Economy

Brexit Pulls UK and Ireland Apart, Undermines Relationship
2018-11-05 04:16:25 UTC
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement which ended thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday. “Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement and is fraying the relationship between Britain and Ireland,” he told Irish state broadcaster RTE. The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit has been one of the major sticking points in Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union in March next year. “Anything that pulls the communities apart in Northern Ireland undermines the Good Friday Agreement, and anything that pulls Britain and...
Germany to halt all arms exports to Saudi
2018-10-22 21:35:32 UTC
ORTENBERG, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday called the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a “monstrosity” and vowed to halt all German arms exports to Riyadh until the case is cleared up. Merkel, in her harshest comments to date, decried what she called “the monstrosity there in the Saudi consulate in Turkey” during a campaign rally in the town of Ortenberg before a regional election in the state of Hesse on Sunday. “It must be cleared up. As long as it’s not cleared up, there will be no arms exports to Saudi Arabia. I assure you of that very decidedly,” Merkel said...
Brexit: EU to break a deadlock over the Irish border
2018-10-22 17:03:04 UTC
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union negotiators are looking at ways to promise Britain a customs deal that could stretch Brussels’ Brexit red lines but might break a deadlock over the Irish border, EU sources close to the talks have told Reuters. Accounts of how British and EU negotiators came close to a deal on Oct. 13 focus on how Prime Minister Theresa May balked at an EU demand for a “backstop” clause. This could put Northern Ireland in a special relationship with the EU that might distance it from the British mainland to avoid putting up customs posts on Britain’s only EU land border, with Ireland. But as the two sides try to re...
UK can remain in EU single market until end of 2020
2018-10-25 19:02:53 UTC
BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Commission has offered to allow Britain to remain in the EU customs union and internal market beyond an agreed transitional arrangement until the end of December 2020, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. “In a goodwill gesture to Britain, the commission has raised the possibility of extending the transitional period,” the newspaper reported, citing a German government document. It did not say what the new date was. <hr><i>Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Alison Williams</i><hr> <h2>European lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastics</h2> European lawmakers have approved measu...
Brexit: The Irish border has become a sticking point
2018-10-15 16:25:14 UTC
LUXEMBOURG (AP) — Britain and the European were still both refusing to blink Monday over the question of the Irish border in Brexit talks — only two days ahead of a summit once seen as the moment when they would have to reach deal on Britain’s divorce from the bloc. A flurry of diplomatic meetings over the weekend had raised hopes for a Brexit agreement, but they were derailed by the issue that has dogged the talks for months — how to ensure that no hard border is created between the EU’s Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland once Brexit happens on March 29. The EU has proposed a “backstop” solution that would keep Northern Ireland ...
Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts
2018-10-12 17:50:55 UTC
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts as part of the security breach disclosed two weeks ago. The exact number hadn’t been known before. Originally Facebook said 50 million accounts could have been affected, but Facebook didn’t know if they had been misused. The hackers accessed name, email addresses or phone numbers from those 29 million accounts. For 14 million of those accounts, hackers got even more data, such as hometown, birthdate, the last 10 places they checked into or 15 most recent searches. One million accounts were affected but hackers didn’t gain information. The social media servic...
US Stock Markets In A Free Fall
2018-10-11 21:54:02 UTC
NEW YORK — The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 fell sharply again Thursday after both indexes on Wednesday logged their largest losses on a percentage basis since Feb. 8. The S&P 500 has closed lower for five straight days. The Nasdaq declined on Thursday, a day after the tech-heavy index had its biggest percentage drop since June 2016. <blockquote> Stocks in Asia closed sharply lower on Thursday following the selloff on Wall Street. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 declined 3.9%, and the Shanghai Composite index sank 5.2%. Banks and health care companies are taking some of the worst losses while technology companies are slightly h...
Dominated by men: Amazon scraps tool that showed bias against women
2018-10-11 21:53:47 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women. The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters. Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. <blockquote><h2>Amazon’s experimental hiring tool</h2>The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to fiv...
Wall Street faces worst day since February
2018-10-11 21:53:35 UTC
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks on major world markets slid to a three-month low on Wednesday, with the benchmark S&P500 stock index falling more than 3.0 percent, its biggest one-day fall since February. Technology shares tumbled on fears of slowing demand, while bond yields ended lower after seeing multi-year highs earlier this week. Major equity indexes in Europe fell more than 1.0 percent, also pulled down by technology shares, and gold prices inched up as some investors sought refuge in the metal. “The S&P 500 is looking very weak and negative and that is putting fear into investors,” said Michael Matousek, head trader at U.S. Gl...
London mayor calls for second referendum on Brexit
2018-09-16 18:23:03 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - London mayor Sadiq Khan has called for another referendum on Britain’s European Union membership, saying the prime minister’s handling of Brexit negotiations had become “mired in confusion and deadlock” and was leading the country down a damaging path. Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29. But with Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plans still not accepted, some lawmakers, as well as union and business leaders, are arguing for people to have a final say on any deal with Brussels. May has repeatedly ruled out a second referendum. She says members of parliament will get to vote on whether to accept any final ...
Low unemployment rates are inevitably followed by recessions
2018-09-13 04:51:55 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Reserve officials tout a decade of falling unemployment as among their major victories in fighting the economic crisis of 2007 to 2009. Now they are beginning to worry they have been too successful. When unemployment falls as low as it is currently, Boston Federal Reserve bank president Eric Rosengren said in a new paper released Thursday as part of a review of Fed policy, recession has inevitably followed, with the central bank showing no success in fine-tuning the economy to a stable rest at full employment. Policy forecasts have often projected such a “soft landing,” he noted, and with unemploym...
Ireland doesn't give UK a free-ride back-door to EU
2018-09-12 19:06:52 UTC
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union officials are working on re-drafting a sensitive Irish protocol to the draft Brexit treaty with Britain, as part of what EU negotiator Michel Barnier has called efforts to “de-dramatize” the issue and get a deal, EU officials said on Wednesday. Officials and diplomats close to the negotiations told Reuters previously this month that work was under way to find wording that could ease British fears that the “backstop” to avoid a hard land border for Northern Ireland would pull the province away from its constitutional anchor to the United Kingdom. British officials have said their problems with the E...
Mercedes-Benz launches 'all-electric SUV with 450 km range'
2018-09-04 18:13:12 UTC
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Mercedes showed on Tuesday how it is “aggressively” gunning for top spot in upscale battery cars market currently dominated by Tesla, as it unveiled the EQC, its first fully electric car, at an event in Stockholm. The event marks the start of the German onslaught against the American upstart and showcased a SUV with a 450 kilometer range, distinctively full-width rear light and clean-cut interiors that Mercedes hopes will find favor with luxury customers and tech-savvy millennials alike. Daimler aims to have up to 10 electrified car variants by 2022, a target reiterated on Tuesday by Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche, ...
UK Brexit-negotiator is struggling to make headway
2018-08-29 15:36:40 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - Financial centers outside the European Union would be the benefactors if the European Union sought to punish the City of London as Britain leaves the bloc, Brexit minister Dominic Raab said on Wednesday. Raab told a parliamentary committee he did not believe the EU would try to punish the London’s financial sector, but that if they did, “I think the only winners would be the other financial centers in the top 10 like Tokyo and New York.” <blockquote><h3>UK could hold back EU payments without Brexit deal</h3> Britain could choose to withhold some payments to the European Union if a deal to ease its exit from the bl...
Toyota to invest about $500 million in Uber Technologies
2018-08-28 01:30:16 UTC
(Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp will invest about $500 million in Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] to jointly work on developing driverless vehicles, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. Toyota and Uber were not immediately available for comment. <hr><I><strong>Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber</I></strong><hr>
Iran praises EU for their efforts to salvage 'Nuclear deal'
2018-08-19 16:50:57 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - Iran’s vice president said on Sunday the government was seeking solutions to sell oil and transfer its revenues despite fresh U.S. sanctions. “We are hopeful that the European countries can meet their commitments but even if they cannot, we are seeking solutions to sell our oil and transfer its revenues,” Eshaq Jahangiri was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. In similar remarks, Iranian foreign minister praised the European signatories for their efforts to salvage the deal, especially for EU’s so-called blocking statute that aims to mitigate the impact of U.S. sanctions for European businesses. Howe...
Steady and strong: German economy picking up more steam
2018-08-14 07:07:13 UTC
BERLIN (Reuters) - The German economy picked up more steam than expected in the second quarter, driven by higher household and state spending, preliminary data showed on Tuesday. Gross domestic product in Europe’s biggest economy expanded by 0.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, the Federal Statistics Office said. That compared with a Reuters forecast of 0.4 percent. The office also revised up the quarterly growth rate for the first three months of the year to 0.4 percent from 0.3 percent reported previously. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, the economy grew by 2.0 percent from April to June, calendar-adjusted data s...
China takes over project in world’s biggest natural gas reserves in Iran
2018-08-11 18:21:26 UTC
Reuters - China’s state-owned energy major CNPC has taken over the share in Iran’s multi-billion dollar South Pars gas project held by France’s Total, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday. Total signed a contract in 2017 to develop Phase II of South Pars field with an initial investment of $1 billion, marking the first major Western energy investment in the country after sanctions were lifted in 2016. South Pars has the world’s biggest natural gas reserves ever found in one place. But the French company had said it would pull out unless it secured a U.S. sanctions waiver, and Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy head of ...
Impact of escalating trade tensions between US and China
2018-08-08 18:14:42 UTC
(Reuters) - U.S. companies are putting in place measures to cushion the impact of escalating trade tensions between the United States and China. The world’s two largest economies have already imposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of each other’s imports. In the latest development, Washington slapped additional tariffs on $16 billion worth of China’s goods and Beijing followed suit. The following is a list of recent comments made by U.S. companies: ** Tesla Inc said higher import duties on Chinese components and unfavorable currency movements likely to cause negative pressures. Price hikes made to offset the tariffs will likely h...
China slaps additional tariffs of 25 percent on $16 billion US imports
2018-08-08 17:44:20 UTC
BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is slapping additional tariffs of 25 percent on $16 billion worth of U.S. imports from fuel and steel products to autos and medical equipment, the Chinese commerce ministry said, as the world’s largest economies escalated their trade dispute. The tariffs will be activated on Aug. 23, the ministry said, the same day that the United States plans to begin collecting 25 percent extra in tariffs on $16 billion of Chinese goods. The United States published its final list of goods subject to the new tariffs on Tuesday. China’s final list announced on Wednesday differs from an earlier draft it publishe...
Trump’s ‘unmitigated crap’ on California wildfires
2018-08-07 21:23:33 UTC
U.S. President Donald Trump has weighed in on the California wildfires. But it wasn’t to express condolences for the victims or to praise the incredible bravery of firefighters — it was to try to score political points. And he did so by badly twisting the science of how wildfires work. In a now-deleted tweet, Trump blamed “bad environmental laws” for “diverting” water into the Pacific Ocean. Scientists mock Trump’s tweet on wildfires as ‘comedically ill-informed’ and ‘unmitigated crap.’ His climate denial is "a crime against the planet" warns climatologist. <blockquote><img alt="Trump_has_said_that_climate_change_is_a_hoax_%e...
EU raises concerns over new US move on Iran
2018-08-06 17:59:19 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration expects economic sanctions that it is re-imposing on Iran this week to further cripple the Iranian economy and will aggressively enforce the measures, senior U.S. administration officials said on Monday. But the U.S. sanctions strategy has several weak spots, especially a reluctance by Europe and China to curtail business with Iran. The European Union voiced regret and expressed concern at the new U.S. move. “We deeply regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S.,” the bloc said in a joint statement with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain. One EU measure to...
Jobs boom in San Francisco, Seattle and Houston, not in Trump strongholds
2018-08-06 03:46:51 UTC
MONACA, Pennsylvania (AP) — The United States is on pace to add about 2.6 million jobs this year under President Donald Trump’s watch. Yet the bulk of the hiring has occurred in bastions of Democratic voters rather than in the Republican counties that put Trump in the White House. On average for the year-ended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to an Associated Press analysis of monthly government jobs data by county. Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows that a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found that ...
Apple became the first $1 trillion listed US company
2018-08-02 18:06:54 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications. The tech company’s stock jumped 2.8 percent to as high as $207.05, bringing its gain to about 9 percent since Tuesday when its reported June-quarter results above expectations and said it bought back $20 billion of its own shares. Started in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976, Apple has pushed its revenue beyond the economic outputs of P...
British car makers and consumers would suffer from "No-Deal" Brexit
2018-07-31 02:14:06 UTC
LONDON (Reuters) - A no-deal Brexit is not an option for Britain’s car industry, given the costs and disruption that carmakers and consumers would suffer, the head of the country’s automobile industry group said on Tuesday. Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said carmakers were “increasingly concerned” about the lack of clarity around the manner of Britain’s departure from the European Union. With less than eight months until the divorce is due to take place, Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to find a proposal to maintain economic ties with the bloc that pleases both sides of her d...