Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. producer prices unexpectedly fell in July amid a drop in the cost for energy products, and underlying producer inflation appears to be on a downward trend.
The producer price index for final demand declined 0.5% last month after climbing 1.0% in June, the Labor Department said on Thursday. In the 12 months through July, the PPI increased 9.8% after advancing 11.3% in June.
There was a drop of 1.8% in goods prices. They gained 2.3% in June.
WASHINGTON, Aug 11(Reuters) - A former Virginia police sergeant who joined Donald Trump's supporters in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be sentenced to up to eight years in prison on Thursday if a judge agrees with federal prosecutors' recommendation.
A jury in April convicted Thomas Robertson, a former police sergeant for the town of Rocky Mount, Virginia, of six criminal charges, including obstructing an official proceeding and obstruction of justice.
Eight years would be the longest sentence handed down so far in a Capitol riot case, if U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper agrees with prosecutors, who say that Robertson abused his position of trust as a law enforcement officer.
BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Daimler Truck (DTGGe.DE) will keep prices high even if certain costs begin to fall in order to compensate for lower margins since last year, the truckmaker said on Thursday, forecasting demand will remain strong into 2023 despite fears of recession.
Energy prices, bottlenecks in China and chip shortages will continue to weigh in the second half of this year, chief executive Martin Daum said, even though the company expects some supply chain issues to ease.
"Even if some costs are easing, we have to catch up for the fourth quarter of 2021 ... we will definitely keep our pricing to go back to normal margins," Daum said on a call with analysts.
- We spoke to women across the U.S. about their experience receiving an abortion before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women's constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that will dramatically change life for millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a deeply polarized country.
Aug 11 (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose for the second straight week, indicating further softening in the labor market despite still tight conditions as the Federal Reserve tries to slow demand to help tame inflation.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 262,000 for the week ended Aug. 6, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 263,000 applications for the latest week.
That's still below the 270,000-300,000 range that economists say would signal a material slowdown in the labor market.
- Chancellor speaks at annual summer press conferenceVows tax relief to those struggling with high inflationDenies impropriety in 'cum-ex' scandalSays G7 proposal on oil price cap needs wider supportDoes not expect social unrest due to high prices
BERLIN, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Acquiring a majority stake in T-Mobile U.S. is a priority for Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) chief executive Timotheus Hoettgas, he said on Thursday after the telecoms operator published its second-quarter results.
"This is our most important strategic project at present," Hoettgas said.
Deutsche Telekom currently holds a 48.4% stake in the company. This should increase to more than 50% in the medium term, he said.
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - China's war games around Taiwan have led Biden administration officials to recalibrate their thinking on whether to scrap some tariffs or potentially impose others on Beijing, setting those options aside for now, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.
President Joe Biden's team has been wrestling for months with various ways to ease the costs of duties imposed on Chinese imports during predecessor Donald Trump's tenure, as it tries to tamp down skyrocketing inflation.
It has considered a combination of eliminating some tariffs, launching a new "Section 301" investigation into potential areas for additional tariffs, and expanding a list of tariff exclusions to aid U.S. companies that can only get certain supplies from China.
KIGALI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday he discussed with Rwandan President Paul Kagame "credible reports" that Rwanda continued to support the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Blinken said Kagame and Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi had agreed to engage in direct talks to address the fighting in eastern Congo.
The U.S. senior diplomat is on a visit to Kigali less than a week after it emerged United Nations experts had found "solid evidence" Rwanda has been interfering militarily in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda's government has disputed the U.N. findings. read more
KIGALI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday he had raised with Rwanda's president U.S. concerns over the jailing of Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed in the film "Hotel Rwanda" sheltering hundreds of people during the 1994 genocide.
Rusesabagina, 67, a U.S. permanent resident, was sentenced last September to 25 years in prison over eight terrorism charges tied to an organization opposed to President Paul Kagame's rule.
Rwanda's foreign minister Vincent Biruta said he was convicted lawfully, but Rusesabagina has denied all the charges and refused to take part in a trial that he and his supporters have called a political sham. The United States in May determined he had been wrongfully detained.
LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Decomposing food waste is releasing thousands of tonnes of planet-warming methane gas at landfills in Buenos Aires, Delhi, Mumbai, and Lahore, new research finds.
With about 570 million tonnes of the greenhouse gas emitted every year from both industrial and natural processes, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has been increasing at a record pace, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In some countries, the biggest source is agricultural fields and farm animals — particularly cows but also livestock and chickens. In the United States, the oil and gas industry is largely responsible.
- 'Monster' fire consumers nearly 7,000 hectares in FranceESA chief urges immediate action to fight climate changeSwiss army airlifts water to cows in Alpine meadowsGig-economy workers decry labour rights as temperatures soar
Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures crawled higher on Thursday, adding to strong gains from the previous session on first signs of cooling inflation, with investors looking for more evidence from data on producer prices and the labor market.
Following a softer-than-expected rise in consumer prices on Wednesday, investors slashed their bets of another super-sized interest-rate hike, driving the main indexes sharply higher.
The gains came even as Federal Reserve policymakers left no doubt they will continue to tighten monetary policy until price pressures are fully broken. read more
Aug 11 (Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc's (VZ.N) internet services appeared to be back up for most users after facing a brief disruption on Thursday, which the company said was due to a fiber cut during an overnight construction activity.
"Our engineers are aware of this issue and are onsite working with our vendor partners and local crews to resolve this issue quickly," a Verizon spokesperson said.
At the peak of the outage, more than 2,000 user reports cited issues with Verizon, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, which collates status reports from a number of sources.
GRAN CANARIA, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Standing in a cemetery of abandoned boats, Mohamed Fane picks a West African franc off the floor and shudders at the traumatic memory of his voyage from Senegal to the Canary Islands.
After an arduous overland trip and months waiting, smugglers shepherded the 33-year-old carpenter into a flimsy wooden vessel with two dozen others to sail from the Moroccan town of Dakhla - but it ran out of fuel far from the Spanish archipelago.
One famished and thirsty man died on board, while a Spanish rescue boat saved the rest. Fane, who barely ate in three days at sea and used his water bottle to bail out the leaking boat, wept like never before when he reached Gran Canaria.
LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Britain said it is considering ways to support combining electricity generated using biomass, such as wood pellets, with technology to capture and store the resulting carbon emissions.
A government consultation is looking at offering developers a guaranteed price for the electricity produced by the power plant and a price for each tonne of carbon dioxide captured.
Britain hopes technology to capture emissions at power stations and industrial factories will help it achieve its target of net zero emissions by 2050 to tackle climate change.
BEIRUT, Aug 11 (Reuters) - An armed man demanding deposits frozen by his bank took an unspecified number of hostages on Thursday at the Federal Bank of Lebanon, a security source and a Reuters witness said.
Lebanese banks have limited withdrawals of hard currency for most depositors during the country's three-year financial meltdown, which has left more than three-quarters of the population struggling.
The man entered the Federal Bank of Lebanon branch in the Hamra neighbourhood in west Beirut just before noon on Thursday with a firearm, the security source told Reuters.
TAIPEI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - China's threat of force is undiminished, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Thursday, even though Beijing's largest ever military drills around the island seemed to be scaling down.
Furious about a visit to Chinese-claimed Taiwan last week by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, China launched ballistic missiles and deployed multiple aircraft and warships in recent days to simulate sea and air attacks.
China said on Wednesday it would keep up patrols but had "completed various tasks" around Taiwan, signalling a possible end to the war games even while keeping up pressure. read more
Aug 10 (Reuters) - Illinois is rebranding an invasive carp in the hopes of encouraging people to eat it - and solving a decades-old issue that has been threatening the ecosystem of the U.S. state's waterways.
"We've launched a new name, 'copi', to help people consume this delicious fish and help us do our work in keeping them out of the waterways," said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Irons and the DNR want everyone to start calling the abundant fish formerly known as Asian carp "copi."
NAIROBI, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Two days after Kenya's general election, officials had yet to announce who is leading the presidential race in East Africa's regional powerhouse, as confused citizens struggled to make sense of divergent tallies from the media in a nail-bitingly close race.
Media houses are compiling results from images of forms that the election commission uploaded on to its website from more than 46,229 polling stations, a mammoth task that means their tallies lag far behind the amount of raw data available.
Some citizens worried the media's differing tallies could inflame claims of rigging, which have sparked violence in past elections. Many urged fellow citizens to wait for the official results.
LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Haleon - GSK's recently spun off consumer health unit - is not a party to U.S. litigation focused on the heartburn medicine Zantac, a spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday.
"We have never marketed Zantac in any form in the U.S., as Haleon or as GSK consumer healthcare," the spokesperson said, responding to Reuters queryinga near-20% decline in Haleon's share price this week.
The spokesperson said the drug has been sold by several companies since 1995 andthat "may make third parties liable ahead of any Haleon exposure."
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