Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Support ebbs for Boris Johnson as more British ministers quit

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

by Linda Noakes

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Here's what you need to know.

The July 4 parade shooting suspect slipped past 'red flag' safeguards, the U.S. yield curve inverts again, and crypto lender Voyager Digital files for bankruptcy

Today's biggest stories

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks in Downing Street in London, July 6, 2022

WORLD


British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was clinging to power, gravely wounded by the resignation of ministers who said he was not fit to govern and with a growing number of lawmakers calling for him to go. We look at how Johnson could be forced out, and who could replace him.

Ukrainian defenders fought desperately to withstand a major Russian offensive in the Donetsk region, with the enemy laying down heavy artillery fire to pave the way for ground forces to advance, a senior Ukrainian official said. Here's what you need to know about the conflict right now.

A wild storm system has moved away from Sydney after pounding Australia's largest city with four days of torrential rain, satellite images showed on Wednesday, although river waters stayed above danger levels, forcing more evacuations.

China is fighting nascent COVID-19 flare-ups across the country with mass testing and fresh restrictions, including in weary Shanghai where new cases have been linked to a building which houses a karaoke lounge that was operating illegally.

Pope Francis said he wants to give women more top-level positions in the Holy See and disclosed that for the first time he would name women to a previously all-male Vatican committee that helps him select the world's bishops. The role of women in the Vatican hierarchy was one of the many Church and international topics the 85-year-old pontiff discussed in an exclusive interview with Reuters in his Vatican residence.

A still image from surveillance footage shows a person who police believe to be Robert E. Crimo III dressed in women's clothing on July 4, 2022

U.S.

The man accused of spraying gunfire into a July Fourth parade from a Chicago-area rooftop, turning a holiday celebration into a killing field, was due to make his first court appearance to face seven first-degree murder charges. The suspect slipped past the safeguards of an Illinois 'red flag' law designed to prevent people deemed to have violent tendencies from getting guns, officials revealed.

Florida's ban on abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy is now in effect after a court order blocking its enforcement was put on hold, and a Mississippi judge declined to prevent a near-total ban from being implemented later this week.

Republican-led states have unleashed a policy push to punish Wall Street for taking stances on gun control, climate change, diversity and other social issues, in a warning for companies that have waded in to fractious social debates. Abortion rights are poised to be the next frontier.

A special grand jury in Georgia probing former President Donald Trump's alleged attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat there issued subpoenas to Senator Lindsey Graham and Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

A former Colorado funeral home owner pleaded guilty to a federal charge of defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting their family members' corpses and selling the body parts without permission, a practice exposed in a 2018 Reuters investigative report.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

The secretary general of oil producers group OPEC, Mohammad Barkindo, has died, the boss of Nigerian National Petroleum Corp announced. Barkindo, 63, a veteran of the oil industry, was due to step down at the end of this month after six years in the top job.

Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which takes oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea via one of the world's largest pipelines, has been told by a Russian court to suspend activity for 30 days, although sources said exports were still flowing.

More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.

A closely watched part of the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted again, as investors continue to price in the chance that the Federal Reserve's aggressive move to bring down inflation will push the economy into recession. But if history is any indicator of the future, the first two weeks of July could bring relief to investors after a bruising first half of the year.

Voyager Digital said it had filed for bankruptcy, a week after the crypto lender suspended withdrawals, trading and deposits to its platform as it sought additional time to explore strategic alternatives.

Scandinavian airline SAS headed into the third day of a crippling pilot strike, cancelling well over half its flights, as it geared up for the first court date in its bankruptcy proceedings later in the week.

Amazon has agreed to take a 2% stake in Just Eat Takeaway.com's struggling U.S. meal delivery business Grubhub and will offer its Prime members access to the service for one year. Meanwhile, Britain's antitrust watchdog is investigating Amazon on concerns it is hurting competition by giving its own sellers an unfair advantage over third-parties on the marketplace.

BREAKINGVIEWS

Agenda-setting financial insight from the international commentary brand of Reuters

Read Yawen Chen on how China’s Henan province is showing all the country’s economic cracks at once, Gina Chon on why inflation has finally killed the shaky U.S. trade-war logic, and Jennifer Hughes on the bankers hitting the bottle for Asia deal inspiration

Quote of the day

"For me it was just business. Yeah. Business as usual"

George Degiorgio

Suspect confesses to killing prominent Maltese journalist

Video of the day

Indonesian school teaches Koran using sign language

Hearing-impaired students typically take about five years to learn to memorize and recite the Koran.

And finally…

Scientists at CERN observe three "exotic" particles for first time

Scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider have discovered three subatomic particles never seen before as they work to unlock the building blocks of the universe.

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