ROME (Reuters) – Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession. "We hope that this government will finally start listening to us because we are losing our patience," said Enzo [...]
By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan plan brokered in the House of Representatives will be tougher on illegal immigrants living in the United States than a Senate counterpart, congressional aides said on Friday. But it fails to address the difficult issue of how many low-skilled foreign workers should be allowed into the country. [...]
By Kaori Kaneko TOKYO (Reuters) – The latest tranche of Japan’s growth strategy will aim to triple infrastructure exports and double farm exports by 2020, as well as boost private investment, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday. The government will set a target for domestic private-sector investment of 70 trillion yen ($687 billion) annually, [...]
By Xola Potelwa RUSTENBURG, South Africa (Reuters) – The leader of South Africa’s biggest platinum mining union threatened on Friday to bring Africa’s No. 1 economy "to a standstill" and demanded a meeting with President Jacob Zuma, ramping up the rhetoric in an 18-month labor crisis. The rand, which tumbled to a four-year low against [...]
By Roberta Rampton and Mark Felsenthal BALTIMORE (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday sought to turn the spotlight from controversies threatening to swamp his agenda back to his top priority – the economy – and announced he will try to cut in half the time it takes to get federal approval for large job-creating [...]
By Richard Cowan and Rachelle Younglai WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prospects for passage of a major immigration bill improved on Thursday when a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives declared they had reached a tentative deal, resolving disputes that had threatened to torpedo negotiations. The breakthrough came at the end of a two-hour [...]
By Jason Lange WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy showed fresh signs of slower growth in the second quarter, with factory activity slipping in the mid-Atlantic region while groundbreaking declined at home construction sites. Other data on Thursday showed a spike in new claims for jobless benefits last week as well as soft underlying inflation [...]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits climbed last week at the fastest pace in six months, a worrisome sign for the economy which has been hit by government austerity. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped by 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 360,000, the Labor Department said on [...]
By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Sherilee Lakmidas JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Miners at South Africa’s Anglo American Platinum reported for work late Thursday, and a labor leader said the workers will strike on Friday in an escalation of unrest that sent the company’s shares lower and the rand to a four-year low. The threatened action is to [...]
By John Lloyd (Reuters) – A new era has arrived in immigration. Many countries – the United States, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands – have for decades taken in poor immigrants with the express intention that they would do work that native citizens had become reluctant to do. The labor was either too hard, [...]
