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The World
President Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda faces a big test this week as opposing factions within his own party clash over how to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger $3.5tn spending package. As the administration is engulfed in the chaos in Afghanistan, the House of Representatives returns from its summer recess early to consider the president’s spending plans, including a multitrillion-dollar budget. Democratic congressional leaders and the White House are trying to pass the massive budget and a $1tn bipartisan infrastructure package in tandem to satisfy both the progressive and moderate wings of the party. Yet the tactic has exposed sharp rifts among Democrats — and raised the possibility that neither the budget nor the infrastructure bill will make it over the line. (Financial Times)
Centrist House Democrats were locked in a weekend standoff with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) over when to vote on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, imperiling the chamber’s ability to advance a sweeping segment of President Biden’s agenda in votes expected early this week. A group of nine centrist Democrats has been at an impasse with Pelosi and liberal Democrats for more than a week over a strategy to tie together the infrastructure bill and Mr. Biden’s $3.5 trillion package of healthcare, education and climate provisions currently being crafted. (Wall Street Journal)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is staring down the nine centrist lawmakers demanding an immediate vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package — all but daring them to sink President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. (Axios)
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Tuesday host crisis talks on Afghanistan with world leaders, as Britain presses the US to extend the evacuation timetable amid chaos and deaths at Kabul airport. Johnson, as chair of the G7, also wants the G7 talks to focus on a longer-term approach to the Afghan crisis but accepts that following the US retreat that China and Russia are now key players in the region. Meanwhile, President Biden said the U.S. may extend his Aug. 31 deadline for removing all American troops from Afghanistan, and he pledged that all evacuated Afghan allies will be given a home in the U.S. after they are screened and vetted at bases in other countries. (Financial Times, New York Times)
Germany stumbles in late efforts to rescue Afghan support staff, as scores of Afghans who worked for German forces have been hiding in Kabul since the Taliban arrived. (Washington Post)
The Lebanese government is raising gasoline prices by 66% in a partial reduction of fuel subsidies as it seeks to ease crippling shortages that have brought the country to a standstill. It follows the state's decision on Saturday to change the exchange rate used to price petroleum products in a bid to ease the shortages. The fuel crisis worsened this month when the central bank said it could no longer finance fuel imports at heavily subsidised exchange rates and would switch to market rates. (Reuters)
Hospitals in the South and Midwest say they are treating more children with Covid-19 than ever and are preparing for worse surges to come. Cases there have jumped over the past six weeks as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads primarily among unvaccinated people. That is leading to more sick kids in places where community spread of the variant is high. (Wall Street Journal)
A third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine has significantly improved protection from infection and serious illness among people aged 60 and older in Israel compared with those who received two shots, findings published by the Israel Health Ministry showed. (Reuters)
Germany has "clearly" begun a fourth wave of coronavirus infections, according to the country's agency for disease control and prevention. (Deutsche Welle)
Extreme floods in Middle Tennessee on Saturday have killed at least 21 people. Search and recovery efforts remain underway in Waverly and Humphreys County, where at least 45 people are confirmed missing. (The Tennessean)
Economy
What will central bankers say at this year’s Jackson Hole summit? Central bankers from around the world will convene this week in Jackson Hole, WY to discuss monetary policy as the global economy enters the 21st month of the coronavirus pandemic. Of particular interest to market participants will be Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell’s speech and any clues he may offer about when the central bank may begin tapering its monthly purchases of $120bn of government debt. Other strategists say taper talk will not be the only focus. HSBC’s Steven Major argues that a discussion of income inequality could also potentially have an effect on bond yields. Economic inequality “is one of the longer-run structural drivers that has contributed to rates being so low”, he wrote last week. (Financial Times)
Cutoff of jobless benefits is found to get few back to work: A total of 26 states, all but one with Republican governors, moved to end some or all of the expanded unemployment benefits that have been in place since the pandemic began. The governors, along with many business owners, argued that the benefits discourage returning to work when many employers are struggling to hire. Several recent studies, however, have concluded that the extra payments have played only a small role in this year’s labor shortages. And they found at most a modest increase in employment in states that abandoned the programs — most of them in June — even as millions of jobless workers have had to cut spending, potentially hurting local economies. Data released Friday by the Labor Department provided the latest evidence. It showed that the states that cut benefits have experienced job growth similar to — and perhaps slightly slower than — growth in states that retained the benefits. That was true even in the leisure and hospitality sector, where businesses have been particularly vocal in their complaints about the benefits. (New York Times)
The Delta outbreak clouds Asian stock markets. Investors are shying away as infections surge and tighter US monetary policy looms. Toyota will cut global output 40% in September on ASEAN outbreaks, while the Philippines slashed its 2021 economic growth target amid lockdown. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Cryptocurrency companies are leaving China in a “Great Mining Migration”: Cryptocurrency mining companies now face many hurdles as they move their machines out of a country that previously used two-thirds of the global energy dedicated to harvesting bitcoin. The machines are prone to damage if shaken, which makes packing and shipping them internationally an arduous task. A single new computer can cost about $12,000. Companies have had to decide whether to move their computers by air or sea, factoring in the cost and the length of transportation. The whole process can cost millions of dollars. (Wall Street Journal)
Inside Afghanistan’s cryptocurrency underground as the country plunges into turmoil. (CNBC)
Consumer brands to protect ad budgets even as other costs spiral: Advertising is a tempting place to start for finance directors on the hunt for cost savings. But even as makers of some of the world’s most popular household products are squeezed by the most intense inflationary pressures in a decade, they are thinking twice about taking the axe to marketing budgets. (Financial Times)
Technology
'An iPhone with four wheels': Inside Foxconn's bid to build EVs: Apple maker confident of becoming a dominant player in auto supply chain. (Nikkei Asian Review)
A new tech-industry battle is taking shape over the “metaverse” as companies such as Facebook and Roblox work to shape a virtual realm that most consumers don’t yet know exists. On Thursday, Facebook launched public testing of Horizon Workrooms, a free app used on its Oculus Quest 2 virtual-reality headset, that lets people enter virtual offices as avatars and participate in meetings while seeing their computer screen and keyboard. Enthusiasm for the concept has also helped supercharge valuations of companies such as Roblox—which went public in a direct listing in March—and “Fortnite” maker Epic Games Inc. as investors bet the popular videogame worlds will have an early foothold in the nascent online space. Other major companies are also expressing interest: Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang, Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella and Match Group Inc.’s Shar Dubey are among CEOs who have talked recently about ways their companies are looking to participate in building or supporting elements of shared virtual worlds. (Wall Street Journal)
Apeel Sciences, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based developer of rot-reduction coatings for fresh fruits and vegetables, raised $250 million in Series E funding led by Temasek at a valuation north of $2 billion. We waste upwards of 40% of all produced food, both in the U.S. and globally, and the situation has been exacerbated by a pandemic that's created supply chain disruptions (e.g., border closures, labor disruptions) and grocery demand surges. (Axios)
60 seconds on the web in 2021 consist of more than 500 hours of content uploaded on YouTube, 695,000 stories shared on Instagram and nearly 70 million messages sent via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. That same internet minute also contains more than two million swipes on Tinder as well as an incredible 1.6 million U.S. dollars spent online. (Statista)
Smart Links
Solar power booms in Georgia. (Wall Street Journal)
IBM software engineering apprentices can now turn their training into college credit. (Inside Higher Ed)
Voter rebuke of Suga likely pushes back Japan's general election. (Nikkei Asian Review)
Nationwide bus driver shortage impacting schools' re-opening plans. (Axios)
Twitter is testing a newsletter subscription button on profile pages. (The Verge)
Study challenges accepted notion of mammal spine evolution. (Harvard Gazette)
Josephine Baker is 1st Black woman given Paris burial honor in the Pantheon. (Associated Press, Le Parisien)