China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it “firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government’s decision”.

On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a “vital national capability”.

The UK took control of British Steel’s operations in Scunthorpe last year, though it was still owned by China’s Jingye Group, limiting the government’s ability to steer its future.

China’s commerce ministry said on Friday that the moves “seriously infringed upon Jingye’s legitimate rights and interests and severely undermined the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the UK”.

It also called on Britain to “faithfully fulfil” its obligations under the China–UK Bilateral Investment Treaty.

“Disregarding Jingye’s significant contribution to the UK economy and society, the British side forcibly took control of the company in the name of national security,” the ministry said.

The statement added that Beijing would monitor developments closely and support Chinese firms to protect their rights, but did not specify what protecting Chinese companies’ rights might involve.

The decision to nationalise British Steel threatens to strain the relationship between London and Beijing just as Andy Burnham is set to become the prime minister on Monday.

The incoming PM will have to weigh his approach to the issue with the economic benefits of ties with the world’s second largest economy.

A Republican-backed bill that would require proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote has become one of the most fought-over pieces of legislation in Washington this year. Here’s what’s actually in it, where it stands, and what it could mean for you at the ballot box.

If you’ve been scrolling through the news lately and keep seeing the phrase “SAVE America Act,” you’re not imagining things, it’s been dominating headlines out of Washington for months, and President Donald Trump has made it one of his top legislative priorities of 2026. Supporters call it a common-sense fix to election security. Opponents call it the biggest rollback of voting access in a generation. Here’s a plain-English breakdown of what’s really going on.

What does the Save America Act Do?

The SAVE America Act, short for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, is a federal bill that would change how Americans register to vote and what they need to bring with them on Election Day. Two changes sit at the heart of it:

• Proof of citizenship to register: Anyone registering to vote in a federal election would need to show a document proving U.S. citizenship, think a passport, a certified birth certificate, or a REAL ID-compliant license that specifically indicates citizenship. A standard driver’s license alone typically wouldn’t cut it.
• Photo ID to vote: Every voter would need to show government-issued photo identification at the polls, a driver’s license, state ID, passport, military ID, or tribal ID. The same requirement would extend to absentee and mail-in ballots, where voters would need to include a copy of their ID both when requesting and returning a ballot.

The bill would also require states to scrub noncitizens from their voter rolls, and it creates new legal tools, including the ability for private citizens to sue, to enforce the rules, along with criminal penalties for violations.

Where Did The Save America Bill Come From?

This isn’t a brand-new idea. A version of the SAVE Act has been kicking around Congress since 2024, passing the House twice before but always stalling out in the Senate. The 2026 version, technically House Resolution 7296, cleared the House on February 11, 2026, by a narrow 218-213 vote, almost entirely along party lines.
From there, it moved to the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to survive a filibuster. Republicans control 53 seats, meaning they’d need at least seven Democrats to cross over, support that, so far, hasn’t materialized. In March 2026, the Senate held its first real test vote on the bill; it advanced narrowly on a 51-48 procedural vote, with Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski breaking ranks to vote no. A later attempt to force a final vote failed 53-47.
Frustrated by the standstill, President Trump used his July 4th address to renew his call for the bill’s passage, and days later, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the chamber would try passing it “one more time,” this time through the budget reconciliation process, a procedural route that only requires a simple majority and sidesteps the filibuster entirely. As of mid-July, that effort is still unfolding, and the bill has not become law.

How Save America Act Mean for You?

For most Americans who are already registered and have a driver’s license or passport handy, day-to-day voting probably wouldn’t look dramatically different. But for millions of others, the bill would add real friction:

• Online and mail-in registration would get harder: Because the law would require an in-person document check in most cases, it would upend registration drives, DMV-based registration, and the online systems most states now rely on. Election-law groups estimate that in a recent election cycle, more than 7 million people registered by mail and nearly 11 million registered online, all systems this bill would force to be reworked.
• Married Women: Married women and others who’ve changed their name could be disproportionately affected. A birth certificate that doesn’t match a current legal name, common after marriage, could complicate the citizenship-proof process unless additional paperwork is provided.
• Rural Older Voters: Rural voters, older Americans, and lower-income voters may face bigger hurdles, since they’re statistically less likely to have a passport or easy access to a certified birth certificate or a DMV office.
• Anyone updating their registration, after a move, a name change, or a party switch, would need to go through the same documentation process again, not just first-time registrants.
• Absentee and mail voters would need to attach an ID copy to both their ballot request and their returned ballot, an extra step that doesn’t currently exist in most states.

Why Trump is Pushing for Save America Act?

Supporters, led by Trump and House Republicans like Rep. Nancy Mace and Rep. Bryan Steil, argue the bill closes a loophole that lets noncitizens end up on voter rolls, even if only rarely, and that requiring ID to vote is a basic, reasonable safeguard most other democracies already use. Backers frame it as restoring public confidence in elections ahead of the 2026 midterms, when control of Congress is on the line, and reject claims that it would be used to purge eligible voters.

Why Many Legislators are Opposing the Save America Act?

Critics, including most Democrats, the League of Women Voters, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Brennan Center for Justice, counter that noncitizen voting is already illegal, already rare, and already actively prosecuted when it happens, meaning the bill solves a problem that barely exists while creating a much bigger one: locking out eligible citizens who lack easy access to the right paperwork. They point to the bill’s national ID mandate as stricter than nearly every existing state voter-ID law, and warn it would hit women, students, elderly voters, people with disabilities, and rural Americans hardest.

Save America Act 2026: What Happens Next

As of mid-July 2026, the SAVE America Act remains stuck, passed by the House, but unable to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. With President Trump pushing hard for a reconciliation-based path that would need only a simple majority, and Speaker Johnson signaling the House is ready to move again, the fight is far from over. Whether it becomes law before the 2026 midterms could shape how tens of millions of Americans register and vote for years to come.

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SYDNEY — Australian shares closed lower Friday, with the S&P/ASX 200 falling 62.2 points, or 0.70%, to 8,778.5, as weakness in mining and energy stocks weighed on the benchmark index following a rough overnight session on Wall Street.

The decline extended a softer patch for the local market after Thursday’s session, when the index gave back early gains to finish only marginally lower at 8,840.7 points. Friday’s open had already been expected to be soft, with futures pricing in a roughly 26-point, or 0.3%, decline heading into the session after major U.S. indexes fell sharply overnight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.3%, the S&P 500 fell 0.6%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.5% as chip stocks led losses on Wall Street, souring sentiment heading into the Australian trading day.

Gold miners were among the hardest hit sectors on the local bourse. Overnight, gold futures fell 1.8% to $3,979 an ounce, driven by growing expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve could deliver a further interest rate increase, which tends to reduce demand for the precious metal by raising the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets. That pullback in gold prices weighed heavily on ASX-listed gold miners, including Evolution Mining and Newmont Corporation, both of which were tipped for a difficult finish to the trading week.

Energy stocks similarly struggled after oil prices retreated overnight. According to Bloomberg data, West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.7% to $79.05 a barrel, pressuring shares of Santos and Woodside Energy Group as investors weighed the impact of softer crude prices on the sector’s near-term earnings outlook.

Not every corner of the market moved lower. Retail giant Harvey Norman Holdings drew a bullish note from Bell Potter, which retained its buy rating on the stock while trimming its price target to $6.00, implying potential upside of roughly 26% from current levels. The broker also pointed to an expected dividend yield above 6% for the 2027 financial year, noting that despite a more challenging retail environment expected in the first half of that year, Harvey Norman’s shares continued to trade at what the broker considered an attractive forward earnings multiple of around 13 times, even as analysts anticipated a recovery weighted toward the second half of the coming financial year.

Elsewhere in company-specific news, aluminum producer Alcoa cut its 2026 alumina production guidance, lowering its forecast to a range of 9.5 million to 9.6 million tonnes, down 0.2 million to 0.3 million tonnes from prior guidance, while trimming its shipment forecast to a range of 11.5 million to 11.6 million tonnes. The company’s aluminium production guidance was left unchanged. The revised outlook, announced after the U.S. market close, sent Alcoa shares down 2.5% in after-hours trading, a move that rippled into sentiment around Australian-listed alumina and aluminium producers given the close ties between the two markets.

REA Group also made headlines Friday after confirming a deal to sell its Housing.com business in India to Aurum PropTech. Under the terms of the agreement, REA Group’s Indian unit, REA India, will receive Aurum shares valued at approximately $68 million as consideration for the sale, rather than a cash payment. The transaction will lift REA India’s equity stake in Aurum to 24.9% from 5.5% upon completion, with that stake to be accounted for by REA Group as a financial asset going forward. The company said it expects to book an overall loss on the divestment of approximately $110 million, reflecting a goodwill impairment and associated transaction costs. The sale follows a broader strategic review of REA Group’s Indian operations, which had already seen the company sell its PropTiger business to Aurum and close its Housing Edge unit earlier in the current financial year.

Corporate Travel Management also featured in Friday’s trading updates, though not for a positive reason. The company announced that Shelley Sorrenson will step down as Company Secretary and Group Chief Legal Officer effective August 14, with the company saying it would update the market once a replacement had been appointed. Corporate Travel Management’s shares have remained suspended from trading on the ASX since August 22 last year, when the company first requested a trading halt before moving into a voluntary suspension days later while it investigated potential issues requiring the rectification and restatement of prior financial statements.

In broader merger and acquisition news, Coles confirmed it would not proceed with a potential acquisition of veterinary care business Greencross, walking away from a deal that had been the subject of market speculation since news of a potential transaction first emerged on July 1. Private equity firm TPG Capital originally acquired Greencross in 2019 for approximately $675 million, and reports had suggested the business could command a price closer to $4 billion in a potential sale this time around, a substantial sum relative to Coles’ roughly $30 billion market capitalization that likely would have required the supermarket giant to take on additional debt or pursue a capital raising to fund the purchase. News of the potential deal had already triggered a negative reaction in both Coles and rival Woolworths shares earlier in the month.

Friday’s session capped a mixed week for Australian equities, with the benchmark index oscillating within a relatively narrow band as investors weighed a combination of global interest rate expectations, commodity price swings and company-specific developments across the mining, retail and travel sectors. With gold and oil prices both under pressure and Wall Street sentiment souring heading into the weekend, traders said the local market would likely remain sensitive to further shifts in U.S. Federal Reserve rate expectations and any additional developments affecting commodity prices in the sessions ahead.

By Christopher Gannatti, CFA

There is a version of the OpenAI (OPENAI) story that runs through language, with the company that gave the world ChatGPT, GPT-4 and the agentic systems now beginning to reshape knowledge work. That

OTTAWA—Factory sales in Canada reached a record high in May, extending the recovery by the country’s manufacturers despite lingering trade concerns that supports a rebound for the economy after recent weakness.

Manufacturing shipments rose 1.3% from the month before to a seasonally adjusted 78.09 billion Canadian dollars, the equivalent of about US$55.55 billion, Statistics Canada said Wednesday. Compared with a year earlier, sales were up 13.4%.

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