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The World
UK PM Boris Johnson was clinging to power on Tuesday night, after chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid dramatically resigned from the UK prime minister’s cabinet within minutes of each other. A number of junior government members also quit, with many Tory MPs believing the ministerial mutiny could signal the beginning of the end for Johnson. But there was relief in Downing Street when a number of other senior figures — including deputy prime minister Dominic Raab, foreign secretary Liz Truss, defencse secretary Ben Wallace and leveling-up secretary Michael Gove — indicated they were staying. (Financial Times)
Who will replace Boris Johnson and be the next prime minister? As speculation mounts over the possible contenders in a Conservative leadership election, Gabriel Pogrund and Geraldine Scott weigh their chances. (The Times)
Turkey seizes Russian ship carrying ‘stolen’ Ukrainian grain: A Russian-flagged ship carrying thousands of tonnes of grain is being held and investigated by Turkish authorities in the Black Sea port of Karasu over claims its cargo was stolen from Ukraine. Turkish customs officials acted after Kyiv claimed the Zhibek Zholy was illegally transporting 7,000 tonnes of grain out of Russian-occupied Berdiansk, a Ukrainian port in the south-east of the country. (The Guardian)
New data from the Transportation Security Administration show that close to 9 million people traveled over the Fourth of July weekend, rivaling numbers from 2019. In fact, TSA numbers show that more people went through checkpoints on July 1, 2022, than on the same day in 2019 — before the coronavirus pandemic. The same was true on June 30. 2022 numbers are well ahead of all 2020 numbers given summer 2020 was in the middle of the pandemic. That said, July 4, 2021, had more travelers than the same day this year (2.1 million compared to 2.08 million), according to TSA. (Axios)
British Airways has cancelled almost 1,000 flights due to take off in July, disrupting the summer holiday plans of up to 170,000 passengers. In the latest sign of the crisis facing the aviation sector, the UK’s flag-carrier airline has cancelled 785 flights departing from Heathrow this month and 186 flights departing from Gatwick. (The Times)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Indonesia this week to explore ways to “responsibly” manage the two countries’ rivalry and seek areas of cooperation, amid soaring tensions on a number of fronts. The meeting is to take place on the sidelines of a G20 foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday and Friday on the Indonesian island of Bali. (South China Morning Post)
The U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, used a speech in Beijing to call on the Chinese government to "stop telling lies" that the United States has bioweapons labs in Ukraine and to cease repeating the "Russian propaganda" that NATO expansion plans were responsible for provoking Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters)
China is rapidly censoring news of the alleged hacking of a Shanghai police database that threatens to expose the personal data of more than 1bn people, in what could be one of the largest-ever leaks of private information. An anonymous hacker advertised the data on an online cyber crime forum late last month, claiming the full file for sale contained multiple terabytes of details, including names, addresses, IDs, phone numbers and criminal records of more than 1bn Chinese people. (Financial Times)
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is working to jump-start Chinese development projects that sputtered under his predecessor as he scrambles to keep Beijing happy and shore up his country's troubled economy. (Nikkei Asia Review)
Workers everywhere want higher wages: Britain is facing a “summer of discontent” as everyone from railway and postal workers to teachers are striking, the New York Times reports. In Germany, some 8,000 dock workers went on strike last week, impacting at least six major ports and causing goods to be stuck. In France, striking workers separately threatened to shut down an Exxon refinery and disrupted Paris’ main airports. In South Korea, truckers last month went on an eight-day strike, curbing operations across businesses, including ones that make steel and computer chips. Meanwhile, Hyundai’s unionized workers in the country just voted for a possible strike. (Axios)
Economy
Recession fears boost Treasuries; Commodities drop: The dollar rose to its strongest level in more than two years Commodities including crude oil, copper dropped; Bitcoin rose. (Bloomberg)
Oil tumbles as much as 10%, breaks below $100 as recession fears mount. Ritterbusch and Associates attributed the move to “tightness in global oil balances increasingly being countered by strong likelihood of recession that has begun to curtail oil demand.” ″[T]he oil market appears to be homing in on some recent weakening in apparent demand for gasoline and diesel,” the firm wrote in a note to clients. (CNBC)
Citi says oil may collapse to $65 by the year-end on recession. (Bloomberg)
Natural gas soars 700%, becoming driving force in the New Cold War: Shortages of the fuel are rippling throughout the global economy, threatening recessions and a further wave of inflation. (Bloomberg)
Texans face skyrocketing home energy bills as the state exports more natural gas than ever. The cost of electricity in Texas is tightly tied to the price of natural gas, which has more than doubled since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. (Texas Tribune)
These major economies are headed into recession in the next 12 months, Nomura says. (CNBC)
Americans Tap Savings to Cope With Inflation: With wage gains lagging behind soaring inflation, U.S. households are starting to dip into the huge pile of savings they accumulated over the first two years of the pandemic. (Wall Street Journal)
Swiss bank UBS has decided to sublet two floors at its landmark London headquarters after its flexible working from home policy left it with too much office space, according to people with knowledge of its plans. UBS moved into 5 Broadgate, a sprawling 12-story “groundscraper” overlooking Liverpool Street station, in 2015. It then moved the majority of its 6,200-strong UK workforce into the building, which is one of the biggest in the City. (Financial Times)
Office Owners Reeling From Remote Work Now Fret About Recession. Office leasing tends to be highly dependent on the health of the economy. During recessions, companies often cut costs by laying off workers, meaning they need less space. Rising interest rates also hurt office landlords because they tend to push down property values. (Wall Street Journal)
Creator economy VC funding set to continue record streak: There’s an entire booming industry of online content creators—think YouTube and TikTok stars, and Instagram influencers—who can individually earn millions of dollars a year with their online personas. Now investors are doubling down on ways to monetize creators who monetize themselves: Crunchbase data shows funding to venture-backed startups focused on content creators is on pace to surpass last year’s amount, which was already a record. (Crunchbase)
Technology
Google said it will work to quickly delete location history for people going to abortion sites and other medical sites following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last week. “Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit,” wrote Jen Fitzpatrick, Google’s senior vice president of core systems and experiences. (CNBC)
Twitter is challenging India’s government in court for the first time over its orders to block tweets and accounts, saying some were excessive and outside the scope of officials’ legal authority. The legal fightback is a potential test case in the struggle between social media platforms and prime minister Narendra Modi’s government, which last year obtained greater powers to force technology companies to suppress content. (Financial Times)
EU lawmakers gave the thumbs up to landmark rules to rein in tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft, but enforcement could be hampered by regulators' limited resources. In addition to the rules known as the Digital Markets Act, lawmakers also approved the Digital Services Act, which requires online platforms to do more to police the internet for illegal content. (Reuters)
Sequoia Capital’s Chinese affiliate is about to close $9 billion in fresh capital for four new funds, higher than its original target of more than $8 billion, according to two people familiar with the fundraising. The final amount could represent the biggest pool of capital ever raised by a single venture capital firm to bet on Chinese technology startups. It also shows how Sequoia Capital China and its backers, including numerous U.S. institutional investors, continue to make aggressive moves despite the downturn in tech stocks and private valuations, which prompted some of Sequoia’s global rivals slow down their pace of investment. (The Information)
Tesla investors have a lot to parse after the July 4 holiday: a disappointing quarter of deliveries, a record month of production, and now several weeks of downtime at multiple plants. The electric-car maker will halt most production on its Model Y assembly line in Shanghai for the first two weeks of July, then stop the Model 3 line for a 20-day stretch starting July 18. Upgrade work at the factory to boost output of both vehicles is expected to be completed by early August. (Bloomberg)
Smart Links
Red states are winning the post-pandemic economy. (Wall Street Journal)
Meet the GOP deal-makers-in-waiting who Dems may find essential in 2023. (Politico)
Italy daily COVID cases exceed 100,000 for first time since February. (Reuters)
Why Mexico is missing its chance to profit from US-China decoupling. (Financial Times)
Ford Sales Rose 32% in June, Outpacing Auto Industry. (Wall Street Journal)
Women more likely to win awards that are not named after men. (Nature)