Month: April 2019

Boeing reported lower first-quarter profits Wednesday as the global grounding of its 737 MAX plane following two crashes hit results. The US aerospace giant reported $2.1 billion in profits, down 13.2 percent from same period a year ago. Revenues dipped 2.0 percent to $22.9 billion, due to a tumble in commercial plane revenues following the suspension of 737 MAX deliveries. Boeing also withdrew its full-year profit forecast, citing uncertainty surrounding the 737 MAX. The aerospace giant has been under scrutiny since the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet, which came on the heels of an October Lion Air crash. Together the crashes claimed 346 lives. Boeing said it is "making steady progress" on a fix to the jet's anti-stall system that is thought to be a factor in…

China is getting ready to welcome representatives from 150 nations, including senior leaders of 40 countries, to discuss its international infrastructure program at the second Belt and Road Forum, beginning Thursday and running through Saturday in Beijing. Analysts say it is not merely a conference on infrastructure building, but an attempt by China to display its popularity and power as a political rallying force. This is significant in view of severe criticism by the United States, which has described the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, as China’s “vanity project.” “It is a political show of strength. BRI has assumed the characteristics of a global public good,” said Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington. “In a sense, conceptually, it is about China slipping itself…

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday failed to meet a final congressional deadline for turning over President Donald Trump's tax returns to lawmakers, setting the stage for a possible court battle between Congress and the administration. The outcome, which was widely expected, could prompt House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal to subpoena Trump's tax records as the opening salvo to a legal fight that may ultimately have to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Neal set a final 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) deadline for the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury to provide six years of Trump's individual and business tax records. But the deadline passed without the panel receiving the documents. After the deadline lapsed, Mnuchin released a letter to Neal in which he pledged…

Greece's budget performance in 2018 was better than expected following some revenue-boosting measures by the government. According to the country's statistical agency, Greece recorded a primary budget surplus, which excludes the cost of servicing the country's vast public debt, of 4.4 percent of its annual output. That's ahead of government projections of 4.1 percent.   The agency also said Tuesday that the country's debt mountain rose to 181 percent of GDP in 2018, from 176 percent in 2017.   Greece's debt dynamics have been shaken by a debt crisis that led to a deep recession and forced Athens in 2010 to seek a massive international bailout. In exchange for the loans, successive governments implemented strict austerity measures.   Though Greece ended its bailout era last summer, it still has to…

Every month, when his respiratory medicine runs out, Dionysis Assimakopoulos heads to the most unlikely pharmacy in Athens. Amid derelict stadiums dating from the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the volunteer-staffed social pharmacy of Hellinikon has handed out free medicine to hundreds of poverty-stricken patients, keeping some of them out of death's reach. "My wife and I have been unemployed for over two years. We need about 150 euros for medicine every month," says Assimakopoulos, a former baker. Established at the height of the crisis in 2011, the pharmacy runs on donated medicine and disposables. Some 40,000 people have brought medicine, many from abroad, says on-duty pharmacist Dimitis Palakas. Another patient waiting in line is Achilleas Papadopoulos, a retired tenor. His pension of 700 euros is not enough to cover the…

Amazon and Walmart on Thursday kicked off a two-year government pilot program allowing low-income shoppers on government food assistance in New York to shop and pay for their groceries online for the first time.    ShopRite will join the two retailers on the program early next week, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.    The USDA has long required customers using electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, to pay for their purchases at the actual time and place of sale. So the move marks the first time SNAP customers can pay for their groceries online. ShopRite and Amazon are providing the service to the New York City area, and Walmart is providing the service online in upstate New York locations. The agency said the…

The National Enquirer is being sold to the former head of the airport newsstand company Hudson News following a rocky year in which the tabloid was accused of burying stories that could have hurt Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.    Tabloid owner American Media said Thursday that it plans to sell the supermarket weekly to James Cohen. Financial terms were not immediately disclosed for the deal, which included two other American Media tabloids, the Globe and National Examiner.      American Media said last week that it wanted to get out of the tabloid business to focus on its other operations, which includes its teen brand and broadcast platforms. Non-prosecution agreement Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed last year not to prosecute American Media in exchange for the company's cooperation in a…

The new North American free trade pact would modestly boost the U.S. economy, especially auto parts production, but may curb vehicle assembly and limit consumer choice in cars, a hotly anticipated analysis from the  U.S. International Trade Commission showed on Thursday.  The ITC report is a crucial step in the push for Congress to consider ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was signed by President Donald Trump and the leaders of the other two countries last year to replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement.  The report estimates that annual U.S. real gross domestic product would increase by 0.35 percent, or $68.5 billion, on an annual basis compared with a NAFTA baseline, and would add 176,000 U.S. jobs, while raising U.S. exports.  The ITC's estimates are for year six of the trade deal, once it is fully implemented.  The trade…

The U.S. trade deficit fell to an eight-month low in February as imports from China plunged, temporarily providing a boost to President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda and economic growth in the first quarter. The surprise second straight monthly narrowing in the trade gap reported by the Commerce Department on Wednesday was also driven by soaring aircraft exports, which are likely to reverse after Boeing halted deliveries of its troubled 737 MAX aircraft. MAX planes have been grounded indefinitely following two deadly crashes. Economists warned the trade deficit would remain elevated regardless of whether the United States and China struck a trade deal that was to the White House's liking because of Americans' insatiable appetite for cheaper imports. Talks between Washington and China to resolve the bitter trade war have…

A long-hidden trove of unpublished works by Franz Kafka could soon be revealed following a decade-long battle over his literary estate that has drawn comparisons to some of his surreal tales. A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s National Library. At stake are untouched papers that could shed new light on one of literature’s darkest figures, a German-speaking Bohemian Jew from Prague whose cultural legacy has been hotly contested between Israel and Germany. What’s in the vaults? Though the exact content of the vaults remains unknown, experts have speculated the cache could include endings to some of Kafka’s major works, many of which were unfinished…