Crypto News: Meloni mends bridges in China

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Giorgia Meloni needed to turn the page on Italy's decision to pull out of China's Belt and Road initiative — and by and large, the prime minister succeeded during her visit to Beijing.

Back in 2019, Italy became the only Group of Seven nation to sign up to the colossal infrastructure undertaking that would see China build and finance railways, highways and ports all over the country.

The US was alarmed and judged this so-called new silk road as further evidence of geo-economic overreach by its rival superpower. The mood in Washington was turning ever more hawkish on China.

WATCH: Meloni has pledged to relaunch bilateral cooperation with China.

When Meloni came to power, she immediately came under pressure to pick a side and she did: she chose Italy's traditional Western allies. But as a middling G-7 economy she also couldn't afford to burn bridges with Xi Jinping.

So seven months on from that fateful diplomatic moment, the Italian leader disembarked the presidential plane, holding her daughter Ginevra by the hand, and headed into a high-stakes meeting with the Chinese president, having taken in how France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Olaf Scholz fared.

Macron's visit in April 2023 was criticized for too much cozying up to Xi and a comment about how Europe should resist becoming America's "vassals." European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accompanied him and was damningly treated as a senior official.

Scholz didn't have much to show from his trip earlier this year given the volume of bilateral trade, which at more than $200 billion last year exceeded France and Italy's China trade combined.

A measure of how Meloni did is reflected in Chinese state media reporting of the event. They were effusive about her pitch to make Italy a go-between.

That, in fairness, is wishful thinking. Italy may be punching above its weight but Meloni will need to be careful not to overplay her hand. — Donato Paulo Mancini

Meloni and Xi in Beijing yesterday. Photographer: Vincent Thian/AFP/Getty Images

Venezuela's opposition has proof that its candidate defeated Nicolás Maduro in Sunday's presidential elections, said leader María Corina Machado, as thousands took to the streets to protest what they say is the incumbent's fraudulent victory. Machado called for "citizen assemblies" including families and children to gather nationwide today, when the presidents of the US and Brazil are separately due to discuss the latest developments in Venezuela.

A protester steps on a poster of Maduro in Caracas yesterday. Photographer: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images

Protesters and far-right lawmakers from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition stormed two Israeli army bases yesterday as tensions soared over the arrests of soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian prisoner. Netanyahu called for calm and condemned the demonstrators for breaking into the southern desert base of Sde Teiman. Israel's defense minister and army chief of staff also spoke out against the march on military sites.

Having imposed export controls on key semiconductor technologies, the US is moving to target China's biotech sector. Legislation now making its way through Congress known as the Biosecure Act seeks to restrict US federal-funded medical providers from contracting with "foreign adversaries," and has already prompted a drop in sales for a Shanghai-based biotech company named in the bill, WuXi AppTec.

US claims to a vast section of the seabed — and the potential resources buried within — have no basis in international law and should be rejected, Russia and China told a session of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica. The US defended its position on claiming about 1 million square kilometers (386,100 square miles) under the Bering Sea, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

French authorities on high alert for terror attacks during the Summer Olympics beefed up security massively in host city Paris, so instead saboteurs have targeted train and internet infrastructure outside the capital. The scale and coordination has taken the government by surprise and prosecutors are saying little to indicate if the severing of fiber-optic cables was the work of far-left anarchists or ordered-up from abroad.

Donald Trump said he expects eventually to debate Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November's US election, after previously declining to commit to appear at a scheduled face-off.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves' spending audit yesterday showed the new UK Labour government is frontloading bad news, leaving as much time as possible to repair and rebuild the economy before the next election.

Russia is moving to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies, as companies wrestle with increasing difficulties in foreign payments under the threat of US sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

President Joe Biden assailed the conservative majority of the Supreme Court yesterday over its recent rulings, calling for new binding ethics rules and term limits for justices — a sweeping proposal that would fundamentally alter the top US court.

"Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court's decisions," he said, casting the changes as necessary to restore accountability to both the presidency and the court.

Biden's plan, which faces a difficult path in Congress, also calls for a constitutional amendment to ensure that former presidents can be tried for crimes committed while in office.

One person to watch today: Harris kicks off a push to compete against Trump in a wider swath of battleground states with a rally in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Dubai has been buffeted by humidity and heat waves that have already caused temperatures to feel higher than 60C (140F) on several days this summer. Extreme weather conditions are hitting many parts of the world with greater frequency and force as a consequence of climate change and rapid urbanization. The Middle East is particularly susceptible because of its desert landscape and proximity to the Persian Gulf.

Some of Hong Kong's wealthy families have been caught up in the city's real-estate slump after selling luxury homes and other properties at a loss to pay back loans. In the residential sector alone, about 75% of high-end transactions — those worth more than $10 million each — in the first half of the year involved financially stressed sellers, according to CBRE data. The sales are putting further pressure on Hong Kong's real-estate market, which has been in a downward spiral as the financial hub loses its luster.

Hong Kong. Photographer: Chunyip Wong/iStockphoto

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