| | U.S.-China Trade | | | U.S. stocks will build on this year’s already strong gains over the rest of 2019 despite growing U.S.-China trade tensions that represent the biggest threat to the market, according to a Reuters poll of strategists. Most strategists in the poll cited further escalation in the U.S.-China trade war as the biggest potential negative over the coming year, followed by a worse-than-expected U.S. economic slowdown and slower earnings growth. | | China is ready to use rare earths to strike back in a trade war with the United States. Chinese newspapers warned in strongly worded commentaries on a move that would escalate tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Rare earths are a group of 17 chemical elements used in everything from high-tech consumer electronics to military equipment. The prospect that their value could soar as a result of the trade war caused sharp increases in the share prices of producers. | | | Top News | Exclusive: Hong Kong judges see risks in proposed extradition changes. Some Hong Kong judges fear they are being put on a collision course with Beijing as the special administrative region’s government pushes for sweeping legal changes that would for the first time allow fugitives captured in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China for trial. | | U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said that naval mines “almost certainly from Iran” were used to attack oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates this month and warned Tehran against new operations. He was speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi ahead of emergency summits of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia on Thursday called to discuss the implications of the tanker attacks and drone strikes two days later on oil pumping stations in the kingdom. | | The father of a university football player who died of a drug overdose is expected to testify on the second day of trial in a lawsuit by the state of Oklahoma accusing the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson of fuelling the U.S. opioid epidemic. The trial in a state court in Norman, Oklahoma, is the first to result from more than 2,000 similar lawsuits against opioid manufacturers nationally. | | Boris Johnson, the favorite to replace Theresa May as British prime minister, must appear in court over allegations he lied about Brexit by stating Britain would be 350 million pounds a week better off outside the EU, a judge ruled. The figure, emblazoned on a campaign bus, was a central and controversial part of the Leave campaign’s “take back control” message ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Opponents argued that it was deliberately misleading and it became symbolic of the divisions caused by the referendum, which saw Britons vote to leave the EU. | | | | |