Baby Formula Shortage

Welcome to The Free Press Report’s Monday Digest. This week a lot has happened - DeSantis tries to silence black voters, a major cryptocurrency collapses, and the nation’s baby-formula shortage crisis could have been prevented. Read on for more of the stories you might have missed

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Market Recap

U.S. Politics

Rand Paul stands his ground on Ukraine aid package as Senate seeks to approve another $40bn of spending. The hawkish Senator has demanded the bill be altered to establish an inspector general to oversee the spending of US funds in Ukraine - a suggestion that neither party in the Senate seems willing to consider (Reuters)

DeSantis Congressional map undermines black voters, a Florida judge has found. The Republican-supported map was passed in March, and automatically added four Republican seats to the House of Representatives. But Circuit Judge J. Layne Smith determined that the map "diminishes African Americans' ability to elect the representative of their choice", and will issue a formal order to strike down the map (Reuters)

Biden still hasn’t made up his mind on student debt relief, despite pressure to act on one of his key campaign promises before midterm elections. Some outspoken Democrats have demanded a complete write-off of the $1.6 trillion loan portfolio held by the Education Board (BBG)

Taxpayer-funded media network is obstructing investigation into “waste, fraud, and abuse”, according to a House Foreign Affairs Committee member. Voice of America is a state owned broadcaster with a budget of over $200mm every year. VOA and its oversight body USAGM have faced criticism for suppressing the truth about Iran’s human rights abuses, failing to properly vet up to 40% of their employees, and showing partisan bias in favor of the Democrats (WFB)

U.S to spend $150 million to win favor in Southeast Asia after ASEAN summit last week. Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden sees China as the main threat to global peace, and hopes that winning favor with the 10 ASEAN member countries, including Vietnam and Singapore, will give America a regional advantage. China’s foreign ministry replied that it endorses any economic investment in the region (Reuters)

Brazil’s President to skip Biden’s summit. Jair Bolsonaro is seeking re-election in October, and looks likely to prioritize campaigning in his own country over attending the US-hosted regional summit in June. This is the second blow to Biden’s international pull, after Mexico’s Andres Obrador threatened to skip the event unless leaders from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were also invited (BBG)

Congress to hold UFO investigation for the first time since the 1960s. The hearing will include testimony from two high-level defense officials. Representative Andre Carson will oversee the examination, and is clearly excited at the prospect, saying “someone has to do it” (BBG)

World View

Same sex couples will be banned from Qatar hotels during this year’s FIFA World Cup. Homosexuality remains illegal in the Arab nation, and despite assurances that foreigners will be accommodated safely, twenty hotels will require same sex couples to hide their relationship in public, whilst three hotels have banned same sex couples entirely (Reuters)

North Korea faces Covid catastrophe as the authoritarian state officially announces its first Covid-19 death. The “explosive” virus outbreak has seen hundreds of thousands of citizens experiencing covid-like symptoms, although due to the country’s limited testing capacity, the true numbers will likely never be known. North Korea is one of only two countries in the world with no Covid vaccination programme (Reuters)

Nigerian student beaten to death by Islamist classmates over “blasphemous” Whatsapp group messages. A witness said that the girl had responded critically to a pro-Islam post on a group used by school students, who retaliated by beating her, and burning down the school (Reuters)

Syria launches missile strike on Turkey, wounding four soldiers and a civilian. Kurdish militants based in northern Syria fired the rockets and mortar shells across the border on Thursday, targeting a military border post in southern Turkey. Turkey responded with retaliatory fire, although it is not known whether any members of the Kurdish militia were injured (Reuters)

Iran detains two French citizens in politically motivated “baseless arrest”. Human rights groups have accused Iran of using arrests to extract concessions from foreign nations. America is currently negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, which may see the country’s Islamist milita removed from the list of international terrorist organisations (Reuters)

NATO to expand into Baltics as Finland and Sweden are set to join the transatlantic military alliance. This will add 835 miles of land frontier between NATO and Russia and isolate Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic sea (BBG)

Social and Business 

Baby formula manufacturer ignored inspection concerns, one month before the product recall that has left the U.S facing national shortages of baby formula. The FDA investigated the case of four babies who had fallen ill after ingesting formula made in Abbott’s Sturgis plant, concluding that employees had transferred contaminants including cronobacter from surfaces to the formula, leading to the death of at least two babies. Abbot says that it will take at least two months to get their formula safely back on shelves (BBG)

Arizona conducts first execution in eight years. Clarence Wayne Dixon was convicted of a 1978 murder that went unsolved until 2001, when Dixon was linked to the crime using DNA evidence. He used his last words to maintain his innocence. The last time Arizona carried out the death sentence was the botched execution of Joseph Wood, who “snorted and gasped” while the lethal drugs took almost two hours to take effect (Reuters)

Police will soon be allowed to use facial recognition despite invasion-of-privacy and racial bias concerns. Virginia will revoke its prohibition of local law enforcement using facial recognition technology in July, and California and New Orleans look set to follow (Reuters)

Investors want to split up HSBC as major shareholders push for the banking conglomerate to sell off its Asian operations. Ping An, a Chinese insurance group that holds 9% of HSBC shares, has pushed HSBC to split off its Asian unit, which represents 65% of the bank’s pretax profit (BBG)

Musk’s Twitter deal in doubt as the Tesla billionaire puts buyout “temporarily on hold”. Musk’s concerns center on the prevalence of fake spam accounts, which Twitter has claimed constitute less than 5% of active users. Twitter shares fell 25% premarket on the news (BBG)

Crypto

TerraUSD crash proves stablecoins are anything but stable. The cryptocurrency, which was supposedly pegged to the US Dollar, lost $17bn in market capitalization and is now worth less than 20 cents on the dollar. Major exchanges including Binance, have now suspended the coin to protect users from risk. The crash was triggered by a failure in the algorithm behind Terra, resulting in an exponential rate of new minting that caused hyperinflation in the coin. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire called the collapse “entirely predictable” (BBG)

BitMEX founder deserves more than a year in prison in addition to a $10mm fine, according to prosecutors. Arthur Hayes pleaded guilty to failing to implement anti-money-laundering protocol in the Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange. Prosecutors have suggested that Hayes deserves a severe prison sentence to serve as an example to others in the crypto industry (BBG)

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