The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the market-rattling meltdown of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management in March, a debacle that left big banks in Europe, Asia and the U.S. nursing more than $10 billion in losses, Bloomberg News reported. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan sent requests for information to at least some of the banks that dealt with the firm. It’s unclear what potential violations or entities authorities are examining.

The Tokyo Olympics, postponed in 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, are facing increasing hurdles in putting on a 2021 show, CNN.com reported. The latest troubling sign for the Summer Games came on Monday when the State Department advised U.S. citizens against traveling to Japan because of a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases. The "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory is the highest cautionary level in the department's hierarchy of warnings. It's been more than a year since Americans have paid tourist calls to the nation. Japan has been closed to U.S.

The U.S. government is preparing to downgrade Mexico's aviation safety rating, a move that would bar Mexican carriers from adding new U.S. flights and limit airlines' ability to carry out marketing agreements, Reuters reported. The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) planned move is expected be announced in the coming days and follows a lengthy review of Mexico's aviation oversight by the agency. One airline industry source said the FAA's concerns did not involve flight safety issues but rather Mexico's oversight of air carriers.

Britain’s main opposition Labour Party said it will push for a vote in parliament on Monday over support for U.S. plans to introduce a global minimum corporation tax rate, Reuters reported. The U.S. Treasury Department earlier this week said that it would accept a floor of at least 15% during international negotiations, a rate significantly below its proposed 21% minimum for U.S. multinational firms.

European Union governments agreed to allow quarantine-free travel for vaccinated tourists and visitors from countries deemed safe, paving the way for the resumption of hassle-free trans-Atlantic flights, Bloomberg News reported. Ambassadors from the EU’s 27 member states backed a proposal to waive quarantine for those with coronavirus inoculations approved by its drug regulator, including shots from Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. The approval could be finalized this week and implemented soon after.

The Council of the EU is questioning the demands of the U.S. on countries to roll back national "unilateral" tech taxes once a global levy on multinational companies is agreed on, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. The pushback comes in the form of an internal Council document that the Portuguese EU presidency has prepared for a technical meeting on Friday among tax officials.

Malaysia today said the U.S. Department of Justice has returned 1.9 billion ringgit ($460.22 million) of funds recovered from assets related to sovereign fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Reuters reported. Malaysian and U.S. investigators say that at least $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB between 2009 and 2014, in a wide-ranging scandal that has implicated high-level officials, banks and financial institutions around the world. The United States has been returning funds it has recovered from seized assets that were allegedly bought with stolen 1MDB money.

The Biden administration announced yesterday that it was asking Mexico to review whether labor violations had occurred at a General Motors facility in the country, a significant step using a new labor enforcement tool in the revised North American trade deal, the New York Times reported. The administration is seeking the review under the novel “rapid response” mechanism in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement and took effect last summer.

A day before Michigan's deadline to close down a key crude oil pipeline, Canada on Tuesday issued its strongest remarks so far about the move, warning that it could undermine relations with the United States, its closest ally and trading partner, Reuters reported. Canadian company Enbridge Inc. is preparing for a legal battle with Michigan and courting protests from environmental groups, betting it can ignore the state's Wednesday deadline to shut down Line 5, which runs under the Straits of Mackinac. The Canadian government, intervening in the case to back Enbridge, said in a U.S.

Archegos Capital is preparing for insolvency, triggered by banks’ attempts to recoup some of the $10bn they lost on its soured bets in March, the Financial Times reported. The family office run by Bill Hwang has hired restructuring advisers to assess potential legal claims from banks and to plan for a possible winding down of its operations.