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The Brazilian state of Minas Gerais is hoping to win at least 28 billion reais ($5.3 billion) from a compensation deal with miner Vale SA after the 2019 Brumadinho deadly dam burst, a senior state official said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. State and Vale officials will meet on Thursday, when it is expected talks on compensation will begin, ahead of a court-mediated hearing expected in January, said state secretary general Mateus Simões. “The idea is that we end the text discussion tomorrow and start the value discussion,” he told Reuters.
The New York Stock Exchange said on Wednesday that it will delist three Chinese telecom companies, confirming its latest reversal on the matter a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the NYSE chief he disagreed with an earlier decision to reverse the delistings, Reuters reported. The latest move, which is effective Jan. 11, marks the third time in less than a week the Big Board has ruled on the matter. The flip-flopping highlights the confusion over which firms were included in an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in November barring U.S.
Digital services taxes adopted by India, Italy and Turkey discriminate against U.S. companies and are inconsistent with international tax principles, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Wednesday, paving the way for potential retaliatory tariffs, Reuters reported.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, admitted on Tuesday that his efforts to rebuild the country’s moribund economy have failed, as he opened his country’s biggest political event amid deepening economic trouble caused by the one-two punch of international sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Times reported. “Our five-year economic development plan has fallen greatly short of its goals in almost all sectors,” Mr. Kim said in his opening speech to the ruling Workers’ Party’s eighth congress that began in Pyongyang, the capital, on Tuesday. Mr.
Qatar’s neighbors agreed Tuesday at a regional summit to set aside festering differences that had caused a destabilizing break among the U.S. allies and undermined a pressure campaign on Iran, but sidestepped efforts to resolve the sources of their repeated rifts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt will reopen their airspace to Qatari jets, restore diplomatic ties with Doha and reverse all other actions taken since they cut relations in 2017.
DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc. says that 1.54 million cars and trucks were sold in Canada in 2020, falling 19.7 per cent from 2019 to the lowest level since 2009, the Canadian Press reported. The consultancy says auto sales fell 2.6 per cent in December 2020 from the same month in 2019, leaving dealers in the midst of the steepest annual decline since 1982. But it also says that it could have been worse, given sales plummeted 75 per cent for the month of April at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Thailand's government says it is tightening restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus as the country logged another 527 new cases, the Associated Press reported. Officials said Tuesday that foreign migrant workers accounted for 439 of the new infections, while 82 were Thais infected locally and another six were new arrivals from abroad who tested positive in quarantine centers. Thailand on Monday reported 745 infections, the most since the pandemic began.
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German retail sales rose in November and jobless numbers fell last month, against forecasts that both readings would worsen, suggesting that parts of Europe’s largest economy have weathered the impact of the coronavirus unexpectedly well, Reuters reported. Retail sales rose 1.9% in November, when markets had anticipated a contraction, the Federal Statistics Office said on Tuesday, adding that it expected sales to have grown around 4% during 2020 as a whole - exceeding 2019’s 3.2% expansion.
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Even before Covid-19, the World Bank had lowered its projections for global growth in the 10 years that began in 2020. The pandemic is exacerbating that trend, raising the prospect of a “lost decade” ahead, the World Bank said Tuesday, as it also cut its forecasts for the coming year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bank’s semiannual Global Economic Prospects report attributes the long-term downgrade to lower trade and investment caused by uncertainty over the pandemic, along with disruptions in education that will hamper gains in labor productivity.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro installed a new National Assembly filled with regime loyalists, consolidating his power over key institutions in the crisis-torn nation despite mounting U.S. sanctions, Bloomberg News reported. Lawmakers on Tuesday elected former Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez as the new president of the legislative body.