FirstFT: Today’s top stories | Financial Times

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily is on the verge of closure after its assets were frozen by the government last week, restricting its ability to operate.

The asset freeze follows the arrest of two of the newspaper’s senior executives who were charged under China’s tough national security law after a raid by 500 police officers on Apple Daily’s offices on June 17. The paper’s owner, Jimmy Lai, has already been jailed.

Critics say the actions mark a new low for press freedom in the Chinese territory, which was promised freedom of expression in the handover of the city from the UK to China in 1997. This changed after Beijing introduced a national security law that heralded a tough crackdown on civil society and politics.

The clampdown, aimed at quelling dissent on display during mass anti-government protests in 2019, has since extended to the previously freewheeling media. But police moves to charge Ryan Law, Apple Daily’s editor-in-chief, were the first time the national security law had been used directly against journalists.

Five stories in the news

1. China orders banks to intensify anti-crypto campaign China’s central bank warned several of its largest state-owned banks and Jack Ma’s Alipay to “investigate and identify” bank accounts facilitating cryptocurrency trading and block all corresponding transactions, in Beijing’s latest move against Bitcoin. Read more in Chris Nuttall’s #techFT newsletter. You can sign up here.

2. Wall Street rebounds as markets adjust to Fed rate rise outlook US stocks bounced back and government bonds softened on Monday, reversing some of the tumultuous moves last week that followed a Federal Reserve meeting where officials took a more hawkish tone on interest rates and inflation.

• More on the Fed: John Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the US economy was not yet ready for the central bank to start pulling back its hefty monetary support.

3. Iran’s president-elect signals tough line on nuclear deal Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative cleric and judiciary chief, told reporters that his government would not “negotiate for the sake of negotiations” and ruled out any meeting with US President Joe Biden.

4. Student athletes win US Supreme Court showdown The court’s nine justices unanimously upheld a lower court decision finding that restrictions set by the National Collegiate Athletic Association on education-related benefits — including “scholarships for graduate or vocational school, payments for academic tutoring, or paid post-eligibility internships” — to student athletes were unfair.

5. Germany’s Armin Laschet warns against cold war with China The frontrunner to become Germany’s next chancellor agreed with Angela Merkel that Beijing was as much a partner as a systemic rival. In a wide-ranging interview Laschet, leader of Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, suggested many in Europe were sceptical of US President Joe Biden’s hawkish attitude to China.

• Go deeper: In this Big Read, FT’s Berlin bureau chief Guy Chazan and editor Roula Khalaf report that Laschet wants to see a return to the orthodoxies of the pre-pandemic world.

Coronavirus digest

• Japan will allow spectators up to 50 per cent of venue capacity at the Olympics, with a maximum of 10,000 people — going against medical advisers’ guidance.

• Vaccitech, the group behind Oxford/AstraZeneca’s vaccine, believes it has a better chance of treating cancers than new medicines based on mRNA.

• As Britain struggles to learn to live with Covid, there has been little discussion about the mortality level that might be acceptable to the public.

• From bagpipes to barbecues, incentives abound to lure staff back to the office, writes Andrew Hill.

Follow our live coronavirus blog and sign up for our Coronavirus Business Update newsletter.

The day ahead

New York City mayoral primary In heavily Democratic New York City, the winner of today’s primary will certainly carry November’s general election. Eric Adams — a black former policeman who has called for more NYPD officers — is one of the favourites to win a contest that has become a referendum on New Yorkers’ attitudes towards policing and public security.

Spain to pardon jailed Catalan separatists The leftwing government is to issue pardons for nine jailed Catalan separatists on Tuesday, in a move it says will pave the way for reconciliation on the country’s most divisive issue but which the opposition says undermines the rule of law.

How should privacy considerations be addressed given data’s emerging status as a tradable commodity? Senior industry leaders will share their insights at an FT virtual webinar starting on Wednesday. Register for free here.

What else we’re reading

How China broke the Asian model While the economics of the China model are derivative, the politics are new, writes Gideon Rachman. Unlike Taiwan or South Korea, which turned from one-party states to democracies as they got richer, China under Xi has entrenched the dominance of the Communist party.

• Video: The global economy is shifting away from the US and Europe towards Asia. The FT’s global China editor James Kynge and FT economics commentator Martin Sandbu discuss whether China will dominate global commerce.

Tech Tonic podcast: The game-changer In this first episode of our five-part series on AI, the FT’s innovation editor and host John Thornhill talks to some of the biggest names in AI research including the CEO of Google’s DeepMind Demis Hassabis. He explores some of the latest innovations and asks a core question: will AI live up to its promise or succumb to its pitfalls? 

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee: ‘Ours is a social science’ The Nobel laureates call for better economic “plumbing” after the pandemic and warn about inaction over climate change. This is the latest in our Economists Exchange series featuring conversations between top FT commentators and leading economists about coronavirus economic recovery.

Capital for the people — an idea whose time has come While nobody these days has much sympathy for wealthy individuals or companies or really believes in trickle-down economics, the threat of tax and regulatory arbitrage by other states is real. California is applying some typically creative thinking to this problem, writes Rana Foroohar.

Masters in Finance The FT’s 2021 ranking of the world’s best masters in finance programmes have been published. HEC Paris again leads the rankings, which are dominated by French business schools. You can read the full list here and learn more about the methodology used to calculate the rankings here.

Life & Arts

Summer books of 2021 The FT today launches its annual summer review of the best books of the year, starting with the genres of science fiction, business and food and drink. You can share your favourite reads of the year so far here. The best responses will be published on FT.com as part of the wider series.