With a cigarette in one hand and a muddy machete in the other, Brazilian grandmother Maria Nobre de Oliveira thinks high-end chocolate will help end the epidemic of deforestation ravaging Amazon communities like hers. Her community of a few dozen residents live in hand-built wooden houses with no electricity or …

A new report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) says getting more women into the world labor market would add trillions of dollars to the global economy and boost tax revenues.  According to the report, the ILO World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends for Women 2017, just more than 49 …

Migrants are sending home billions of dollars more than they did a decade ago – and the rate of growth in remittances is almost double the increase in migration, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday. The report commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development says that  remittances increased …

The sanctions imposed by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states on Qatar have been a blessing for Mohammed Kuwari and his al-Rawa brand of yoghurt. With competing Saudi products off the shelves, his business is booming. “Our sales doubled! There’s lots of production as you can see and we have …

Wind and solar accounted for more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity generation for the first time in March, the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. Wind and solar power capacity has been growing in the United States, accounting for an average of up to 7 percent of …

Top officials of the U.S. central bank raised the benchmark interest rate slightly Wednesday, as the recovering economy no longer seems to need quite as much of the boost it gets from ultra-low rates. The Federal Reserve raised its short-term rate a quarter of a percent, to a range between …

China’s three big Internet-driven companies, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, are set to influence a vast section of the country’s business because they control data concerning the consumer and social behavior of millions of people. The awesome power comes from the government’s drive to develop a “big data” industry, which is thriving in China. …

Panama’s business community on Tuesday cheered the Central American country’s decision to establish full diplomatic ties with China and ditch Taiwan, hoping to deepen links with a key customer of the nation’s shipping canal. Although there was regret at the cost to Taiwan, an ally of various Central American nations, …

Mexico’s ancient civilizations cultivated crops such as maize, tomatoes and chilies for thousands of years before the Spanish conquerors arrived — and now those native plants could hold the key to sustainable food production as climate change bites, said a leading ecologist. José Sarukhán Kermez, who helped set up Mexico’s …

With a record-breaking 26.5 million people going hungry in the Horn of Africa, development banks are increasing their humanitarian funding to fill a gap left by traditional donors, a high-level mission said on Tuesday. Food rations for 7.8 million Ethiopians are due to run out in July due to funding …

Sheltering under planks on his boat moored at a waterside slum in Lagos, fisherman Thomson Pascal is trying to protect his six children from the rain flooding into what is now their new home. He is one of 30,000 residents who have been living in boats, shacks or in the …

The World Bank on Tuesday approved financing worth more than $500 million for Afghanistan to support a string of projects to boost the economy, help improve service delivery in five cities and support Afghan refugees sent back from Pakistan. The bank said the six grants, including donor money, worth some …

The World Bank on Tuesday approved a $500 million loan to support Tunisia’s budget, a government official for the North African country said on Tuesday. The funding followed the release by the International Monetary Fund of a delayed $320-million tranche of Tunisia’s IMF loan, after the government agreed to speed …

The United States is weighing imposing sanctions on countries that do business with North Korea and looking for ways to revive strained relations with Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Tuesday. At a committee hearing, he also defended President Donald Trump’s plans for steep reductions in U.S. …

Market demand for the dirtiest of fossil fuels is plummeting worldwide, according to industry data published Tuesday, even as President Donald Trump has made reviving the long-struggling U.S. coal mines the bedrock of his administration’s energy policy. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy shows global coal production fell by …

Uber’s embattled CEO Travis Kalanick announced Tuesday that he is taking a leave of absence from the company for an unspecified amount of time. He made the announcement to employees over email saying he needed to mourn the loss of his mother, who died in a boating accident last month. …

Top officials of the U.S. central bank are gathered in Washington, debating how soon and how much to raise short-term interest rates, with a formal decision expected Wednesday.  PNC Bank Chief Economist Gus Faucher tells VOA that a healthy labor market and some wage growth make it a near certainty …

It’s the end of an internet era. Yahoo, an iconic early adapter of the World Wide Web, is now part of Verizon Communications, after a $4.48 billion deal was finalized Tuesday for Yahoo’s core internet operations. The remainder of Yahoo will be called Atlaba Inc., which will serve as a …

The Trump administration is proposing to curb the authority of the consumer finance watchdog created following the economic crisis as it drives toward easing restrictions on banks and financial institutions. The Treasury Department issued Monday the first part of a review that was ordered by President Donald Trump in one …

Britain’s descent into political crisis just days before Brexit talks begin has sapped confidence among business leaders and infuriated bosses who were already grappling with the fallout from the vote to leave the EU. The failure by Prime Minister Theresa May to win a parliamentary majority in last week’s election …

The Trump administration has a backup plan to keep the government from defaulting on its financial obligations even if Congress misses an August deadline to raise the debt limit, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told a congressional panel Monday. Mnuchin had previously set an August deadline for the federal government to …

Israel will reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Authority limited how much it pays for power to the enclave run by Hamas, Israeli officials said Monday. The decision by Israel’s security cabinet is expected to shorten by 45 minutes the daily average of four hours of …

Work longer hours. Get fewer benefits. Retire years later. Those are the ingredients of the bitter medicine Brazilians are being asked to swallow as a cure for the country’s moribund, overregulated economy. It would be a tough sell under any conditions, but it’s even harder because few trust the politicians …

A drop in global cocoa prices threatens to undermine efforts to stamp out child labor in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s two biggest growers, as falling incomes could force farmers to send their children to work, charities said on Monday. More than two million children are estimated to work …

Poland warned on Monday against rising protectionism in Europe after a decisive victory for French President Emmanuel Macron’s party in the first round of parliamentary elections. Macron has called for a “protection agenda” for the European Union that includes a “Buy European Act” and regulations to prevent strategic companies from …