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  • China to Impose up to 42.7% Provisional Tariffs on EU Dairy Products

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    HONG KONG (AP) — China will impose up to 42.7% of provisional tariffs on dairy products including milk and cheese imported from the European Union, its Commerce Ministry said Monday.

    The elevated duties, which take effect Tuesday, were based on preliminary results from an investigation opened by China’s Commerce Ministry in August 2024 as tensions between Beijing and Brussels flared. Beijing reviewed subsidies provided by EU countries for their dairy and other farm products.

    Beijing’s probe was launched as part of tit-for-tat measures as the EU investigated Chinese subsidies on electric vehicles, and later imposed tariffs as high as 45.3% on China-made EVs.

    China had initiated other probes into European brandy and pork imports as counter measures for the EU’s tariffs on Chinese EVs. It had also urged the EU to scrap its EV tariffs.

    The temporary duties on EU dairy imports will range from 21.9% to 42.7%, according to the Commerce Ministry, and will cover a basket of dairy products, including fresh and processed cheese, blue cheese, milk, and cream with a fat content exceeding 10% by weight.

    The ministry said preliminary findings from its investigation determined that subsidies provided by the EU and EU member states for their dairy products had damaged China’s dairy industry.

    Beijing’s probe into EU dairy products covered subsidies given under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and subsidies offered to farmers by EU countries including Italy, Ireland and Finland, the Commerce Ministry said in August 2024.

    China’s relationship with the EU is fractious, with the Chinese trade surplus with the EU recently coming into the spotlight. The EU runs a significant trade deficit with China, at more than 300 billion euros ($352 billion) last year.

    Last week, Beijing announced it was imposing up to 19.8% tariffs on EU pork imports — significantly lower than preliminary tariffs of up to 62.4%.

    It accused the EU of dumping pork and pig by-products in the country, selling them at cheap prices which in turn harmed its domestic pork industry.

    In July, Beijing also announced up to 34.9% tariffs on brandy imported from the EU — including cognac from France — although several major brandy brands had received exemptions.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • WSJ’s Parent Firm on Trial in Hong Kong, Accused of Dismissing Reporter Over Union Role

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    HONG KONG (AP) — A former Hong Kong reporter at the Wall Street Journal began testifying Monday against the newspaper she accused of terminating her due to her union activities in a trial — a closely watched case that has raised concerns about press freedom in the city.

    Former WSJ reporter Selina Cheng, also chairperson of the trade union Hong Kong Journalists Association, launched a private prosecution against her ex-employer, Dow Jones Publishing Co. (Asia) Inc., the parent company of the Journal, after losing her job in July 2024.

    At that time, Cheng said she believed that the termination was linked to her refusal to comply with her former supervisor’s request to withdraw from the election for the union role, instead of the news outlet’s restructuring, as she was told.

    Dow Jones faces two charges under the city’s Employment Ordinance. The company pleaded not guilty to both charges, each of which carries a maximum fine of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $12,850).


    Two charges faced by newspaper

    The first charge alleges the company had prevented or deterred an employee from exercising union participation rights. The second alleges the company had terminated employment, penalized, or discriminated against an employee for exercising those rights.

    Before Cheng’s testimony, Dow Jones representative Benson Tsoi last week accused her of abusing the criminal process and acting in bad faith when seeking to get the court to admit certain email exchanges. Tsoi highlighted emails showing Cheng had demanded 3 million Hong Kong dollars ($385,500) as settlement or reinstatement with a formal apology.

    Tsoi said while Cheng had told the Labor Tribunal she didn’t intend to settle out of court, the emails showed she had pressed for mediation with the company.

    Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 after some 150 years under British control, was once considered a bastion of press freedom in Asia. Yet despite the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution which guarantees its Western-style civil liberties to be kept intact under a “one country, two systems” approach, the ability of the media to operate there has seen drastic changes.


    Media environment in Hong Kong has faltered

    Lai was convicted under the security law last Monday, facing up to life in prison. While the government insists his case has nothing to do with press freedom, rights groups expressed concerns. Amnesty International said the conviction “feels like the death knell for press freedom in Hong Kong.”

    Two former editors at Stand News were also convicted in August 2024, the first journalists found guilty of sedition under a separate law since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule.

    Cheng’s termination alarmed many journalists who are already operating in an increasingly restricted media environment in the city, where foreign outlets have traditionally faced less pressure than local news outlets.

    Hong Kong ranked 140th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • San Francisco Outages Leaves 130,000 Without Power

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    A massive outage knocked out power to 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco on Saturday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said.

    The power failure left a large swath of the northern part of the city in the dark, beginning with the Richmond and Presidio neighborhoods and areas around Golden Gate Park in the early afternoon and growing in size.

    PG&E did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cause of the blackouts. The outage represents roughly one-third of the utility company’s customers in the city.

    Social media posts and local media reported mass closures of restaurants and shops and darkened street lights and Christmas decorations.

    The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said on X there were “significant transit disruptions” happening citywide and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops.

    The city’s transportation agencies said they were bypassing some Muni bus and BART train stations because of the power outages.

    At least some of the blackouts were caused by a fire that broke out inside a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets, fire officials posted on X at about 3:15 p.m.

    At about 4 p.m., PG&E posted on X that it had stabilized the power grid and was not expecting additional customer outages. The company said it was unable to confirm if power would be restored by later Saturday.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • South Dakota Hotel Owner Found Liable for Discrimination Against Native Americans

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    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The owner of a South Dakota hotel who said Native Americans were banned from the establishment was found liable for discrimination against Native Americans on Friday.

    A federal jury decided the owner of the Grand Gateway Hotel in Rapid City will pay tens of thousands of dollars in damages to various plaintiffs who were denied service at the hotel. The jury awarded $1 to the NDN Collective, the Indigenous advocacy group that filed the lawsuit.

    The group brought the class-action civil rights lawsuit against Retsel Corporation, the company that owns the hotel, in 2022. The case was delayed when the company filed for bankruptcy in September 2024. The head of the company, Connie Uhre, passed away this September.

    “This was never about money. We sued for one dollar,” said Wizipan Garriott, president of NDN Collective and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. “It was about being on record for the discrimination that happened, and using this as an opportunity to be able to really call out racism.”

    Uhre posted on social media in March 2022 that she would ban Native Americans from the property after a fatal shooting at the hotel involving two teenagers whom police identified as Native American. She wrote in a Facebook post that she cannot “allow a Native American to enter our business including Cheers,” the hotel’s bar and casino.

    When Native American members of the NDN Collective tried to book a room at the hotel after her social media posts, they were turned away. The incident drew protests in Rapid City and condemnation from the mayor as well as tribes in the state.

    In Friday’s decision, the jury also ruled in Retsel’s countersuit against NDN Collective that the group had acted as a nuisance in its protests against the hotel, awarding $812 to the company.

    The Associated Press reached out to the defense attorneys for comment.

    Rapid City, a gateway to Mount Rushmore, has long seen racial tensions. At least 8% of the city’s population of about 80,000 identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, according to census data.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • CNBC Daily Open: Investors might not want to take U.S. inflation numbers in November at face value

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    A food shopper browses for groceries ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday at an Albertsons supermarket in Redmond, Washington, U.S., November 24, 2025.

    David Ryder | Reuters

    The U.S. inflation numbers in November looked supremely encouraging, with the annual headline rate coming in 0.4 percentage points less than expected. But don’t get too happy about them yet.

    It’s the first consumer price report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the U.S. government shutdown ended: October’s figures vanished into the void because the agency was “unable to retroactively collect these data.”

    The BLS added that November’s CPI “did not include 1-month percent changes for November 2025 where the October 2025 data are missing.” It also said that certain survey data were “carried forward to October 2025 from September 2025.”

    Evercore ISI’s Krishna Guha said it appears the BLS “put in zero inflation in multiple categories” when calculating housing inflation in some cities.

    In other words, it’s a noisy report. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell once described setting interest rates as “navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.” With November’s CPI report, the stars aren’t just obscured by clouds — they could be mirages, unidentified flying objects, a seagull that picked up an LED light from the beach.

    Nonetheless, investors celebrated the numbers. The CPI report, along with a 10.2% surge in Micron shares on the back of an expectation-busting earnings report, lifted major indexes.

    Perhaps it’s the holidays suffusing the air with unbridled cheer. Or maybe it’s all rather like having a feast during Christmas — the calories only count in the new year.

    — CNBC’s Sean Conlon contributed to this report.

    What you need to know today

    And finally…

    The Bank of England (BOE) in the City of London, UK, on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025.

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  • Research Reports & Trade Ideas – Yahoo Finance

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    The Argus Dividend Growth Model Portfolio

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    Technical Assessment: Bullish in the Intermediate-Term

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    Analyst Report: CMS Energy Corporation

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  • Asian Shares Slip After Wall Street Logs Its Worst Day in 3 Weeks

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    BANGKOK (AP) — Shares fell Monday in Asia as China reported investment fell in November in the latest signal that demand in the world’s second largest economy remains weak. The retreat followed a dismal end to last week, when declines for superstar artificial-intelligence stocks knocked Wall Street off its record heights

    Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index shed 1.5% to 50,092.10, as investors wait to see if the Bank of Japan will raise its benchmark interest rate as expected this week.

    The BOJ’s quarterly “tankan” survey of big manufacturers, released Monday, showed a slight improvement in sentiment among such businesses. The measure of those expressing optimism rose to 15 from 14 in the last quarter, the highest level in four years, the central bank said.

    The index shows the percentage of companies reporting positive conditions minus the percentage reporting unfavorable ones. While the overall survey showed improvement, forecasts for the next quarter were less positive.

    Japan’s economy contracted at a 2.3% annual pace in the July-September quarter, the first such decline in six quarters. An agreement between Japan and the U.S. over the level of President Donald Trump’s higher tariffs, limiting baseline import duties to 15%, has helped to reduce uncertainty for big automakers and electronics companies.

    Analysts said the stronger results may sway the BOJ toward pressing ahead with a 0.25 percentage point rate hike that will take the key rate to 0.75%.

    The Kospi in South Korea dropped 1.2%, to 4,117.68.

    In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng declined 0.7% to 25,786.45. The Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% higher, however, to 3,892.45.

    China reported Monday that investment in fixed assets such as factory equipment and other infrastructure fell 2.6% in November from a year earlier, implying that such investments dropped 11.1% year-on-year in the first 11 months of the year.

    Retail sales rose 4% in January-November from a year earlier, while factory output climbed 4.8%, the government said.

    The latest data followed a high-level meeting of China’s Communist Party leadership last week that yielded no major policy shifts, and a pledge to continue to try to boost consumer spending and investment needed to drive higher domestic demand.

    “Policy support should help drive a partial recovery in the coming months, but this probably won’t prevent China’s growth from remaining weak across 2026 as a whole,” Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a commentary.

    Elsewhere in the region, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.7% to 8,640.60 and Taiwan’s benchmark lost 1.1%.

    The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.3%.

    On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 1.1% from its all-time high for its worst day in three weeks, closing at 6,827.41. The weakness for tech stocks yanked the Nasdaq composite down by a market-leading 1.7%, to 23,195.17.

    The Dow gave back 0.5% to 48,458.05.

    AI heavyweight Broadcom dragged the market lower and tumbled 11.4% even though the chip company reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Analysts called the performance solid, and CEO Hock Tan said strong 74% growth in AI semiconductor revenue helped lead the way.

    The drop added to worries about the AI boom that flared a day before, when Oracle plunged nearly 11% despite likewise reporting a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

    Chip maker Nvidia fell 3.3%, while Oracle fell another 4.5%.

    Stocks of companies that depend on spending by U.S. consumers were relatively strong Friday, as two out of every five stocks within the S&P 500 rose. Oil prices eased this week, which could help ease people’s bills, and

    In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 30 cents to $57.74 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 29 cents to $61.41 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 155.37 Japanese yen from 155.75 yen late Friday. The euro was unchanged at $1.1739.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Reddit Challenges Australia’s World-First Law Banning Children Under 16 From Social Media

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    MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Global online forum Reddit on Friday filed a court challenge to Australia’s world-first law that bans Australian children younger than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s most popular social media platforms.

    California-based Reddit Inc.’s suit filed in the High Court follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.

    Both suits claim the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.

    “We believe there are more effective ways for the Australian government to accomplish our shared goal of protecting youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) law carries some serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet,” Reddit said in a statement.

    “While we agree with the importance of protecting people under 16, this law has the unfortunate effect of forcing intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors, isolating teens from the ability to engage in age-appropriate community experiences (including political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which aren’t,” Reddit added.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government declined to comment on the merits of Reddit’s challenge.

    “The Albanese government is on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms,” a government statement said.

    “We will stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media. The matter is before the courts so it is not appropriate to comment further,” the statement added.

    Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) from Wednesday if they fail to take reasonable steps to remove the accounts of Australian children younger than 16.

    Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the law’s enforcer, sent compulsory information notices to the 10 age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding data on how many accounts of young children they had deactivated since the law took effect on Wednesday.

    Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms might have been waiting to receive their first notice or their first fine for noncompliance before mounting a legal challenge.

    ESafety will send six monthly notices to gauge how effectively the platforms are complying.

    Despite the court challenge, Reddit said it would comply with the law and would continue to engage with eSafety.

    The platforms’ age-verification options were to ask for copies of identification documents, use a third party to apply age-estimation technology to analyze an account holder’s face, or make inferences from data already available, such has how long an account has been held.

    The government hasn’t told the platforms how to check ages, but has said requesting all account holders verify their ages would be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants already have sufficient personal data on most people to perform that task.

    For privacy reasons, the platforms also cannot compel users to provide government-issued identification.

    Documents filed with the court registry show Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the law is invalid.

    Alternatively, the company wants the court to prevent the government from listing Reddit among the age-restricted platforms.

    The High Court will hold a preliminary hearing in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s challenge on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is not yet clear whether the two challenges would be heard together.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Analyst Report: Royal Bank of Canada

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  • Crypto Mogul Do Kwon to Be Sentenced for Misleading Investors Who Lost Billions in Stablecoin Crash

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Cryptocurrency mogul Do Kwon is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for misleading investors who lost billions when his company’s crypto ecosystem collapsed in 2022.

    Kwon, known by some as “the cryptocurrency king,” pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in August to fraud charges stemming from Terraform Labs’ $40 billion crash.

    The company had touted its TerraUSD as a reliable “stablecoin” — a kind of currency typically pegged to stable assets to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices. But prosecutors say it was all an illusion that came crumbling down, devastating investors and triggering “a cascade of crises that swept through cryptocurrency markets.”

    Kwon, who hails from South Korea, has agreed to forfeit over $19 million as part of the plea deal.

    While federal sentencing guidelines would recommend a prison term of about 25 years, prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Kwon to 12 years. They cited his guilty plea, the fact that he faces further prosecution in Korea and that he has already served time in Montenegro while awaiting extradition.

    “Kwon’s fraud was colossal in scope, permeating virtually every facet of Terraform’s purported business,” prosecutors wrote in a recent memo to the judge. “His rampant lies left a trail of financial destruction in their wake.”

    Kwon’s attorneys asked that the sentence not exceed five years, arguing in their own memo that his conduct stemmed not from greed, but hubris and desperation.

    In a letter to the judge, Kwon wrote, “I alone am responsible for everyone’s pain. The community looked to me to know the path, and I in my hubris led them astray,” while adding, “I made misrepresentations that came from a brashness that is now a source of deep regret.”

    Authorities said investors worldwide lost money in the downfall of the Singapore crypto firm, which Kwon co-founded in 2018. Around $40 billion in market value was erased for the holders of TerraUSD and its floating sister currency, Luna, after the stablecoin plunged far below its $1 peg.

    Kwon was extradited to the U.S. from Montenegro after his March 23, 2023, arrest while traveling on a false passport in Europe.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Coca-Cola Names a Company Veteran as Its New CEO

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    Coca-Cola said Wednesday that its chief operating officer will become its next CEO in the first quarter of 2026.

    The Atlanta beverage giant said its board elected Henrique Braun as CEO effective March 31. James Quincey, Coke’s current chairman and CEO, will transition to executive chairman of the company.

    Braun, 57, has worked at Coca-Cola for three decades. Prior to assuming the COO role earlier this year, he led operations in Brazil, Latin America, Greater China and South Korea. He has held positions overseeing Coke’s supply chain, new business development, marketing, innovation, general management and bottling operations.

    Braun was born in California and raised in Brazil. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from the University Federal of Rio de Janeiro, a master of science degree from Michigan State University and an MBA from Georgia State University.

    David Weinberg, Coca-Cola’s lead independent director, called Quincey, 60, a “transformative leader” who will continue to remain active in the business.

    During Quincey’s nine years as CEO, Coke added more than 10 additional billion-dollar brands, including BodyArmor and Fairlife. He also brought Coke into the alcoholic drink market with Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, which went on sale in 2021.

    In 2020, Quincey led a restructuring that reduced Coke’s brands by half and laid off thousands of employees. Quincey said Coke wanted to streamline its structure and focus its investments on fast-growing products like its Simply and Minute Maid juices.

    But as Quincey steps down as CEO, Coke is facing numerous challenges, including tepid demand for its products in the U.S. and Europe and increasing customer scrutiny of its ingredients. This summer, after a nudge from President Donald Trump, Coke said it would release a version of its trademark Cola with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

    Weinberg said the board is confident that Braun will build on the company’s strengths and seek out growth opportunities globally.

    Coke shares were flat in after-market trading.

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  • Trump Says Venezuela’s Airspace Should Be Viewed as Closed. It’s Not Clear What That Means

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    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday said that the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered as “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the U.S. pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

    The White House did not respond to questions about what Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, and it was unclear whether he was announcing a new policy or simply reinforcing the messaging around his campaign against Maduro, which has involved multiple strikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean on small boats accused of ferrying drugs as well as a buildup of naval forces in the region. More than 80 people have been killed in such strikes since early September.

    The Republican president addressed his call for an aerial blockade to “Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers,” rather than to Maduro. International airlines last week began to cancel flights to Venezuela after the Federal Aviation Administration told pilots to be cautious flying around the country because of heightened military activity.

    The FAA’s jurisdiction is generally limited to the United States and its territories. The agency does routinely warn pilots about the dangers of flying over areas with ongoing conflicts or military activity around the globe, as it did earlier this month with Venezuela. The FAA works with other countries and the International Civil Aviation Organization on international issues. The FAA and ICAO did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.

    Trump’s administration has sought to ratchet up pressure on Maduro. The U.S. government does not view Maduro as the legitimate leader of the oil-rich but increasingly impoverished South American nation and he faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.

    U.S. forces have conducted bomber flights near Venezuela and the USS Gerald R. Ford, America’s most advanced aircraft carrier, was sent to the area. The Ford rounds off the largest buildup of U.S. firepower in the region in generations. With its arrival, the “Operation Southern Spear” mission includes nearly a dozen Navy ships and about 12,000 sailors and Marines.

    Trump’s team has weighed both military and nonmilitary options with Venezuela, including covert action by the CIA.

    Trump has publicly floated the idea of talking to Maduro. The New York Times reported Friday that Trump and Maduro had spoken. The White House declined to answer questions about the conversation.

    Associated Press writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

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    Technical Assessment: Bullish in the Intermediate-Term

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