News

September 8, 2021 By Abdi Sheikh MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somalia’s two most powerful leaders were locked in a standoff on Wednesday after they named different men to head the politically unstable Horn of Africa nation’s intelligence service. The row between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Prime Minister Mohammed Hussein Roble, nominally over a murder investigation, […]

September 8, 2021 DUSHANBE (Reuters) – Panjshiri leader Ahmad Shah Massoud and former Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh have not fled Afghanistan and their resistance forces are still fighting the Taliban, the ousted Afghan government’s ambassador to Tajikistan said on Wednesday. Zahir Aghbar, envoy to Dushanbe under the government of ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, […]

September 8, 2021 By Michelle Nichols NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lack of clarity on the Taliban’s position on women in Afghanistan has generated “incredible fear” across the country, a senior U.N. official said on Wednesday, warning there were daily reports of curbs on the rights of women. Alison Davidian, deputy head of UN Women […]

September 8, 2021 By Marianna Parraga and Sabrina Valle HOUSTON (Reuters) – More than three-quarters of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico’s offshore oil and natural gas output remained shut on Wednesday as the fallout from Hurricane Ida continued to hamper production. Some 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude production and over 1.72 billion […]

September 8, 2021 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc is working on a new type of point-of-sale system that can be sold to third-party sellers, Insider reported on Wednesday. The new system can handle both online and offline transactions and can also link to other services including Prime and Flex, the report added, citing an internal document. […]

September 8, 2021 (Reuters) – Comcast-owned NBCUniversal has recently sold ads for the upcoming Super Bowl LVI for $6.5 million, a company executive said on Wednesday, an 18% increase from what ViacomCBS-owned CBS charged for Super Bowl ads this year. That price includes similar-sized investments in other NBC commercial inventory. Super Bowl LVI is scheduled […]

September 8, 2021 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Wednesday spoke by phone with the head of the World Trade Organization and acknowledged the “difficult logistical challenges” facing an upcoming WTO ministerial conference, her office said. Tai thanked WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for her strong leadership since taking office in March, […]

September 8, 2021 (In 7th paragraph, fixes date of amended complaint to Aug. 9 instead of Aug. 10) By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A woman suing former Apollo Global Management Inc Chief Executive Leon Black for sexual abuse and defamation made up “demonstrably false” new accusations linking him to the late sex offender […]

September 8, 2021 By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Publicly funded pre-school, child care subsidies and two years of tuition-free community college are on the agenda this week, when a U.S. House of Representatives panel votes on parts of a sweeping social spending plan backed by President Joe Biden. The president, a Democrat, campaigned on […]

September 8, 2021 RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – A few hundred Palestinians held protests in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday in support of six militants who broke out of a maximum security Israeli jail this week in an escape that has boosted Palestinian spirits and alarmed Israelis. Israeli forces have mounted a search in […]

September 8, 2021 By Merdie Nzanga ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) – After Fahima, 30, stepped off a plane at Dulles international airport in Virginia on Aug. 26th, she asked an immigration official what would happen to her next. He shrugged, she said, and told her to find a lawyer. Like many among the thousands of Afghans […]

September 8, 2021 BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Luiz Fux said on Wednesday that encouraging people to disobey the court’s rulings was an anti-democratic act, rebuffing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro a day after he said he would not obey the decisions of a member of the court. “The Supreme Court will not […]

September 8, 2021 By Nelson Renteria SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) -El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele stepped in on Wednesday to closely manage the fraught roll-out of a payments app that underpins the nation’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, and called on users to report any problems on his Twitter feed. Adopting language similar to IT […]

September 8, 2021 PARIS (Reuters) – Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Wednesday she would nationalise French motorways and privatise public television and radio channels if she wins the 2022 presidential election. Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 election, is gearing up for her third presidential bid next spring. She […]

September 8, 2021 LONDON (Reuters) – British lawmakers backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to raise taxes in a parliamentary vote on Wednesday, clearing the way to direct more funds into the country’s creaking health and social care system. Johnson had angered some members of his governing party by breaking election promises not to increase […]

September 8, 2021 By Simon Evans (Reuters) – International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach said on Wednesday that the organisation had helped around 100 members of the “Olympic community” in Afghanistan to leave the country on humanitarian visas. The rescue efforts, which began after the Tokyo Games and before the Taliban took control of […]

September 8, 2021 ZURICH (Reuters) – Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi finished a frustrating season on a high with another impressive victory over 5,000 metres on a temporary city-centre track in the opening session of the two-day Diamond League final on Wednesday. For the third time in two weeks Niyonsaba outkicked Kenya’s Tokyo Olympics silver medallist […]

September 8, 2021 By Christoph Steitz FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Activist fund ENKRAFT has taken a stake in RWE and is calling for a separation of the company’s brown coal activities to remove the burden of a legacy business that has weighed on the value of shares in Germany’s largest power producer. ENKRAFT, which has a […]

September 8, 2021 By Laura Sanicola NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil rose more than 1% on Wednesday as U.S. Gulf of Mexico producers made slow progress in restoring output after Hurricane Ida. Brent was up 89 cents, or 1.2%, at $72.58 a barrel at 2:02 p.m. EDT (1802 GMT), and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) […]

September 8, 2021 By Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. economy “downshifted slightly” in August as the renewed surge of the coronavirus hit dining, travel and tourism, the Federal Reserve reported Wednesday, but the economy overall remained in the throes of a post-pandemic rush of rising prices, labor shortages and stilted hiring. […]