Reuteurs

WORLD

• Taliban fighters captured the city of Ghazni, the ninth provincial capital they have seized in a week, as U.S. intelligence said Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, a few hours drive away, could fall to the insurgents within 90 days. Here’s a timeline of the Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan.
  
• Russia has detained the head of a research facility that specializes in hypersonic technology in Moscow on suspicion of state treason, the TASS news agency cited a source as saying.
  
• Extra Australian military personnel may be called in to ensure compliance with lockdown rules in Sydney, the New South Wales state government said, as the highly infectious Delta coronavirus variant spreads into regional areas. Meanwhile, COVID success story New Zealand said it plans to allow quarantine-free entry to vaccinated travelers from low-risk countries from early 2022 after nearly 18 months of isolation.
  
• Polish lawmakers advanced a bill that the opposition says aims to silence a U.S.-owned news channel critical of the government, leading to a swift denunciation from the United States, one of Warsaw’s most important allies.

BUSINESS

• Hackers behind one of the biggest ever digital coin heists have now returned over half of the $610 million-plus they stole, the cryptocurrency platform targeted by the hack said. We explain how the hackers pulled off the theft.
  
• Soccer star Lionel Messi’s signing on fee at Paris St Germain includes some of the French club’s cryptocurrency fan tokens, in the latest big-name endorsement for new digital assets.
  
• Investors in China are turning to semiconductors, renewable energy and consumer-focused firms in the belief they offer safe-harbour from a blizzard of regulatory action that has battered confidence and forced funds to overhaul their portfolios.
  
• Toshiba swung back to profit in the first quarter, as sales of automotive chips and hard disk drives recover from a pandemic-driven slump in demand. The scandal-hit Japanese conglomerate also said it has been working on the selection of candidates for a permanent CEO and board chairman.
  
• Cineworld is considering a Wall Street listing for all or part of its business in an effort to bolster its finances which are under heavy pressure from the pandemic. A U.S. listing would give the heavily indebted cinema group access to the largest capital market in the world, where rival AMC this year became one of the so-called ‘meme stocks’, sending its shares skyrocketing.