| |  |  | The Reuters Daily Briefing | Thursday, October 7, 2021 by Linda Noakes | Hello Here's what you need to know. A supply crisis drives Walmart to hire its own ships, Russia's Gazprom feels the heat over Europe's red-hot gas prices, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is announced | | | | | Today's biggest stories  U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell walks past reporters in the Ohio Clock Corridor, outside the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington, October 6, 2021. REUTERS/Leah Millis U.S. U.S. Senate Democrats and Republicans are expected to continue negotiating today to avert a debt crisis after Democrats showed openness to a Republican offer to allow an extension of the federal debt ceiling into December. We look at whether the Washington truce will stick.
A federal judge temporarily blocked a near-total ban on abortion in Texas, the toughest such law in the United States, following a challenge from President Joe Biden's administration after the U.S. Supreme Court let it proceed.
Biden is set to visit Chicago today to meet with United Airlines' chief executive and local Democratic leaders as he touts his decision to impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates on employees of large firms.
Some 70 U.S. for-profit colleges, including some of the largest, were sent notices that the Federal Trade Commission could impose "significant financial penalties" if the schools deceive students about how successful their graduates were.
|  FILE PHOTO: A view of a rice field in North Korea's propaganda village Kaepoong in this picture taken in Gimpo, South Korea, October 5, 2021. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji WORLD North Korea's most vulnerable risk starvation after it slipped deeper into isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and U.N. sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile programmes should be eased, a U.N. rights investigator said in a report seen by Reuters.
Taiwan will ensure regional peace and stability and seeks to work with other like-minded democracies, President Tsai Ing-wen told senior French and Australian dignitaries, days after a dramatic spike in tensions with China.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.7 hit southern Pakistan, killing 20 people, most of them women and children, and injuring about 300, at a time when many victims were asleep.
A former SS guard who is now 100 years old is due to go on trial in Germany, charged with contributing to the deaths of more than 3,000 people in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two.
Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gurnah, whose novels include 'Paradise' and 'Desertion', writes in English and lives in Britain.
| BUSINESS The Flying Buttress once glided across the oceans carrying vital commodities like grain to all corners of the world. Now it bears a different treasure: Paw Patrol Movie Towers, Batmobile Transformers and Baby Alive Lulu Achoo dolls. We look at how the supply crisis is driving Walmart and rivals to hire their own ships.
German industrial output suffered its steepest drop in August since April last year, due to supply chain disruptions that are holding back growth in Europe's biggest economy and hitting the auto sector particularly hard, official data shows.
Europe's biggest gas firms say the continent's top supplier Gazprom is fulfilling its long-term contracts yet the Russian energy giant remains at the center of a dispute about whether it could do more to ease the price pain in a red-hot spot market.
Royal Dutch Shell warned of a $400 million hit to third-quarter earnings from the damage caused by August's Hurricane Ida. However, in an update ahead of quarterly results this month, the oil major also flagged a boost to cashflows from soaring natural gas and electricity prices.
Shares of Chinese Estates Holdings, a former major shareholder of embattled developer China Evergrande, jumped as much as 32% after it announced an offer to be taken private for $245 million. The Hong Kong developer said the family of Chinese Estates' biggest shareholder, Joseph Lau, had offered minority shareholders a 38% premium to its last traded price.
| | | | | | | | | Video of the day  Chilean tree could be key to next COVID vaccine Down a dusty farm track in Chilean wine country, forestry experts are nursing a plantation of saplings whose bark holds the promise of potent vaccines. | | | Thanks for spending part of your day with us. | | | | | |
