Crypto News: PwC puts partners on leave

Welcome to Tuesday. It's Sunil here in Sydney. Here's what you need to know at the start of your day.

Today's must-reads:
• PwC Australia tries to restore confidence
• A boon for battery metals
• Renewables reality check for tycoons

PwC Australia is putting nine senior partners on leave and appointing independent directors as the firm seeks to claw back confidence in the wake of a tax scandal. The company will ringfence business conducted with the government to minimize conflicts of interest and boost governance.

President Joe Biden's climate policy is helping drive a "golden age of mineral exploration" in Australia, as the US rushes to catch up with China on clean energy technologies, Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell said. Deals between Australian miners and US carmakers had already spurred increased investment in exploration and refining of battery metals, and the Inflation Reduction Act is accelerating that, he said.

Tycoons Andrew Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes deserve praise for pursuing a A$30 billion ($20 billion) project to build the world's largest solar power plant, but the difficulties faced by the Sun Cable initiative show that less grandiose ambitions would do far more to nudge the world toward zero emissions, Bloomberg Opinion's David Fickling writes.

Australian stocks are set for a muted open after US equity futures posted modest gains amid cautious optimism that America will avert a catastrophic default after the weekend's tentative debt-ceiling deal.

The White House and Republican congressional leaders geared up lobbying campaigns to win approval for the debt-limit deal as environmentalists, defense hawks and conservative hard-liners condemned concessions.

President Joe Biden in Washington, DC, on May 28. Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca

Russia hit an airbase in western Ukraine, damaging five aircraft and the runway, and targeted the nation's capital with ballistic missiles in the second massive rocket and drone attack in as many days.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez surprised adversaries on Monday by dissolving parliament and triggering a snap election. The move came after his Socialist party suffered a crushing defeat in regional polls.

• Qantas investor day
• New Zealand's April building permits (10:45 am Wellington)
• Australia's April building approvals (11:30 am Sydney)

There is no honor among thieves. A hacker who took control of the sanctioned crypto laundering service Tornado Cash has relinquished power over the protocol while also using it to wash the digital tokens plundered during the attack. The exploiter stole 483,000 of the protocol's native TORN coins and swapped a large part of the stash into the Ether virtual currency before laundering 472 of the latter — worth about $900,000 — through Tornado Cash, which has been sanctioned by the US.