WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Wednesday it was rejecting the applications of SpaceX's Starlink and LTD Broadband to receive government subsidies through a rural fund.

In the initial auction results announced in December 2020, LTD Broadband won $1.32 billion and SpaceX won $885.5 million.

"Starlink's technology has real promise," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. "But the question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer broadband - which requires that users purchase a $600 dish - with nearly $900 million in universal service funds until 2032."

NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he refused to answer questions during an appearance before New York state's attorney general in a civil investigation into his family's business practices, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and daughter Ivanka Trump had fought unsuccessfully to avoid appearing for testimony in state Attorney General Letitia James's probe into whether the Trump Organization inflated real estate values to obtain favorable loans and understated asset values to get tax breaks.

"I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution," Trump said in a statement issued roughly an hour after he arrived in a motorcade to the attorney general's office in lower Manhattan for the deposition behind closed doors.

WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday proposed a rule to improve the quality of disclosures it receives from large hedge funds about their investment strategies and leverage.

The rule, which was proposed in conjunction with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is part of a broader regulatory effort to increase transparency of private funds amid worries the industry is a growing source of systemic risk. read more

The proposal confirmed a Reuters report on Tuesday. read more

Aug 9 (Reuters) - Drugmaker Gilead Sciences (GILD.O) plans to announce on Tuesday that it will provide up to $5 million in grants to help a coalition of LGBTQ+ and human rights advocacy groups craft public health responses to monkeypox outbreaks, the company said.

Outside of Africa, where the virus is endemic, new cases have largely occurred among gay and bisexual men. Experts warn that the virus could spread to other populations, especially due to vaccine shortages. The World Health Organization and the United States have declared monkeypox a public health emergency.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), GLAAD, the National Black Justice Coalition, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights are each receiving $350,000 from Gilead for public education toward preventing and treating the virus.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - More than 80 countries where monkeypox is not endemic have reported outbreaks of the viral disease, which the World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency, as confirmed cases crossed 31,400 and non-endemic countries reported their first deaths. read more

Below are the non-endemic countries that have reported monkeypox-related deaths:

* BRAZIL reported its first death on July 31. read more

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Health officials in Europe are discussing whether to follow a move by the United States to stretch out scarce monkeypox vaccine supplies, with the World Health Organization calling for more data.

There have been 27,800 monkeypox cases - largely among men who have sex with men - and 12 deaths worldwide this year. read more

Supplies of the key Bavarian Nordic (BAVA.CO) shot, the only vaccine authorized to prevent monkeypox and a key part of the global public health response, are scarce, according to WHO and other government health agencies.

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators have authorized injecting a monkeypox vaccine intradermally in adults, meaning between layers of the skin rather than below the skin, in an effort to stretch out low vaccine supplies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday.

The emergency use authorization for Bavarian Nordic's (BAVA.CO) Jynneos monkeypox vaccine will increase available doses fivefold as it only uses a fraction of the dose but provides the same protection, health officials said at a White House briefing.

The FDA authorization comes after the United States and the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a public health emergency to bolster the response against the outbreak. read more

SHEBOYGAN, Wisc., Aug 10 (Reuters) - Travel brochures in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, tout the town’s beaches on Lake Michigan as the Malibu of the Midwest. But pages of glossy photos leave out a feature of the landscape: a coal-fired power plant on the shore that will remain open until mid 2025 instead of closing this year as planned.

Alliant Energy Corp's Edgewater coal-fired plant in Sheboygan is one of at least six across the country that this summer have announced delays or potential delays to their planned closures, citing concerns about energy shortages.

A key culprit: renewable energy deployment, which was meant to replace these coal plants, has taken a hit in recent months because of COVID-19-related supply chain hiccups. Utilities say import tariffs on solar panels imposed by U.S. Commerce Department make it hard to keep up with robust power demand.

KUDAMADUWELLA, Sri Lanka, Aug 10 (Reuters) - As anarchy gripped the Sri Lankan city of Colombo in May, Meenu Mekala and Nirosh Ravindra gambled their family's life savings on a two-week, 4,700-km voyage aboard a rusting trawler with their two young sons. The decision ended in ruin.

Meenu, a Buddhist, and Nirosh, a Christian, met and fell in love as migrant labourers in Dubai, despite opposition from their families. They married in 2005 in Nirosh's home village of Kudamaduwella, two hours' drive north of Colombo.

They are among hundreds of Sri Lankans who have attempted to escape an unprecedented economic meltdown by boarding fishing boats bound for Australia.

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WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The main revenue source in the U.S. Senate's newly passed tax, climate and drugs bill is a novel 15% corporate minimum tax aimed at stopping large, profitable companies from gaming the Internal Revenue Service code to slash their tax bills to zero.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the new tax will add around $222 billion to U.S. government coffers over the next 10 years, down from a previous projection of $313 billion after last-minute changes to the bill. It will apply to companies with more than $1 billion in "book income," the profits they report to shareholders before the effects of tax deductions and credits.

Here are some key details on how it would work:

ISLAMABAD, Aug 10 (Reuters) - More than 70 economists and experts, including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, called for Washington and other nations to release Afghanistan's central bank assets in a letter sent to U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

The letter said foreign capitals needed to return the roughly $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets to Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) to allow the economy to function, despite criticism of behaviour by the ruling Taliban towards women and minorities.

"The people of Afghanistan have been made to suffer doubly for a government they did not choose," the letter said. "In order to mitigate the humanitarian crisis and set the Afghan economy on a path toward recovery, we urge you to allow DAB to reclaim its international reserves."

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Britain is launching a polio vaccine booster campaign for children in London aged below 10, after confirming that the virus is spreading in the capital for the first time since the 1980s.

The UK Health Security Agency has identified 116 polioviruses from 19 sewage samples this year in London. It first raised the alert on finding the virus in sewage samples in June. read more

The levels of poliovirus found since and the genetic diversity indicated that transmission was taking place in a number of London boroughs, the agency said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday the United States could not allow China to normalize the new level of pressure on Taiwan it asserted with days of military drills following her visit to the Chinese-claimed island.

"What we saw with China is that they were trying to establish sort of a new normal. And we just can't let that happen," Pelosi told a news conference with four other Democratic House members who accompanied her on the trip to Asia.

China said on Wednesday it had "completed various tasks" around Taiwan, but will continue regular patrols, potentially signaling an end to days of war games while keeping up pressure on the self-ruled island. read more

Aug 10 (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in July due to a sharp drop in the cost of gasoline, delivering the first notable sign of relief for weary Americans who have watched inflation climb over the past two years.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was flat last month after advancing 1.3% in June, the Labor Department said on Wednesday in a closely watched report that nevertheless showed underlying inflation pressures remain elevated as the Federal Reserve mulls whether to embrace another super-sized interest rate hike in September. read more

The reading was the largest month-on-month deceleration of price increases since 1973 and followed on the heels of a roughly 20% drop in the cost of gasoline since mid-June. Prices at the pump spiked in the first half of this year due to the war in Ukraine, hitting a record-high average of more than $5 per gallon on June 14, according to motorist advocacy group AAA. read more

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Gaming companies are facing a slowdown in demand for video games from pandemic highs, raising doubts about their ability to weather an economic downturn.

Rising prices and a lack of hit titles have added to problems for video game publishers Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) and Electronic Arts (EA.O) that are also battling supply-chain delays and a shift in consumer choices due to easing lockdowns.

The latest proof of that came on Tuesday from gaming platform Roblox (RBLX.N) whose revenue growth eased to just 30% from 83% two quarters ago. read more

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA.O) contributed to the opioid epidemic in San Francisco through its sale of prescription drugs in the city, a federal judge concluded on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said that Walgreens failed to properly investigate suspicious opioid orders for nearly 15 years. The amount the pharmacy chain must pay will be determined in a later trial.

Walgreens' pharmacists filled hundreds of thousands of suspicious opioid prescriptions from 2006 to 2020 with pharmacists not given time, staffing or resources to properly investigate red flags, Breyer wrote.

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Florida's governor wants pension plans in conservative U.S. states to band together to fight shareholder initiatives on issues like climate change and diversity, but the idea may prove hard to pull off.

The call by Ron DeSantis last month opened a new front in Republican efforts to push back against activist-led environmental, social and governance -- or ESG -- initiatives at corporate shareholder meetings. read more

With assets of over $5.7 trillion under management, U.S. state and local defined-benefit pension plans are a powerful shareholder force that can help activists pass or defeat ESG issues on corporate ballots by declaring how they will vote and giving momentum to reform efforts, or slowing them.

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Top U.S. gas exporter, Freeport LNG, has retracted the force majeure it initially declared after an explosion in June, a development that could cost its buyers billions of dollars in losses, a document showed and three trading sources said.

Force majeure is a notice used to describe events outside a company's control, such as a natural disaster, which usually releases it from contractual obligation without penalty.

The force majeure would also have allowed Freeport’s LNG buyers to exit their own agreements to deliver gas to end users. Instead, they are facing a collective loss of up to $8 billion as they source alternative supplies at elevated spot market prices, according to the trading sources, who have knowledge of the matter, and calculations by a consultancy.