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What's Next |
Good Afternoon Welcome to What's Next, a Sunday newsletter from the folks who deliver your essential weekday What's News briefing. We won't overload you: just a quick look at the week ahead and great stories you ought not to miss. |
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| The work week is coming. Be ready. |
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Traders are on edge as growth fears persist. Lingering fears about a potential recession remain unresolved. Investors will be watching for any signs of progress in trade talks: White House economic adviser Lawrence Kudlow confirmed the possibility Sunday of holding trade talks with China in the U.S. |
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Clues from central banks. The Fed and the ECB are set to release minutes from each of their July policy meetings this week, giving more insight into deliberations surrounding rate cuts and stimulus. |
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Jackson Hole summit. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's speech later this week at the annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo., is expected to provide signals on how the recent escalation in trade tensions could play into the Fed’s policy. |
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More evidence on consumer spending. Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Kohl’s and TJX are due to report quarterly results a week after Walmart gave an upbeat outlook. |
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The dollar poses fresh threats to markets. A prolonged dollar rally is pressuring earnings, hitting commodities and threatening to deepen a selloff in emerging markets. The currency has grinded higher despite the escalating trade fight and broadsides from President Trump, who has complained that its strength is constraining growth. |
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Tariff spat masks deeper trade problems. The tit-for-tat fight between the U.S. and China is the public face of a global slide toward protectionism that shows few signs of slowing. Many economists say the recent proliferation of such measures is holding back economic growth. New tariffs will hit wide range of goods. President Trump may have scaled back tariffs on Chinese goods to spare holiday shoppers, but consumers are still likely to feel a pinch. |
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Trump to give Huawei more time. The administration plans to grant a 90-day extension to the license that allowed Huawei to continue doing some business within the U.S., despite national-security concerns that landed the Chinese telecom company on an export blacklist. |
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Hong Kong protesters gather peacefully. Hundreds of thousands attended a massive rally in the center of the city, billed as rational to contrast with recent demonstrations where protesters and police clashed. Living with the protests. More than two months of demonstrations have forced everyday people to change their routines and develop contingency plans. Residents are moving money out. The local currency has weakened rapidly since early July, a move analysts attribute partly to outflows. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know that I don’t want my money trapped here,” said one resident. |
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SoftBank to lend employees billions. The Japanese company plans to lend up to $20 billion to its employees to buy stakes in its second venture-capital fund. It is an unusual setup that would doubly expose SoftBank to a startup economy that is starting to show cracks. |
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Epstein's attorneys attempted to sway prosecutors. Documents show efforts by Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers to sway New York prosecutors, arguing he had a compelling life story and was "not in any way a typical sex offender." |
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Judges set to rule on child sex-abuse appeal. Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Vatican official ever to be jailed for child sexual abuse, could be freed this week if he wins his appeal against the conviction. |
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Disney-Fox clash ripples from red carpet to Wall Street. Five months after Disney acquired Fox’s movie and television studios, the companies’ cultures are proving an uncomfortable fit. |
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| Long reads and smart WSJ analysis curated by our editors |
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Boeing's four-second catastophe. In designing the flight controls for the 737 MAX, Boeing assumed that pilots should be able to sift through a jumble of contradictory warnings and take the proper action 100% of the time within four seconds. That’s about the amount of time that it took you to read this sentence. |
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Small companies play a big role in robocalls. The billions of illegal robocalls inundating Americans are being facilitated largely by small telecom carriers that transmit calls over the internet, industry officials say, but authorities are at odds over what they can do to stop them. |
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Has Xi Jinping stirred a backlash? China's leader has harnessed his country's new might to pose challenges to the Western-led international order—an effort that is generating debate at home and pushback around the world, writes Yaroslav Trofimov. |
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Deleveraging adds to surge in triple-B bonds. Debt reduction at AT&T, Anheuser-Busch InBev and others is contributing to a surprising development: The lowest group of investment-grade bonds is outpacing other tiers. |
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Tumblr and the end of the eyeballs-are-everything era. Tumblr operated under the assumption that if you had enough eyeballs, "monetization" would take care of itself. But with an adult-content problem and only the vaguest idea how to make money, Tumblr was easy prey for trends bigger than itself, writes Christopher Mims. |
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The war on sugar hits the juice box. As pediatricians warn of the health risks of juice and parents worry about sugary beverages, a growing crop of watered-down juice-box alternatives are coming to store shelves. Whether kids will go for it is another question. |
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Graphic novels take off with young readers. Authors of traditional books venture into a new format, graphic novels for children, going beyond superheroes and tackling serious issues. |
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Cape Cod's shark problem. It is peak shark season on Cape Cod, and this summer, the huge animals lurking just offshore are an inescapable presence to the people on dry land. |
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Silicon Valley looks north. Technology companies are hiring more workers in Toronto, attracted by the region’s diverse population of 6.4 million, a deep pool of skilled labor and cultural similarities to major U.S. cities. But many Canadians are wary of the influx. |
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Hurricane Alicia Hits Texas After forming over the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Alicia touched down in Texas, hitting the state as a category 3 storm. Alicia unleashed sustained winds of 94 mph in Houston, littering the downtown area with broken glass as skyscraper windows shattered. The storm was responsible for 21 deaths and $2 billion in damages. |
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Correction: A major earthquake struck Chile in 1906. "This Day in History" in Friday's newsletter incorrectly stated that it happened in 1905. |
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