* Ukraine hit with expanded shelling from Russia
* Russia temporarily halts gas flows to Europe via major pipeline
* Biden’s visit to Middle East this week confronts challenges
* New coronavirus mutant raises concerns among scientists
* Texas at risk of rolling blackouts during heatwave
* Analysts consider how UK economy will change with Johnson’s successor
* China violently dispersed peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors
* Strong US jobs market is good for economy, but small firms are struggling
* US payrolls continue to increase at solid pace in June:

US TIPS real yields return to (modestly) positive terrain. Buying at Friday’s yields offers the opportunity to lock in inflation-adjusted yield of 0.51% for the 5-year maturity and 0.72% for the 10-year TIPS, according to Treasury.gov.

If the US is in recession, it may be a good time to buy stocks. Mark Hulbert, editor of Hulbert Ratings, which tracks investment newsletters, reports: “To measure the performance of the Recession Buy Indicator (RBI), I focused on all NBER recessions since 1870 — a total of 30. I went back that far because that’s when monthly stock market returns are available on Yale University professor Robert Shiller’s website. Because I had no way of knowing when investors actually would have been able to know when each past recession had indeed started, I assumed that the RBI was triggered seven months after when the NBER says the recession began. The accompanying chart shows the S&P 500’s SPX, -0.08% average inflation-adjusted total return over the 3-, 6- and 12-month periods following those triggers.”