Coming Up This Week

• Yesterday was the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Or, as it's known in Beijing: . Dozens of people were arrested for quietly protesting in Hong Kong, and a group of Chinese dissidents in New York commemorated the anniversary by unveiling a new Tiananmen museum celebrating the "democratic dreams of the Chinese people."
• Yesterday was also election day in Guinea-Bissau. No Bissau Guinean elected government has ever served its full mandate and the country has had twice as many coups as elections since independence.

• Aluminum: $2,283/ton
• Antimony (ingot min. 99.65% fob China): $12,850/ton
• Cobalt: $29,525/ton
• Copper: $8,244/ton
• Gold: $1,948/toz
• Lead: $1,999/ton
• Natural Gas (Nymex): $2.17/MMbtu
• WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $71.74/barrel
• Zinc: $2,267/ton

• Russia said it has already thwarted Ukraine's major counteroffensive in Donetsk and claimed to have killed 250 Ukrainian troops. Ukraine hasn't confirmed the counteroffensive was underway and there was no independent verification of Russia's claims.
• Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin volunteered his services defending the Russian border region of Belgorod, which partisans have targeted several times in recent weeks. His offer is a bit of a jibe at the Russian regular forces who are supposed to be defending Russian territory.

• A Chinese warship came dangerously close to a U.S. destroyer in the Taiwan Strait. U.S. officials complained that the Chinese vessel was moving in an "unsafe manner," but China's defense minister blamed the U.S. ship for provoking the incident.

• Pres. Tshisekedi said his meetings with Pres. Xi went "wonderfully" and he expects to sign a revised infrastructure-for-minerals deal before the end of the year.
• However, there's no indication Xi agreed to any changes in deal terms, and I find it hard to imagine he would make the kind of unilateral concessions Tshisekedi is asking for.

• Dozens of girls at two schools in Sar-e-Pul were poisoned and hospitalized. Authorities suspect the attacker had a personal grudge - perhaps against girls' education.

• An Egyptian police officer shot and killed three Israeli soldiers at the border between their countries. Egypt rushed to clarify that the shooter was a rogue cop acting on his own.
• Indian authorities believe a signal error likely caused the train crash that killed over 300 people Friday night. At least that's the most likely direct cause; it will be harder to fix the underlying issue of chronic underinvestment in rail safety and maintenance.