SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s consumer prices rose more than expected in June to hit the fastest pace in nearly 24 years, government data showed on Tuesday. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 6.0% in June from a year before, speeding up from a 5.4% rise in the previous month and exceeding 5.9% tipped in a Reuters poll. It was the fastest annual rise since November 1998 and stood above the central bank’s 2% target for a 15th consecutive month. The index rose 0.6% on a monthly basis, compared with a 0.5% rise seen in the survey. (Reporting by Jihoon Lee; Editing by Kim Coghill) Source link

(Reuters) – U.S. WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner has made a direct plea to President Joe Biden to stand up for her in an emotional letter sent to the White House on Monday as she remains detained in Russia on drug charges. Griner, who was held at a Moscow airport on Feb. 17 when a search of her luggage allegedly revealed multiple cannabis oil vape cartridges, went on trial on Friday and could face up to 10 years in a Russian jail. The case takes place against a backdrop of high tension between Moscow and Washington over the conflict in Ukraine. U.S. officials say Griner has been detained wrongfully. “As I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the ...

Center-left President Alberto Fernandez tapped Silvina Batakis to replace Guzman on Sunday, with the new minister seen as closer to Fernandez de Kirchner and her advocacy for more public spending and other interventionist economic policies. Batakis was sworn in on Monday and quickly moved to calm markets. “I believe in fiscal balance and I think we have to move in that direction,” she said. During her stint as president, Fernandez de Kirchner pushed higher export taxes on agricultural goods plus other measures to safeguard domestic supply. Argentina is a top global exporter of soybeans, corn and wheat. Export taxes on corn and wheat stand at 12%, but the government has left open the ...

WELLINGTON – New Zealand’s business confidence continued to worsen in the second quarter of this year as companies grappled with increased costs and higher interest rates, a private think tank said on Tuesday. A net 65% of firms surveyed expected general business conditions to deteriorate compared with 40% pessimism in the previous quarter, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s (NZIER) quarterly survey of business opinion (QSBO) showed. It added that business confidence is now at its lowest level since the first quarter of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared. (Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Josie Kao) Source link

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – A woman in El Salvador has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide in a controversial case in which authorities argued she had killed her baby after giving birth, while her defenders said she had suffered a miscarriage. Salvadoran authorities said the woman carried her baby to near-full term and gave birth in June 2020. After having the baby, she stabbed it in the neck six times, they said. The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, a feminist non-governmental organization that defended the woman, said in a report on Monday that she had suffered a miscarriage in the bathroom of her home while five months pregnant. Morena ...

(Reuters) – McKesson Corp, AmerisourceBergen Corp and Cardinal Health Inc are not responsible for fueling an opioid epidemic in a part of West Virginia, a federal judge ruled on Monday. The decision from U.S. District Judge David Faber came in a $2.5 billion case brought by the city of Huntington and Cabell County, which sought to hold the three largest U.S. drug distributors responsible for surging opioid prescriptions in their communities. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Source link

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is proposing a new law that will require social media companies to proactively tackle disinformation posted by foreign states such as Russia, the government said on Monday. The law would tackle fake accounts on platforms such as Meta’s Facebook and Twitter that were set up on behalf of foreign states to influence elections or court proceedings, the government said. The law is likely to be passed during this parliamentary session through an amendment to link the National Security Bill and Online Safety Bill, both of which are in the government’s current programme. Communications regulator Ofcom will draw up codes of practice to help social media companies ...

LONDON (Reuters) – British police said on Monday that they had charged a 19-year-old man with possession of explosives and terrorism offences, following his arrest on June 27 in northwest England. Vaughn Conrad John Dolphin, who lived in Walsall in central England, will appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday to face the charges, West Midlands Police said. The charges included possession of explosive material and manuals on how to make improvised explosives and firearms, as well as sharing material online that encouraged acts of terrorism, the police force said. In February, Britain’s security services lowered their assessment of the threat posed by terrorism to ...

TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisia has bought eight military training aircrafts from the United States as part of a plan to renew the air force’s training aircraft fleet, the defense ministry said in a statement on Monday. A deal was signed between the U.S. government and Textron Aviation Defense to provide Tunisia with the training aircrafts, it added. The first batch of the new aircrafts is expected to be delivered during March 2023 and the delivery will be completed by October 2026, the statement said. The bulk of the deal financing will be through the American grant and Tunisia will pay the rest, it added. (Reporting by tarek Amara; writing by Mahmoud Mourad; editing by Lisa Shumaker) ...

(Reuters) – Ukraine is holding talks with Turkey and the United Nations to secure guarantees for grain exports from Ukrainian ports, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday. “Talks are in fact going on now with Turkey and the U.N. (and) our representatives who are responsible for the security of the grain that leaves our ports,” Zelenskiy told a news conference alongside Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. “This is a very important thing that someone guarantees the security of ships for this or that country – apart from Russia, which we do not trust. We therefore need security for those ships which will come here to load foodstuffs.” Zelenskiy said Ukraine was working ...

OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) – Armed assailants killed at least 22 civilians in northwest Burkina Faso on Monday, a local official said, the latest deadly attack in an area marred by militant activity. The attackers raided a rural commune in the province of Kossi, around 55 kilometres from the border with Mali, in the hours between late Sunday night and early Monday morning, regional governor Babo Pierre Bassinga said in a statement. “The provisional death toll of this terrorist attack is 22 dead, several wounded and material damage,” it said. Military forces have been deployed to the scene and measures are in place host those who fled to nearby cities, the statement added. Burkina Faso has ...

By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland’s reliance on just 10 multinational firms to pay over half of the country’s soaring corporate tax receipts represents an “incredible level of vulnerability” for the economy, the finance ministry’s chief economist warned on Monday. Corporate receipts, mostly generated from big multinationals attracted to Ireland by its low corporate tax rate, have surged in recent years and made up almost a quarter of all tax revenues in the first half of 2022 after a 53% year-on-year jump. The finance ministry said this meant that 1 in every 8 euros collected by the state comes from “an exceptionally small number of firms” and that a shock which impacted on ...