| |  |  | The Reuters Daily Briefing | Thursday, December 9, 2021 by Linda Noakes | Hello Here's what you need to know. A deal to avert a U.S. default faces a test in the Senate, Boris Johnson imposes his COVID 'Plan B' in England, and Lithuania braces for a China-led corporate boycott | | | | | Today's biggest stories  FILE PHOTO: Flags flutter outside a distribution center at Amazon's logistics operation in Passo Corese, Italy, March 22, 2021. REUTERS/Remo Casilli BUSINESS Italy's antitrust watchdog said it had fined Amazon $1.28 billion for alleged abuse of market dominance, in one of the biggest penalties imposed on a U.S. tech giant in Europe. Global regulatory scrutiny of tech giants has been increasing after a string of scandals over privacy and misinformation, as well as complaints from some businesses that they abuse their market power.
Starbucks baristas waging a union campaign in Buffalo, New York, say they are organizing in part to have more of a say in the workload created by the company's mobile app, which has left them struggling to keep up with surges in orders for $6 Frappuccinos and other custom coffee drinks.
The U.S. Federal Reserve will raise rates in the third quarter of next year, earlier than expected a month ago, according to economists in a Reuters poll who mostly said the risk was that a hike comes even sooner.
China has told multinationals to sever ties with Lithuania or face being shut out of the Chinese market, dragging companies into a dispute between the Baltic state and Beijing. China downgraded its diplomatic ties with Lithuania last month, after the opening of a representative office by Taiwan in Vilnius.
We'd all be whizzing round in robotaxis by now if Elon Musk had been right. Instead, fully self-driving cars are struggling to get away from the starting grid and some investors are betting that driverless trucks will reach the chequered flag first.
|  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer walks away after speaking to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, December 7, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz U.S. A deal between the top Democrat and Republican in the U.S. Senate to help raise the federal government's $28.9 trillion debt limit will be tested today when the full chamber votes on whether to approve the measure. The House of Representatives approved an unusual bill, agreed to by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, to sidestep the Senate's 'filibuster' rule and ultimately raise federal borrowing authority by a simple majority vote.
The Senate approved a Republican measure that would overturn President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for private businesses, with two Democrats joining Republicans to back the initiative.
The North Carolina Supreme Court ordered primary elections in the state delayed from March until May of 2022, citing legal challenges to gerrymandered political maps.
Republicans have been campaigning in battleground states to put local officials who oversee key election functions in the hands of party loyalists. In some counties in Georgia, the result has been the removal of several Black Democrats from these boards.
A fourth woman who said she was a teenager when Ghislaine Maxwell gave her an unsolicited massage and set her up for sex abuse by late financier Jeffrey Epstein is expected to testify against Maxwell at the British socialite's criminal trial.
| | | | | | | | | Video of the day  Saudi boxers train for the first women’s championship Women are preparing for the kingdom’s first female boxing tournament at a Riyadh gym called ‘Fight Club’. | | | Thanks for spending part of your day with us. | | | | | |
