Month: March 2019

On a recent Sunday afternoon, thousands of shoppers crowded the hallways and stores of the Citygate Outlets shopping mall in Tung Chung, one of Hong Kong’s new town developments just a short train ride from the airport. Some visitors had recently arrived by plane, wheeling…

Marin Mendez leaned a shoulder into his rusty Chevy Malibu rolling it forward each time the line of cars inched closer to the pump. Waiting hours to fill up, he says, is the high cost he pays for gasoline that's nearly free in socialist Venezuela.…

Celebrity chef Mario Batali on Wednesday said he had cut ties with his U.S. restaurants after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Batali has sold his shares in the 16-restaurant operation, including Babbo and Del Posto in New York, to former partners Tanya…

U.S. officials have warned at an energy conference in Brussels that the Trump administration will take punitive action against European companies that are building the Kremlin-favored Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which will deliver energy from Russia to Germany while bypassing Ukraine. Nord Stream…

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is warning of a slowdown in most of the world's largest economies, citing concerns about ongoing trade tensions, policy uncertainty and a decrease in business and consumer confidence. In its Interim Economic Outlook released Wednesday, the OECD is…

In Zimbabwe, the high cost of bread is forcing citizens to look for alternatives to this basic commodity as food shortages and soaring prices continue to worsen. Columbus Mavhunga reports for VOA from Harare. ...

Leaders of Mexico's agricultural sector are urging "mirror measures" on U.S. farm imports in politically sensitive products such as yellow corn and poultry, in an effort they argue would counter decades of subsidized imports from the United States. The three-month-old government of President Andres Manuel…

The corporation behind a Florida detention camp for migrant children is abandoning its plans to go public as controversy grows around policies that lock up children crossing the Mexico border. The chairman of Caliburn International Corp., Thomas J. Campbell, sent a letter Tuesday to the…

The global travel industry is likely to expand by 4 percent in 2019 despite slowing economic growth in key areas such China and Europe, but a no-deal Brexit could wipe out 700,000 travel-related jobs, a top industry association said on Tuesday. The travel and tourism…

India has downplayed the impact of U.S. plans to end New Delhi's preferential trade status that allows duty free access to products worth $ 5.6 billion.   Saying that India has not assured the United States that it will provide “equitable and reasonable access” to…

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin informed Congress on Monday that he will stop making payments into two government retirement funds now that the debt limit has gone back into effect. In a letter to congressional leaders, Mnuchin said that he would stop making investments into a…

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido named Harvard University economist Ricardo Hausmann as the country's representative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Guaido's envoy to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, wrote in a tweet on Monday. Guaido, who calls socialist President Nicolas Maduro a usurper after…

A U.S. judge on Monday acquitted a former top foreign exchange trader at Barclays Plc accused of illegally trading ahead of an $8 billion transaction for Hewlett-Packard, without letting the case go to a jury. The acquittal of Robert Bogucki, who led Barclays' foreign exchange…

The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average snapped a three-day run of losses on Friday as optimism about the prospects for a U.S.-China trade agreement countered downbeat U.S. and China manufacturing data.  The Nasdaq, meanwhile, marked its longest streak of weekly gains since late 1999.  Following…