Monday Briefing: Inflation and Evergrande keep world shares on back foot

The Reuters Daily Briefing Monday, October 4, 2021 by Linda Noakes Hello Here's what you need to know. A new document dump exposes how money is hidden by the wealthy, New Zealand drops its COVID elimination strategy, and two Americans win the Nobel prize for medicine Today's biggest stories FILE PHOTO: A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, September 29, 2021 BUSINESS World stocks are on the back foot and the dollar remains close to one-year highs on concerns that higher inflation, supply shortages and China's property sector problems will put global economic recovery at risk. Investors are focusing on Treasury yields as a key factor in determining how stocks will fare the rest of the year, after a month in which equities notched their steepest losses since the coronavirus pandemic began. Here's a look at the week ahead for Wall Street. Distressed developer China Evergrande will sell a half-stake in its property management unit to Hopson Development for more than $5 billion, Chinese media said, after both Evergrande and Hopson requested trading halts ahead of a major transaction. British military personnel in combat fatigues arrived at a BP storage depot after the government ordered the army to help deliver fuel to help compensate for an acute shortage of truckers. Britain's supply chains for everything from pork, petrol and poultry to medicines and milk have been strained to breaking point by shortages of labor. What do diamonds, sunglasses, high-end lululemon sportswear and concrete have to do with climate change? They can all be made using carbon dioxide, locking up the planet warming gas. And tech startups behind these transformations are grabbing investor attention. FILE PHOTO: Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein addresses, via a prerecorded statement, the General Debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, September 22, 2021 WORLD A massive leak of financial documents has been published by several major news organizations that allegedly tie world leaders to secret stores of wealth, including King Abdullah of Jordan, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here are the key findings of the leaked Pandora Papers. Japan's new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, exchanged fist bumps with lawmakers after he was formally elected by parliament, as public broadcaster NHK said he was set to dissolve the body next week and call an election on October 31. The two Koreas restored their hotlines that the North severed months ago, with Pyongyang urging Seoul to step up efforts to improve relations after criticizing what it called double standards over weapons development. New Zealand abandoned its long-standing strategy of eliminating coronavirus amid a persistent Delta outbreak, and will instead look to live with the virus and control its spread as its vaccination rate rises. Australia's Delta outbreak appears to have leveled off, with more than half the country in extended lockdowns and vaccination rates starting to approach national targets. Seven more people were killed in Oman as heavy winds and rain swept through the country after tropical storm Shaheen made landfall, the national emergency committee said. Four people were killed yesterday. U.S. Congressional Democrats face the hard work of paring back the White House's sweeping infrastructure and social agenda in the week ahead, but have yet to agree on a target size for their multi-trillion dollar spending bill. Supreme Court justices are set to don their black robes and sit once more behind a mahogany bench in their grand courtroom today as they resume in-person oral arguments for the first time since pandemic disruptions started last year. A large oil spill off the southern California coast left fish dead, birds mired in petroleum and wetlands contaminated, in what local officials called an environmental catastrophe. U.S. Marines who had been deployed to Afghanistan reached their home base, hugging their families after the combat deaths of nine Marines from their battalion who failed to make it back. American scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch that could pave the way for new pain-killers. Quote of the day "There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests" Frances Haugen Former product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook Whistleblower says Facebook put profit before reining in hate speech Video of the day La Palma lava flow thickens after crater collapses The volcano has emitted roughly three times the material expelled during the island's last major eruption in 1971, in a quarter of the time. And finally… World religious leaders issue appeal on climate change Pope Francis and other religious leaders made a joint appeal for next month's U.N. Climate Change Conference to offer concrete solutions to save the planet from "an unprecedented ecological crisis". More from Reuters COVID-19 The Great Reboot Disrupted Legal News Breakingviews Thanks for spending part of your day with us. Share your thoughts You are receiving this email because you signed up for newsletters from Reuters. No longer want to hear from us? 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