Kamala Harris’s White House bid receives key endorsement

Good morning. Today we’re covering:

• China’s surprise rate cuts

• An early test for Modi’s third term

• Paris Olympics security challenges

But we start in the US, where vice-president Kamala Harris has moved a step closer to locking up the Democratic party’s nomination for the White House.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi became the latest high-profile Democrat to throw her weight behind Harris’s bid yesterday, as endorsements and money poured in for the vice-president’s candidacy.

Pelosi, a longtime Democratic leader who was seen as instrumental in the behind-the-scenes campaign to push Joe Biden to step aside, said she endorsed Harris’s bid “with immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future”.

Harris’s campaign has taken over the infrastructure and apparatus of the former Biden campaign, and said yesterday that it had raised nearly $50mn from small donors since the president dropped out on Sunday, boosting her firepower for the election run.

Here are the party leaders who have endorsed Harris and the handful who are holding out.

• Harris’s chances against Trump: The new Democratic frontrunner is polling behind the former president — for now.

• The undoing of Joe Biden: The three weeks of agony that humbled the most powerful man in the world.

• Opinion: Democrats should not just hand Harris the nomination without debate or discussion, argues pollster and political strategist Frank Lutz.

With less than four months to go before Americans head to the polls, keep up to date with our US Election Countdown newsletter. And here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: Singapore publishes June inflation figures and Taiwan reports industrial output.

• India: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the government’s budget.

• Results: Alphabet, Tesla, and Spotify report second-quarter earnings.

Five more top stories

1. China has unveiled unexpected cuts to lending rates days after a top Communist party policy meeting, in a sign of government efforts to boost lagging momentum across the world’s second-largest economy. Here’s why analysts called the reductions “modest but symbolically significant”.

2. The assassination attempt on Donald Trump last week was a result of the “most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades”, the agency’s director said. The testimony from Kimberly Cheatle came as she was subjected to an angry interrogation by a Congressional committee yesterday.

3. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been called to testify in a criminal investigation into corruption allegations against his wife. The judge’s request dramatically raises the stakes in a case Sánchez has described as part of a rightwing smear campaign against him.

4. Artificial intelligence developer Cohere has raised $500mn in a new funding round, making it one of the world’s most valuable start-ups in the field. The funding round values the Canadian company at $5.5bn as it takes on rivals including OpenAI and Anthropic.

5. Mysterious buyers with suspected links to Russia have begun amassing dozens of vessels capable of carrying liquefied natural gas in moves that suggest Moscow is expanding its “dark fleet” of energy tankers. The clutch of previously unknown companies are largely registered in the United Arab Emirates, shipping industry insiders said.

News in-depth

Narendra Modi faces an early test to his third term as his new coalition partners make demands ahead of the government’s first budget, which will be delivered today. The Indian prime minister must compromise with two regional “kingmakers” after his Bharatiya Janata party unexpectedly lost its parliamentary majority in last month’s election.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Israel-Hamas war: Israeli evacuation orders are forcing Palestinians in Gaza on a seemingly never-ending search for shelter.

• Paris Olympics: Police are locking down large swaths of the city ahead of the Games, as France wrestles with one of its biggest security challenges.

• Working older: Joe Biden’s recent blunders spurred debate over whether one can be too elderly for a job. But changing demographics are set to keep older people employed, writes Emma Jacobs.

Chart of the day

A global supply glut has pummelled solar panel prices over the past two years, hurting producers including the Chinese companies that dominate the market. But an abundance of cheap solar panels has delivered one significant upside — consumers and businesses are installing them in ever greater numbers.

Take a break from the news

The Bootleg Beatles are Britain’s oldest, most famous and most successful tribute act, performing more than 5,000 times worldwide since 1980. FT Magazine’s Kieran Morris follows a band that may have one of the best jobs in rock.

Additional contributions from Tee Zhuo and David Hindley