| Pelosi is set to visit Taiwan after all. US kills the leader of al-Qaeda. Stocks stumble after three-day rally. Here's what you need to know today. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to visit Taiwan on Tuesday, defying Chinese authorities who have warned of consequences if the trip takes place, according to people familiar with her plans. It would be a landmark move by a US official that raises the risk of a military confrontation, given China views Taiwan as its territory. Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden on a call last week that "whoever plays with fire will get burnt," while China again warned yesterday that its military will take action if the visit goes ahead. Here's why China's so on edge about the trip. A US counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan over the weekend killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, according to two people familiar with the matter. Zawahiri took over the leadership of al-Qaeda in 2011, shortly after American forces killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. He had been charged by US prosecutors with having a role in the 1998 terrorist bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The White House said President Joe Biden would shortly give an address about "a successful counterterrorism operation."  | Stocks in Asia face challenging conditions on Tuesday amid escalating US-China tensions and deepening worries about a global economic slowdown. Futures pointed to muted starts in Japan and Australia and were more than 1% lower for Hong Kong after US equities snapped a three-day rally. The S&P 500 dropped after notching its best month since 2020. Treasuries climbed, lowering the 10-year yield to 2.57%, and the dollar fell. Oil plunged as poor manufacturing figures across the globe fueled concerns that an economic slowdown may sap demand for crude. In Australia, one of the year's unlikely best investments has turned out to be a new Tesla. Months-old Model 3s with only a few hundred miles on the clock are selling for around A$130,000 ($91,000) or higher — more than one-third higher than the price of a new one. That's because the delivery time for a brand-new model is so long Down Under — up to nine months — that buyers are losing patience. They're paying huge premiums to skip the queue, even if it means settling for a second-hand car. A supercharged rebound in airline bookings as Covid-19 travel restrictions ease has overwhelmed even the largest and most established names in aviation. After laying off tens of thousands of pilots, flight crew, baggage handlers and security staff during the pandemic, the industry can't hire fast enough to keep up. Here we take a look at which of the world's major airlines are cancelling the most flights and which are sticking to their schedules. The global bond market is struggling to keep up with the cross currents washing across the asset class. The highest inflation rates for a generation, steep central bank interest-rate hikes and a wave of geopolitical risks are among the dynamics driving wild swings in the yields used by almost every other market as a benchmark for returns and/or borrowing costs. Treasuries are ground zero for this chaos, which is also being fueled by a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. The infrastructure imposed on large banks around the glove to safeguard them against a repeat of the global financial crisis of 2008 is making markets less safe. That's helping to set off massive swings in traditional haven assets that aren't supposed to gyrate like this. It also casts doubt on things like inflation expectations, recession warnings from the yield curve and even July's stunning tech-sector rally that owed much to the Treasuries-led drop in global government bond yields. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney. | 
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