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The World
Kim Jong Un Travels to Russia, His Bulletproof Train Spotted Ahead of Putin Meeting: As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russia, he likely did so in the preferred manner of Pyongyang’s ruling family: cloaked in secrecy, self-protection and style. Kim, the third-generation dictator, plans to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, state media from both countries said on Monday—the first official confirmation of the summit between the two leaders. The reports didn’t specify when or where specifically the exchange will take place. Kim “will meet and have a talk with Comrade Putin,” North Korea’s state media said. The trip will mark the North Korean dictator’s first overseas trip in more than four years. Earlier on Monday, Kim’s personal, bulletproof train had left Pyongyang and been spotted en route toward Russia, according to a South Korean government official. (Wall Street Journal)
Kim Jong-un has ammunition stocks that Russia covets as it continues its war in Ukraine, and North Korea may get advanced technology and badly needed food aid in return. (New York Times)
NATO to launch biggest military exercise since cold war: Nato is preparing its biggest live joint command exercise since the cold war next year, assembling more than 40,000 troops to practise how the alliance would attempt to repel Russian aggression against one of its members. The Steadfast Defender exercise comes as part of Nato’s rapid push to transform from crisis response to a war-fighting alliance, prompted by the invasion of Ukraine. It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, Nato officials said. It is designed to model potential manoeuvres against an enemy modeled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill. (Financial Times)
The Biden administration has cleared the way for the release of five American citizens detained in Iran by issuing a blanket waiver for international banks to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian money from South Korea to Qatar without fear of U.S. sanctions. In addition, as part of the deal, the administration has agreed to release five Iranian citizens held in the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on the sanctions waivers late last week, a month after U.S. and Iranian officials said an agreement in principle was in place. Congress was not informed of the waiver decision until Monday, according to the notification, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The outlines of the deal had been previously announced and the waiver was expected. But the notification marked the first time the administration said it was releasing five Iranian prisoners as part of the deal. The prisoners have not been named. (Associated Press)
‘Completely destroyed’: Morocco’s mountain villages count human cost of earthquake. Hassan stared grimly at the mangled wreck of the café where he worked as a waiter, with sections of the building twisted and turned upside down by the powerful earthquake that struck Morocco’s High Atlas region. He was outside collecting his motorbike when the 6.8-magnitude quake hit on Friday night, wreaking devastation across rural villages south-west of the ancient city of Marrakech. “The whole building fell down. The owner, his wife and two children were inside but we pulled them out,” said Hassan. “They’re safe.” Others were less fortunate. As three members of a rescue team walked past, covered in dust and grime, sweating in the summer heat, one said he pulled 10 people out of nearby destroyed buildings. “They were all dead. I brought them so their families could recognise them and take them for burial,” said the rescuer, who declined to give his name. Some 2,681 people have been killed so far in the most powerful quake to strike the north African country for 120 years. (Financial Times)
Up to 2,000 feared drowned after Libyan city hit by ‘catastrophic’ storm floods: Local leaders in eastern city of Derna say thousands missing after two ageing dams collapse overnight. (The Guardian)
Chinese military: celebrating workers’ social media photo shows Beijing is likely building new Type 076 giant warship. An online image shows workers holding a banner celebrating the finished floor of a new dry dock in Changxing Island shipyard. Type 076 expected to function as a helicopter and drone carrier with an eye to conflict in the South China Sea, analyst says. (South China Morning Post)
The FDA announced it had greenlit two updated Covid-19 booster shots in people as young as 6 months old, triggering a process that could see the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines become available in doctors’ offices, clinics, and pharmacies later this week. The updated approvals relate only to the two messenger RNA vaccines on the U.S. market. An application for an updated vaccine from Novavax is still pending. (STAT News)
McCarthy pressure hits a boiling point: Kevin McCarthy is facing the greatest peril to his speakership since he clawed his way into the job eight months ago, with multiple factions of his party feuding and a looming revolt ahead during the battle to fund the government. Ultra-conservative members of the House GOP are talking in unsubtle terms about turning on McCarthy if he does not take a hard line in negotiations with the Senate and the Biden administration. Interviews with more than two dozen GOP members and aides reveal that it would take only a few rogue lawmakers hell-bent on his downfall to risk McCarthy’s fate in an entirely new way, sending their party spiraling into a new period of chaos. And even if those defectors fail to actually eject McCarthy, some of the speaker’s confidantes privately concede there may be no way to recover. (Politico)
Economy
Jamie Dimon again took aim at higher capital requirements US regulators proposed for the banking industry in July, saying he would “love to know what they really want to accomplish.” Requiring US lenders to hold more capital than their international competitors is a “huge negative” over time, the JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer said Monday at a conference hosted by Barclays Plc. Regulators should have shared more about the “cost-benefit to society,” said Dimon, who questioned whether they learned the right lessons from the failures earlier this year of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. (Bloomberg)
Pandemic Population Boom in Rural Hotspots Sparks Resentment: Rural America is booming, but the population growth that’s boosting local economies is also putting a strain on everything from schools to housing and roads. The trend is sparking resentment as house prices in the top 10 rural counties that have seen the biggest population increases surging more than 40% over the past three years. Schools are overloaded and the shift is even impacting farmland prices. “There’s a lot of resentment,” said Maggie Doherty, a writer and columnist who lives in Flathead County, Montana. “There’s bumper stickers that say ‘Montana’s full’ or ‘Don’t California my Montana.’” (City Lab)
Bitcoin briefly dips under $25,000 ahead of fresh inflation data this week. (CNBC)
The banks underwriting Arm’s $50bn listing will close orders for shares a day earlier than planned due to strong demand for the biggest initial public offering in nearly two years. People familiar with the matter said the IPO for the UK-based chip designer, which is more than five times oversubscribed, will close on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday as previously intended. They added that shares in Arm were still expected to be priced on Wednesday, and could land towards the top end of the initial range of $47-$51 a share or even higher than that. (Financial Times)
Technology
Disney, Charter End Dispute, Restoring ESPN, ABC to 15 Million Households: Charter has agreed to pay Disney higher rates to carry its TV channels, in return for being able to provide the Disney+ and ESPN+ streaming services to its Spectrum pay-TV subscribers, which was a big point of contention during the standoff. Specifically, the ad-supported version of Disney+ will be included in Spectrum’s TV Select video packages, which are among the cable operator’s most popular. The ad-supported ESPN+ will be available to Charter customers who subscribe to a tier that includes other sports channels such as regional sports networks. In addition, when Disney releases its much-anticipated direct-to-consumer version of its ESPN cable channel—which is separate from ESPN+—Charter pay-TV customers will be able to get it as well. (Wall Street Journal)
The Rise and Fall of ESPN’s Leverage. (Stratechery)
The US Copyright Office denied protection for an AI-made image that won an art competition, despite Adobe Photoshop alterations and 624+ text prompt revisions. The office said on Tuesday that Allen's science-fiction themed image "Theatre D'opera Spatial" was not entitled to copyright protection because it was not the product of human authorship. (Reuters)
MGM Resorts says a “cybersecurity issue” that began on Sunday is affecting some casino and hotel computer systems at the company's properties across the US. (Associated Press)
‘He is driven by demons’: biographer Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk. Chasing a controversial innovator was not a novel task for Isaacson: he has already penned hefty, bestselling biographies of Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. I ordered these books before our lunch and the resulting stack of paper was almost a foot high. However, exploring the mind of Musk was “not quite like anything I have ever done before”, he says, as we sit down. “I told him at the beginning [of the project] that if I am going to do this I have to be at your side for two years and I want to talk to you almost every day — I want to be like Boswell doing Doctor Johnson.” That delivered “a wild ride”, says Isaacson. But it also left him (and everyone else) grappling with big questions: do you have to be half-crazy to be truly innovative, or a genius? And how do you stop a brilliant mind from spinning out of control? “He told me he thinks he is bipolar — but has never been diagnosed,” Isaacson shouts a few minutes later, as I push the microphone into a wine glass beneath his mouth to contend with the hubbub. “But I think it is more complicated.” Indeed. (Financial Times)
A profile of Walter Isaacson, who has written biographies of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and others, was the editor of Time in the 1990s, and was running CNN on 9/11. (New York Magazine)
Tesla shares soar 10% after Morgan Stanley upgrade: Morgan Stanley analysts argued that Tesla should be viewed as a tech company as much as an electric car maker. (CNBC)
Smart Links
Try Hard, but Not That Hard. 85% Is the Magic Number for Productivity. (Wall Street Journal)
J.M. Smucker to buy Twinkies maker Hostess Brands in $5.6 billion deal. (Reuters)
US sets new record for billion-dollar climate disasters in single year. (The Guardian)
McDonald’s to start focus groups with owners as part of civil rights audit. (CNBC)