A proposal by the U.S. Senate to change the way shares in startup companies are taxed incited panic and dread in Silicon Valley on Monday, with startup founders and investors warning of nothing less than the demise of their industry should the proposal become law. The provision in the Senate’s tax reform plan, which appeared…
read moreAttorney General Jeff Sessions returns to Capitol Hill this week amid growing evidence of contacts between Russians and associates of President Donald Trump, bracing for an onslaught of lawmaker questions about how much he knew of that outreach during last year’s White House campaign. The appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday follows a…
read moreGeneral Electric’s new Chief Executive John Flannery on Monday outlined steps that will turn the biggest U.S. industrial conglomerate into a smaller, more focused company, surprising some investors who sold the company’s shares to a five-year low. Flannery’s plan to shrink GE’s multi-industry array of businesses was a reversal of the deal-driven empire building of…
read moreNorth Korea warned Monday that the unprecedented deployment of three U.S. aircraft carrier groups “taking up a strike posture” around the Korean peninsula is making it impossible to predict when nuclear war will break out. North Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Ja Song Nam, said in a letter to Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres that the joint military exercises…
read morePresident Donald Trump’s son has released a series of private messages from WikiLeaks’ Twitter account sent to him during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. Donald Trump Jr.’s release of the messages came hours after The Atlantic magazine, which obtained the string of messages, first reported them. As he released them, he appeared to downplay…
read moreU.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, where he is likely to face questions about his directive for senior federal prosecutors to examine whether it is appropriate to open investigations into a number of issues raised by Republican lawmakers. Committee chairman Rep. Robert Goodlatte, asked Sessions in July and September…
read moreMexico’s government is preparing a macroeconomic response in case U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on threats to quit the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an event which could wreak havoc on the Mexican economy and hurt the peso. Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Monday the government and central bank were preparing…
read morePromoted as needed relief for the middle class, the Senate Republican tax overhaul would increase taxes for some 13.8 million moderate-income American households, a bipartisan analysis showed Monday. The assessment by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation emerged as the Senate’s tax-writing committee began wading through the measure, working toward the first major revamp of…
read moreForeign investors walked a red carpet at a state palace Monday eager to hear strategies for reorganizing Venezuela’s billions in debt, but they left minutes later having learned no concrete plans to address the country’s financial crisis. Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who headed the talks, used much of his time to rail against…
read moreThe federal government began its new budget year with an October deficit of $63.2 billion, up sharply from a year ago. The Treasury Department reported Monday that the October deficit was 37.9 percent higher than the $45.8 billion deficit recorded in October 2016. Both government receipts and spending were up for the month, with receipts…
read morePresident Donald Trump is wrapping up 12-day, five-nation tour of Asia dominated by talks on the North Korea nuclear threat and bolstering trade. After talks in Manila on Monday with the prime ministers of Australia and Japan, Trump promised to make a “major statement” on North Korea and trade when he returns to Washington this…
read moreThe next World Economic Forum of world leaders and CEOs in Davos will be chaired by women including International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and IBM’s chief executive Ginni Rometty. The seven co-chairs for the four-day event in January were announced in the face of criticism that the conference has…
read moreThe top Republican in the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Monday that Alabama Republican Roy Moore should end his Senate candidacy in the wake of allegations he had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl four decades ago when he was a 32-year-old local prosecutor. McConnell previously said Moore should end his candidacy if…
read moreHate crimes in the United States rose moderately last year, with hate-motivated incidents against several target groups, including Arabs, Muslims and transgender people, showing sharper increases, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI’s annual hate crime statistics, released Monday, showed there were 6,121 hate crime incidents in 2016, up 4.6 percent from…
read moreU.S. President Donald Trump has nominated former pharmaceutical executive Alex Azar to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, he would fill the post that has been vacant since Tom Price resigned in September for chartering expensive planes at government expense, rather than taking cheaper commercial flights Trump, in a tweet…
read moreAlabama Republican candidate Roy Moore is rebuffing a growing number of calls for him to abandon his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in the wake of allegations he had sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl four decades ago when he was a local prosecutor in his early 30s. Moore told political supporters Sunday that…
read morePresident Donald Trump: Late in last year’s presidential campaign, a secretly recorded tape surfaced of a 2005 conversation in which Trump lewdly described abusive treatment of women. He said as a star, “You can do anything,” adding, “Grab them by the p—-. You can do anything.” He was elected president a month later. Rep.…
read moreThe European Union has approved economic sanctions, including an arms embargo on Venezuela. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels announced the measures on Monday in response to regional elections last month, which they say worsened the country’s crisis. The weapons ban is intended to prevent the government of President Nicolas Maduro from purchasing military equipment…
read moreFlying drones are nothing new in the skies, but online retailers have been investing in them as a way to deliver goods faster and to those in hard-to-reach rural areas. But the automation doesn’t stop there. Arash Arabasadi reports. …
read moreWhile climate change is being discussed this week in Germany, it’s being felt by farmers and ranchers around the world. But it’s hitting subsistence farmers in places like Uganda particularly hard. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …
read moreAllegations of sexual misconduct against a Republican Senate candidate have thrown the party into chaos at a critical time – as Republicans make a major push to overhaul America’s tax code and as President Donald Trump concludes a marathon Asia trip. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, many Republican lawmakers are denouncing or distancing themselves from firebrand…
read moreVenezuela’s foreign debt renegotiation committee will meet with creditors at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Monday at the government’s “White Palace” in downtown Caracas, the finance minister said on Saturday. “Once again, we invite investors to register their participation in this meeting,” Simon Zerpa, who is also the finance boss of state oil company PDVSA…
read more