WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday that if the Inflation Reduction Act became law additional IRS resources should not be used to increase audit rates on taxpayers making under $400,000 a year.

The legislation, which passed the Senate over the weekend with no Republican support, increases the IRS budget by about $80 billion over 10 years.

Democrats say beefing up IRS enforcement will increase tax collection and help pay for the $430 billion bill, which tackles climate change and lowers prescription drug costs for seniors, among other provisions.

SEOUL, Aug 11 (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared victory over COVID-19 and his sister indicated that he too caught the virus, while vowing "deadly retaliation" against South Korea, which the North blames for causing the outbreak.

Kim ordered the lifting of maximum anti-epidemic measures imposed in May though adding that North Korea must maintain a "steel-strong anti-epidemic barrier and intensifying the anti-epidemic work until the end of the global health crisis", North Korea's KCNA news agency reported on Thursday.

North Korea has never confirmed how many people caught COVID, apparently because it lacks the means to conduct widespread testing.

FREETOWN, Aug 10 (Reuters) - At least two police officers and one civilian died after a day of anti-government protests in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, staff at the city's main mortuary said on Wednesday.

Sierra Leone's government previously said there had been deaths, but did not say how many, as protesters threw rocks and burned tyres in the streets out of frustration at worsening economic hardship and other issues.

The West African country, which has been struggling with rising inflation and a fuel crisis, imposed a nationwide curfew from 3 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) in a bid to stem the violence.

SEOUL, Aug 11 (Reuters) - China and South Korea clashed on Thursday over a U.S. missile defence shield, threatening to undermine efforts by the new government in Seoul to overcome longstanding security differences.

The disagreement over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system installed in South Korea emerged after an apparently smooth first visit to China by South Korea's foreign minister this week.

China, contending that the THAAD's powerful radar could peer into its airspace, curbed trade and cultural imports after Seoul announced its deployment in 2016, dealing a major blow to relations.

Aug 11 (Reuters) - London's Heathrow said on Thursday more than 6 million people travelled through Britain's busiest airport in July and expects about 16 million passengers between July and September as travel rebounds.

Heathrow said there had been fewer last-minute flight cancellations and smoother operations after it capped the number of departures last month to cope with airport disruptions.

"Integral to increasing the departing passenger cap is increasing airline ground handler capacity and resilience, and we have initiated a review of ground handling to support that objective," Heathrow said in a statement.

The airport capped the number of departures at 100,000 per day from July to Sept. 11 to limit queues, baggage delays and cancellations, to the consternation of some airlines.

Nearly 6 million passengers travelled through the airport in June.

GRAN CANARIA, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Standing in a cemetery of abandoned boats, Mohamed Fane picks a West African franc off the floor and shudders at the traumatic memory of his voyage from Senegal to the Canary Islands.

After an arduous overland trip and months waiting, smugglers shepherded the 33-year-old carpenter into a flimsy wooden vessel with two dozen others to sail from the Moroccan town of Dakhla - but it ran out of fuel far from the Spanish archipelago.

One famished and thirsty man died on board, while a Spanish rescue boat saved the rest. Fane, who barely ate in three days at sea and used his water bottle to bail out the leaking boat, wept like never before when he reached Gran Canaria.

LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Oil prices steadied on Thursday after the International Energy Agency raised its oil demand growth forecast for this year as soaring gas prices drive some consumers to switch to oil.

Brent crude futures slipped 7 cents, or 0.1%, to $97.33 a barrel by 0829 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures eased 9 cents, or 0.1%, to $91.84.

"Natural gas and electricity prices have soared to new records, incentivising gas-to-oil switching in some countries," the Paris-based agency said in its monthly oil report, in which it raised its outlook for 2022 demand by 380,000 barrels per day (bpd). read more

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Illinois is rebranding an invasive carp in the hopes of encouraging people to eat it - and solving a decades-old issue that has been threatening the ecosystem of the U.S. state's waterways.

"We've launched a new name, 'copi', to help people consume this delicious fish and help us do our work in keeping them out of the waterways," said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Irons and the DNR want everyone to start calling the abundant fish formerly known as Asian carp "copi."

Aug 11 (Reuters) - Bearish bets on emerging Asian currencies eased on hopes that monetary tightening will cool red-hot inflation, with short bets on the Thai baht falling sharply after the first rate hike in the country in nearly four years, a Reuters poll found.

Short positions on all emerging Asian currencies fell, with bets on China's yuan at their lowest since late-April, according to the fortnightly poll of 12 analysts.

Short bets on the Philippine peso , the Singapore dollar and the Indonesian rupiah also fell to multi-month lows.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) edged past Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) with a total of 221 million streaming customers and announced it will increase prices for customers who want to watch Disney+ or Hulu without commercials.

The media giant will raise the monthly cost of Disney+ without advertising by 38% to $10.99 in December, when it begins to offer a new option that includes ads for the current price.

Shares of Disney rose 6.9% in after-hours trading to $120.15 on Wednesday.

BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Zurich (ZURN.S) reported a better-than-expected 25% rise in operating profit to $3.39 billion in the first half on Thursday, with both its property and casualty and its life businesses outperforming.

Analysts had on average seen business operating profit at $3.28 billion, according to a company-compiled consensus forecast.

Insurers are facing weak investment performance from market falls due to the war in Ukraine and inflationary pressures are hitting their customers' wallets.

LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A four-day "extreme heat" warning came into force in parts of England and Wales on Thursday, with temperatures poised to exceed 35 Celsius in another heatwave that could pressure water supplies and transport services.

The Met Office said its amber warning, its second-most severe after red, will last until the end of Sunday, and cautioned that people vulnerable to extreme heat could face adverse health effects.

Temperatures are expected to peak at 35C (95 Fahrenheit) on Friday and may hit 36C in some places on Saturday.

LOS ANGELES, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Antarctica's coastal glaciers are shedding icebergs more rapidly than nature can replenish the crumbling ice, doubling previous estimates of losses from the world's largest ice sheet over the past 25 years, a satellite analysis showed on Wednesday.

The first-of-its-kind study, led by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles and published in the journal Nature, raises new concern about how fast climate change is weakening Antarctica's floating ice shelves and accelerating the rise of global sea levels.

The study's key finding was that the net loss of Antarctic ice from coastal glacier chunks "calving" off into the ocean is nearly as great as the net amount of ice that scientists already knew was being lost due to thinning caused by the melting of ice shelves from below by warming seas.

BANGKOK, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is expected to arrive in Thailand on Thursday and stay temporarily in a second Southeast Asian country since fleeing his island nation last month in the midst of mass protests.

Rajapaksa fled to Singapore on July 14 and resigned from office shortly afterwards, following unprecedented unrest over his government's handling of the worst economic crisis in seven decades, and days after thousands of protesters stormed the president's official residence and office. read more

The former military officer, who is the first Sri Lankan head of state to quit mid-term, is expected to travel from Singapore to Thailand's capital of Bangkok on Thursday, two sources said. It was unclear what time he would arrive.

BEIJING, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday that he had no information to offer at the moment when asked to comment on a media report that President Xi Jinping will visit Saudi Arabia next week.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that plans are underway in Saudi Arabia for a gala reception for Xi, without saying where it got the information from.

Xi has not made any official visit to a foreign country since January 2020.

A look at the day ahead in markets from Alun John

Fed policymakers surged out of the traps last night, telling markets not to get too excited by the cooler-than-expected inflation reading, but to little avail.

The Nasdaq closed up 20% from its June low, the dollar tumbled after the data, and even bitcoin - remember that? - is back above $24,000 and testing a two-month high.

Aug 11 (Reuters) - The average price of U.S. retail gasoline fell below $4 per gallon on Thursday for the first time in months, giving some relief to drivers in the world's largest consumer of the fuel.

The national average price for regular unleaded gas fell to $3.990 a gallon on Aug. 11, according to the American Automobile Association.

Gasoline prices peaked at a record $5.02 in June. That high cost curbed spending, and prices have also dropped as market fears of severe restrictions on supply have ebbed since Russia first invaded Ukraine in February.

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

LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A four-day "extreme heat" warning came into force in parts of England and Wales on Thursday, with temperatures poised to exceed 35 Celsius in another heatwave that could pressure water supplies and transport services.

The Met Office said its amber warning, its second-most severe after red, will last until the end of Sunday, and cautioned that people vulnerable to extreme heat could face adverse health effects.

Temperatures are expected to peak at 35C (95 Fahrenheit) on Friday and may hit 36C in some places on Saturday.

HOSTENS, France, Aug 11 (Reuters) - More than 1,000 firefighters backed by water-bombing aircraft battled a "monster" wildfire near France's wine-growing heartland of Bordeaux for a third day on Thursday, with no let-up in blistering temperatures seen before the weekend.

The fire in the Gironde region, one of several major blazes burning in France, has forced thousands of people from their homes, destroyed more than a dozen properties and scorched more than 6,800 hectares of forest.

"It's an ogre, it's a monster," Gregory Allione from the French firefighters body FNSPF told RTL radio.

SINGAPORE, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Singapore's economy expanded less than initially estimated in the second quarter and the government revised its growth projections for 2022 lower, flagging risks to the global outlook from the Ukraine war and inflation.

Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.4% year-on-year in the second quarter, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) said, slower than the 4.8% growth seen in the government's advance estimate.

"Downside risks in the global economy remain significant...further escalations in the Russia-Ukraine conflict could worsen global supply disruptions and exacerbate inflationary pressures through higher food and energy prices," said Gabriel Lim, permanent secretary of MTI at a media briefing.