News Syndicates

SINGAPORE/LONDON—The dollar regained ground on Monday, partly recovering from a knee-jerk reaction to Friday data showing U.S. job gains were the smallest in two-and-a-half years, while disappointing inflation figures in China weighed on the yuan and proxies. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major peers, was up 0.15 percent at 102.44 having tumbled 0.87 percent...

Victorian homeowners will be hit with the heaviest property tax in Australia from the 2023-2024 financial year onward as the state Labor government carries out its COVID-19 debt repayment plan. According to a new report by the Victorian Parliamentary Budget Office, Victorians will need to pay an estimated property tax (land transfer duty plus land tax) of $2,000 (US$1,336) per person...

Roy Herron, a longtime Tennessee state lawmaker and former chairperson of the state Democratic Party, died Sunday from injuries sustained in a jet ski accident. He was 69. Herron died at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, according to a statement from his family. He had been hospitalized since a July 1 collision with another jet ski on Kentucky Lake, in...

Commentary You have to wonder whether Australia’s federal and state Labor governments are trying to drive private landlords out of the residential market. It would be perverse behaviour when Australia has a housing rental and home ownership crisis, but the only alternative explanation is incompetence. In the first place, they’ve set the country up for housing failure. Net migration over...

A Bank of England (BoE) digital pound will be a “complete restructure” of the current financial system and can give the government more control on how people use their money, a financial analyst warns. Some 130 countries are exploring a central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to the Atlantic Council. The Bank of England (BoE) and the Treasury are currently considering...

WASHINGTON—Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Sunday he would take steps to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status if he won the 2024 White House race. “I favor doing that. I think we probably need Congress but I would take executive action as appropriate to be able to move us in that direction,” Mr. DeSantis...

Commentary Progressive California Gov. Hiram Johnson’s initiative system has justified itself again. Look at the political establishment’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision ending affirmative action at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, with national application. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta and others have rejected that decision, contradicting what their own voters indicated,...

RUTLAND, Vt.—A Vermont burglary suspect who led police on a high-speed chase and crashed his truck into two police cruisers, killing a 19-year-old officer and injuring two others, will be arraigned Monday on charges related to the crash, state police said. Tate Rheaume, 20, is facing charges of grossly negligent operation and attempting to elude, both with death resulting. Additional...

LONDON, UK—President Joe Biden kicks off his 5-day trip to Europe with the first stop in the United Kingdom, where he will meet King Charles III at Windsor Castle and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Mr. Biden will then join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit on July 11–12 in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital. During the two-day summit, NATO leaders will...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that a U.S. recession is still “not completely off the table” in the near future, but she claimed the country is on the right path in bringing down decades-high inflation. “It’s not completely off the table,” Ms. Yellen told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday about a possible recession after the Department of Labor’s...

Apple will permanently delete a photo album from iPhones in about two weeks and has stopped uploading pictures to it, the company confirmed. My Photo Stream is an iCloud service that originally launched in 2011. What the service does is temporarily uploads photos taken on a device so they can be seen on another device with My Photo Stream enabled....

MINNEAPOLIS—Minnesota officials discovered an error in a $3 billion tax cut bill lawmakers passed this spring that could cost taxpayers $352 million over the next two years, but state leaders promised to fix it before it would take effect. The head of the Minnesota Revenue Department Paul Marquart told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Friday that his staff caught the...

On July 4, 11 federal agencies and dozens of their officials were legally blocked from further interaction with more than 20 social media companies about the censoring of information deemed by the government as misinformation. Communication about criminal activity, national security threats, attempted foreign influence, cyberattacks, illegal campaign contributions, and voter suppression are exempt from the ban. The preliminary injunction...

Commentary U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen’s goal in Beijing is to explain President Joe Biden’s China policy, which has shifted a great deal. Prior to the beginning of the administration, it was widely believed that Mr. Biden would repeal the Trump-era tariffs and take a softer stance on China. In reality, he appointed a number of people who are no friends...

Last week, talks between the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union and UPS broke down twice—once as June drew to an end and the Teamsters walked from the table demanding that UPS present their “last, best, and final offer,” and again on July 5 with both parties pushing the blame. Contracts for the 330,000-plus UPS delivery drivers and warehouse logistics workers...

U.S. home mortgage rates soared towards 7 percent this week, pushing away many potential home buyers as affordability pressures for some pushed home ownership further out of reach. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage hit 7.22 percent on July 6, reaching its highest point since November, according data published by to Mortgage News Daily. Freddie Mac’s report showed...

A tribal chief with links to the Native American nation that originally inhabited the land in Vermont where Ben & Jerry’s is headquartered said he’s interested in getting the land back after the ice cream company called for the return of “stolen” lands. Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of The Coosuk Abenaki Nation, which is descended from the nation...

The first-in-the-nation GOP caucus has officially been scheduled after Iowa Republicans gathered Saturday to vote unanimously on the date. “The Republican Party of Iowa is proud to announce that we will officially hold our 2024 First-in-the-Nation Caucus on January 15, 2024,” Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Republican Party of Iowa, said in a statement. Like in past primary cycles, the...

Commentary Will Canada ever learn from its own mistakes? The years of apologies and reparations for the historical mistreatment of Canadian immigrants during times of war appear to have been forgotten as we quietly allow prejudice to form around Russian Canadians. Canada has a rich history of inviting and welcoming immigrants from all parts of the world. Festivals are held...

“The government narrative is still that people do not die after COVID-19 vaccination. And now we have the largest series of autopsies. And the autopsies really are incontrovertible,” says Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist. We discuss the paper he co-wrote, which did a systematic review of autopsies after COVID-19 vaccination that were published in the peer-reviewed literature...