Daily Report 09.21.2021

The Leaside Bridge in Toronto, Canada (Matthew Henry via Unsplash)

On Monday, the results of Canada’s early parliamentary elections showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party won a plurality — but not a majority — of the votes, meaning PM Trudeau will form another minority government. (cbc.ca)
On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights found that Russia was responsible for the 2006 assassination of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London, and British police said a third Russian military operative had been charged with the 2018 murder attempt on former double agent Sergei Skripal. (reuters.com) (reuters.com)
On Tuesday, Sudanese authorities said they detained 21 military officers and a number of soldiers in connection to a foiled coup attempt. (reuters.com)
On Monday, the UK’s Prince Andrew was served with a sexual assault lawsuit in the US by lawyers for a woman who says she was forced to have sex with him at the London home of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. (reuters.com)

A street in El Paso, a Texan border city (Matthew LeJune via Unsplash)

On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said it was investigating footage of US Border Patrol agents on horseback grabbing and chasing down Haitian migrants at the US-Mexico border. On Tuesday, 8,600 of the roughly 15,900 mostly Haitian migrants who had assembled in the Texan border town of Del Rio over the past three weeks still remained. (twitter.com) (apnews.com)
On Monday, the State Department said the Biden administration will raise the US’s cap on refugee admissions to 125,000. In May, the Biden administration raised the cap from 15,000 — a historically low level set by the Trump administration — to 62,500. (nytimes.com)

On Tuesday, police in Melbourne, Australia, fired pepper balls and rubber bullets to disperse about 2,000 anti-lockdown and anti-coronavirus vaccine mandate protesters. More than 60 demonstrators were arrested. (reuters.com)
On Monday, the Biden administration awarded contracts that will lead to the delivery of 120 million at-home Covid-19 tests, starting next month. Because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies rapid Covid-19 tests as medical diagnostic devices, therefore requiring that they return results comparable with the more accurate but slower PCR tests, they are not as widely or cheaply available as they are in much of the EU, where more than 135 rapid tests are recognized. (nytimes.com) (statnews.com)
On Monday, Pfizer and BioNTech said a Phase 2/3 trial of their Covid-19 vaccine on children 5 to 11 years of age showed “a favorable safety profile and robust neutralizing antibody responses.” Pfizer and BioNTech plan to apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for authorization of their vaccine on children aged 5 and older by the end of September. (pfizer.com) (nytimes.com)

Buildings in Chongqing, China (Jon Grogan via Unsplash)

On Monday, the tech-heavy S&P 500 stock index closed down 1.7%, its worst daily performance since mid-May, due to a sell-of spurred by concerns that the US’s Federal Reserve would slow pandemic stimulus and that China would refuse to save the Evergrande Group, the country’s No. 2 property developer, from collapse over $305 billion worth of debt. On Tuesday, shares of several Japanese toilet, air-conditioner and paint manufacturers declined due to similar concerns over the Chinese real estate market. (nytimes.com) (reuters.com)
On Tuesday, shares of Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label, rose 36% in their debut on Europe’s Euronext Amsterdam stock index. The listing is Europe’s largest so far this year. (cnbc.com)
On Monday, Reuters reported that gas prices have increased about 280% in Europe and about 100% in the US so far this year. Reuters attributed the rise to “a range of factors from low storage levels to carbon prices to reduced Russian supplies.” (reuters.com)

On Tuesday, world leaders gathered in New York City for the 76th session of the UN General Assembly. During the session, US Pres. Joe Biden said he would work with Congress to double climate change funds to $11.4 billion per year by 2024 and Chinese Pres. Xi Jinping said China will not build any new foreign coal-fired power plants. (The US and China are the world's two largest economies.) (reuters.com) (cnn.com)

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