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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's Latin American tour took him Saturday to Argentina, where he talked with officials about conservation and diplomacy. Traveling from Mexico City after meeting with the Mexican president and other senior officials on Friday, Tillerson arrived in Bariloche, a lakeside resort town in Argentina’s Nahuel Huapi National Park. Local news reports said Tillerson met with park rangers to discuss progress made in joint U.S.-Argentine projects on science and conservation issues. He also met with a student selected for the U.S. Fulbright scholarship program. Tillerson was scheduled to visit the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, to meet with his counterpart, Jorge Faurie. On Monday, Tillerson is set to meet with Argentina President Mauricio Macri to discuss regional issues, including upcoming elections and the political crisis in Venezuela.…

The window opened Friday for oil, gas, uranium and coal companies to make requests or stake claims to lands that were cut from two sprawling Utah national monuments by President Trump in December, but there doesn’t appear to be a rush to seize the opportunities. For anyone interested in the uranium on the lands stripped from the Bears Ears National Monument, all they need to do is stake a few corner posts in the ground, pay a $212 initial fee and send paperwork to the federal government under a law first created in 1872 that harkens back to the days of the Wild West. They can then keep rights to the hard minerals, including gold and silver, as long as they pay an annual fee of $155. It was unclear…

Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China's so-called 'One Belt One Road Initiative' — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping's vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. There are, however, concerns over the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the United States has issued a blunt warning over what it sees as the dangers of being tied to China's huge investment projects. ...

Another solid month for the U.S. economy as American companies added 200,000 new workers to their payrolls last month. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, but wages are rising. Although the number of unemployed Americans continues to fall, recruiting agencies say they've never been busier. Mil Arcega explains. ...

U.S. stocks slumped Friday, pulling down the Dow Jones industrial average by more than 650 points and handing the market its worst week in two years. Technology, banks and energy stocks accounted for much of the broad slide. Several major companies, including Exxon Mobil and Google's parent company, Alphabet, sank after reporting weak earnings. Fears of rising inflation sent bond yields higher and contributed to the stock market swoon after the government reported that wages grew last month at the fastest pace in eight years. The sharp drop follows a long period of unprecedented calm in the market. Stocks haven't had a pullback of 10 percent or more in two years, and hit their latest record highs just one week ago. "We've enjoyed low interest rates for so long, we're…

Stocks closed sharply lower in New York on Friday, extending a weeklong slide, as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 600 points.  The drop capped stocks' worst week in two years. The Dow's drop was its biggest in percentage terms since June 2016. Several giant U.S. companies' shares dropped after reporting weak earnings, including Exxon Mobil and Alphabet. Apple and Chevron also fell. Bond yields rose sharply after the government reported the fastest wage growth in eight years, stoking fears of inflation. The Dow fell 665 points, or 2.5 percent, to 25,520. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762. The S&P is down almost 4 percent since hitting a record high a week ago. The Nasdaq was off 144 points, or 2 percent,…

Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China's so-called "One Belt One Road" initiative — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping's vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. But there are concerns about the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken. British Prime Minister Theresa May recently visited Beijing, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders in an effort to boost trade after Britain's European Union exit. The two countries signed deals worth $12.7 billion, and May hailed a "golden era" of Sino-British relations. Her ambassador to Beijing, Barbara Woodward, earlier outlined Britain's hopes of cooperating in China's "One Belt One Road" initiative. "The first is, we'd like to collaborate on practical projects," she said. "The second…

With an eye on general elections next year, India has announced several populist measures that include a health insurance program for 500 million people, and billions of dollars for rural development and affordable housing in its annual budget.   Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the measures aimed at improving “ease of living” for citizens, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas.   The announcements came amid widespread rural distress due to falling crop prices. Several farmers protests, sometimes violent, took place last year. In a country where two thirds of the 1.3 billion people depend on agriculture, there are growing worries the anger in the countryside will pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government when it seeks reelection next year. Saying "my government is…

When Janet Yellen leaves the Federal Reserve this weekend after four years as chair, her legacy will include having shattered a social barrier: She is the first woman to have led the world's most powerful central bank, a position that carries enormous sway over the global economy.   Yellen will be remembered, too, for her achievements in deftly guiding the Fed's role in the U.S. economy's slow recovery from a crushing financial crisis and recession. She picked up where her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, had left off in nurturing the nation's recuperation from a crisis that nearly toppled the financial system. As Jerome Powell prepares to succeed Yellen as leader of the U.S. central bank, here are five areas in which Yellen's era at the Fed will be remembered:   Crisis…

A new political dawn in Zimbabwe has sparked talk among farmers of land reform and the return of some whites who lost their land and livelihoods to President Robert Mugabe during a 37-year rule that drove the economy to collapse. Mugabe, 93, resigned in November after the army and his ZANU-PF party turned against him, prompting optimism among some of the thousands of white farmers ousted in the early 2000s on the grounds of redressing imbalances from the colonial era. For colonialists seized some of the best agricultural land that remained in the hands of white farmers after independence in 1980 leaving many blacks effectively landless and making land ownership one of Zimbabwe's most sensitive political topics. Now some white landowners hope the post-Mugabe regime may address the land issue,…

Many refugees would like to buy low-carbon stoves and lights but poor access in camps and a lack of funding is forcing them to rely on "dirty and expensive" fuels, a report said Tuesday. Millions of refugees worldwide struggle to access energy for cooking, lighting and communication and often pay high costs for fuels like firewood, which are bad for their health. Yet two-thirds would consider paying for clean cookstoves and more than one-third for solar household products, according to a survey by the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI), a partnership among Britain, the United Nations and charities. "Energy providers don't tend to think of refugees as potential energy consumers, but the opportunities to build a relationship with them are huge," Mattia Vianello, one of the report's authors, told the Thomson…

A colorful paint job has transformed one of Mumbai's drab hilltop slums into a tourist destination, even prompting comparisons with Italy's picturesque Amalfi Coast. During a recent journey on a Mumbai metro train, Dedeepya Reddy was struck by the grim appearance of a slum in Asalpha in the city's eastern suburbs as she stared out from her air-conditioned carriage. Reddy, a Harvard University-educated co-founder of a creative agency, was keen to brighten the lives of slum residents, while also changing the perception of slums being dirty and dangerous, and decided on a simple makeover. Armed with dozens of cans of colorful paint, Reddy and a team of about 700 volunteers painted the walls and alleyways of the hilltop slum over two weekends last month. Residents, at first skeptical, also got…

Hackers who stole around $530 million worth of cryptocurrency from the Coincheck exchange last week — one of the biggest such heists ever — are trying to move the stolen “XEM” coins, the foundation behind the digital currency said on Tuesday. NEM Foundation, creators of the XEM cryptocurrency, have traced the stolen coins to an unidentified account, and the account owner had begun trying to move the coins onto six exchanges where they could then be sold, Jeff McDonald said. Hackers made off with roughly $533 million worth of the cryptocurrency from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck Inc late last week, raising fresh questions about security and regulatory protection in the booming market. The location of the hackers’ account was not known. “(The hackers are) trying to spend them on multiple exchanges.…

Middle Eastern countries should pursue fiscal policies to support growth and build broader tax bases to fund infrastructure projects and social spending, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. "A key priority is building broader and more equitable tax bases. All must pay their fair share, while the poor must be protected," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told an economic conference in Marrakech, organized by the Washington-based fund and the kingdom. That would allow them to spend more on social safety nets, health and education services than the current 11 percent of gross domestic product in the region. "Fiscal policy can and must be redesigned to support inclusive growth in the region," Lagarde said. More efforts are also needed to support the private sector, she said. The state, the dominant…

Venezuela is abandoning the most-overvalued of its two official foreign exchange rates, which had been used for state imports of food and medicine amid a worsening economic crisis.   The move could potentially encourage businesses to import more and put more goods on store shelves and in pharmacies, but only if the government carries it out as written, said Francisco Rodriguez, a former Venezuelan official who is now chief economist at the New York-based Torino Capital.   "This is not a place where there's a good tradition of following the letter of the law,'' Rodriguez said Tuesday. "I don't think that one should get too optimistic."   Oil-rich Venezuela is in the fifth year of a deepening economic crisis that has brought scarcities of basic foods and medicine after nearly…