By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday temporarily blocked a U.S. House of Representatives committee from gaining access to former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, effectively pausing the fight over a request from lawmakers that he claims is politically motivated.

The order from the chief justice maintains the status quo while the Supreme Court assesses Trump’s emergency request, filed on Monday, to block a lower court ruling that upheld the House panel’s request for the tax materials as a justified part of its legislative work, while his attorneys prepare an appeal.

Roberts ordered the Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee to respond to Trump’s bid by Nov. 10. That is two days after the U.S. midterm elections in which Trump’s fellow Republicans are seeking to regain control of Congress.

The legal fight has lingered since 2019 when the committee sued Trump to force disclosure of the tax returns. Trump was the first president in four decades years not to release his tax returns as he aimed to keep secret the details of his wealth and the activities of his company, the Trump Organization.

Allowing the lower court decision to stand would “undermine the separation of powers and render the office of the Presidency vulnerable to invasive information demands from political opponents in the legislative branch,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, referring to the division of authority among the three branches of the U.S. government.

The committee’s purpose is “exposing President Trump’s tax information to the public for the sake of exposure,” the lawyers added.

The committee in its request invoked a federal law that empowers its chairman to request any person’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.

House Democrats have said they need Trump’s tax returns to see if the IRS is properly auditing presidential returns and to assess whether new legislation is needed. Trump’s lawyers have called that explanation “pretextual” and “disingenuous,” saying the real aim is to unearth politically damaging information about Trump, who is considering another run for the presidency in 2024.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, sided with Congress in December 2021 and threw out the case, finding that the committee holds broad authority over a former president’s tax returns.

Trump is “wrong on the law,” McFadden wrote in his ruling.

“A long line of Supreme Court cases requires great deference to facially valid congressional inquiries. Even the special solicitude accorded former presidents does not alter the outcome,” McFadden added.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in August also ruled against Trump, concluding that “every president takes office knowing that he will be subject to the same laws as all other citizens upon leaving office.” The D.C. Circuit on Oct. 27 refused a rehearing.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Sam Nussey

TOKYO (Reuters) -Shares in Sony Group Corp leapt 9% on Wednesday morning after the entertainment conglomerate hiked its full-year profit forecast in contrast to lacklustre projections by many peers.

Sony reported that it produced more than 6.5 million PlayStation 5 (PS5) units during the second quarter ahead of the year-end shopping season, signalling that supply chain snarls that have hampered the games business are easing.

The value of inventory at Sony’s games unit surged to 412.5 billion yen ($2.79 billion) in the second quarter, versus 146.2 billion yen three months earlier.

Sony aims to sell more than 18 million PS5 units this year, Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki has said.

“PS5 production constraints have eased, and we believe (the) game segment’s operating leverage is likely to drive upside from next (quarter),” Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal wrote in a note.

Sony’s profit forecast revision was aided by a boost from exchange rate changes at units including the music business, which recorded higher sales to streaming services supported by artists such as Beyonce, whose new album was released in July.

The Japanese conglomerate also hiked the outlook for its movies and image sensor businesses citing the FX boost but noted lower sensor sales.

The yen has weakened sharply against the dollar as interest rates in the United States and Japan diverge. A weaker Japanese currency typically boosts profits earned by local companies overseas when repatriated.

($1 = 147.8800 yen)

(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

By Ricardo Brito, Brian Ellsworth and Rodrigo Viga Gaier

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday did not concede defeat in his first public remarks since losing Sunday’s election, saying protests by his supporters were the fruit of “indignation and a sense of injustice” over the vote.

However, he stopped short of contesting the election result and authorized his chief of staff, Ciro Nogueira, to begin the transition process with representatives of leftist President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

It took Bolsonaro, a right-wing nationalist, more than 44 hours to comment after the election was decided by electoral authorities, with the delay raising fears he would seek to cast doubt on the narrow result.

Amid his silence, supporters blocked highways to protest his defeat, with some calling for a military coup to stop former president Lula from returning to power.

The highway blockades have disrupted fuel distribution, supermarket supplies, and the flow of grains exports to major ports, according to industry groups.

In his brief national address, Bolsonaro joked that journalists would miss him, thanked those who voted for him and said he would abide by the constitution, which stipulates a transition of power on Jan. 1.

“The current popular movements are the fruit of indignation and a sense of injustice about the way the electoral process took place,” he said.

He said protesters should avoid destroying property or “impeding the right to come and go,” but did not tell them to return home.

“Bolsonaro has not put out this fire. He spoke to his hardcore supporters without criticizing the demonstrators on the highways,” said political risk analyst Andre Cesar at Hold Legislative Advisors in Brasilia. “He is keeping his more extremist followers mobilized.”

Karina Laurinda, 34, who took part in highway demonstrations outside of Sao Paulo, said she would keep protesting.

“Even if he says to calm down, not to react, we’re still going to react because we won’t accept a Lula government,” she said.

LULA CONTACTS

Bolsonaro’s chief of staff and Vice President Hamilton Mourao have begun to make contact with the Lula camp to discuss a transition. Other allies, including the speaker of the lower house of Congress, have called since Sunday for the Bolsonaro government to respect the election result.

In a statement, the Supreme Court said it considered that, by authorizing the government transition, Bolsonaro was recognizing the result of the election.

During a meeting later on Tuesday between Bolsonaro and several Supreme Court justices, the president acknowledged clearly that Lula had won the election, according to two of the justices who took part.

“It cleared the air, without a doubt. It seemed to turn the page,” said one of the judges, who requested anonymity to discuss the meeting frankly.

“The message was: game over,” said the other judge. “He didn’t criticize the electoral system or the courts.”

Before Sunday’s vote, Bolsonaro repeatedly made baseless claims that the electoral system was open to fraud and accused electoral authorities of favoring his leftist adversary.

Bolsonaro did not directly repeat those claims on Tuesday. But his reference to “injustice” in the electoral process showed he had learned from the post-presidency of U.S. President Donald Trump, his ideological ally, according to Leonardo Barreto, political analyst at Vector Consultancy in Brasilia.

Trump has continued to repeat false claims that the 2020 U.S. election was “stolen” by widespread fraud and retains a significant core of supporters who believe them.

“He is going to copy Trump for the next four years to keep his conservative movement alive,” said Barreto, forecasting that the 2026 election would be a rematch between Bolsonaro and Lula’s Workers Party.

Lula’s victory represents a stunning comeback for the 77-year-old former metalworker, who spent 19 months in jail for corruption convictions before they were annulled last year.

Lula has vowed to overturn many of Bolsonaro’s policies, including pro-gun measures and weak protection of the Amazon rainforest. His aides confirmed on Tuesday that he would attend this month’s COP27 United Nations climate summit in Egypt.

Lula’s centrist running mate, former Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin, will coordinate the transition, the Workers Party announced on Tuesday, with the help of party leader Gleisi Hoffmann and former Education Minister Aloizio Mercadante.

Nogueira, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, told journalists that the president had authorized him to begin the transition process with Alckmin once his name is formally submitted on Thursday.

(Reporting by Ricardo Brito, Marcela Ayres and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, and Brian Ellsworth, Nayara Figuereido and Gabriel Araujo in Sao Paulo; Editing by Brad Haynes, Alistair Bell, Rosalba O’Brien & Shri Navaratnam)

By David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon

OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Bank of Canada has not ruled out another oversized interest rate hike to fight sky-high inflation, governor Tiff Macklem said on Tuesday, acknowledging Canadians feel “ripped off” by fast rising prices.

Macklem, answering questions in the Senate’s banking, trade and economy committee, said that while the central bank is starting to see signs rate increases are slowing the economy, it is still in excess demand.

“Looking forward, we have indicated that we think interest rates need to go up and maybe that’s another bigger-than-normal step, or maybe we can go down to more normal steps,” Macklem said. “But we still think we have more to go.”

The Bank of Canada surprised markets with a smaller-than-expected 50-basis point increase last week, lifting the policy rate to 3.75%. It also forecast the economy would stall over the next three quarters.

Inflation, meanwhile, has eased to 6.9% from a peak of 8.1%, but it is still far above the central bank’s 2% target and underlying price pressures remain broad-based.

“Our mandate is price stability, we’re a long way from that mandate,” said Macklem.

“It’s been a long time since we had high inflation and we’re rediscovering that it corrodes the social fabric,” he added. “It makes people angry. People feel ripped off. And that’s one of the big problems with inflation and it’s an important reason why we got to get it back down.”

Earlier he reiterated the Bank of Canada would need still higher rates to fight stubborn inflation.

“How much further (rates rise) will depend on how monetary policy is working to slow demand, how supply challenges are resolving, and how inflation and inflation expectations are responding to this tightening cycle,” Macklem said.

“The effects of higher rates will take time to spread through the economy. … There are no easy outs to restoring price stability.”

(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon; Editing by Leslie Adler & Shri Navaratnam)

By Sheila Dang and Katie Paul

(Reuters) -In an expanding exodus of Twitter’s top management, officials including its advertising and marketing chiefs left the company in the past few days, according to statements and a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The departures come after billionaire Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the company last week, followed by his firing of CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, Reuters reported, citing sources.

Sarah Personette, who was chief customer officer and ad boss, tweeted on Tuesday that she resigned last week, adding to advertisers’ uncertainty over how the social media company will change under Musk.

Chief People and Diversity Officer Dalana Brand announced on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post that she had resigned last week as well. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell confirmed his departure on Twitter, changing his profile bio to “former Twitter exec” by Monday night.

Chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, Twitter’s head of product Jay Sullivan, and its vice president of global sales, Jean-Philippe Maheu, have also left, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. It was not immediately clear whether they quit or were asked to leave.

Berland tweeted a blue heart but did not give details.

Caldwell declined further comment. The other five did not respond to requests for comment.

Multiple employees who spoke with Reuters said they continue to receive little communication about the future of the company. An all-staff meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday was canceled, following the cancellation by Twitter of a check-in call last week.

Musk’s team is meeting with advertisers this week in New York, as the company’s increasingly skittish customers raise alarms about the potential for harmful content to appear next to their ads.

Hateful content has skyrocketed since Musk closed the deal. Use of the n-word has increased by nearly 500% on Twitter, said the Network Contagion Research Institute, which identifies “cyber-social threats.”

A coalition of more than 40 advocacy organizations including the NAACP and Free Press sent an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers on Tuesday, asking them to pull their ads if Musk guts content moderation on the platform.

Mediabrands, a unit of ad holding company IPG, has advised its clients to pause advertising on Twitter for the next week until the company gives more details about its plans to protect trust and safety on the platform, according to a source familiar with the matter.

IPG works with major advertisers like Coca-Cola.

Musk has attempted to reassure advertisers. “Twitter’s commitment to brand safety is unchanged,” he tweeted on Monday.

He previously said he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former President Donald Trump, who was kicked off because of concerns he could incite further violence after the U.S. Capitol riot last year.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Sayantani Ghosh and Leslie Adler)

ABU DHABI (Reuters) -The United States and United Arab Emirates have reached an agreement to spend $100 billion on clean energy projects with a goal of adding 100 gigawatts globally by 2035, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

The two governments signed a memorandum of understanding in Abu Dhabi setting out the framework of the deal, Blinken said in a statement.

“This memorandum of understanding is an important step forward in our joint efforts to accelerate our collective movement toward clean energy,” Blinken said.

Under the initiative, the UAE, an OPEC oil producer, and the United States would provide technical, project management and funding assistance for commercially and environmentally sustainable energy projects in other countries.

“Together, we will spur large-scale investment in new energy technologies, in our own countries, around the world and in emerging economies,” U.S. energy envoy Amos Hochstein said in a separate statement carried on the WAM state news agency.

The statement said the partnership would “assemble and stimulate” private and public sector funding and support for clean energy innovation, carbon and methane management, advanced reactors including small modular reactors, and industrial and transport decarbonisation.

“The energy transition needs a realistic, practical and economically viable plan to deliver climate progress together with energy security and inclusive economic growth,” Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Special Envoy for Climate Change, said in the statement.

The initiative will also focus on investing in responsible and resilient supply chains, promoting investment in green mining as well as production of minerals and materials vital to the energy transition.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Lina Najem and Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Louise Heavens, Mark Potter & Shri Navaratnam)

By Choonsik Yoo

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea’s annual consumer inflation in October ticked up from September against market expectations for no change, led by lagging effects of earlier global raw materials prices, government data showed on Wednesday.

Both the finance ministry and the central bank played down the accelerated pace of prices growth in separate statements and affirmed their previous projections that inflation would stay elevated for some time.

The consumer price index (CPI) rose 5.7% in October from a year earlier, according to the Statistics Korea data. The rate had slowed in September to 5.6% from 5.7% in August, compared with a near 24-year high of 6.3% in July.

The median forecast in a Reuters survey of economists was for the annual CPI growth to be 5.6% in October, although five of the 11 economists polled predicted higher rates.

“This is in line with our view that inflation has passed its peak, and I think the Bank of Korea will pay more attention to credit market conditions and the U.S. policy prospects,” said Park Sang-hyun, economist at HI Investment & Securities.

The country’s central bank, which has raised the policy interest rate by a combined 250 basis points since the middle of last year from record-low 0.5%, next meets on Nov. 24 to set the rate.

The Bank of Korea said in a statement issued after an internal meeting of officials that it expected inflation would stay at the 5% level through the first quarter of next year, though the level of uncertainty was high.

The CPI rose 0.3% in October on a monthly basis, the same rate as in September and higher than a 0.2% gain seen in the survey.

Core inflation, which strips volatile foods and energy prices, ticked up to 4.2% in October on an annual basis from 4.1% in September to mark the fastest since December 2008.

(Reporting by Choonsik Yoo; Additional reporting by Cynthia Kim; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Lincoln Feast)

By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) – The cost of fresh food in British shops last month was 13.3% higher than a year earlier, the biggest annual increase in records going back to 2005, the British Retail Consortium said on Wednesday.

The BRC, a trade body, said its broader measure of shop price inflation picked up to 6.6% in October from 5.7%, while food prices overall rose 11.6%, as the cost of less perishable foodstuffs rose more slowly than prices for fresh items.

“It has been a difficult month for consumers who not only faced an increase in their energy bills, but also a more expensive shopping basket,” BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said.

Britain’s official measure of consumer price inflation – which covers a wide range of goods and services including soaring energy bills – returned to a 40-year high of 10.1% last month, and the Bank of England expects it will peak this month at nearly 11%.

Outsize rises in the cost of food have come under particularly close attention, and some anti-poverty and anti-obesity charities have reported that shoppers are turning to more calorific processed foods to save money.

The BRC said retailers were under pressure from rising energy bills, staff costs and commodity prices, and urged the government to freeze a planned 800 million pound rise in business property taxes, which shops would pass on to customers.

“While some supply chain costs are beginning to fall, this is more than offset by the cost of energy, meaning a difficult time ahead for retailers and households alike,” Dickinson said.

(Reporting by David Milliken)

By Maayan Lubell and James Mackenzie

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared well placed to return to power as exit polls following Tuesday’s election showed his right-wing bloc heading for a narrow majority lifted by a strong showing from his far-right allies.

Israel’s longest-serving premier, on trial over corruption charges which he denies, was poised to take a narrow majority of 61 or 62 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, according to Israeli television exit polls.

“It’s a good start,” Netanyahu, 73, said in a video broadcast by Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11, but added that exit polls were not the real count.

A final result is not expected until later in the week, and wrangling broke out immediately with Netanyahu’s Likud party warning of possible attempts to falsify the results.

Israel’s fifth election in less than four years exasperated many voters, but turnout was reported at the highest levels since 2015.

The campaign was shaken up by firebrand West Bank settler Itamar Ben-Gvir and his ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism list, now poised to be the third-largest party in parliament after surging in from the political margins.

“The time has come that we go back to being in charge of our country!” Ben-Gvir said in a speech punctuated by chants of “Death to Terrorists” from hundreds of cheering supporters.

Netanyahu’s record 12-year consecutive reign ended in June 2021 when centrist Yair Lapid and his coalition partner Naftali Bennett managed to stitch together an alliance that included an Arab party for the first time.

Security on the streets and soaring prices topped the list of voter concerns in a campaign triggered by defections from Prime Minister Lapid’s unlikely ruling coalition of right-wing, liberal and Arab parties.

“NO PEACE PARTNER”

The campaign was dominated by the outsized personality of Netanyahu, whose legal battles have fed the stalemate blocking Israel’s political system since he was indicted on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges in 2019.

Lapid’s camp was poised to take 54-55 seats, with his There Is a Future party coming in second-largest in parliament, according to the polls.

Speaking to supporters at his party headquarters, Lapid stopped short of conceding the election and said he will wait until the final results were in.

“We have no intention to stop,” Lapid said. “We will continue to fight for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic, liberal and progressive state.”

He campaigned on his stewardship of the economy as well as diplomatic advances with countries including Lebanon and Turkey. But it was not enough to stop the right.

The result, however, left Netanyahu depending on support from Ben-Gvir and fellow far-right leader Bezalel Smotrich, who have moderated some extreme anti-Arab positions but still call for anyone deemed disloyal to Israel to be expelled.

The prospect of a government including Ben-Gvir, a former member of Kach, a group on Israeli and U.S. terrorist watchlists, and who was once convicted for racist incitement, risks alarming allies including Washington.

It also reinforced Palestinian scepticism that a political solution to the conflict was likely after a campaign which unrolled against a backdrop of increasing violence in the occupied West Bank, with near-daily raids and clashes.

“The election results proved what we already know, that we have no peace partner in Israel,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement.

The outcome could be affected by whether or not Balad, a small Arab party, gets over the threshold for entry into parliament, which could shake up the distribution of seats and potentially thwart Netanyahu.

The Central Elections Committee said it had found no sign of any manipulation and said there was no basis to rumours of supposed fraud.

(Additional reporting by Emily Rose, Ari Rabinovitch, James Mackenzie, Henriette Chacar, Ali Sawafta, Nidal Al-Mughrabi; Editing by Howard Goller and Leslie Adler)