Category: Business

A surge in U.S. job creation and some reassuring words from the head of the U.S. central bank sent U.S. stocks soaring Friday.   The Labor Department reported a net gain of 312,000 jobs in December, far more than economists predicted. The unemployment rate, however, rose slightly, to 3.9 percent. Many analysts said the rising unemployment rate was probably good news because rising wages prompted many jobless people to start looking for work. People are not counted as officially unemployed unless they have searched for work in the past four weeks. In December, the labor force expanded by a healthy 419,000 people as wages rose 3.2 percent over the past year. PNC Bank Chief Economist Gus Faucher said the data meant worries about a possible recession were probably "overblown." Worried investors have sent…

Marriott International Inc said Friday that fewer than 383 million customer records were stolen in a massive cyberattack disclosed last month, down from its initial estimate that up to 500 million guests were affected. The hotel operator also said that some 25.55 million passport numbers were stolen in the attack on the Starwood Hotels reservation system, 5.25 million of which were stored in plain text. Another 8.6 million encrypted payment cards were also taken in the attack, it said. Marriott previously confirmed that passport numbers and payment cards were taken, but not said how many. The company disclosed on Nov. 30 that it had discovered its Starwood hotels reservation database had been hacked over a four-year period in one of the largest breaches in history. At least five U.S. states…

It sounds like a Hollywood caper: A group of investors and officials convince European banks to loan a total of $2 billion to a resource-rich African nation trying to rebuild after a bruising civil war.   The money promptly disappears, and then this caper turns tragic.  The government doesn't learn of the loans until three years after they happen. It defaults on the loans, and that triggers an economic crisis: the currency tumbles, prices rise, hospitals run out of basic supplies and key roads go unrepaired.  Thousands of people contract cholera – an easily preventable and treatable illness that is often caused by a breakdown of health services. This isn't Hollywood. This, allegedly, is Mozambique, according to an indictment that has resulted in the arrests of at least four figures…

Asian markets Friday continued the global sell-off triggered by Apple’s warning of lower revenues and futures indicators predict a sharply lower opening for U.S. markets. The Tokyo market dropped 3 percent in morning trading, and markets in Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul and Taipei were also down. Stock markets across the globe dropped Thursday after tech giant Apple said sales of its devices had fallen sharply in China last month, perhaps signaling a broader slowing in the world economy. Apple has blamed U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade dispute with China for its shrinking outlook, but the U.S. leader tweeted his defense Thursday, claiming, “The United States Treasury has taken in MANY billions of dollars from the Tariffs we are charging China and other countries that have not treated us fairly. In the…

Herb Kelleher, who changed the airline industry by helping create and lead Southwest Airlines, a low-fare carrier that made air travel more accessible to the masses, has died. He was 87.    Southwest confirmed that Kelleher died Thursday.    Kelleher was a lawyer in San Antonio when a client came to him in the late 1960s with the idea for a low-fare airline that would fly between big cities in Texas. Today, Southwest carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline.    At a time when many other airlines were run by colorless finance wizards, Kelleher boasted about drinking whiskey and showed a gift for wacky marketing ploys.   ...

Three former Credit Suisse Group AG bankers were arrested in London on Thursday on U.S. charges that they took part in a $2 billion fraud scheme involving state-owned companies in Mozambique, a spokesman for U.S. prosecutors said. Andrew Pearse, Surjan Singh and Detelina Subeva were charged in an indictment in Brooklyn, New York federal court with conspiring to violate U.S. anti-bribery law and to commit money laundering and securities fraud, according to spokesman John Marzulli. They have been released on bail. The arrests came five days after former Mozambique finance minister Manuel Chang was arrested in South Africa as part of the same criminal case, which was brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn. The prosecutors will seek to have all of the defendants extradited to the United States, according to…

A federal judge says a New York City law forcing Airbnb and HomeAway home-sharing platforms to reveal detailed information about its business seems unconstitutional. Judge Paul Engelmayer on Thursday blocked the law from taking effect on Feb. 2, finding there’s a greater than 50 percent chance the companies would prevail on claims that the law violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The ruling comes at an early stage of the litigation. Lawyers for the city and the companies will gather additional evidence before Engelmayer makes a final ruling. The city did not immediately comment. The San Francisco-based Airbnb in a statement called the ruling a “huge win.” The law was passed last summer.   ...

Tesla made about 9,300 more vehicles than it delivered last year, raising concerns among industry analysts that inventory is growing as demand for the company’s electric cars may be starting to wane. If demand falls, they say, the company will enter a new phase of its business. Like other automakers, Tesla will have to either cut production or reduce prices to raise sales. A drop in demand could also curtail the company’s earnings and jeopardize CEO Elon Musk’s promise to post sustained quarterly profits. On Wednesday, Tesla did cut prices, knocking $2,000 off each of its three models. The company said the cuts will help customers deal with the loss of a $7,500 federal tax credit, which was reduced to $3,750 this month for Tesla buyers and will gradually go…

The sweet aroma of mutton smoke drifts through a maze of crumbling alleyways, a barbecue tang that for decades has lured meat-eaters from across Pakistan to the frontier city of Peshawar. The ancient city, capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has retained its reputation for some of Pakistan's tastiest cuisine despite bearing the brunt of the country's bloody war with militancy. University student Mohammad Fahad had long heard tales of Peshawar's famed mutton. "Earlier we heard of Peshawar being a dangerous place," he told AFP — but security has improved in recent years, and he finally made the hours-long journey from the eastern city of Lahore to see if it could live up to the hype. "We are here just to see what the secret to this barbecue is," he…

Rotting hides on the road are all that is left of three butchered cows. Such carnage is common in Venezuela's cattle country, where thieves, squatters and government policy threaten a vital food resource. Venezuela's severe economic crisis is felt keenly in cities — where food sources are limited — but it's also cutting a swath through what should be the country's food basket. Seeing the hides on the road — the handiwork of cattle poachers — Jose Labrador stops his truck and explodes with rage. "It's as if they were telling us: 'We are killing your cattle, so what?'" the 46-year old rancher says, fuming that complaining is useless — police and local authorities will do nothing. Labrador and other farmers in the cattle-rearing region of San Silvestre, in the…

Digital developments that have upended businesses throughout the global economy, from music to manufacturing, are also changing what the world trades and how manufacturers and merchants move and sell their goods. Experts tell VOA's Jim Randle, the digital revolution presents significant opportunities, but also serious problems, for countries. ...

Equities around the world rose Monday as possible progress in resolving the trade dispute between the United States and China engendered some investor optimism in what has been a punishing end of year for markets. The U.S. benchmark S&P 500 stock index advanced in light trading volume after U.S. President Donald Trump said he held a "very good call" with China's President Xi Jinping on Saturday to discuss trade and said "big progress" was being made. Chinese state media were more reserved, saying Xi hoped the negotiating teams could meet each other halfway and reach an agreement that was mutually beneficial. The rise in U.S. equities mirrored that in Asian and European markets, which were also buoyed by trade optimism. Despite Monday's advance, equities ended the year largely in the…

China's factory activity shrank in December for the first time in more than two years, an official survey showed Monday, intensifying pressure on Beijing to reverse an economic slowdown as it enters trade talks with the Trump administration. The purchasing managers' index of the National Bureau of Statistics and an industry group, the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing, fell to 49.4 from November's 50.0 on a 100-point scale. Any reading below 50 shows that activity is contracting. The December figure was the lowest since February 2016 and the first drop since July 2016.   In the quarter that ended in September, China's economic growth sank to a post-global crisis low of 6.5 percent compared with a year earlier. The slowdown occurred despite government efforts to stem the downturn by…

Kenya's economy expanded faster in the third quarter of this year than in the same period last year due to strong performance in the agriculture and construction sectors, the statistics office said on Monday. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said the economy grew 6 percent in the third quarter of 2018, compared with 4.7 percent in the same period in 2017. It said the agriculture sector expanded by 5.2 percent compared with 3.7 percent in the third quarter of 2017, helped by better weather. "Prices of key food crops remained low during the quarter compared to the corresponding quarter of 2017, an indication of relative stability in supply," KNBS said. Manufacturing grew by 3.2 percent from a 0.1 percent contraction in the third quarter of 2017, KNBS said. It…

The euro currency turns 20 years old on January 1, surviving two tumultuous decades and becoming the world’s No. 2 currency. After 20 years, the euro has become a fixture in financial markets, although it remains behind the dollar, which dominates the world’s market. The euro has weathered several major challenges, including difficulties at its launch, the 2008 financial crisis, and a eurozone debt crisis that culminated in bailouts of several countries. Those crises tested the unity of the eurozone, the 19 European Union countries that use the euro. While some analysts say the turmoil and the euro’s resilience has strengthened the currency and made it less susceptible to future troubles, other observers say the euro will remain fragile unless there is more eurozone integration. Beginnings  The euro was born…

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Saturday that he had a "long and very good call" with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that a possible trade deal between the United States and China was progressing well. As a partial shutdown of the U.S. government entered its eighth day, with no quick end in sight, the Republican president was in Washington, sending out tweets attacking Democrats and talking up possibly improved relations with China. The two nations have been in a trade war for much of 2018 that has seen the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods between the world's two largest economies disrupted by tariffs. Trump and Xi agreed to a ceasefire in the trade war, agreeing to hold off on imposing more tariffs…

The end of 2018 seemed to signal good things to come for America’s farmers. Fresh off the passage of the farm bill, which reauthorized agriculture, conservation and safety net programs, the Agriculture Department last week announced a second round of direct payments to growers hardest hit by President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Then parts of the government shut down. The USDA in a statement issued last week assured farmers that checks would continue to go out during the first week of the shutdown. But direct payments for farmers who haven’t certified production, as well as farm loans and disaster assistance programs, will be put on hold beginning next week, and won’t start up again until the government reopens. There is little chance of the government shutdown ending soon.…

The storm winds of the recent trade war between the United States and China have settled in a truce for now, but the weeks of agitation — of rising tariffs and counter duties — battered one economy close to Beijing: Hong Kong’s. In December, Hong Kong government economist Andrew Au said he anticipated near-term troubles for the territory’s economic forecast. GDP growth — a year after a record high of 341.5 billion — slowed significantly, from 4.6 percent growth in the first quarter to 2.9 percent in the third. The government says the impact of the trade war can be seen in consumer prices, slower spending and lighter trade. Consumer price inflation ticked up 2.8 percent in the third quarter. The government warned that inflation could head upward as local…

Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman Eddie Lampert submitted a $4.4 billion takeover bid for the bankrupt U.S. retailer, representing its only chance of escaping liquidation and laying off tens of thousands of workers, a spokesman for the billionaire’s hedge fund said Friday. Lampert’s bid is backed in part by $1.3 billion in financing from three different financial institutions, the spokesman for his hedge fund, ESL Investments Inc., said. It would preserve about 425 stores that Sears has yet to close and secure the jobs of up to 50,000 workers out of the 68,000 employed by the retailer. An affiliate of ESL, Transform Holdco LLC, submitted the bid, the spokesman said. ​People familiar with the matter said the financing comes from Sears’ existing lenders Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc, as…

Wall Street capped a week of volatile trading Friday with an uneven finish and the market's first weekly gain since November.    Losses in technology, energy and industrial stocks outweighed gains in retailers and other consumer-focused companies. Stocks spent much of the day wavering between small gains and losses, ultimately unable to maintain the momentum from a two-day winning streak.    Even so, the major stock indexes closed with their first weekly gain in what's been an otherwise painful last month of the year. The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 rose more than 2 percent for the week, while the Nasdaq added nearly 4 percent. The indexes are still all down around 10 percent for the month and on track for their worst December since 1931.    "It…

In South Korea's largest shipyard, thousands of workers in yellow hard hats move ceaselessly between towering cranes lifting hulks of steel. They look like a hive of bees scurrying over a massive circuit board as they weld together the latest additions to the rapidly growing fleet of tankers carrying super-chilled liquefied natural gas across the world's oceans.    The boom in fossil-fuel production in the United States has been matched by a rush on the other side of the Pacific to build the infrastructure needed to respond to the seemingly unquenchable thirst for energy among Asia's top economies. When Congress lifted restrictions on shipping crude oil overseas in 2015, soon after the Obama administration opened the doors for international sales of natural gas, even the most boosterish of Texas oil…

Wall Street stocks finished solidly higher Thursday following a late-afternoon surge as worries over slowing economic growth gave way to bargain-hunting. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 23,138.82, an increase of 1.1 percent and up some 870 points from the low point of the session. The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 0.9 percent to 2,488.83, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.4 percent to 6,579.49. The push into positive territory came in the final 30 minutes of the session. While trading is usually light during Christmas week, data has suggested volumes more in line with non-holiday sessions. ...

Tesla Inc has registered a financial leasing company in China, a local business registration filing shows, in the latest sign the U.S. electric car maker is attempting to speed up its push into China. The California-based carmaker, led by billionaire Chief Executive Elon Musk, has opened a wholly-owned financial leasing unit in Shanghai’s free trade zone with registered capital of $30 million, according to China’s National Enterprise Information Publicity System. Its scope includes leasing and consultancy, the document said, which listed the firm’s legal representative as Zhu Xiaotong, Tesla’s boss in China. Tesla declined to comment. The company has opened a tender process to build its Shanghai Gigafactory and at least one contractor has started buying materials, Reuters reported earlier this month. The $2 billion factory, Tesla’s first in China,…

Retail sales in the U.S. for the 2018 holiday season were up more than 5 percent to more than $850 billion, according to data Mastercard released Wednesday, making 2018 the best holiday retail season in the last six years. The Mastercard SpendingPulse report tracks retail spending across all payment types, including cash and checks, from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24. The report said online sales also jumped more than 19 percent from last year. Clothing and home improvement items were the seasonal favorite, while the sale of electronics fell. The National Retail Federation had predicted holiday sales to increase between 4.3 and 4.8 percent from 2017, for a total of $717.45 billion to $720.89 billion. Online giant Amazon said 2018 was a record year for its global holiday sales. Amazon…

A U.S. trade delegation will go to China the week of Jan. 7, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. It will be the first time the two sides will meet face to face since U.S. President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping agreed to de-escalate a trade war during a meeting in Argentina on Dec. 1. The U.S. team will be led by Deputy Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish and will include David Malpass, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Bloomberg said.  For months, the U.S. and China have engaged in tit-for-tat increases in tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of exports flowing between the two countries.  At the meeting in Buenos Aires, the two leaders agreed to a 90-day truce in the trade war between the world's two largest…

Wall Street notched its best day in 10 years as stocks rallied back Wednesday, giving some post-Christmas hope to a market that has otherwise been battered this December. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,000 points — its biggest point-gain ever — rising nearly 5 percent as investors returned from a holiday break. The benchmark S&P 500 index also gained 5 percent and the technology heavy Nasdaq rose 5.8 percent. But even with the rally, the market remains on track for its worst December since 1931, during the depths of the Great Depression, and to finish 2018 with its steepest losses in a decade. Technology companies, health care stocks, banks drove much of the broad rally. Retailers also were big gainers, as traders cheered a healthy holiday shopping…

Saul Ronaldo Atiliano was diving for lobster in the clear waters off Honduras’ Caribbean coast when he felt a pressure, a pain in his body. And he knew he’d gotten the sickness that has killed or disabled so many of his Miskito comrades. “The pressure attacked me deep in the water,” said Atiliano, a 45-year-old Miskito who for 25 years has dived for lobster, most of which winds up is exported to the United States. Thousands of men across the Mosquitia region of Honduras and Nicaragua depend on lobster fishing to eke out a living. And like Atiliano, hundreds have been stricken with the bends — decompression sickness caused when nitrogen bubbles form in divers’ bodies. Some are paralyzed. Some are killed. With more than 60 per cent of its…

North and South Korea held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday to mark the start of a joint project to connect railways throughout the divided peninsula. The event was held after both Korea’s inspected railways along the peninsula’s east coast. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Lee Do-hoon told reporters last week, “The railroad linkage project and related groundbreaking ceremony were given the go-ahead to proceed as scheduled in the working group today,” referring to meetings held with State Department Special Representative for North Korea Policy Stephen Biegun in Seoul. Jung Dae-jin, a research professor with the Ajou Institute of Unification called the ceremony a strong indicator of both North and South Korea wanting to continue discussions held by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and…