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ood morning and welcome to Notes on the News. It's Thursday, July 8. Here's what you should know today: Four of the Haitian president's suspected killers have been shot, Americans are eager for car loans and credit cards, the Tokyo Olympics is unlikely to allow spectators, and more. Let us know what you think by replying to this email. |
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| PHOTO: CAYCE CLIFFORD FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL |
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1. Google sued by states for app store practices. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia allege that the company operates an illegal monopoly with its Google Play app store. The lawsuit challenges Google’s description of Android as an open operating system, but the company countered that it "provides more openness and choice than others." |
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2. Borrowing is back. With vaccinations readily available in the U.S. and the economy reopening, many Americans are splurging on cars, vacations and eating out. Higher prices, especially for cars and trucks, have also stoked loan demand. |
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3. Stock futures drop and bond yields skid lower. U.S. stock futures fell this morning and yields on government bonds extended their decline as investors continued to pull back from bets on a spell of high growth and inflation. |
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WSJ News Exclusive |
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4. The U.A.E. looks to a future beyond oil. The United Arab Emirates’s strategy of selling as much crude as possible before demand dries up—according to officials familiar with the matter—represents a significant shift in oil policy by a major Mideast petrostate. |
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WSJ News Exclusive |
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5. Biden to target railroads and ocean shipping in executive order. As part of a sweeping executive order expected this week, the administration will push regulators to combat what it calls a pattern of consolidation and aggressive pricing that has made it onerously expensive for American companies to transport goods to market. |
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6. Japan declares a new state of emergency due to Covid-19. The restrictions will continue during the Summer Olympics, making it likely the organizers will drop plans to allow some spectators at the Games. Officials are set to discuss spectator levels later today. |
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7. The former boss of Gap and J.Crew is running a fashion brand again. At an age when most people retire, 76-year-old Mickey Drexler is starting a new job as chief executive officer of Alex Mill, a clothing brand his son started. He is having more fun now than ever, he says. Compiled by Bryony Watson in London. 📰 Enjoying this newsletter? Get more from WSJ and support our work with a special subscription offer. |
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| ILLUSTRATION: TAMMY LIAN |
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9.2 million — The number of available jobs in the U.S. at the end of May, according to data released by the Labor Department on Wednesday, a new high in records dating back to 2000. The number of available jobs nearly matches the 9.3 million Americans who are unemployed and seeking jobs, with the accommodation and food-service sector having the highest rate of available positions, accounting for nearly 10% of all openings. 60% — The share of the responsibility that the U.S. Air Force bore for the largest mass shooting in Texas history, a federal judge said. Former Airman Devin Kelley, who killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017, should have been barred from buying a gun because of his conviction of domestic assault in military court. But the Air Force never entered the conviction in the database, meaning it wasn’t shown on background checks. A lawsuit filed by survivors and victims’ families sought to find the Air Force liable for the shooting. The judge ordered parties to set a trial plan within 15 days to assess monetary damages for the survivors and victims’ families. $235 million — The amount SoftBank and others are investing in AnyVision Interactive Technologies, a Tel Aviv-based facial-recognition startup. The fundraising round is SoftBank’s second major bet on a facial-recognition company and comes as other large companies like Google and Microsoft have dialed back their sales of facial-recognition technology due to privacy concerns. |
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| What Everyone Wants to Know |
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| Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in May. PHOTO: JEAN MARC HERVE ABELARD/SHUTTERSTOCK |
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Haiti’s president has been assassinated. Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was killed in an attack on his residence early Wednesday morning, plunging the Caribbean nation into fresh political turmoil as it deals with a contracting economy and growing gang violence. Four of Moise's suspected killers were fatally shot by National Police, the chief of police said Wednesday evening, and two others were captured. Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has assumed control of the government and declared a state of siege, which restricts media information, puts the military in charge of security and replaces civilian courts with military tribunals. Moïse, who was 53, was a former banana plantation manager. He was narrowly elected in 2016 but couldn’t take power for another year due to civil unrest. During his presidency, he launched an effort to rewrite the constitution to gain more power, allegedly used brutal gangs to repress political opponents and had seen his popularity deteriorate. He refused to leave office in February, when his opponents said that his term had ended, arguing that his term should be extended because it started late. Moïse’s killing will likely add to the country’s instability, foreign-policy experts say. |
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Donald Trump has sued Facebook, Twitter and Google in an attempt to restore his accounts. The former president was the lead plaintiff in class-action suits against the tech companies, which claim that he has been wrongly censored by them, in violation of his First Amendment rights. The chief executives of each company were named as defendants. Facebook, which banned Trump the day after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has said it would uphold that ban for at least two years after the starting date of his initial suspension. Twitter, which also moved quickly to block Trump after the riot, said its ban was permanent, a decision it has upheld in the months since. In March, YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it would only lift Trump’s ban once it determines “the risk of violence has decreased.” Trump said public-opinion polls showed Americans would support his lawsuit and, shortly after, the Republican National Committee highlighted the suit in fundraising appeals. First Amendment attorney Floyd Adams said the lawsuits are “irredeemably frivolous.” |
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The U.S. said it wouldn’t send Julian Assange to a Supermax prison if he was extradited there. The U.S. government continues its yearslong battle to get WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to go on trial in the U.S. on espionage charges, but has assured the U.K. government that Assange won't be held under the strictest maximum-security conditions if he is extradited. The concession comes after a U.K. judge rejected an extradition request by the U.S. in January over concerns Assange would commit suicide if he was forced to serve time in a federal maximum-security prison. Assange has been held at the high-security Belmarsh prison in the U.K. since 2019 and is facing 18 counts of breaking espionage laws and conspiring to hack a military computer, allegedly related to the publication in 2010 and 2011 of classified documents that painted a bleak picture of U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and their aftermath. |
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| The new "Black Widow" movie will explore the hero's origin story. PHOTO: MARVEL |
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- Go watch: One of these picks from our What to Watch list, including the upcoming Marvel film "Black Widow."
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