UNITED STATES: THE US military budget looks set to soar to a staggering $842 billion (£688.8bn), as the Pentagon ramped up its rhetoric against China on Thursday.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House of Representatives appropriations sub-committee: “This is a strategy-driven budget, one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.”

SHARES: Shares fell in Europe and Asia today as worries mounted over the turmoil in the banking sector and recession risks.

Investors are worried that more banks might suffer a debilitating exodus of customers following the second and third-largest US bank failures in history. 

UNITED STATES: A three-day strike by workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District ended on Thursday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if any progress was made in negotiations for higher pay for teachers’ aides, bus drivers, custodians and other support staff in the nation’s second-largest school system.

Teachers joined the picket lines in solidarity, shutting down instruction for the district’s half-million students during the walkout by members of local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 30,000 of the lowest-paid school workers. 

BRAZIL: A representative of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro today handed a set of diamond jewellery he had received from Saudi Arabia to a state bank, as he was ordered to do by a government watchdog.

The state bank Caixa Economica Federal received the box of precious stones at one of its branches in the capital Brasilia.