BERLIN (AP) — The German government is considering backtracking on plans for consumers to pay a surcharge on natural gas amid mounting criticism that the money could flow to highly profitable energy companies, officials said Friday. The surcharge of 2.4 euro cents per kilowatt hour was announced two weeks ago and could cost the average…
By Scott Murdoch, Xie Yu and Samuel Shen HONG KONG (Reuters) – Beijing and Washington took a major step on Friday towards ending a dispute that threatened to boot Chinese companies, including Alibaba, from U.S. stock exchanges, signing a pact to allow U.S. regulators vet accounting firms in China and Hong Kong. U.S. regulators long…
COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna is suing Pfizer and the German drugmaker BioNTech, accusing its main competitors of copying Moderna’s technology in order to make their own vaccine. Moderna said Friday that Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine Comirnaty infringes on patents Moderna filed several years ago protecting the technology behind its preventive shot, Spikevax. The company filed…
By Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Devik Jain (Reuters) – The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were subdued on Friday in early trading as investors were nervous about hawkish signals from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at the annual Jackson Hole symposium amid fears of slowing economic growth. Powell’s speech at 10:00 a.m. ET will be…
As a child, Wendy Schmidt didn’t think about how the ocean intersected with human life. It was a nice place to go swimming, but it was mostly a murky, unknowable realm that didn’t have much to do with her day-to-day life. That outlook changed 15 years ago when she started sailing and learned to scuba…
Elon Musk’s SpaceX and T-Mobile are teaming up in an attempt to connect mobile devices through a network of satellites, providing coverage to even the most isolated places. Under the plan, T-Mobile’s wireless network would be routed through SpaceX Starlink satellites that are in low Earth orbit. T-Mobile said that the vast majority of smartphones…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer spending barely rose in July, but inflation eased considerably, which could give the Federal Reserve room to scale back its aggressive interest rate increases. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, edged up 0.1% last month, the Commerce Department said on Friday. Data for June…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation eased last month as energy prices tumbled, raising hopes that the surging costs of everything from gasoline to food may have peaked. According to a Commerce Department report Friday that is closely watched by the Federal Reserve, consumer prices rose 6.3% in July from a year earlier after posting an annual…
MADRID (Reuters) – Former chief executive of textile giant Inditex, Pablo Isla, has started his own film production company, saying in a statement on Friday that he hoped to use his “deep passion for film” and business experience to advance Spain’s movie industry. Isla stepped down from the owner of the global fashion brand Zara…
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Germany’s foreign minister said Friday that estimates show the Baltic Sea can produce wind power that is “more than twice the installed capacity of all German coal-fired power stations” as the country works to meet climate change targets and wean itself off of Russian energy. In a video message ahead of…
