The disappearing trick.

"French supermarket chain Carrefour has slapped price warnings on products ranging from Lindt chocolates to Lipton Ice Tea to pressure suppliers such as Nestle, PepsiCo and Unilever to cut their prices." CNN. "Carrefour is putting stickers on products that have shrunk in size but cost more even though raw material prices have eased." "Consumer groups say 'shrinkflation' is a widespread practice, which supermarkets like Carrefour are also guilty of in their private label products." "The European Central Bank raised its key interest rate to a record high of 4%...but, with the euro zone economy in the doldrums, signaled that the hike, its 10th in a 14-month-long fight against inflation, was likely to be its last." Reuters. The ECB sees inflation coming down gradually to its target rate of 2% from "5.6% in 2023, 3.2% in 2024 and 2.1% in 2025". "For decades, internal migration in Germany only flowed in one direction: from the countryside to the cities." DW. "But this trend seems to have stopped," with "more and more people between the ages of 30 and 49 with children, and young professionals between the ages of 25 and 29 have been moving to the countryside since 2017." What people are looking for is "more and cheaper space to live, more nature and less pollution". To counter Labour's 20-point lead in opinion polls, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak's "plan to save his job: Don't look back. Hope for the best." ET. "A massive retreat of funds from Chinese stocks and bonds is diminishing the market's clout in global portfolios," and "Foreign holdings of the nation's equities and debt have fallen about 1.37 trillion yuan ($188 billion), or 17% from a December-2021 peak through the end of June this year, according to Bloomberg calculations." ET. "That's before onshore shares witnessed a record $12 billion outflow in August alone." Are markets nervous because of an ongoing purge in China? "Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who has been missing from public view for more than two weeks has been placed under investigation by Chinese authorities" which "relates to procurement of military equipment." Reuters. Eight other senior officials are also under investigation. In July, "According to Indian intelligence agencies monitoring developments in China, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the PLA Rocket Force, died under mysterious circumstances on June 6," and "his senior and commander of the PLA Rocket Force, Lieutenant General Li Yuchao, was found missing from a promotion ceremony of the Chinese military in late June." India Today. Also in July, China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang was suddenly removed from power and apparently placed under investigation. BBC. Is Xi Jinping consolidating his power by removing his own men or is someone pruning him down to size? Is there any truth that Xi was given a dressing down by party elders at the Beidaihe meeting last month? TOI. Maybe, Xi will disappear next. It's like magic where a person disappears and then reappears. Only, this is permanent.