WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If U.S. President Joe Biden were to be presented with Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s spending and debt bill, he would veto it, the White House said on Tuesday. McCarthy floated a plan last week that would pair $4.5 trillion in spending cuts with a $1.5 trillion increase in the…
MALINDI, Kenya (Reuters) – Stephen Mwiti was too distraught to go identify the bodies of his wife and six children among the corpses of dozens of cult members recovered from Shakahola forest and brought to a mortuary in Kenya’s coastal town of Malindi on Wednesday. “My children are gone. The children who have been rescued,…
By Tim Reid (Reuters) – Former Republican Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson formally launched his 2024 presidential bid on Wednesday, in a speech that portrayed himself as a more moderate alternative to party frontrunner Donald Trump. Hutchinson, 72, who’s bid is considered a long-shot, had already broken with Trump this year after the Republican former president’s…
By Dan Peleschuk and Ethan Wang KYIV/BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding goal of Kyiv which had publicly sought such talks for months. Zelenskiy, describing the hour-long phone call as “long and meaningful”, signalled the importance…
By Nupur Anand, Saeed Azhar and Niket Nishant (Reuters) -First Republic Bank’s market value plunged again on Wednesday as investors waited to see if it would be able to find buyers for assets and engineer a turnaround without government support. In a brutal sell-off, the bank’s market capitalization briefly sank as much as 41% to…
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The U.N. Security Council is set to vote on Thursday to condemn a ban on Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan and call upon the Taliban administration to “swiftly reverse” its crackdown on the rights of women and girls. The resolution to be voted on –…
By Davide Barbuscia CHICAGO (Reuters) -A U.S. default is highly unlikely, but negotiations around the debt ceiling are expected to be protracted, Daniel Ivascyn, chief investment officer at U.S. bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO), said on Wednesday. Speaking at a Morningstar investment conference in Chicago, Ivascyn said prolonged uncertainty around the U.S. debt…
By Stephen Culp NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Nasdaq rose and the dollar weakened on Wednesday as investors weighed solid company earnings against weaker-than-expected economic data and ongoing wrangling in Washington over raising the debt ceiling. While surging tech shares helped the Nasdaq hold positive territory, the S&P 500 and the Dow were weighed down…
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday that Chinese cloud computing companies like Huawei Cloud and Alibaba Cloud could pose a threat to U.S. security and vowed to review a request to add them to an export control list. A group of nine Republican senators on Tuesday urged…
MOSCOW (Reuters) -The United States gave JPMorgan permission to process payments for agricultural exports via the Russian Agricultural Bank, but the arrangement was no substitute for reconnecting the bank to the SWIFT system, two Russian sources told Reuters. Access to the SWIFT payment system for the Russian Agricultural Bank is one of Moscow’s main demands…
