South Korea top court’s clean chit to Samsung Chairman
South Korea’s top court Thursday cleared Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee of alleged accounting fraud and stock manipulation related to a $8 billion merger in 2015.
The case involved the merger between two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries a decade ago, which, prosecutors had alleged, was designed to consolidate Lee’s control of the tech giant. A lower court had also cleared him of the charges last year.
Business lobby groups have welcomed the court’s decision, calling it a “stabilising development for the South Korean economy”, according to a Reuters report.
Protecting Druze ‘our priority’—Syrian interim president
Syria’s interim president and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has said that protecting the Druze citizens and their rights is his “priority”. The statement comes after Israel vowed to destroy Syrian forces allegedly attacking the members of the minority community in southern Syria.
In a televised statement after Israel’s airstrikes on Damascus Wednesday, al-Sharaa addressed the Druze community in Syria and said, “We reject any attempt to drag you into the hands of an external party.”
Over 350 people are reported to be dead since sectarian clashes between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes erupted in Suweida province Sunday.
Couche-Tard withdraws $47 bn bid for Seven & i
Canadian retailer Alimentation Couche-Tard Thursday pulled its bid worth $46 billion to buy Seven & i Holdings, citing a lack of constructive engagement by the Japanese retailer.
The deal for operating 7-Eleven “konbini” stores could have been the largest foreign buyout of a Japanese company.
“There has been no sincere or constructive engagement from 7&i that would facilitate the advancement of any proposal, contrary to comments made publicly by 7&i representatives,” Couche-Tard said in a letter to its board of directors.
Canada’s steel tariffs on some trade partners
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the country will introduce a tariff rate quota for countries with which it has free trade agreements (excluding US) to protect its domestic steel industry.
A 50 percent tariff will apply to imports from these countries that surpass 2024 volumes. However, Canada will honour existing arrangements with its US-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade partner, Carney said.
Additional 25 percent tariffs will be implemented on steel imports from all countries containing steel melted and poured in China before the end of July.
The move comes after complaints from the domestic industry that other countries are diverting steel to Canada and making the domestic industry uncompetitive due to US tariffs.
Trump signs bill with harsh penalty for fentanyl dealers
US President Donald Trump Wednesday signed into law a bipartisan legislation, permanently classifying fentanyl-like substances among the most dangerous drugs, in an effort to increase punishments for drug traffickers and curb the opioid epidemic.
The law codifies emergency rules enacted in 2018, which Republicans spent years working to make permanent.
The bill formally places the drug into a category of controlled substances that yields harsher federal prison sentences, including a minimum 10-year term for possession of 100 grams or more of the drug.
How Chinese steel companies are bypassing tariffs
Chinese steelmakers are bypassing tariffs in Indonesia, Turkey and others by exporting semi-finished products, or billets, undermining the barriers against a flood of cheap Chinese metal, and raising concerns in Beijing over the increase in lower value experts, reports Reuters, citing industry sources.
The top five export destinations for steel billet are Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Turkey, according to customs data. Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have tariffs on some finished steel products, but none on steel billets.
China-linked hackers target Taiwan’s chip industry
Chinese-linked hackers are attacking the Taiwanese semiconductor industry and investment analysts as part of a string of cyber espionage campaigns, a new analysis by researchers at cybersecurity firm Proofpoint shows, according to an exclusive report by Reuters.
Researchers said that there is an increase in sustained hacking campaigns from several China-aligned hacking groups. “We’ve seen entities that we hadn’t ever seen being targeted in the past being targeted,” Mark Kelly, a threat researcher at Proofpoint, is quoted as saying.
South Africa central bank chief asserts Africa’s G20 agenda
South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago said Wednesday that an “African agenda” was yet to be discussed by G20 finance chiefs, amid fears that tariff discussions would overshadow the two-day meet of finance ministers and central bank governors in Durban, starting Thursday. This “agenda” is centered around climate change and cross border payment systems.
“The African issues have been elevated, all of us are talking about those,” Kganyago told Reuters.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent skipped the gathering, marking his second consecutive absence from G20 finance meetings.
Trump calls supporters ‘weaklings’ for questioning Epstein case
Trump Wednesday attacked critics of his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, including his supporters.
“It’s all been a big hoax,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans, and foolish Republicans fall into the net, and so they try and do the Democrats’ work.”
Some of Trump’s most loyal supporters were enraged when the administration reversed course on its promise to release documents containing major revelations about the now-dead convicted sex offender Epstein and his alleged clients.
3-person IVF technique protects children from diseases
Scientists from Newcastle University have reported that eight children in the UK were spared from genetic diseases with the help of a new three-person in vitro fertilisation technique.
Banned in the US, the technique transfers pieces from inside the mother’s fertilised egg—the egg’s nucleus and the nucleus of the fathers sperm—into a healthy egg provided by an anonymous donor. The procedure prevents transfer of mutated genes from the mothers mitochondria that could cause potentially fatal disorders.
One of the eight children is now two years old, two are aged between one and two years, and five are infants. All were reported to be healthy at birth, and blood tests showed no or low levels of mitochondrial gene mutations, according to the findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Saksham Thakur is an intern with ThePrint.
Also Read: World news of the day: 16 July, 2025