WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. banking regulator announced on Wednesday it had finalized work on a long-running effort to change community lending standards for banks. The new rule from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is an update to require... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is back at work after being diagnosed with the new coronavirus, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree cancelling a temporary transfer of Mi... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s DIHK chambers of industry and commerce expect Europe’s largest economy to shrink at least 10% this year due to the coronavirus crisis, its president said on Tuesday, a much more pessimistic view than the government’s forecast. “Thi... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – The United Nations said Afghan civilian casualties jumped to 380 in April, expressing alarm about a “striking deterioration” in respect for international humanitarian law as the United States withdraws troops and attempts to usher in a peace ... More »
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia reported on Tuesday 486 new coronavirus infections, taking the total in the Southeast Asian country to 18,496, the country’s COVID-19 task force reported on its official website. The task force also recorded 30 more deaths, taking... More »
MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippine health ministry on Tuesday reported six new coronavirus deaths and 224 more infections, taking the total number of confirmed cases to 12,942. The number of deaths was the lowest in just over two weeks, with the total now at 83... More »
MILAN (Reuters) – The auto industry represents a significant share of Italy’s economy and it is right to support those who create jobs, Deputy Economy Minister Laura Castelli said when asked about Fiat Chrysler’s (FCHA.MI) request for state-backed loans. The I... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan may lift its state of emergency in more regions this week as new coronavirus infections drop, the Asahi newspaper said on Tuesday, moving to resume sorely needed activity in the world’s third-largest economy, battered by containment mea... More »
KARLSRUHE, Germany (Reuters) – Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that monitoring the internet traffic of foreign nationals abroad by the BND intelligence agency partly breaches the constitution. The long-awaited ruling stated that internet survei... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A consortium of British aerospace, automotive and medical companies said they were ramping up ventilator production to make sure there were enough available should there be a second spike in the novel coronavirus outbreak. “We are continuing... More »
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – Businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area may open for curbside retail and manufacturing, while fan-free professional sports events might be allowed as soon as June, as California continued to loosen coronavirus health restriction... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – After a 78-day delay, China’s parliament begins its annual session this week and is expected to unveil stimulus measures to spur an economy battered by the coronavirus as leaders grapple with problems from surging unemployment to worsening ... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday that 9,263 new cases of the novel coronavirus had been reported in the last 24 hours, pushing its nationwide tally to 299,941. The daily rise in cases was below 10,000, a threshold that it has been above for much of Ma... More »
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Worldwide electric car registrations are set to fall 18% this year, but those of combustion engine cars are set to drop even faster, analysts BloombergNEF (BNEF) said on Tuesday, as the automotive sector is hammered by the coronavirus cri... More »
PRAGUE (Reuters) – The number of new coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic showed its biggest daily rise in four weeks and climbed above 100 for the first time this month, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said 111 new cases had been recorded... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany rose by 513 to 175,210, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Tuesday, with new infections accelerating after decelerating the previous four days. The... More »
(Reuters) – The United States will announce on Tuesday that it has signed a $354 million contract with a company to make generic medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients in the country needed to treat COVID-19, the New York Times reported late on Monday. The m... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government’s handling of its massive economic response to the coronavirus pandemic will come under scrutiny on Tuesday as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testify before the Senate Bankin... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Monday he does not expect a Justice Department review of the FBI’s handling of 2016 election interference to lead to criminal investigation of former President Barack Obama or former Vice Presid... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he was surprised that Attorney General William Barr opted not to look at former President Barack Obama in a Justice Department review of the FBI’s handling of 2016 Russia probe. “I’m a little su... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump may have fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick because he was investigating U.S. military sales to Saudi Arabia, Democratic lawmakers said on Monday, although Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to fire the State Department’s inspector general, saying Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked him to do so and dismissing suggestions that Pompeo faced a probe by the ousted off... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Joe Biden’s campaign said on Monday that if elected president, the presumptive Democratic nominee would rescind the permit for Keystone XL pipeline, which effectively would doom the long-troubled project. In doing so, Biden would reverse... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio will serve as acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday, after Senator Richard Burr announced he would step aside from the position duri... More »
(Reuters) – Advocacy groups sued Wisconsin election officials on Monday, seeking to force the state to send every voter an absentee ballot request form, hire more poll workers and launch a public education effort to ensure voters understand their options ahead... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Presumptive Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden has been speaking regularly with former rival Elizabeth Warren on public health and economic relief ideas as he crafts more ambitious proposals aimed at helping Americans through... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his recommendation to President Donald Trump that the inspector general of the State Department be fired was not an act of retaliation as he was unaware of any investigations the employee was carr... More »
(Reuters) – Arrest warrants have been issued for National Football League (NFL) players Quinton Dunbar and Deandre Baker in Miramar, Florida, after they were accused of being involved in an armed robbery, local police said late on Thursday. Dunbar, a cornerbac... More »
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – A new work by Chinese dissident artist Badiucao in support of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters shows the image of a lone man standing in the path of a tank taken on Tiananmen Square in 1989. But in Badiucao’s version of the photograph,... More »
MADRID (Reuters) – Usually at this time of year Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring is packed as matadors take on lethal half-tonne bulls in daily fights during the annual San Isidro festival. But plazas across Spain are empty this season as the coronavirus epidemic ... More »
MADRID (Reuters) – The Spanish government ordered a two-week quarantine for all travellers coming into the country from May 15 in a bid to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus after one of the Europe’s strictest lockdowns helped slow down the epidemic in S... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s government should extend a costly job support programme until the end of the year for retail and hospitality workers hit hardest by the coronavirus, a think tank said on Tuesday, ahead of an expected government announcement. The Re... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Tuesday he was not considering tax cuts, including a reduction in the sales tax, for the time being as a way of easing the economic pain from the coronavirus pandemic. “Japan’s fiscal condition is in... More »
KABUL (Reuters) – Gunmen attacked a hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Tuesday where the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders runs a maternity clinic, officials said. There was no immediate information about any casualties in ... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – China has suspended imports from four of Australia’s largest meat processors, Australia’s trade minister said on Tuesday, as the trade of several key agricultural commodities suffers in the wake of souring ties. The suspension comes after Au... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China announced on Tuesday a new list of 79 U.S. products eligible for waivers from retaliatory tariffs imposed at the height of the bilateral trade war, amid continued pressure on Beijing to boost imports from the United States. China’s fi... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Tuesday reported 10,899 new cases of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours, bringing the nationwide total past that of Britain to 232,243, the third highest total worldwide. The country’s coronavirus response centre said the d... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will on Tuesday announce changes to programme that is paying the wages of more than 6 million workers at businesses affected by the coronavirus, its health minister said. Britain’s finance minister, Rishi Sunak, will make a statement... More »
(Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk on Monday said production was resuming at the automaker’s sole U.S. vehicle factory, in California, defying an order to stay closed and saying if anyone had to be arrested it should be him. The move come... More »
(Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee said on Monday they jointly raised $61.7 million in April, just beating the month’s haul for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his party. A ... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s health ministry confirmed 1,305 new cases of coronavirus infections on Monday, along with 108 additional deaths. The new infections brought confirmed coronavirus cases to 36,327 and 3,573 deaths in total, according to the offic... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The campaign for U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election, the Republican National Committee and their authorized joint fundraising committees raised $61.7 million in April, in what the campaign said on Monday was a record for the month... More »
(Reuters) – Bret Chiafalo had his bags packed in the weeks following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If somehow his gambit worked and Donald Trump were blocked from officially being declared the winner, the information technology specialist from Washingto... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump accused Democrats of moving to reopen U.S. states from coronavirus lockdown measures too slowly for political advantage on Monday, as Pennsylvania’s governor hit back against Republicans pushing a faster timetable.... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate will make a renewed attempt this week to extend parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday, two months after the divisive government surveillance tools... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday said he would welcome Michael Flynn’s return to the Trump administration after the U.S. Justice Department’s controversial move last week to drop criminal charges against the president’s former na... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House has begun informal talks with Republicans and Democrats in Congress about what to include in another round of coronavirus relief legislation, officials said on Sunday, while predicting further U.S. jobs losses in the comi... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Barack Obama described President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “chaotic” in a conference call with former members of his administration, a source said on Saturday. Obama has largely kept out of t... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – While President Donald Trump traveled to the battleground state of Arizona this week, his Democratic opponent for the White House, Joe Biden, campaigned from his basement as he has done throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Those optics h... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will ease social distancing restrictions in a three-step process, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, as Canberra aims to remove most curbs by July and get nearly 1 million people back to work amid a decline in coronaviru... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels. Now, as major economies prepare green investments to kickstart growth, advocates spy a golden chance to drag the niche energy into the mainstream of a post-pandemic world.... More »
MONTREAL (Reuters) – The major Canadian province of Quebec, among the worst hit by the coronavirus, started gradually restarting its economy on Monday while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau maintained his cautious stance. Quebec is allowing stores with an outside... More »
MILAN (Reuters) – Luxury sports car maker Ferrari (RACE.MI) still expects to make more than $1 billion in core profit this year, providing a relative beacon of stability in an auto industry ravaged by the coronavirus crisis. The company, known for its red Form... More »
BERLIN/MUNICH (Reuters) – The business climate in Germany’s auto sector suffered its biggest slump in April and hit its lowest level since 1991, when the Ifo economic institute began collecting data post-reunification, a survey showed on Monday. The news came ... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – The French government has rejected a request by Amazon (AMZN.O) to tap a state partial unemployment scheme for employees at its six warehouses in the country, a spokeswoman for the labor ministry said on Monday. The e-commerce giant has shut ... More »
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Czech carmaker Skoda Auto, part of the Volkswagen Group (VOWG_p.DE), reported a 25% drop in first-quarter operating profit on Monday, but said the biggest hit from the coronavirus outbreak would come in the second quarter. Skoda, the Czech R... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Protesters blocked construction sites along the route of a planned high-speed rail link on Monday, aiming to stop swathes of British woodlands being felled for a project that has also faced criticism over spiralling costs. Prime Minister Bor... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s top court on Monday heard challenges to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to secure a governing coalition, with opposition figures arguing a deal on a new unity administration would unlawfully shield him in a corruption tri... More »
ROME/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Italy and the United States were among a slew of countries easing lockdown restrictions on Monday to resurrect economies, but officials cautioned against moving too swiftly as global deaths from the coronavirus neared a quarter of a... More »
BERN (Reuters) – Environmental activists delivered a petition to a special session of the Swiss parliament on Monday demanding that a government aid package should promote a “green recovery” from the coronavirus crisis. With some lawmakers wearing protective f... More »
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah’s leader hailed the Lebanese government’s crisis plan as a “big, important step” on Monday and said any talks with the IMF must not blindly surrender the country to terms it can not bear. In a televised speech, Sayyed Hassan Nasral... More »
MADRID (Reuters) – Hairdressers, ironmongers and florists opened for business with restrictions on Monday as Spain began a four-phase plan to reopen by end-June, while the 24-hour death tally from the coronavirus pandemic stayed under 200 for the second day in... More »
AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – Indian police fired tear gas on Monday to scatter migrant workers during clashes in the western state of Gujarat, officials said, as authorities relaxed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavirus. ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he now believes as many as 100,000 Americans could die in the coronavirus pandemic, after the death toll passed his earlier estimates, but said he was confident a vaccine would be developed by t... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday said bipartisan discussions are underway over whether more U.S. government relief funding is needed amid the nation’s novel coronavirus outbreak, but that President Donald Trump is focused on t... More »
OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian Air (NWC.OL) shareholders backed its financial survival plan on Monday, with more than 95% of votes cast supporting the conversion of nearly $1 billion of debt into equity and raising more cash from its owners. The approval follows w... More »
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – Coronavirus test kits used in Tanzania were dismissed as faulty by President John Magufuli on Sunday, because he said they had returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw. Magufuli, whose government has already... More »
TOKYO (Reuters) – Swimming’s world governing body FINA rescheduled the 2021 Fukuoka aquatics world championships to May 2022 on Monday to avoid a clash with the postponed Tokyo Olympics. The new dates for the swimming event in the Japanese city are May 13-29, ... More »
LAGOS (Reuters) – Two dozen Lagos healthcare workers in scrubs and face masks rushed outside the isolation tents and, making sure to keep six feet apart on the bright green grass, danced and swayed as a saxophone and trumpet struck up the band. Inside the tent... More »
ROME (Reuters) – Russia and China are taking advantage of the coronavirus emergency to put their interests forward in Europe, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday, describing Chinese efforts to promote Huawei mobile phone network equipment as malig... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – The number of people who have died in France after contracting the new coronavirus rose on Sunday by 135 to 24,895, the health ministry said. The number of people treated in hospital for the coronavirus and the number of people in intensive c... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court are typically a formal affair, dictated by adherence to tradition by an institution historically resistant to altering its ways. Come Monday, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, all that chang... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it “counterproductive” to h... More »
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) – Before the coronavirus pandemic, Desi Marinov considered herself “apolitical.” The Fort Lauderdale, Florida, flight attendant didn’t even bother to vote in the 2016 presidential election. Losing her job due to lockdowns to curb the spre... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As Democratic presidential hopefuls descended on New Hampshire prior to the state’s Feb. 11 primary, John Tackeff was busy. The 27-year-old attended candidate events across the state to raise concerns about a proposed tax on Wall Street ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump intends to nominate Keith Dayton to be the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the White House said on Friday, a year after Trump removed the previous envoy. Dayton, a retired Army lieutenant general, currently serves as t... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Friday asked the Senate to find any documents tied to an allegation he sexually assaulted a former aide in 1993, after personally denying the accusation publicly for the first time... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Republicans in the U.S. Congress displayed a united front on Friday in their drive for coronavirus-related liability protections for businesses, saying such measures will be crucial to talks about future relief legislation. Senat... More »
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A grandiose mosaic depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking officials will not be put on display in a new military church after objections from the Kremlin leader, a church official said on Friday. Russia is building... More »
CHAMBLON, Switzerland (Reuters) – In the battle against coronavirus, Swiss soldiers are using smartphones to test a new contact tracing application that could prevent infections while also protecting users’ privacy. Switzerland hopes to launch the app on May 1... More »
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – It’s not every day that the face of a chief epidemiologist is inked as a tattoo. But then it’s not every country that has tackled the coronavirus pandemic like Sweden. Anders Tegnell was until the start of the crisis an unknown civil serv... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson returns to work on Monday to the biggest dilemma of his premiership: how to lift the coronavirus lockdown that is destroying swathes of the British economy without triggering a deadly second wave of the outbreak.... More »
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea. At a cl... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s economy minister urged the country’s 16 federal states on Monday to go slowly in lifting coronavirus restrictions to avoid the outbreak spreading further and being forced to backtrack later. Under Germany’s decentralised political ... More »
DUBAI (Reuters) – Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) (8306.T) expects countries in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to be in deep recession this year with overall real GDP contracting 3.7% from a previous growth forecast of 2.9%. Th... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s airlines want the government’s coronavirus wage support scheme to be extended beyond June, maintaining the assistance for longer with a only slow recovery in air travel expected. Airlines UK, the industry’s representative body, wro... More »
RIYADH (Reuters) – The Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen on Monday urged a leading separatist group that declared self-rule in the south to rescind its move, saying it was an “escalatory action” at a time all parties should focus on confronting the novel co... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – The German government and the federal state of Hesse have agreed to provide Condor with loans worth 550 million euros ($596.31 million), the economy minister said on Monday, after the owner of Poland’s LOT pulled out of a deal to buy the air... More »
(Reuters) – It is a Ramadan like never before for Muslims across Asia as mosques that would normally be packed for prayers are deserted and in some places locked up as governments enforced measures to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. At Indonesia’s ma... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Nearly two million Australians rushed to download an app designed to help medical workers and state governments trace close contacts of COVID-19 patients, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s approval rating soared on his pandemic response. Au... More »
DUBAI (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates stands against a decision by a main Yemeni southern separatist group to declare self-rule in areas it controls, and urges full implementation of a peace deal agreed last year for the south, minister of state for forei... More »
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German companies including ThyssenKrupp, Salzgitter, Bayer, Covestro, E.ON, HeidelbergCement, Puma, Allianz and Deutsche Telekom have called for coronavirus-related state aid to be tied to climate action, daily Handelsblatt reported. “We ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The European Central Bank meets on Thursday, the ink barely dry on its emergency bond-buying scheme, and markets are already asking what more it will do to help the euro zone economy through the coronavirus crisis. Its emergency stimulus, wh... More »
TAIPEI (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury’s latest semi-annual report on trade practices of its major trading partners which was due this month has been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, two sources with direct knowledge at Taiwan’s central bank told Reuters... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is continuing to test whether antibody tests can be used in the fight against the novel coronavirus and is hopeful they will work, junior health minister Edward Argar said on Monday. “Tests continue to be tested, the sign at the mome... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After passing $3 trillion of coronavirus relief in a rare run of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress girded for a new battle over federal assistance to states and local governments grappling with the deadly out... More »
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Citing grave dangers to privacy, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on Sunday that the government must bring its use of mobile phone tracking deployed in the battle against the new coronavirus under legislation. Circumventing parliament in Marc... More »
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany changed course on Sunday over which type of smartphone technology it wanted to use to trace coronavirus infections, backing an approach supported by Apple and Google along with a growing number of other European countries. Countries ... More »
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – The Australian government launched a controversial coronavirus tracing app on Sunday and promised to legislate privacy protections around it as authorities try to get the country and the economy back onto more normal footing. Australia an... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration is considering replacing its secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, because of early missteps in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Wall Street Journal and Politico reported ... More »
