TOKYO, Aug 10 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) said on Wednesday it would book a gain of $34.1 billion by cutting its stake in Alibaba Group Holding (9988.HK), as the investment behemoth looks to shore up its cash reserve to weather the market downturn.

The Japanese company will reduce its stake in Alibaba to 14.6% from 23.7% by settling prepaid forward contracts. Alibaba's U.S.-listed shares were down 1.3% in early trade.

SoftBank booked a $50 billion loss at its Vision Fund investment arm in the first half of the year as its tech bets soured, with Chief Executive Masayoshi Son on Monday pledging to further reduce investment activity and cut costs.

CIJARA, Spain, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A flock of sheep shelter from the midday sun under the gothic arches of a medieval bridge flooded in 1956 to create the Cijara reservoir in central Spain, but now fully exposed as the reservoir is 84% empty after a severe drought.

In Andalusia, one of Europe's hottest and driest regions, paddle-boats and waterslides lie abandoned on the cracked bed of Vinuela reservoir, remnants of a rental business gone with the water, now at a critical level of 13%.

A nearby restaurant fears a similar fate.

KAMPALA, August 10 (Reuters) - Ugandan IT student Andrew Njuki spent years hunched over English-language textbooks, often grappling with material that would have been easier to grasp in his mother tongue Luganda.

As of May, the 27-year-old has been able to copy-paste his online teaching materials into Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google translation service and read them directly in Uganda's official language Luganda, spoken by millions across the east African country but not taught in schools.

"To understand something better you need to first understand it in your mother tongue," said Njuki, who also finds the service handy for surfing the internet and social media.

NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co's (KO.N) bottler Coca Cola HBC AG (CCH.L) will on Thursday detail the cost of stopping production and sales of Coke in Russia, a goal that has taken five months to reach as the company used up its existing supplies.

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co, which relied on Coca Cola HBC to manufacture and distribute its sodas in Russia, said in March it would suspend production in the country. The Swiss-based bottler, in which Coca-Cola has a 20% stake, has since then been using up its remaining stock. It placed its last orders for concentrate in March.

Coca-Cola HBC last week in a statement on its website said it had stopped making and selling Coke-branded products in Russia and had no plans to re-introduce them. The bottler instead is re-naming its business in Russia Multon Partners and focusing on local brands including Dobry, Rich and Moya Semya.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) delivered its first 787 Dreamliner in more than a year on Wednesday after a lengthy halt, stemming from production problems, cost the U.S. planemaker at least $5 billion.

The restart in deliveries comes as a major relief for Boeing, which was struggling with the production of the wide-body jet for more than two years. It could also help the airline industry better tap this year's boom in travel demand.

Here is a timeline of the troubled 787 program since 2020:

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in Michigan on Wednesday began laying out their case against two men accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, saying that conversations about their plan went beyond just idle talk.

Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. face kidnapping and weapons conspiracy charges for the second time after a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Michigan declared a mistrial last April.

The men - alleged members of the Three Percenters, a self-styled militia group - are accused of plotting to abduct Whitmer from her vacation home and stage a "trial" for her for treason. Two other defendants were found not guilty in the men's first trial.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Russian steel producer Evraz (EVRE.L) said on Wednesday it was launching a process to solicit proposals for the acquisition of its North American subsidiaries.

The sale will help unlock the value of its North America business, the company said without disclosing details on the sale process.

Britain sanctioned Evraz in May in response to Russia's decision to send thousands of its troops to Ukraine, but provided a licence allowing business with Evraz's North American subsidiaries.

"Recent geopolitical tensions have given rise to significant corporate governance and operating challenges for Evraz," Chief Executive Aleksey Ivanov said earlier this month.

LONDON/NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Ukraine's overseas creditors have backed its request for a two-year freeze on payments on almost $20 billion in international bonds, a regulatory filing showed on Wednesday, a move that will allow the war-ravaged country to avoid a messy debt default.

With no sign of peace or a ceasefire on the horizon nearly six months after Russia's invasion began, holders of around 75% of the outstanding total agreed to Kyiv's proposal, documents showed.

"Ukraine will save almost $6 billion on payments," said Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in a statement. "These funds will help us maintain macrofinancial stability, strengthen the sustainability of the Ukrainian economy and improve the power of our army."

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Slowing U.S. inflation may allow Federal Reserve policymakers to downshift their most aggressive round of monetary policy tightening in decades when they meet next month, though data on tap in coming weeks could still change the picture.

After a U.S. Labor Department report Wednesday showed consumer prices didn't rise at all in July compared with June, traders of futures tied to the Fed's benchmark interest rate on Wednesday slashed bets the central bank would enact a third straight 75-basis-point hike at its Sept. 20-21 policy meeting, and instead would opt for a half-point increase.

One Fed policymaker, while not immediately flagging a rate increase preference, still noted the good news.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) edged past Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) with a total of 221 million streaming subscribers at the end of the most recent quarter and announced it will launch a Disney+ option with advertising this December.

Disney+ with ads will cost $7.99 per month, the same price the company now charges for the ad-free version, Disney said in a statement on Wednesday. The cost of Disney+ without ads will increase by $3 per month to $10.99 as of Dec. 8.

Prices for Hulu, also owned by Disney, will rise by $1 to $2 per month depending on the plan.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - TUI (TUIGn.DE), one of the world's largest tour operators, took a 75 million euros ($77 million) hit in the third quarter from flight disruption across Europe, pushing it to a loss on Wednesday.

Incoming Chief Executive Sebastian Ebel said there would be significant but lower costs related to air disruption in the fourth quarter, with air traffic normalising in recent days.

"The whole system is still very fragile, and we have days with hardly any disruptions, and we have weeks and days with a lot of disruptions," Ebel, who is replacing long-time chief Friedrich Joussen in October, told journalists.

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Masayoshi Son is thinking the unthinkable at SoftBank Group (9984.T). His $63 billion technology and telecom empire will slash its stake in Alibaba (9988.HK) to 15% from 24%. The long-overdue shrinkage offers a blueprint for what to do next: break up the conglomerate.

This year’s tech selloff has punished the Japanese holding company, pushing it to a $23 billion net loss last quarter. Son’s new watchword is discipline: His Vision Funds, effectively giant venture-capital vehicles, invested just $600 million in the three-month stretch ending in June, compared with some $21 billion a year earlier.

The same focus on cash preservation seems to have informed the decision unveiled on Wednesday to cut the Alibaba holding, which has a totemic significance at SoftBank as one of the world’s most lucrative tech investments. Through derivatives deals with banks, Son could have retained the Alibaba stake by settling so-called prepaid...

MATANZAS, Cuba, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Massive clouds of steam rose from Cuba's largest fuel depot in Matanzas on Wednesday as firefighters, helicopters and boats poured water and foam on the smoldering remains of the largest fire in the island's history.

Black charcoal covered with white ash remained red hot after the flames died down. One firefighter was confirmed dead, and 14 were unaccounted for since blast on Saturday, according to authorities.

"We can now say that the fire is controlled," Lt. Colonel Alexander Avalos, deputy chief of the firefighters tackling the blaze, told the media at the scene. "Already today we feel calmer although we still have to (completely) extinguish it and that will not be today."

(Reuters) - A New York federal judge who rescinded his plans to take senior status unless his successor lived in Utica on Wednesday said he would not step aside even after a nominee to fill his would-be vacant seat indicated he would work out of that city's courthouse.

U.S. District Judge David Hurd in a letter to President Joe Biden apologized for any inconvenience he was causing but stressed that he had "unconditionally withdrawn my previously expressed intention regarding senior status."

His decision to not take senior status, a form of semi-retirement, would appear to doom Biden's nomination of Jorge Rodriguez to become the first Hispanic judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari on Wednesday said he is sticking to his view that the U.S. central bank will need to raise its policy rate another 1.5 percentage points this year and more in 2023, even if that causes a recession.

The Fed is "far, far away from declaring victory" on inflation, Kashkari said at the Aspen Ideas Conference, despite the "welcome" news in the consumer price index report earlier in the day that inflation may have begun to cool.

Kashkari said he hasn't "seen anything that changes" the need to raise the Fed's policy rate to 3.9% by year-end and to 4.4% by the end of 2023. The rate is currently in the 2.25%-2.5% range.

Aug 9 (Reuters) - Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said on Tuesday it had raised $10 billion in its first-ever bond offering, as it looks to fund share buybacks and investments to revamp its business.

The offering would help Meta, the only one among big technology companies without debt on its books, to build a more traditional balance sheet and fund some expensive initiatives, such as its metaverse virtual reality. read more

ORLANDO, Fla., Aug 10 (Reuters) - An inverted U.S. Treasury yield curve almost always heralds recession, but the yawning gap between high short-term funding costs and falling long-term borrowing rates may accelerate the economic downturn it presages.

From a banking sector perspective, the inverted curve, combined with near-9% inflation and post-2008 regulation - the deepest, highest, and toughest in decades, respectively - offers cause for concern.

Although banks are in pretty good shape, the downward-sloping curve will erode net interest margins and curb lending, while this year's rout in stocks and bonds will require them to divert more cash towards repairing torpedoed capital buffers.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The United Nations expects a "big uptick" in ships wanting to export Ukraine grain through the Black Sea after transit procedures were agreed and a goal of 2-5 million tonnes a month is "achievable," a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday.

Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations agreed transit procedures on Monday for a deal struck in July to resume Ukraine Black Sea grain and fertilizer exports. The procedures include a 10 nautical mile protection zone for ships. read more

"We're expecting to see a big uptick in applications for transit," said Frederick Kenney, interim U.N. Coordinator at the Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul, which oversees the deal.

TOKYO, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Japan's Honda Motor Co (7267.T) raised the outlook for its full-year operating profit on Wednesday thanks to weaker yen, but warned against over-optimism as it saw the chips shortage continuing and was concerned about an economic slowdown.

The mixed view from Honda reflected sentiment held widely among Japanese carmakers that although demand is strong and recovery from COVID-19 is underway, they have yet to completely shrug off negative factors hindering operations.

Honda raised its operating profit forecast to 830 billion yen ($6.15 billion) from 810 billion for the year ending March 31.