August 7 2025
Trump-Putin summit; Lilly obesity pill; MAGA antitrust?; NASA moon nuclear reactor; Japan auto makers
Kremlin Announces Trump-Putin Talks; Russian Stocks Rally
Lilly's Obesity Pill Shows Promise but Falls Short of Wall Street Hopes
Companies Hire Politically-Connected Fixers to Navigate Antitrust Scrutiny
NASA Pushes for Nuclear Reactor on the Moon by 2030
New US-Japan Trade Deal Offers Little Relief to Japanese Automakers
Newsletter sponsor
Kremlin Announces Trump-Putin Talks; Russian Stocks Rally
Russian leader Vladimir Putin will hold talks with US President Donald Trump as early as next week, the Kremlin said on Thursday, a day before the expiry of Trump’s 10-day deadline for Moscow to agree a ceasefire or face additional sanctions. The announcement of the first in-person meeting since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine came a day after Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow for talks that both sides described as productive. The aim for the two leaders is to meet next week, Ushakov said, but he added that “it’s hard to say how many days the preparation will take”. The location of the meeting had already been agreed and would be announced later, Ushakov said. Russia’s stock market rose 4.5 per cent on Thursday after the planned meeting was announced. The bilateral meeting will not include Ukraine. Putin has previously refused to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
FT
Lilly's Obesity Pill Shows Promise but Falls Short of Wall Street Hopes
An experimental weight-loss pill developed by Eli Lilly helped people lose up to about 12% of their body weight after more than a year of treatment, a new study found, potentially clearing the way for the shot alternative to be on the market next year. The Lilly pill, orforglipron, is expected to become a big seller if regulators approve it for sale. Morgan Stanley analysts said that under their bull-case scenario, the drug’s use for both obesity and diabetes could generate annual sales of up to $40 billion by 2033. Yet the latest clinical-trial results may dim some of that enthusiasm. The magnitude of weight loss fell short of what some analysts were predicting: 13% to 15% or more. Eli Lilly shares fell more than 10% in premarket trading early Thursday.
WSJ
Companies Hire Politically-Connected Fixers to Navigate Antitrust Scrutiny
The second Trump administration seemed poised to deliver on MAGA’s embrace of aggressive antitrust enforcement. Instead, those efforts have run headlong into power brokers with close ties to President Trump who have snatched up lucrative assignments helping companies facing antitrust threats. The injection of politically-connected lobbyists and lawyers into antitrust investigations is a shift in an arena that for decades was a niche area dominated by specialized lawyers and economists. Through these power brokers, companies have also been able to appeal to some of the president’s broader economic priorities to limit enforcement. Working through Mike Davis—a longtime Trump ally—and other consultants, Hewlett Packard Enterprise made commitments, not disclosed in court papers, that called for the company to create new jobs at a facility in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter. The unusual offer was designed to ease the government’s opposition to the company’s merger with a major rival, Juniper Networks, which would reduce competition in the wireless networking market. The proposed settlement with the Justice Department allowed HPE to acquire Juniper in a deal that closed last month. HPE agreed to sell a small part of its networking business and provide competitors with limited access to technology it acquired from Juniper. A Justice Department spokesman said the settlement “was based only on the merits of the transaction.” Adam Bauer, an HPE spokesman, said the settlement didn’t include job commitments.
WSJ
NASA Pushes for Nuclear Reactor on the Moon by 2030
Nuclear reactors have been generating power on Earth for more than 70 years. How hard would it be to place one on the moon to provide copious, continuous energy through the cold, dark, two-week-long lunar nights? And could that be accomplished in less than five years? Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation who is now also NASA’s acting administrator, called for just that last week: a reactor producing 100 kilowatts of electricity — enough to power about 80 households in the United States — that would launch to the moon before 2030. Nuclear reactor technology would transform the ability of humanity to travel and live in the solar system. Many of NASA’s robotic spacecraft today operate at power levels equivalent to what a few incandescent lightbulbs consume. That limits what scientific instruments can be put on board. The International Space Station gets its energy from swaths of solar panels, but that is not practical for human habitats on the moon, where the cold, dark night lasts two weeks, or on Mars, where the sun is farther away and dimmer.
NYT
New US-Japan Trade Deal Offers Little Relief to Japanese Automakers
Japan’s automakers, which sell more cars in the United States than anywhere else, are expecting little financial relief from the country’s recent trade deal with President Trump. The agreement between Tokyo and Washington last month promised to lower U.S. tariffs on imported cars and parts to 15 percent. While that was a significant reduction from the current 27.5 percent, this rate is still six times higher than what imports from companies like Toyota, Honda and Nissan were subject to earlier this year. Two weeks after the deal was announced, the new lower rates have not taken effect and there is confusion about when they will. Coupled with a more sober view of their impact on profits, even the lower tariffs are casting a pall over the earnings outlooks of Japanese automotive giants.
NYT
August 7, 1998: U.S. embassies in East Africa bombed
At 10:30 a.m. local time, a massive truck bomb explodes outside the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Minutes later, another truck bomb detonated outside the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital of neighboring Tanzania. The dual terrorist attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded more than 4,500. The United States accused Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, a proponent of international terrorism against America, of masterminding the bombings. On August 20, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles launched against bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, where bin Laden allegedly made or distributed chemical weapons.
Osama bin Laden was born in 1957 into one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest and most prominent families. His father, an immigrant from South Yemen, had built a small construction business into a multibillion-dollar company. When his father died in 1968, bin Laden inherited an estimated $30 million but for the next decade drifted without focus and lived a jet-setting lifestyle. In 1979, however, everything changed when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Like tens of thousands of other Arabs, bin Laden volunteered to aid Afghanistan in repulsing what he saw as the godless communist invaders of the Muslim country.
For the first few years of the Afghan War, he traveled around Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf raising money for the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters. In 1982, he traveled to the front lines of the war for the first time, where he donated construction equipment for the war effort. Bin Laden directly participated in a handful of battles, but his primary role in the anti-Soviet jihad was as financier. During the war, he made contact with numerous Islamic militants, many of whom who were as anti-Western as they were anti-Soviet.
In 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, and bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. He grew increasingly critical of the ruling Saudi family, especially after hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops were welcomed onto Saudi soil during the Persian Gulf War. Although his passport was taken away, he slipped out of Saudi Arabia in 1991 and settled in the Sudan. From there, he spoke out against the Saudi government and the continuing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, which he likened to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, the United States began to suspect that bin Laden was involved in international terrorism against the United States. The military organization he built during the Afghan War–al Qaeda, or “the Base”–was still in existence, and U.S. intelligence believed he was transforming it into an anti-U.S. terrorist network. In 1995, bin Laden called for guerrilla attacks against U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, and three months later a terrorist attack against a U.S. military installation killed five Americans. Under U.S. and Saudi pressure he was expelled from the Sudan in May 1996. One month later, a truck bomb killed 19 U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia. Whether or not bin Laden was involved in planning these attacks has not been established.
With 200 of his followers, bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, which was then falling under the control of the Taliban, a faction of extreme Islamic fundamentalists. Bin Laden provided funding for the Taliban military campaign against the city of Kabul, which fell to the militia in September 1996. Soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, bin Laden issued a fatwah, or religious decree, calling for war on Americans in the Persian Gulf and the overthrow of the Saudi government. In February 1998, he issued another fatwah stating that Muslims should kill Americans, including civilians, anywhere in the world.
On August 7, 1998—the eighth anniversary of the deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia—two U.S. embassies in East Africa were bombed almost simultaneously. The attack at the Nairobi embassy, which was located in a busy downtown area, caused the greater devastation and loss of life. There, a truck loaded with 2,000 pounds of TNT forced its way to the back entrance of the embassy and was detonated, shattering the embassy, demolishing the nearby Ufundi Coop House, and gutting the 17-story Cooperative Bank. By the time rescue operations came to an end, 213 people were dead, including 12 Americans. Thousands of people were wounded, and hundreds were maimed or blinded. The attack against the U.S. embassy in Dar es Saalam killed 11 and injured 85.
By 1997, American intelligence officers knew that bin Laden operatives were active in East Africa but were unable to break up the terrorist cell before the embassies were attacked. They had even heard of a possible plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Nairobi but failed to recommend an increase in security before the attack. Meanwhile, Prudence Bushnell, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, independently asked the State Department to move the Nairobi embassy because of its exposed location, but the request was not granted. Revelations of these pre-bombing security issues provoked much controversy and concern about the United States’ vulnerability abroad. Few, however, voiced concern that the proliferation of terrorists eager to kill innocent civilians and themselves in order to strike a blow against the U.S. would soon shatter America’s sense of invulnerability at home.
Within days of the August 7 bombings, two bin Laden associates were arrested and charged with the attacks. However, with bin Laden and other key suspects still at large, President Clinton ordered a retaliatory military strike on August 20. In Afghanistan, some 70 American cruise missiles hit three alleged bin Laden training camps. An estimated 24 people were killed, but bin Laden was not present. Thirteen cruise missiles hit a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, and the night watchman was killed. The United States later backed away from its contention that the pharmaceutical plant was making or distributing chemical weapons for al Qaeda.
Greg Loving
Found a mistake? Have a news tip or feedback to share? Contact our newsroom using the button below:
citizen journal offers three flagship products: a daily national news summary, a daily Kansas news summary, and local news and school board summaries from 12 cities across Kansas. Each issue contains 5 paragraph-length stories that are made to be read in 5 minutes. Use the links in the header to navigate to national, kansas, and local coverage. Subscribe to each, some, or all to get an email when new issues are published for FREE!
Sponsors (click me!)
Sources
- https://on.ft.com/4msP8Iv
- https://www.wsj.com/health/pharma/eli-lilly-weight-loss-pill-q2-earnings-lly-stock-d2d5cf96?mod=hp_lead_pos5
- https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/maga-antitrust-agenda-under-siege-by-lobbyists-close-to-trump-18558898?mod=hp_lead_pos9
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/science/nasa-nuclear-reactor-moon.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/business/tariffs-japan-cars.html
See the citizen journal Podcast! Released on Apple, Spotify and YouTube around 10a CST.
Contact: greg@citizenjournal.us
