Microsoft has signed an agreement with Sony to ensure "Call of Duty" remains available on PlayStation after Microsoft closes its $69 billion Activision Blizzard merger, the tech giant said Sunday.

With six weeks until the first 2024 Republican presidential debate, some hopefuls are finding creative ways to boost their donor numbers and ensure they make it on stage

US treasury secretary Janet Yellen is back in India for the third time in nine months, this time to meet finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations about global economic challenges like the increased threat of debt defaults facing low-income countries. Ms Yellen will use her time in Gandhinagar to try to foster warming relations between the US and India. She also plans a stop in Hanoi, Vietnam, to address supply chain reliability, clean energy transition and other matters of economic resilience. Ms Yellen's goals for her time in India: press for debt restructuring in developing countries in economic distress, push to modernize global development banks to make them more climate-focused and deepen the ever-growing US-India relationship. Ms Yellen’s frequent stops in the country signal the importance of that relationship at a time of of tensions with China. India’s longstanding relationship with Russia also will loom as the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine continues despite US and allied countries’ efforts to sanction and economically bludgeon Russia's economy. India has not taken part in the efforts to punish Russia and maintains energy trade with that country despite a Group of Seven agreed-upon price cap on Russian oil, which has seen some success in slowing Russia's economy. Still, the US increasingly relies on India and has courted its leaders. President Joe Biden hosted a White House state visit honoring Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in June, designed to highlight and foster ties. The two leaders pronounced the US-India relationship never stronger and rolled out new business deals between the nations. Raymond Vickery Jr, a policy expert on US-India relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Ms Yellen's coming to India shortly after visiting China is meaningful in that Indian officials “are going to want to know in great detail what happened in the meetings with her Chinese counterparts and see where it fits with their perspective on economic relations with China.” “They’re going to want to know whether or not the United States is serious about moving some of its sourcing activity from China to India.” A senior Treasury official, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview Ms Yellen’s trip, said there was hope that debt treatments for Ghana and Sri Lanka will be discussed and completed quickly at the meetings. Sri Lanka and Ghana defaulted on their international debts last year, roughly two years after Zambia defaulted. And more than half of all low-income countries face debt distress, which hurts their long-term ability to function and develop. Last month, Zambia and its government creditors, including China, reached a deal to restructure $6.3bn in loans, on the sidelines of a global finance summit in Paris. The agreement covers loans from countries such as France, the U.K., South Africa, Israel and India as well as China – Zambia’s biggest creditor at $4.1bn of the total. The deal may provide a roadmap for how China will handle restructuring deals with other nations in debt distress. Ms Yellen’s trip comes shortly after she spent a week in China, meeting the nation’s finance ministry and discussing mutual trade restrictions and national security concerns. Harold W Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Ms Yellen's trip to India “is a reflection of a naturally developing alliance.” “India has a great deal of tension with China – they have constant border disputes,” he said. “And India wants to develop and has developed into sort of an Indian Ocean naval power, which is also a region that China wants to develop." Read More What Britain needs is a ‘grown-up’ relationship with China US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visits China as part of efforts to sooth strained relations Yellen says Washington might 'respond to unintended consequences' for China due to tech export curbs Janet Yellen expresses hopes her Beijing visit has put US-China ties on a ‘surer footing’ Janet Yellen highlights record US-China trade and talks ‘fair rules’ during Beijing visit Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide

On Saturday (July 15), Elon Musk revealed that Twitter is struggling with a “heavy debt load” due to advertising revenue dropping 50 per cent. Responding to a user seemingly giving financial business advice to Musk, the billionaire replied explaining that the company is “still in negative cash flow, due to ~50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.” Back in April, Musk had said Twitter was “roughly breaking even,” as most of its advertisers had returned. However, a New York Times report in early June found that Twitter’s revenue from US advertising was down 59 per cent from the previous year. Since taking over Twitter in October last year, Musk has faced constant scrutiny for his business decisions, cutting roughly 75 per cent of its workforce almost immediately, as well as reinstating users who were previously banned for breaking terms of service. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In May, Musk hired a new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, an ex-NBCUniversal advertising executive. The new hire was supposed to signal a fresh start for the platform under Musk’s ownership, but it clearly hasn’t worked in bringing previous advertisers back. Twitter has also caused new upset by imposing ‘rate limits’ on how many tweets users can view a day. At the time, Musk had said the restrictions were required to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”. Another challenge that faces Twitter is Meta’s Threads, the new app it launched this week to compete with Twitter. Meta saw over 100 million users sign up in the first two weeks, but is yet to allow advertisers to host on the platform, despite interest. In response, Twitter threatened legal action, with Twitter’s attorney, Alex Spiro, accusing Meta for unlawfully using trade secrets and other intellectual property to create a “copycat” app. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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