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Stocks surge on US hopes

Stocks surged as investors responded to positive US economic data. Jobless claims in the US dropped to a five week low, while consumer sentiment rebounded as retail sales grew by an “unexpectedly robust 1% last month,” The Wall Street Journal reported. The slew of data has prompted traders to lower their expectations of an aggressive interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve when it meets next month, Bloomberg reported. Even as inflation slows overall, however, shoppers remain selective: Sales at Walmart, which has made low prices its mantra, rose by 4% in the latest quarter, far surpassing expectations.

China’s new richest person

China’s new richest person represents a shift in how the nation’s wealthy are accumulating their money. Colin Huang, the founder of low-cost online retailer Temu’s parent company Pinduoduo, now has a fortune of $48.6 billion, displacing a bottled-water magnate atop Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index in China. Yet unlike his predecessors in the ranking, Huang’s company does not credit China’s breakneck economic expansion solely for its growth: Pinduoduo’s steady success since the COVID-19 pandemic has been down mostly to overseas expansion, putting the company “in position to continue growing even if consumers at home aren’t opening up their wallets,” as seems likely with an economic slowdown underway in China, Bloomberg said.

IRA marks second anniversary

The Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s huge clean tech-spending program which marks its second anniversary today, has a promising future regardless of who wins November’s election, analysts said. In large part, that’s because its largesse has been bipartisan, benefitting Republican-controlled states in particular: More than 80% of the investment from clean tech and chip manufacturing resulting from recent climate and semiconductor spending is going to GOP districts, according to the Financial Times. Among the IRA’s biggest advocates, meanwhile, are Republican mayors — including those in GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s home state of Ohio: “What I want to tell Vance and Trump is that this is very beneficial for us,” one told Semafor’s Climate & Energy Editor.

Ukraine claims Russian town

Ukraine claimed full control of a Russian town, the first such success in its surprise offensive into Moscow’s territory. The announcement has immediate strategic implications — Sudzha lies next to a Russian gas terminal, suggesting Kyiv is seeking to curb one of Moscow’s sources of income — as well as wider consequences, both for Russia’s war as well as farther afield: Analysts believe Ukraine wants to use its territorial gain as a bargaining chip in exchange for its own lands held by Russia, while a former senior US diplomat argued in Foreign Policy that Kyiv’s successes showcased how a strategy of arming and encouraging Ukraine could allow Washington to gradually shift focus to its rivalry with Beijing.

West Bank violence intensifies

Dozens of Israeli settlers set fire to houses and cars in a village in the occupied West Bank, leaving at least one person dead. A White House spokesperson said the attacks — which come amid ongoing ceasefire talks over the war in Gaza — were “unacceptable and must stop.” Israeli incursions into the West Bank have surged since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct 7, part of a strategy by ultranationalist Israeli lawmakers to prevent the possibility of East Jerusalem one day becoming the capital of an independent Palestinian state, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The goal is to change the DNA of the system for many, many years,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said of his plans in the West Bank.

France honors African WWII effort

French President Emmanuel Macron and six African leaders honored the contributions of the continent’s fighters in France’s World War II liberation. African soldiers — some volunteers, but many forcibly conscripted from France’s overseas colonies — were a huge chunk of the 250,000 who followed some 100,000 American, British, and Canadian troops into the south of France to overthrow Nazi Germany, a swift victory that has long been overshadowed by fighting in Normandy weeks prior. “There would have been no Allied victory without the contribution from the other peoples, without the foreigners,” Cameroon’s president said. Yet in a sign of contemporary tensions, several African leaders stayed away or sent lower-level envoys.

Trump-inspired book looks at 1906 killings

A new book inspired in part by Donald Trump explores a more than century-old American massacre in the Philippines. Kim Wagner said he was spurred to focus on the 1906 episode after Trump raised it in 2016, lauding an American general’s use of torture, a tale that has been largely debunked. “The real significance of Trump’s story was not that it was factually inaccurate,” Wagner writes, “but that it was so much closer to the truth than even his critics were willing to admit.” As Tim McLaughlin notes in the Mekong Review, the book “presents a masterful case for why the incident” ranks among “acts of barbarity” such as the Vietnam War’s My Lai massacre.

Why isn’t the Trump campaign hack newsworthy? Eight years ago, Wikileaks dumped a trove of emails before the public, leading to revelations about Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches and John Podesta’s secret to a great risotto. Today, we’re not sure if any amazing recipes are part of the Trump campaign hack because The New York Times, Politico, and The Washington Post have all declined to report its contents. Ben and Nayeema explore why these two campaign hacks are receiving totally different media treatments and why people are mad at Ben for celebrating today’s editorial restraint. Plus, Mixed Signals talks with Christina Reynolds, a Democratic operative and two-time victim of digital hacks.

Sweden, Pakistan report mpox

Sweden and Pakistan both reported the first case of the more contagious variant of mpox, which the World Health Organization declared a global public health emergency this week. Meanwhile Chinese authorities said they would begin monitoring people and goods entering the country for the virus. The spread of the disease has sent the stock price of mpox vaccine makers soaring amid a global lack of doses. According to an African health organization, the continent — in parts of which the virus has long been endemic — has just 200,000 of the more than 10 million vaccines it needs to control the outbreak.

Panama displaces farmers for Canal

Panamanian authorities are creating a water reservoir to bolster the parched Panama Canal despite opposition from environmentalists. Critics say the project would displace 2,000 farmers, who would also lose the land they depend on. However proponents argue the affected communities would be compensated, and insist the project is indispensable to securing the future of the Canal, through which the number of crossings has plummeted amid a historic drought, and which generates a large share of Panama’s GDP. “The past 20 years have been totally different than from the previous 80 years… because climate change has, in crescendo, had an impact that’s much different,” a Canal official told The New York Times.

Video game strike over AI

Video game voice actors have gone on strike over concerns about artificial intelligence. More than 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) will stop taking on video game projects after negotiations broke down over a new contract. The guild’s provisions govern both voice and movement performance, and cover not only using those performances as the basis for new ones, but also the use of AI to create entirely new performances. Industry negotiators wanted to offer protections on AI recreations of voices only, not motion-capture or live-action work, which SAG-AFTRA rejected. Fears over AI’s impact on acting work already brought the film and TV industry to a four-month standstill last year.

• Indonesia’s president delivers a state of the nation speech and outlines spending plans ahead of the country’s Independence Day.
• Hurricane Ernesto nears Bermuda.
• A Russian spacecraft is set to arrive at the International Space Station on Saturday with food, fuel, and other supplies.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva drew criticism after calling on Venezuela to hold new elections despite the country’s opposition saying they had evidence of their overwhelming victory in last month’s vote.

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is reading the 1950 mystery novel while on her summer break in Germany, and told Politico the book was “Extremely well-written… and can take one’s mind away from the everyday matters.” Buy it from your local bookshop.

• Solar geoengineering might help cool a warming Earth, but research into risks is lacking.
• Nigeria targets crypto accounts worth $38 million in intensified crackdown.
• Global access to safe drinking water may be significantly overestimated