DAILY DOSE: July 4, 2021
Posted on 07/04/2021
1. Happy 4th of July
2. BP plc is considering leaving Iraq. In addition, Russia’s Lukoil sent a formal notification saying it wanted to sell its stake in the West Qurna-2 field to Chinese companies.
3. FULL CIRCLE. The U.S. military and NATO have evacuated Bagram airbase. The Taliban continues to gain ground in Afghanistan. The Taliban now controls roughly a third of all 421 districts and district centers in Afghanistan.
4. Pope Francis was hospitalized in Rome on Sunday afternoon. This reason is for his scheduled surgery on his large intestine, the Vatican said.
5. New York City government mocks the City of Cleveland.
6. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has ordered the State Border Committee to close its border with Ukraine, which for months have been targeting Belarus with accusations of plotting military aggression against it. The Belarus government sees an astonishing amount of weapons being smuggled from Ukraine to Belarus.
7. South Africa’s resurgence of COVID-19 is setting record numbers of new daily cases. The cases are centered in Johannesburg and driven by the delta variant. More than 26,000 new cases were reported on June 3, 2021, up from 24,000 on Friday, according to the National Institute for Communicable Disease.