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The World
The White House warned that Russia is beginning to roll out its plans to annex large parts of southern Ukraine by installing proxy officials and preparing to hold stage-managed referendums. John Kirby, head of strategic communications at the US National Security Council, said that Moscow had started laying the groundwork for its annexation plans, which have been widely anticipated since its troops started to gain control of the region. (Financial Times)
Russian President Vladimir Putin had talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran on Tuesday, the Kremlin leader's first trip outside the former Soviet Union since Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. In Tehran, Putin also held his first face-to-face meeting since the invasion with a NATO leader, Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, to discuss a deal that would resume Ukraine's Black Sea grain exports as well as the conflict in northern Syria. (Reuters)
China warned that a Taiwan visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would deeply damage relations with the U.S., in what would be one of the highest-level U.S. trips to the island in years amid rancor between Washington and Beijing. (Wall Street Journal)
The Chinese military has tested its most advanced multiple-launch rocket system at high altitude to underscore its ability to operate in the disputed mountainous border between China and India, CCTV, the state broadcaster, has claimed. With a maximum range of about 310 miles, the PCL-191 truck-launched rockets could threaten all Indian army bases along the so-called Line of Actual Control, the 2,100-mile notional demarcation frontier between Chinese and Indian-controlled territory in the Himalayas. (The Times)
Trade minister Penny Mordaunt and foreign secretary Liz Truss will battle it out over who will compete in a head-to-head fight with former chancellor Rishi Sunak to be Britain’s next prime minister. Truss’s allies claimed she had the momentum to overtake Mordaunt in a final round of voting by Tory MPs on Wednesday about who should be the next Conservative leader, while Sunak appears assured of a place in the final shortlist of two. (Financial Times)
Australians admitted to hospitals from COVID-19 neared record levels as authorities urged businesses to let staff work from home and recommended people wear masks indoors and get booster shots urgently amid a major outbreak. (Reuters)
More than 100 million Americans are under either a heat warning about dangerous conditions or heat advisories amid record temperatures, as 85 major wildfires burn in 13 US states, scorching more than 3m acres. Officials said on Tuesday that 14 new large fires were reported: seven in Texas, two in Alaska and two in Washington, as well as one each in Arizona, California and Idaho. The sprawling blazes spread as record-high temperatures are poised to continue this week, leaving more than 100 million US residents under “excessive [heat] warnings or heat advisories”, the National Weather Service said. (The Guardian)
Blistering heat bakes the Plains with highs up to 115 degrees. (Washington Post)
Temperature passes 40C for first time; London fire brigade warns of ‘huge surge in fires’. (The Guardian)
Economy
Big investors have cut their allocations to equities to the lowest level since the collapse of Lehman Brothers at the height of the global financial crisis as rising recession fears spark worries about corporate profits. Fund managers this month reduced their net overweight position in stocks to the lowest level since October 2008, while also boosting cash holdings to a 21-year high of 6.1 per cent of assets under management, a survey by Bank of America of 259 investment managers with combined assets of $722bn showed. (Financial Times)
China’s buyers are snapping up abodes in Marco Rubio’s Florida home base, splurging US$6.1 billion on US real estate to top US list for 10th year. Investments by buyers from China - including Hong Kong and Taiwan - rose 27 per cent in the 12 months ended March, more than any other nationality. Florida and California were the two favorite states for Chinese buyers of US real estate, according to the US National Association of Realtors (NAR). (South China Morning Post)
Hong Kong protected from inflation by closed border with mainland China as experts predict small increase in consumer prices for June. Experts warn that homebuyers and borrowers may have to shoulder bigger financial burden as interest rate increase predicted. But Hong Kong protected from big rises in inflation as long as border restrictions with mainland China continue, they add. (South China Morning Post)
The Bank of England will consider a 0.5 percentage point increase in interest rates in August as policymakers fear Russia’s war on Ukraine could fuel further price rises this winter, its governor said tonight. Andrew Bailey, who has led the central bank since 2020, told an audience of City figures at the annual Mansion House dinner that a 50 basis point increase in the interest rate, currently at 1.25 per cent, will be “among the choices on the table” in the next monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting on August 4. (The Times)
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to prod banks to pay back more customers who are the victims of alleged scams on Zelle and other money-transfer services, according to people familiar with the coming regulatory effort. Under new guidance the bureau is preparing to release in the coming weeks, banks could face heightened requirements around certain scams that have become more prevalent on these platforms, these people said, such as when a customer is tricked into sending money to a scammer pretending to be a representative of his or her bank. (Wall Street Journal)
The architect trying to revive New York’s tired office skyscrapers: Developers want to spruce up aging buildings as employers attempt to get workers back to office. Dan Shannon has gained a reputation as one of the city’s foremost practitioners of what architects and developers refer to as “repositioning.” Demand for that particular trade is being driven by the upheaval in the world’s largest office market wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent rise of working from home. While the newest and flashiest office buildings are still attracting top tenants, middling towers are under mounting pressure to upgrade or risk becoming obsolete. (Financial Times)
Technology
Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled in Twitter’s favor for an expedited trial to force Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company. The five-day trial will take place in October. (CNBC)
After losing more than a million customers in the first half of 2022, Netflix Inc. has a message for investors: It could have been worse. The leader in paid streaming TV lost 970,000 subscribers in the second quarter. That was less than half what Wall Street feared, thanks in large part to a new season of “Stranger Things,” the service’s most popular English-language series. (Bloomberg)
Facebook is reallocating resources from its Facebook News tab and newsletter platform Bulletin, as the company focuses more on the creator economy, senior executive Campbell Brown told employees in a memo. Ms. Brown, a former journalist who leads Facebook’s global media partnerships, said the company would shift engineering and product support away from the two products as “those teams heighten their focus on building a more robust Creator economy.” (Wall Street Journal)
Industry Dive, a Washington, D.C.-based business media company, has signed an agreement to be acquired by Informa, a publicly traded events and publishing company, for an enterprise value of $525 million, a source familiar with the deal told Axios. It's a great outcome for Industry Dive, which has grown its business to over $100 million in annual revenue over the past 10 years. The deal values Industry Dive at a cash value of $389 million, according to the source. That number doesn't include potential earn-outs based on revenue growth or equity that's being rolled over into the new company. The total enterprise value of the deal is $525 million, nearly 5x the company's annual revenue. (Axios)
Google will once again test augmented reality glasses in public. The glasses will be equipped with microphones and cameras as well as transparent displays, Google said. The announcement shows the company trying to get ahead of kinds of privacy issues that helped sink Google Glass almost a decade ago. (CNBC)
Cybersecurity Venture Capital Investments Took a Stiff Dip in Q2 22: Q2 VC investment levels across the cybersecurity landscape slipped to $3.4 billion, a quarterly drop of nearly 40%, exceeding the 23% drop in the global venture ecosystem. (Metacity)
Smart Links
Apple reaches $50 mln settlement over defective MacBook keyboards. (Reuters)
Error by payroll provider ADP hits about 55,000 EY staff: Employees furious after July’s payroll was ‘erroneously reversed’ leaving them out of pocket. (Financial Times)
Instacart Valuation Cut to $14.7 Billion by Investor Capital Group. (Bloomberg)
Broke Colleges Resort to Mergers for Survival. (Wall Street Journal)