BitGou: China announces fresh military drills around Taiwan

Monday, August 8, 2022

by Linda Noakes

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Here's what you need to know.

U.S. Democrats score big wins with a $430 billion Senate bill, an attack on a Ukrainian nuclear plant prompts a U.N. call for access, and SoftBank posts a record net loss

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A man reads a newspaper report with an image of military exercises near Taiwan by the Chinese People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theatre Command, at a newspaper stand in Beijing, August 8, 2022. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang

WORLD

China's military announced fresh military drills in the seas and airspace around Taiwan - a day after the scheduled end of its largest ever exercises to protest against last week's visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. South Korea's foreign minister Park Jin is set for his first visit to China today as President Yoon Suk-yeol's government seeks to reassure Beijing about their relationship.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for international inspectors to be given access to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant after Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over shelling of Europe's largest atomic complex at the weekend. Here's what you need to know about the conflict right now.

Israel reopened border crossings into Gaza following an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with the militant Islamic Jihad group that ended the most serious outbreak of fighting around the volatile Palestinian enclave in more than a year. At least 44 people, including 15 children, were killed in 56 hours of violence that began when Israeli airstrikes hit a senior Islamic Jihad commander

France braced for a fourth heatwave this summer as its worst drought on record left parched villages without safe drinking water and farmers warned of a looming milk shortage in the winter. In Italy, the drought-stricken waters of the River Po are running so low they revealed a previously submerged World War Two bomb.

Hong Kong will shorten the COVID hotel quarantine period for all arrivals to three days from seven, taking another step to gradually unwind stringent pandemic rules that have isolated the Asian financial hub.

President Joe Biden gestures to the media as he walks towards Marine One for departure to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware from the South Lawn of the White House, August 7, 2022. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

U.S.

Democrats scored a major policy victory when the U.S. Senate passed a $430 billion climate change, healthcare and tax bill that will help reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change while also cutting drug costs for the elderly.

The Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records.

Ahmaud Arbery's family will ask a judge to hand down life terms for the three white men convicted of chasing down and murdering the young Black man as he jogged. We look at how Ahmaud Arbery's death changed a coastal Georgia community.

Police in New Mexico asked for the public's help in locating a "vehicle of interest" in their probe of four fatal shootings of Muslim men whose slayings in Albuquerque over the past nine months are believed by investigators to be related.

A man drowned in northern New Mexico when a flash flood swept through a burn area left by the state’s largest recorded wildfire, according to a local rancher, marking the fourth such death reported in just over two weeks.

BUSINESS

SoftBank unveiled a $23 billion quarterly net loss, its biggest ever, as a market sell-off upended tech stocks and shredded valuations at its sprawling Vision Fund unit. SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son signaled cuts to headcount at the Vision Fund, saying there were no "sacred areas".

Volkswagen's controlling shareholder families aim to keep Europe's top carmaker on a shorter leash and want greater say over strategic matters in what marks a power play ahead of the planned listing of Porsche, people familiar with the matter say.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio's huge popularity in China has not only drawn local investors flocking to his funds but also spawned home-grown challengers using his 'All Weather' strategy and brand to try to beat him at his own game. Now, the Connecticut-based hedge fund giant he founded, Bridgewater Associates, is pushing back.

With climate change spurring more cases of tick-borne Lyme disease, drugmaker Valneva is betting big on a vaccine as it looks beyond disappointing sales of its COVID shot. Although Valneva secured European Union and British regulatory approval, both walked away from contracts worth more than a billion dollars combined.

Degrowth - the idea that a finite planet cannot sustain ever-increasing consumption - is about the closest you can get to a heresy in economics, where growth is widely held as the best route to prosperity. But, as climate change accelerates and supply chain disruptions offer rich-world consumers an unaccustomed taste of scarcity, the theory is becoming less taboo and some have started to ponder what a degrowth world might look like.