Good morning from the Financial Times.
Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, and this is your FT News Briefing.
Republicans are trying to contain a crisis over Jeffrey Epstein,
and Nigeria has a shiny new GDP number to show off.
Plus, pharmaceutical companies are buddying up to Chinese biotechs.
But is this relationship what the doctor ordered?
I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to steer clear of a vote on releasing files related to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Yesterday Johnson made the call to start their summer break early to avoid a vote altogether.
The controversy over the Epstein case was refuelled last week.
The Wall Street Journal reported that
US President Donald Trump had allegedly sent Epstein a birthday message in 2003 that referred to, quote, secrets.
Trump called the Journal story false and sued the newspaper,
its parent company and its owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 when he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges of underage girls.
Even though Johnson blocked the vote on the files,
several members of his own party are calling for them to be made public.
Nigeria’s economy has gotten an upgrade, at least on paper.
A new statistical model shows its gross domestic product to be 30 per cent bigger than earlier calculations.
That’s because the country’s National Bureau of Statistics has updated how it evaluates GDP.