The two recent hurricanes that hit the United States raised inflation and puzzled analysts tracking job losses in Texas and Florida. Experts say the impact on the huge economy is “limited.” Thursday’s report from the Labor Department says overall unemployment claims declined 14,000 over the past week, after jumping by …

A large influx of immigrants and refugees certainly helps boost the population of a region. But they can also have social and economic impacts. The northern part of Columbus, Ohio – an abandoned wasteland in the early 2000s – has been revitalized thanks to the new Americans. VOA’s June Soh …

Illicit evasion and a thriving black market continue to mitigate the impact of sanctions intended to deprive North Korea of billions of dollars in revenue and needed components for its nuclear program. The latest round of United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea this week for conducting its sixth nuclear …

Vietnamese police have widened their investigation into alleged graft and mismanagement connected with the state-owned oil and gas giant PetroVietnam that caused $69 million in losses.  Three PetroVietnam subsidiaries are being investigated for alleged abuse of power in appropriating $5.3 million, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement …

President Donald Trump has blocked the acquisition of a U.S. computer chip manufacturer by a Chinese company, calling it a threat to national security. The Chinese-owned Canyon Bridge Fund has sought to take over Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor Corp. The U.S. Treasury Department, acting under Trump’s orders, said Wednesday it is …

As Congress looks into ways to fix the immigration system, often with the goal of safeguarding job opportunities for U.S. workers, at least one immigration organization argues that current federal regulations fail to protect foreign visa holders from job misrepresentation, recruitment fees, exploitation, fraud and discrimination. Four women who came …

Pittsburgh, once a dynamo of heavy industry, will soon become home to the United States’ largest urban farm, part of what advocates say is a trend to transform former manufacturing cities into green gardens. The Hilltop Urban Farm will open in 2019, consisting of 23 acres (9 hectares) of farmland …

Leaders of Cameroon’s indigenous forest peoples say their survival is at risk if they are further deprived of access to the lands that are the source of their livelihoods. Speaking in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, indigenous representatives said they had experienced increasingly serious violations of their land rights by palm oil …

Gambia is negotiating deals with three private companies to crack down on rampant illegal fishing in its territorial waters, a senior official with the fisheries ministry told Reuters. Made possible by poor monitoring capacity and, in some cases, corrupt local officials, illegal fishing costs West Africa’s coastal nations about $2.3 …

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman on Wednesday said the government was committed to implementing reforms backed by the International Monetary Fund, following a meeting with IMF first deputy managing director David Lipton. Ukraine has so far received $8.4 billion from the IMF, helping it to recover from a two-year recession …

Tanzania’s government has been cracking down on irregularities in the mining sector, most recently confiscating diamonds worth $15 million from British company Petra Diamonds, accusing it of devaluing exports. And in July, the government demanded gold miner Acacia pay $190 billion in what it asserted were unpaid taxes, saying the …

Amazon.com Inc. is preparing to open a 1 million square-foot warehouse near Mexico City, sources familiar with the project said, part of an effort to boost its presence in Mexico’s nascent e-commerce industry. The new warehouse is slated to be built in the Tepotzotlan municipality about 25 miles (40 km) …

In this upper Midwestern state known for dairy, beer and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, ginseng growers want to make sure that the bitter root also gets its due. So they’ve organized the first International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival. Set for Friday through Sunday in this mid-state river town, it will feature the root’s …

Facing a backlash in Europe over palm oil’s environmental toll, the world’s top producers are scrambling to find new markets and even striking unusual barter deals, such as exchanging Sukhoi jets for the edible oil. The European Union is the second-largest palm oil export destination after India for both Malaysia …

Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and General Motors are among hundreds of companies calculating how much they spend on carbon emissions to show investors they are concerned about global warming, a study said on Tuesday. More than 700 other businesses around the world plan by 2018 to introduce so-called carbon pricing, …

Roughly one year ago, Denise Wallace, executive co-director of the Miss Minnesota USA pageant, received a phone call from 19-year-old Halima Aden asking if she could compete in the contest wearing her hijab. “Her photo popped up and I remember distinctly going, ‘Wow, she is beautiful,’” Wallace said. The Somali-American …

Protesters in Haiti damaged commercial buildings in the capital city and set cars on fire Tuesday, angered by government tax hikes that come at a time when foreign aid is declining. The Port-au-Prince protest, called by former presidential candidate Jean-Charles Moise, took many by surprise and represents the biggest outcry …

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday cast doubt on President Donald Trump’s goal of cutting the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, even as the president moved to inject new urgency into a sluggish effort in Congress to lower taxes. “Ideally, he’d like to get it down to 15 …

Lawmakers from 19 states are trying to develop a plan in Arizona this week for carrying out a growing, but unlikely, national effort to amend the Constitution to require a balanced U.S. budget, a long-held goal of conservatives who believe out-of-control spending is harming the nation. The plan is to …

Syria’s government signed a contract with an Iranian company on Tuesday to import five gas-fired power plants to the war-battered city of Aleppo, in an early sign of the major role Tehran is expected to play in Syria’s reconstruction. The deal, reported by Syria’s state news agency SANA, is part …

Tens of thousands of luxury projects were on display at a premier global property show in Dubai on Monday, but missing from the glittering mock-ups and pipeline of home dreams being rolled out were more affordable housing projects for the Middle East’s large and burgeoning population of young and aspiring …

In the United States, family incomes are up, the poverty rate is down, and the number of people covered by health insurance has improved. Experts at the Census Bureau published the data Tuesday, and it shows the median household income rose 3.2 percent between 2015 and 2016, hitting $59,039. That …

The Wisconsin Senate was poised to approve nearly $3 billion in cash payments for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group on Tuesday, an unprecedented incentive package for the electronics company to locate a flat-screen factory in the state. The proposed subsidy would be the largest ever from a U.S. state to a …

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said at the end of a two-day visit to Algeria Monday that his country and the North African nation were working to achieve “equitable” oil prices.   Maduro said his talks with Algeria’s second-ranking official, Council of the Nation President Abdelkader Bensalah, had a “good climate.” …

International watchdog group Global Witness says powerful political elites and security forces have controlled and secretly exploited Zimbabwe’s diamond sector for a decade. Zimbabwe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organization and the military are among the state actors accused of holding stakes in private diamond enterprises, trading the country’s precious stones on …