average across the FTSE 350. Ministers are now drawing up proposals for a fresh push to ensure that UK companies have at least 40% female board directors. (Financial Times)
Private equity investment in the UK has risen to its highest level in five years, as investors gained a renewed sense of confidence and vendors brought their assets to market. KPMG’s latest study of UK transactions involving mid-market private equity investors showed a boost of activity in 1H21, as 377 deals were completed with a combined value of GBP20.7 billion – levels which haven’t been seen since 1H17. This is a significant increase when compared to the same period in 2020, which saw 260 deals with a combined value of GBP14.9 billion. (Private Equity Wire)
Spirit and American Airlines cancel and delay flights a third day. (Wall Street Journal)
Technology
Facebook is bulking up a team of artificial intelligence researchers, including a key hire from Microsoft, to study ways of analyzing encrypted data without decrypting it. The research could allow Facebook to target ads based on encrypted messages on its WhatsApp messenger, or to encrypt the data it collects on billions of users without hurting its ad-targeting capabilities. (The Information)
Whole Foods is tacking on a $9.95 grocery delivery fee in six cities to offset operating costs. Delivery previously was free for Prime members. (Bloomberg)
Food delivery has turned into an all out war between cities, delivery companies, mom-and-pop restaurants and delivery drivers over every dollar. In spring 2020, cities rushed to pass emergency commission caps to limit the amount that delivery companies could siphon off of a delivery order. Now cities want to make those caps permanent. DoorDash and Grubhub are suing San Francisco after it became the first city to pass a permanent cap at 15% in June, calling the price controls "unprecedented and a dangerous overreach by the government." New York's City Council passed an extension on its delivery cap to February 2022, and is mulling over a permanent commission cap in the country's largest food delivery market. Also on the menu: new bills that would have delivery companies hand over customer information like their address and phone numbers to restaurants when they request it. (Source Code, Second Measure)
China's Tencent Holdings said it would further curb minors' access to its flagship video game, hours after its shares were battered by a state media article that described online games as "spiritual opium." Economic Information Daily cited Tencent's "Honor of Kings" in an article in which it said minors were addicted to online games and called for more curbs on the industry. The broadside re-ignited investor fears about state intervention in China after Beijing had already targeted the property, education and technology sectors to curb cost pressures and reassert the primacy of socialism after years of runaway market growth. (Reuters)
Activision Blizzard’s head of its Blizzard Entertainment unit and a senior human-resources executive are leaving the company, as the videogame publisher seeks to stabilize its business after a gender-bias lawsuit and calls to improve its culture. (Wall Street Journal)
The ad market boom is leaving the television sector behind. Discovery became the third major TV firm to report second-quarter results, and like WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal previously, it showed U.S. ad numbers that were lower than the pre-pandemic era. It’s a contrast to any internet-based firm selling advertising—whether Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Spotify or the advertising-focused platforms like Facebook, Snap, Twitter and Google. (The Information)
Smart Links
China’s top market watchdog investigates auto chip dealers it suspects are driving up prices. (Wall Street Journal)
Airbnb alums raise early-stage venture capital fund. (Wall Street Journal)
What if highways were electric? Germany is testing the idea. (New York Times)
Robinhood surges more than 24%, blows past $38 IPO price. (CNBC)
Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry gets 4-year, $215M NBA extension. (ESPN)
Global investment in renewable energy. (Axios)