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:
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.
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
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Finally over his coronavirus infection, President Joe Biden departs on Wednesday to spend most of the next week on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, an oceanfront golf resort that he has visited in the past.
Biden has spent many weekends at his homes in the Delaware cities of Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach but has not been to Kiawah Island since he took office in January 2021. He was a regular visitor to the island south of Charleston as vice president.
A White House official confirmed the trip but did not have specific dates on how long he would be there and was not able to say where Biden would be staying. The resort has a luxury hotel as well as a variety of rental homes.
LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - China, which Russia has sought as an ally since being cold-shouldered by the West over its invasion of Ukraine, has called the United States the "main instigator" of the crisis.
In an interview with the Russian state news agency TASS published on Wednesday, China's ambassador to Moscow, Zhang Hanhui, accused Washington of backing Russia into a corner with repeated expansions of the NATO defence alliance and support for forces seeking to align Ukraine with the European Union rather than Moscow.
"As the initiator and main instigator of the Ukrainian crisis, Washington, while imposing unprecedented comprehensive sanctions on Russia, continues to supply arms and military equipment to Ukraine," Zhang was quoted as saying.
- We spoke to women across the U.S. about their experience receiving an abortion before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women's constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that will dramatically change life for millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a deeply polarized country.
Aug 10 (Reuters) - Google Fiber plans to bring its high-speed internet service to multiple cities in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska and Nevada over the next several years in its first big expansion since it spun out as an independent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) unit in 2015.
In his first media interview since becoming chief executive of Google Fiber in February 2018, Dinni Jain told Reuters on Wednesday that his team was finally prepared to "add a little bit more build velocity" after over four years of sharpening operations.
The anticipated expansion to 22 metro areas across the United States from 17 today includes previously announced projects to launch in Mesa, Arizona and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The choices were based the company's findings of where speeds lag.
Aug 10 (Reuters) - San Francisco-based blockchain payments company Ripple Labs Inc is interested in potentially purchasing assets of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network, according to a company spokesperson.
"We are interested in learning about Celsius and its assets, and whether any could be relevant to our business,” the spokesperson said, declining to say if Ripple was interested in acquiring Celsius outright.
"Ripple has continued to grow exponentially" through the recent crypto market turmoil and "is actively looking for M&A opportunities to strategically scale the company," the spokesperson said.
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.
SEOUL, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Using a plastic bowl, Ha In-sik bailed water out of his lower ground apartment in the low-income housing district of Sillim in southwestern Seoul on Wednesday, where flooding caused by torrential rain forced his family to sleep at a nearby park.
The 50-year-old man, along with his wife and daughter had collected home appliances, furniture, books and even cutlery, and put them outside to see what was salvageable.
The scene bore uncomfortable similarities with the sewage-flooded semi-basement flat depicted in the 2020 Oscar-winning South Korean film "Parasite," that was a tale of growing social disparity in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
SUVA, Fiji, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Karen Vusisa has been struggling to find a decent catch of a favourite Fijian edible seaweed, amid concerns that ocean temperatures have hit harvests and are threatening livelihoods of fisherwomen like her.
Like many others, Vusisa, 52, is managing to collect only about half as much of the seaweed, nama, as she once did. She must hunt for it over wider areas, spending more time at sea.
"We are struggling to find some spot for a lot of nama," Sera Baleisasa, another Fijian fisherwoman, told Reuters.
LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - As energy bills mount and the threat of rationing increases, some European retailers are turning off lights and considering shorter opening hours this winter.
Energy bosses and government officials have urged people and businesses to reduce power use and put in place contingency plans so they are less reliant on gas imports if there are shortages linked to the war in Ukraine.
The Austrian branch of multinational retail chain SPAR Group is reducing the hours of lighting for storefront advertising and outside its more than 1,500 stores across the country, a spokesperson said in an email.
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.
Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday Washington was "very concerned" about what he called credible reports that Rwanda has provided support to M23 rebels in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
Blinken, speaking during a visit to Kinshasa ahead of a trip to Rwanda, called on all parties to halt any support for or cooperation with M23 or other non-state armed groups.
Blinken said the conflict in eastern Congo was a focus of his meeting with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi on Tuesday and would be central when he meets Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Wednesday.
Aug 10 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes rose more than 1% on Wednesday after data showing a slower-than-expected rise in inflation in July prompted traders to cut their bets on a third straight 75-basis-point interest rate hike in September.
U.S. consumer prices did not rise in July compared with June, marking the slowest monthly inflation in more than two years, as fuel prices dropped. read more
The market is now pricing in a 37.5% chance of a 75-basis-point increase in fund rates at the U.S. Federal Reserve's next meeting in September, compared with 67.5% before the data. read more
LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - An investment manager of a collapsed 100-million-pound ($121 million) Cayman Islands-based legal financing fund was on Wednesday convicted by a London jury of fraudulent trading, fraud by abuse of position and money laundering.
Timothy Schools, a 61-year-old former lawyer who founded Axiom Legal Financing Fund in 2009 to provide loans to law firms pursuing no-win-no fee lawsuits, siphoned off nearly 20 million pounds of investor money to buy luxury properties and cars, the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said in a statement.
His lawyer, David Hanman of Cobleys Solicitors, said he would not be commenting ahead of his sentencing on Thursday.
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - For the first time, investors seeking to pour cash into U.S. clean energy projects can count on at least a decade of generous federal subsidies, offering them long-sought confidence in the staying power of the world’s third biggest renewables market.
Tax credits for wind and solar projects have underpinned explosive growth in U.S. installations over the last decade. But they have often had short time horizons, leaving project developers scrambling to meet looming deadlines and spooking risk-averse investors.
The long-term tax credit commitments for wind and solar, wrapped up in a $430 billion bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Sunday, were joined by new credits for energy storage, biogas and hydrogen. Developers of wind and solar projects will also be able to get more support if they use U.S.-made equipment or build their projects in poorer areas. read more
NEW DELHI, Aug 10 (Reuters) - India said on Wednesday that Biological E's COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax can be administered as a booster dose in people who have taken the country's other two main shots, Covaxin and AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) Covishield, from Friday.
Corbevax will be available to over 18s as precautionary booster six months after a second dose, the health ministry said in an Aug. 8 letter to state authorities and shared with reporters on Wednesday.
Covishield is produced for the Indian market by the Serum Institute of India under licence from AstraZeneca, while Bharat Biotech makes Covaxin.
India has so far administered more than 2 billion COVID vaccine shots, including 113 million boosters, all of which have so far been of the same vaccine as the recipient's first two doses. The government says about 89% of Indians above the age of 12 have had two doses.
The country of nearly 1.4 billion people has documented more than 44 million coronavirus...
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards force has been charged in an attempted plot to murder John Bolton, who was national security adviser to former President Donald Trump, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday.
Iranian national Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, "attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder in Washington, D.C., or Maryland," the Justice Department said.
BEIJING, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A Beijing court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by a plaintiff in a high-profile Chinese sexual harassment case involving a well-known host of state broadcaster CCTV, a decision likely to deal a blow to China's #MeToo movement.
Zhou Xiaoxuan, 29, accused one of CCTV's premier entertainment show hosts, Zhu Jun, of groping and forcibly kissing her in 2014 when she was an intern working for him, allegations he denies.
Zhou’s accusations, posted on social media in 2018, quickly went viral and she sued Zhu for damages that year. In September 2021, after two closed-door hearings, Haidian People's Court, a district court in the Chinese capital, rejected her claims due to insufficient evidence.
MANCHESTER, England, Aug 10 (Reuters) - The World Cup in Qatar will kick-off a day earlier than scheduled if FIFA's ruling bureau agree to a plan to hold the opening ceremony and the host nation's first match on Sunday Nov. 20th, a source close to the discussions told Reuters.
The original plan was for the opening ceremony to be held before Qatar's game on Nov. 21 against Ecuador -- which created the unusual situation of two matches being held before the ceremony.
Normally the ceremony is conducted before the kick-off of the first game of the tournament.
HOSTENS, France, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A wildfire was advancing through the Gironde region of southwestern France on Wednesday, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents, some of whom had clambered onto rooftops as the flames got closer.
More than 1,000 firefighters backed by water-bombing aircraft were fighting the fire that has razed more than 6,000 hectares and is still burning out of control.
France, like the rest of Europe, is struggling with successive heatwaves and its worst drought on record. Dozens of wildfires are ablaze across the country, including at least four other major ones.
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