VdL presents rescue package

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday presented details of the EU’s €750bn recovery fund to the European Parliament. The fund will be made up of €500bn in grants and €250bn in loans. Von der Leyen said that approval of the plan, which has been dubbed Next Generation EU, would be “Europe's moment”. But the so-called frugal four member states--Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden--have yet to be convinced of the plan. The BBC, Reuters, the FT and The Washington Post all have details.

100,000 US dead

The death toll from the coronavirus pandemic passed what The Washington Post in a moving report called the “hard-to-fathom marker” of 100,000 on Wednesday. Reuters says the number of fatalities is more than those who died in the Korean War, Vietnam War and the US conflict in Iraq from 2003-2011 combined. Fox News called it a “harrowing milestone”.

Trump to sign social media order

US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on social media firms on Thursday, the White House has said. No details of what the order could entail have been released, but the president used Twitter to say that “Big Tech” was doing everything in its power to “censor” ahead of November’s election and that he would never let that happen. But legal experts say the president’s options to regulate social media are limited. CNBC, CNN, the BBC and Reuters report.

Pompeo says Hong Kong’s autonomy

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Congress on Wednesday that “no reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China” and that the territory no longer warrants favourable treatment. His statement could lead to the US imposing the same tariffs on Hing Kong as it does on China. The Washington Post, BBC, Bloomberg and South China Morning Post have more

Huawei boss loses extradition fight

The supreme court of British Columbia has ruled against Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in her bid to fight extradition from Canada to the United States. The court ruled on Wednesday that the fraud charges of which she is accused in the US meet “double criminality” standards, because they are also illegal in Canada. The Chinese foreign ministry immediately urged Canada to return Meng to China. CNBC, Reuters and Bloomberg have more.

EU warns UK financial services sector to be prepared

Paulina Dejmek-Hack, director of the European Commission’s task force for relations with Britain, has said that the UK’s financial services sector should be fully prepared for a no-deal Brexit. Reuters reports that although assessments about equivalence were ongoing, Dejmek-Hack said that “under all circumstances” terms would be different as of January 2021. And even though the EU’s financial sector is heavily dependent on London, Dejmek-Hack said that “long term we need reflection on what kind of dependence one would want to have on a third country.”

Lufthansa bailout row

Germany and the EU are at loggerheads over conditions being imposed for a planned €9 billion bailout of flagship carrier Lufthansa. Politico says that German chancellor Angela Merkel is particularly irked by terms that would require Lufthansa to relinquish some of its landing slots at Frankfurt and Munich.

Backbench criticism of Cummings grows

61 Conservative party MPs have voiced criticism of Boris Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings and his contravention of the UK government’s confinement rules. 44 of the MPs have called for Cummings to resign or be sacked, according to The Guardian, the BBC and Sky News.

Kabuga denies role in genocide

Félicien Kabuga has denied accusations that he helped finance the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Kabuga, who was arrested in Paris earlier this month, told a bail hearing on Wednesday that the accusations were all lies. “I have not killed any Tutsis. I was working with them," the BBC cites him saying.

SpaceX launch delayed

The planned launch of a SpaceX rocket that was to take Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station was postponed on Wednesday due to bad weather at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They will try again on Saturday, with Donald Trump in attendance. The New York Times, CNBC, Vox and TechCrunch have more, while Business Insider gets down to the nitty gritty and explains where the toilet is aboard the space craft.

Today’s breakfast briefing was written by Duncan Roberts