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Back to the paddy fields. COVID smashes Indian middle-class dreams

DUTTA NAGAR, India (Reuters) – Until late March, Ashish Kumar was helping to make plastic boxes for Ferrero Rocher praline chocolates and the plastic spoons tucked inside Kinder Joy eggs to scoop out the milky sweet cream inside. With a diploma in plastic moul... More »

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Death at home: the unseen toll of Italy’s coronavirus crisis

MILAN (Reuters) – It took Silvia Bertuletti 11 days of frantic phone calls to persuade a doctor to visit her 78-year-old father Alessandro, who was gripped by fever and struggling for breath. When an on-call physician did go to her house near Bergamo, at the e... More »

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Mother of invention: the new gadgets dreamt up to fight coronavirus

LONDON/OAKLAND/BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Driving to work at his factory to the west of London last week, designer Steve Brooks had coronavirus on his mind. What could he make that would let him open a door without touching the handle? “Everyone has to use their li... More »

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Coronavirus emerges as major threat to U.S. election process

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. election officials looking to construct a safe voting system in a worsening coronavirus pandemic are confronting a grim reality: there may not be enough time, money or political will to make it happen by the November election. The p... More »

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Swine fever toll in China may be twice as high as reported,…

BEIJING (Reuters) – As many as half of China’s breeding pigs have either died from African swine fever or been slaughtered because of the spreading disease, twice as many as officially acknowledged, according to the estimates of four people who supply large fa... More »

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Oil loses luster as banks cash in on cleaner commodities

LONDON (Reuters) – Investment banks are beefing up trading teams in markets such as gas, metals and carbon permits that are flourishing as businesses and economies become greener, according to recruitment consultants. The shift in staffing at the world’s bigge... More »

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Less to lose: Germany’s poorer East embraces tech revolution

JENA, Germany (Reuters) – From the 12th floor of Jenoptik’s headquarters, chief executive Stefan Traeger points to his laser factory and the university that provides it with talent. Welcome to “Optics Valley” – a role model for Germany’s East in a big year for... More »

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Denials of U.S. immigrant visas skyrocket after little-heralded…

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When Arturo Balbino, a Texas construction worker, walked into his visa interview at the American consulate in the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez in March, he wasn’t nervous. He felt good. Balbino, a 33-year-o... More »

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How U.S. bike companies are steering around Trump’s China tariffs

(Reuters) – U.S.-based bicycle manufacturer Kent International has found a way around President Donald Trump’s tariffs – by shifting production out of China. Like almost all U.S. bike makers, Kent has long relied on low-cost Chinese labor and parts, but Trump’... More »

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U.S. Steel wins tax breaks from one of America’s poorest cities

GARY, Indiana (Reuters) – United States Steel Corporation founded Gary, Indiana in 1906 – naming it after co-founder Elbert Henry Gary – and the city’s fortunes have been closely tied to the company ever since. When the firm started losing business to cheap As... More »

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Ahead of Bangladesh vote, opposition says it has been silenced

DHAKA/NOAKHALI, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Bangladesh has a general election this weekend, but opposition candidate Abdul Moyeen Khan says he has yet to hold a single public meeting in his constituency about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Dhaka, the capital. Thousa... More »

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Software and stealth: how carmakers hike spare parts prices

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – Carmakers including Renault, Jaguar Land Rover and Peugeot have boosted revenues by over $1 billion in the past decade by using sophisticated pricing software, according to sales presentations prepared by the software vendor, Accenture... More »

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Kenya moves to regulate fintech-fuelled lending craze

(This May 25 story corrects first name of Capital Markets Authority CEO to Paul, not Peter, paragraph 29) By Maggie Fick and Omar Mohammed NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya built a reputation as a pioneer of financial inclusion through its early adoption of a mobile m... More »

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Vietnam set to tighten clamps on Facebook and Google, threatening…

HANOI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A struggle over internet laws in Vietnam is pitting a government keen on maintaining tight control against U.S. technology companies trying to fight off onerous new rules – with the country’s online dissidents among the biggest lose... More »

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Shipping’s financiers turning the tide on shipbreaking practices

LONDON (Reuters) – The shipping industry has long been criticized by campaigners for allowing vessels to be broken up on beaches, endangering workers and polluting the sea and sand. Now, it is being called to account from a quarter that may have a bit more clo... More »

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French leader Macron’s power system: never explain, never apologize

PARIS (Reuters) – When Emmanuel Macron was gearing up for his presidential campaign in 2016, he set out on an unprecedented “great march” – a door-to-door campaign to hear voters’ grievances in what promised to be a new, more open way of running the country. A... More »

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Too many cancer drugs? Crowded market gives investors pause

LONDON (Reuters) – In London’s world-famous Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, Dr. Karin Straathof is excited about a new cell-based medicine that offers hope for toddlers with incurable nerve tissue cancer. Her progress with a handful of children for wh... More »

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Insect farms gear up to feed soaring global protein demand

LANGLEY, British Columbia (Reuters) – Layers of squirming black soldier fly larvae fill large aluminum bins stacked 10-high in a warehouse outside of Vancouver. They are feeding on stale bread, rotting mangoes, overripe cantaloupe and squishy zucchini. But thi... More »

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Why Canada is the next frontier for shale oil

FILE PHOTO: A construction site at the new Suncor Fort Hills oil sands mining operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, September 17, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The revolution in U.S. shale oil has battered Canada’s ... More »

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Inspection battle threatens Egypt`s wheat supply

Wheat shipments to Egypt, the world's largest buyer, are being disrupted by a dispute involving government inspectors angered by a ban on the expenses-paid foreign trips they once enjoyed to approve cargoes at their ports of origin. More »

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Voters sense betrayal in Britain`s Brexit heartlands

There is a whiff of betrayal in the air across Britain's Brexit heartlands where many impatient voters fear Prime Minister Theresa May is going soft on implementing last year's decision to leave the European Union. More »

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After dieselgate, Volkswagen loosens reins on empire

FILE PHOTO: People walk past a row of Volkswagen e-Golf cars during the company’s annual news conference in Berlin, Germany March 13, 2014. Picture taken March 13, 2014. When Volkswagen boss Matthias Mueller vowed to reform the carmaker after its emissions sca... More »

How JPMorgan could not save Italy`s problem bank

The main entrance of the Monte dei Paschi bank headquarters is seen in Siena, Italy March 13, 2012. REUTERS/Max Rossi/File Photo On the morning of July 29, former Italian Industry Minister Corrado Passera was traveling in a high-speed train towards the medieva... More »

Yahoo security problems a story of too little, too late

A photo illustration shows a Yahoo logo on a smartphone in front of a displayed cyber code and keyboard on December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration In the summer of 2013, Yahoo Inc launched a project to better secure the passwords of its customers, a... More »

Euro zone nations turn to hedge funds to meet borrowing needs

A two Euro coin is pictured next to an English ten Pound note in an illustration taken March 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/Illustration/File Photo Euro zone governments are increasingly relying on hedge funds to help them meet their borrowing needs, which risks... More »

Hate speech seeps into U.S. mainstream amid bitter campaign

“KKK” is shown spray painted on a telephone pole in Kokomo, Indiana, U.S. November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Peter Eisler The lettering is crude, scrawled in black spray paint on the sidewalk in front of Karen Peters’ neatly kept home in the quiet, working class neighb... More »

Most states on track to meet emissions targets they call burden

The John Amos coal-fired power plant is seen behind a home in Poca, West Virginia May 18, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith/File Photo The 27 states challenging Obama’s Clean Power Plan in court say the lower emissions levels it would impose are an undue burden. ... More »

For one Zika patient, lingering symptoms and few answers

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen at the Laboratory of Entomology and Ecology of the Dengue Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alvin Baez/File Photo It began with what felt like a punc... More »

Taking on Tesla: China’s Jia Yueting aims to outmuscle Musk

BEIJING/DETROIT Tomorrow’s cars will be all-electric, self-driving, connected to high-speed communications networks … and free. And probably Chinese. That, at least, is the vision of Jia Yueting, a billionaire entrepreneur and one of a new breed of Chinese who... More »

How a boardroom feud left Brazilian steel giant on the brink

CUBATAO, Brazil On a warm September morning in 2014, the 10-man board of Brazilian steelmaker Usiminas met on the ninth floor of a blue glass tower in Sao Paulo. In the room, the board members grappled over whether to fire the company’s chief executive and two... More »

Ties between Germany and Russia enter new chill

BERLIN At an hour-long meeting in Moscow on March 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov irritated his German counterpart by raising the case of a German-Russian girl who said she was raped by migrants in Berlin earlier this year. After the girl’s claims w... More »

Trump’s investment funds lose money, billionaire unfazed

NEW YORK Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is built on his business acumen. But some of the Wall Street funds that he has invested in have proven less successful, underperforming industry benchmarks in the last 15 months, according to a Reuters examination.... More »

Obama’s prisoner clemency plan faltering as cases pile up

WASHINGTON In April 2014, the administration of President Barack Obama announced the most ambitious clemency program in 40 years, inviting thousands of jailed drug offenders and other convicts to seek early release and urging lawyers across the country to take... More »

Bank of Japan scrambles to find positives in negative rates

TOKYO Bank of Japan (BOJ) officials have been scurrying to commercial banks to explain and apologize for its surprise adoption of negative interest rates in January, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has distanced himself from a decision that is proving unpopula... More »

Mosquitoes’ rapid spread poses threat beyond Zika

LONDON As the world focuses on Zika’s rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity. The battle against the in... More »

Big U.S. banks to take on tech rivals with instant payments

NEW YORK Depositors at some of the largest U.S. banks are finally going to get the chance to do something quick and simple: send money to another person’s account instantaneously by mobile phone. The idea has been in the works for at least five years, and in t... More »

In slump, oil firms turn to labs, data centers for help

GRAND FORKS, N.D. In a basement lab of a North Dakota research center, Beth Kurz and an assistant are peering through a scanning electron microscope, studying samples from the state’s vast Bakken shale oil formation. Kurz, a hydrogeologist, is part of a team, ... More »

Trump’s outrage finds ready audience in struggling South

LUCEDALE, Miss Mississippi’s vast flatlands, laced with the remains of a fading industrial base, are fertile ground for the incendiary populism of Donald Trump. For the insurgent presidential candidate, there’s plenty of voter outrage to tap into here and in a... More »

Doctors puzzle over severity of defects in some Brazilian babies

NEW YORK/BRASILIA Experts on microcephaly, the birth defect that has sparked alarm in the current Zika virus outbreak, say they are struck by the severity of a small number of cases they have reviewed from Brazil. Consultations among doctors in Brazil and the ... More »

The frequent-flyer U.S. Congress: lawmakers work less in DC

WASHINGTON Anyone seeking a table at Carmine’s Italian restaurant near Capitol Hill on a Tuesday or Wednesday needs to battle a mid-week crush of Congress members and their staff. But Mondays are far quieter — just like the floor of Congress. There are usually... More »

Did Brazil, global health agencies fumble Zika response?

Rio de Janeiro Last January, long lines formed outside health clinics in Recife, a city in Brazil’s northeast hit hard in recent years by outbreaks of dengue, a painful tropical disease. Doctors were on guard because federal health officials and the World Heal... More »

A rebranded Saab at the center of China’s green car push

BEIJING The Swedish automaker once known as Saab has emerged as part of China’s push to make electric vehicles a mass-market alternative to petrol cars, after getting a $12 billion order for EVs. Chinese-owned National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) – the comp... More »

As Fed fog lifts, central bankers keep puzzling over China

SAN FRANCISCOThe world’s central banks are scrambling to assess the risk a slowing China poses to their economies and appear to be no closer than most other observers to working out what is going on in the world’s second largest economy. While the Reserve Bank... More »

Black presence on U.S. boards shrinks, hedge funds cited by some

BOSTON African-Americans have become a shrinking presence in the boardrooms of the biggest U.S. companies in recent years, setting back a push by pension funds for greater diversity. African-Americans, who make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, accou... More »

On China’s fringes, cyber spies raise their game

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE Almost a year after students ended pro-democracy street protests in Hong Kong, they face an online battle against what Western security experts say are China-sponsored hackers using techniques rarely seen elsewhere. Hackers have expanded th... More »

As Boeing booms, robots rise and job growth lags

NEW YORK For most of its 100-year history, when Boeing turned out more planes, employment soared and the Seattle-area economy prospered. When the rate of production fell, layoffs followed and the local economy crashed. The cycle was so predictable that Boeing ... More »

Guns, God and grievances – Belgium’s Islamist ‘airbase’

BRUSSELS “A breeding ground for violence” the mayor of Molenbeek called her borough on Sunday, speaking of unemployment and overcrowding among Arab immigrant families, of youthful despair finding refuge in radical Islam. But as the Brussels district on the wro... More »

Sent back from Europe, some Afghans prepare to try again

KABUL Last year, Hamid Rostami, a 28-year-old from Wardak in western Afghanistan, was expelled from Denmark after years trying to stay in Europe. Jobless and cut off from his family, he now sits in wintry Kabul wondering how to go back. Jobless and unwilling t... More »

Sanctions fears choke nascent U.S. trade with Myanmar

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK/YANGONWestern banks are cutting trade finance in Myanmar after learning that part of the country’s main port is controlled by a man blacklisted by Washington, threatening to stop nascent U.S. economic ties with the Southeast Asian nation in... More »

MERS, Ebola, bird flu: Science’s big missed opportunities

LONDON, Anyone who goes down with flu in Europe this winter could be asked to enroll in a randomized clinical trial in which they will either be given a drug, which may or may not work, or standard advice to take bed rest and paracetamol. Those who agree could... More »

Wall Street bonuses likely to plunge as trading revenue drops

NEW YORK Wall Street bankers and traders are likely to get smaller bonuses for 2015 as trading revenue plunges. Goldman Sachs said on Thursday that it set aside 16 percent less money for compensation in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2014. ... More »

Cyber insurance premiums rocket after high-profile attacks

BOSTON A rash of hacking attacks on U.S. companies over the past two years has prompted insurers to massively increase cyber premiums for some companies, leaving firms that are perceived to be a high risk scrambling for cover. On top of rate hikes, insurers ar... More »

Legal troubles, market realities threaten Uber’s global push

PARIS/SINGAPORE Uber Inc’s aggressive global expansion is looking costlier and riskier than ever as the company struggles with regulatory and competitive obstacles in major markets. Just last week, the company faced a police raid on its European headquarters i... More »

Rebels see tougher war with Russians in Syria, evoke Afghanistan

AMMAN/BEIRUT Rebels who have inflicted big losses on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad say Russia’s intervention in support of its ally will only lead to an escalation of the war and may encourage the rebels’ Gulf Arab backers to pour in more military aid. Russ... More »