News

September 17, 2021 LONDON (Reuters) – Lloyd’s of London wants the commercial insurance market to recruit a third of its workforce from ethnic minorities, it said on Friday, as it attempts to improve diversity. Nearly 50,000 staff are employed in Lloyd’s underwriting and broking firms, which arrange specialist risks from oil rigs to footballers’ legs. […]

September 17, 2021 By Shivani Singh BENGALURU (Reuters) -Biocon Ltd said late on Thursday its biologics unit will sell a 15% stake to a Serum Institute of India (SII) subsidiary for access to 100 million doses of vaccines annually for 15 years, including COVID-19 shots. SII, which makes AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot, branded as Covishield in […]

September 17, 2021 By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve, facing a labor market that may be stalling or on the cusp of a surge, is expected next week to open the door to reducing its monthly bond purchases while tying any actual change to U.S. job growth in September and beyond. Fed […]

September 17, 2021 By Leonhard Foeger VIENNA (Reuters) – A trial opened in Vienna on Friday over an outbreak of the coronavirus at the ski resort of Ischgl in early 2020 in which Austrian authorities stand accused of responding too slowly, possibly due to pressure from the tourist sector. The outbreak at Ischgl was Austria’s […]

September 17, 2021 ATHENS (Reuters) – International air traffic to Greece picked up strongly in August at the peak of the summer tourism season, civil aviation authority data showed on Friday. Arrivals nearly doubled in that month to 3,042,098, from 1,666,222 a year earlier when the world was gripped by the first wave of the […]

Apple and Google have removed a tactical voting app created by the organization of jailed Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, from their respective mobile app stores in Russia. Earlier this week Reuters reported that the Russian state had been amping up the pressure on foreign tech giants ahead of federal elections — appropriating the language of […]

September 17, 2021 BERLIN (Reuters) – The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics will have tight COVID-19 countermeasures in place to ensure the safety of all participants, the International Olympic Committee said on Friday. Just over a month after the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Games, IOC President Thomas Bach said in an open letter that […]

September 17, 2021 MADRID (Reuters) – The European Central Bank is not foreseeing an interest hike in the euro zone in 2023, ECB policymaker Pablo Hernandez de Cos said on Friday. The comments from De Cos came after ECB chief economist Philip Lane revealed in a private meeting with German economists that the ECB expected […]

September 17, 2021 HONG KONG (Reuters) -The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, on Friday, proposed changing its rules to allow Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) to list, a bid to tap the frenzy for such investment vehicles in the United States earlier this year. The proposal is open for public consultation, with the deadline for […]

September 17, 2021 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev urged other nations on Friday to unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets kept in foreign banks to facilitate dialogue with the Taliban government in Kabul. Following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said any central bank assets the Afghan government has in the […]

September 17, 2021 VILLACH, Austria (Reuters) – Infineon Technologies opened a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) plant in Austria on Friday, boosting the German semiconductor company’s ability to supply power chips for cars, datacenters and renewable power generation. The plant in Villach, ready three months early, will make chips on 300 mm wafers thinner than […]

September 17, 2021 By Sheila Dang (Reuters) – Facebook Inc is rolling out new ways for businesses to find and chat with potential customers on its apps, the social media company said Thursday, as it seeks to become an online shopping destination. The new features will help Facebook, already a leader in digital advertising, offer […]

September 17, 2021 VILLACH, Austria (Reuters) – Infineon CEO Reinhard Ploss said on Friday that he expected silicon chip prices to rise significantly, adding that semiconductor makers needed to cover the cost of investments to meet booming demand. “We expect significant price increases,” Ploss told a news conference at an opening ceremony for Infineon’s new […]

September 17, 2021 SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Tencent Holdings said its popular WeChat messaging app will start allowing users to access external links from Friday, days after regulators told the company and its rivals to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other’s links. The company said it had revised WeChat’s content management rules in a […]

September 17, 2021 DUBAI (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates could invest at least a further 1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in the United Kingdom this year after pledging 10 billion pounds this week to its investment partnership with the British government. The UK’s Trade Commissioner to the Middle East, Simon Penney, told Reuters on […]

September 17, 2021 NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenyan telecoms operator Safaricom,, said on Friday it had submitted a proposal to Kenya Power for the installation of a $300 million smart meter system at the utility, confirming documents seen by Reuters. The telecoms firm said in a statement it was now waiting for feedback from the state […]

September 17, 2021 LONDON (Reuters) – Capitalism has not served the U.S. economy as well as it could have, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday, saying that the system needed to be improved. “In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy […]

September 17, 2021 By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Elaine Lies TOKYO (Reuters) -Candidates vying to become Japan’s next prime minister launched their campaigns on Friday, promising to restore popular trust in the ruling party by tackling issues such as income disparity, the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. A scheduled leadership race for the ruling Liberal Democratic […]

September 17, 2021 BEIJING (Reuters) -Japan said it would have to determine if China meets the “extremely high standards” of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) after the world’s second-biggest economy formally applied to join. Commerce Minister Wang Wentao submitted China’s application to join the free trade agreement in a letter to […]

September 17, 2021 LONDON (Reuters) – British clothing retailer Next has struck a deal with Gap Inc, to run the Gap brand’s business in the UK and Ireland as a franchise partner. The deal will allow the U.S. firm to retain a presence in the UK and Ireland having closed its shops in those markets […]