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This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe\/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters here<\/p>\n
Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT Asia. In today\u2019s newsletter: <\/p>\n
India\u2019s Russian oil predicament<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
China warms to stablecoins<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The global sand shortage<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The Berkshire Hathaway premium fades<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
We start with the deteriorating US-India relationship, as Donald Trump announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on imports from India due to New Delhi\u2019s purchases of Russian oil.<\/p>\n
The latest:<\/strong> The decision was published yesterday in an executive order from the White House shortly after Steve Witkoff, a senior US envoy, met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The executive order said the 25 per cent levies connected to India\u2019s oil trade with Russia would be added to existing duties imposed on Indian imports. India\u2019s foreign ministry called the US tariffs \u201cunfair, unjustified and unreasonable\u201d and said that its oil imports were \u201cbased on market factors and done with the overall objective of ensuring the energy security of 1.4bn people of India\u201d. Analysts told the FT how the falling-out with the US will impact India\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n India\u2019s Russian oil conundrum:<\/strong> After years of his country bingeing on cheap Russian crude, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a geopolitical dilemma as well as a practical challenge should he seek to re-engineer the energy supply mix of the world\u2019s third-biggest oil importer. India imports about 5mn barrels of oil a day, of which 2mn come from Russia. Sumit Ritolia, a lead Kpler analyst, said New Delhi could \u201cpivot more towards non-Russian barrels. But I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll see a day when India stops buying Russian oil\u201d. Read more about Modi\u2019s bind.<\/p>\n War in Ukraine:<\/strong> Trump is \u201copen\u201d to meeting Putin as well as the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he seeks to broker an end to the war in Ukraine, the White House has said.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n India news:<\/strong> India\u2019s central bank held its key interest rate as Trump\u2019s planned increase in tariffs threatens to send its economy into turmoil.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Here\u2019s what else we\u2019re keeping tabs on today:<\/p>\n Economic data:<\/strong> China and Japan release July trade figures. The Philippines reports second-quarter GDP.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Trade war:<\/strong> Trump\u2019s \u201creciprocal\u201d levies are set to come into force today. See the FT\u2019s tariff tracker for more details.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Results:<\/strong> SoftBank, Sony and Toyota report earnings. <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n 1. UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has demanded additional information from China<\/strong> over its plans for a new \u201cmega\u201d embassy in London after several of its drawings contained areas that were blacked out. The late objection raises the prospect that ministers may reject the plans, which have been criticised by the White House. <\/p>\n 2. China plans to allow the launch of its first stablecoins<\/strong> in a bid to internationalise the renminbi and compete against the dollar. However, concerns about capital flight are slowing the technology\u2019s growth in the country, while regulators have warned about the potential for stablecoins to be used in money laundering. <\/p>\n 3.<\/strong> Apple is preparing to add a further $100bn to its US investment plans<\/strong> as chief executive Tim Cook strives to insulate the iPhone maker from Trump\u2019s trade war. White House officials said the Silicon Valley giant\u2019s pledge would include a new \u201cAmerican manufacturing programme\u201d to produce more of its devices and components in the US.<\/p>\n 4. Airbnb\u2019s second-quarter results beat estimates as bookings recovered<\/strong> from the initial economic shock of Trump\u2019s trade war. But the home rental platform warned that its earning margins would compress in the third quarter as the US president\u2019s new tariffs go into effect and as it invests $200mn in new services and experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n 5. US institutional investors including MetLife and Harvard University\u2019s endowment<\/strong> have backed a $420mn fund by one of the Australian venture capital firms behind Canva and other \u201ckangaroo-nicorns\u201d, as a country once dismissed as a tech backwater becomes a hunting ground for foreign capital. <\/p>\n Condemned houses along the eroding beachfront in Rodanthe, North Carolina. Eleven homes in the community have collapsed into the ocean over the past five years<\/span> \u00a9 Justin Cook\/FT<\/span><\/p>\n From the US eastern seaboard to Australia\u2019s Gold Coast, climate change is accelerating the erosion of shorelines, threatening the future of seaside communities. Sand is essential to beach revitalisation, but its cost and availability are putting limits to government efforts to mitigate further degradation.<\/p>\n Indonesia:<\/strong> Businesses in south-east Asia\u2019s largest economy are raising alarm over a slowdown in manufacturing and domestic consumption.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Captain of convenience:<\/strong> Authorities have repeatedly targeted a mysterious figure who set up shipping registries in far-flung countries, including ones that are landlocked.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Alzheimer\u2019s research:<\/strong> A study adds to the idea that there may be more rogue proteins implicated in cognitive decline than first thought, writes Anjana Ahuja.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Shares of Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway have underperformed the wider market by one of the biggest margins in decades, as his retirement as chief executive nears and some investors head for the exits.<\/p>\n .\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and pick up a comic novel. In a decade that has featured war, pestilence, famine and unstable global leaders, what readers need most are the brilliant, often undersung fiction writers who wring a smile out of us, writes Nilanjana Roy. While it\u2019s so easy to rail at the state of the world, sometimes we just need a good laugh.<\/p>\n Even the most culturally specific comic fiction can have a global appeal<\/span> \u00a9 Alamy<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This article is an on-site version of our FirstFT newsletter. Subscribers can sign up to our Asia, Europe\/Africa or Americas edition to get the newsletter delivered every weekday morning. Explore all of our newsletters here Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT Asia. In today\u2019s newsletter: India\u2019s Russian oil predicament China warms to stablecoins The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[7409,115,102,426,268,672,2971,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-14390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-buying","9":"tag-extra","10":"tag-hits","11":"tag-india","12":"tag-oil","13":"tag-russian","14":"tag-tariff","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Five more top stories<\/h3>\n
The Big Read<\/h3>\n
We\u2019re also reading\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009<\/h3>\n
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Chart of the day<\/h3>\n
Take a break from the news\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009<\/h3>\n