By Julie Ingwersen

CHICAGO (Reuters) -U.S. wheat futures jumped 6%, hitting a two-week high, and corn rose 1.6% on Monday as Russia’s withdrawal from a Black Sea export agreement raised concerns over global supplies.

Soybeans followed the trend, with the most-active January contract setting a one-month top.

Chicago Board of Trade December wheat settled up 53 cents at $8.82-1/4 per bushel after reaching $8.93-1/4, the contract’s highest since Oct. 14.

Benchmark CBOT wheat futures hit a record high of $13.63-1/2 a bushel in March.

CBOT December corn ended up 10-3/4 cents at $6.91-1/2 a bushel and January soybeans finished up 19-1/4 cents at $14.19-1/2 a bushel.

“The grain and oilseed markets rose sharply overnight, led by wheat, as food shortage fears rise again after Russia pulls out of the Black Sea trade agreement,” StoneX chief commodities economist Arlan Suderman said in a client note.

Moscow suspended its participation in the Black Sea deal on Saturday in response to what it called a major Ukrainian drone attack on its fleet in Russia-annexed Crimea.

Ships carrying grain sailed from Ukrainian ports on Monday, suggesting Moscow had stopped short of reimposing a blockade.

But shipments could be interrupted again, not least if insurers stop underwriting them. Lloyd’s of London insurer Ascot is suspending writing cover for new shipments using the Ukrainian grains corridor in the Black Sea until it has more clarity about the situation there, a senior official said.

Russia’s moves overshadowed market pressure from a firmer dollar, which tends to make U.S. grains less competitive globally, and hedge-related pressure from the ongoing Midwest harvest.

After the close of the CBOT, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 28% of the newly-seeded U.S. winter wheat crop in good to excellent condition, below analyst expectations and the lowest for this time of year in USDA records dating to 1987.

The USDA said the U.S. soybean harvest was 88% complete, ahead of the five-year average of 78%, and the corn harvest was 76% complete, ahead of the five-year average of 64%.

In South America, roadblocks in at least 12 Brazilian states by truckers who support outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro could affect agricultural exports in one of the world’s top food producers, according to the head of a key state farm lobby.

(Additional reporting by Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Sybille de La Hamaide in Paris; editing by David Evans and Leslie Adler)

By Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump’s real estate company cheated tax authorities for 15 years, a prosecutor said on Monday in her opening statement in the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial, while defense lawyers countered that the company’s longtime chief financial officer had acted for his own benefit.

The company paid certain executives – including former CFO Allen Weisselberg – in perks such as rent and cars without reporting those benefits to tax authorities, and falsely reported bonuses as non-employee compensation, said prosecutor Susan Hoffinger of the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“This case is about greed and cheating, cheating on taxes,” Hoffinger said. “The scheme was conducted, directed and authorized at the highest levels of the accounting department at the company.”

The case is one of several legal troubles facing the 76-year-old Trump as he considers another bid for the presidency after losing in 2020.

Trump has not been charged in the case.

Weisselberg, who has worked for Trump for nearly half a century, in August pleaded guilty to avoiding taxes on $1.76 million in personal income and agreed to testify at trial as part of a plea deal for him to receive a sentence of five months in jail. He paid back nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest, Hoffinger said.

Both Trump Organization units charged – the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation – have pleaded not guilty. Their lawyers argued on Monday that Weisselberg was not acting on the company’s behalf.

“Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg,” Michael van der Veen, a lawyer for the Trump Payroll Corporation, said in his opening statement. “Greed made him cheat on his taxes, hide his deeds from his employer, and betray the trust built over nearly 50 years.”

Hoffinger said Weisselberg was “a prime beneficiary” of the scheme. But she said he acted as a Trump Organization executive, and that the company benefited by keeping top executives happy and saving on taxes.

Hoffinger said Trump paid for the private-school tuition of Weisselberg’s grandchildren, adding that the jury would see checks signed by Trump himself as evidence.

Van der Veen sought to shift blame to accounting firm Mazars, which handled the company’s and Weisselberg’s tax returns.

Mazars did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In February, the firm dropped the Trump Organization as a client and said financial statements it prepared for the company from 2011 through 2020 should no longer be relied on.

FIRST WITNESS

If convicted, the Trump Organization – which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world – could face $1.6 million in fines. It could also further complicate the real estate firm’s ability to do business.

The trial is expected to last over a month. Twelve jurors must reach a unanimous verdict for conviction on each count of tax fraud, scheming to defraud, and falsifying business records.

She said that when Trump was elected president in late 2016, Weisselberg and the company “had to clean up these fraudulent tax practices” due to concerns about additional scrutiny. The companies stopped paying for its employees’ unreported personal expenses, and Weisselberg began paying his grandchildren’s tuition himself, Hoffinger said.

Susan Necheles, a lawyer for the Trump Corporation, said it was Weisselberg – not the company – who wanted to clean things up.

The prosecution’s first witness, Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney, testified that Weisselberg received a portion of his compensation as non-employee bonuses until a certain point.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked him if it stopped around the time Trump was elected.

“I think coincidentally it was,” said McConney, who was granted immunity from prosecution because he testified before the grand jury that indicted Weisselberg and the companies.

“Did you say coincidentally?” Steinglass replied. McConney, who prosecutors see as a hostile witness, said yes.

Weisselberg stepped down as CFO when he was indicted but remained on the payroll as a senior adviser. After his guilty plea, he continued to be paid but was put on leave.

The case is separate from a $250 million civil lawsuit filed by New York’s attorney general against Trump, three of his adult children and his company in September, accusing them of lying to banks and insurers by overvaluing his real estate assets and Trump’s net worth.

Trump also faces a federal criminal investigation into the removal of government documents from the White House when he left office last year.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen in New YorkEditing by Noeleen Walder, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks lost ground on Monday, with the major indexes closing out a strong month of gains on a weaker foot, as investor focus turned to the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week.

The central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by 75 basis points on Wednesday at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting, but investors will look for any signals the Fed may be considering a deceleration in interest rate hikes in the future.

Hopes the Fed may pull back from its aggressive interest rate hike policy have lifted equities in recent weeks, with the S&P 500 notching a gain of nearly 9% over the past two weeks. The Dow booked its biggest monthly percentage gain since January 1976 and biggest October percentage gain since at least 1900.

Comments from Fed officials after the policy decision as well as labor market data later this week will help shape market expectations for future hikes starting at the December meeting.

“It is pretty much a foregone conclusion, it has been almost a 100% probability for at least three weeks now that it would be three-quarters of a point and very little chance that it is going to be more or less than that, but there is always apprehension on the part of everyone just waiting for that to be done,” said Randy Frederick, managing director, trading and derivatives, Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

“People are going to be digesting what is said on Wednesday about what happens on Dec. 14. My hope is that would be a quarter point. In reality, it is probably going to be half a point, but even that would be a very positive sign for the market.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 128.85 points, or 0.39%, to 32,732.95, the S&P 500 lost 29.08 points, or 0.75%, to 3,871.98 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 114.31 points, or 1.03%, to 10,988.15.

For the month, the Dow jumped 13.95%, the S&P climbed 7.99% and the Nasdaq advanced 3.9%.

  Apple Inc lost 1.54% after a Reuters report said production of its iPhones could slump by as much as 30% next month due to tightening COVID-19 curbs in China.

Megacap growth names such as Amazon.com and Google-owner Alphabet which have been under pressure in the rising rate environment, were also lower, down 0.94% and 1.85%, respectively.

Nearly all 11 S&P 500 sectors fell, with technology and communication services the worst performers with declines of more than 1%. Energy was the sole advancer ahead of remarks on oil companies by U.S. President Joe Biden later on Monday.

Energy companies such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil handily beaten profit estimates this quarter, benefiting from surging energy prices, in contrast to Big Tech firms that have largely disappointed investors.

“Dividend stocks, energy, stuff that is short duration, industrials … that is what is working,” said Eric Diton, president and managing director at The Wealth Alliance in Boca Raton, Florida.

With around half of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported their quarterly results so far, third-quarter earnings growth estimates stands at 4%, according to Refintiv data, slightly lower than the 4.1% last week.

Global Payments Inc slumped 8.82% after the company forecast full-year revenue below estimates.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.53 billion shares, compared with the 11.52 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.29-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.22-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 24 new 52-week highs and 8 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 137 new highs and 113 new lows.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

By Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan spent a record $42.8 billion on currency intervention in October to prop up the yen, the finance ministry said, with investors keen for clues about how much more the authorities might step in to soften the yen’s sharp fall.

The 6.3499 trillion yen ($42.8 billion) was broadly in line with the estimates of Tokyo money market brokers who thought Japan had likely spent up to 6.4 trillion yen over two consecutive trading days of unannounced interventions.

A steep drop in the yen to a 32-year low of 151.94 to the dollar on Oct. 21 likely triggered the intervention, followed by another one on Oct. 24.

However, the amount was nearly double the 2.8 trillion yen Tokyo spent last month in its first yen-buying and dollar-selling intervention in more than two decades. The latest intervention records were registered from Sept. 29 to Oct. 27.

The interventions helped to trigger an immediate drop in the dollar of more than 7 yen on Oct. 21, and another dollar fall to the yen by around 5 yen on Oct. 24 albeit temporarily.

The Japanese currency has since come under renewed pressure.

“Big spending on intervention has proved effective to a degree,” said Daisaku Ueno, chief FX strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. “The way Japan stepped into the market was a little indecent though as they apparently targeted thin trade seen late Friday evening and early Monday morning.”

“This suggested that the Japanese authorities will continue to attack market players selling off the yen beyond 150 yen.”

UPBEAT DATA FOR U.S. RATE HIKES

With solid U.S. consumer spending data focusing attention on persistent inflation and dampening expectations of slower interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, while the Bank of Japan remains committed to ultra-low interest rates, the dollar was rising again late on Monday, up 1% at 148.45 yen.

Japan’s currency intervention data, comprising monthly totals released around the end of each month and daily spending released in quarterly reports, is watched closely for clues on how much more Japan might be willing to spend in its forays into the currency market.

Monday’s figures will draw additional scrutiny after the finance ministry refrained from commenting on its apparent actions in the market this month, taking a stealth approach to intervention. It confirmed last month’s yen-buying action immediately after it occurred.

But while the markets are keen to examine how much Japan is willing to commit to intervention, there is little doubt that – at least for the foreseeable future – it has sufficient resources to continue stepping into the market.

Indeed, Japan’s top currency diplomat, Masato Kanda, has said there was no limit to the authorities’ resources for conducting intervention.

Japan held roughly $1.2 trillion in foreign reserves at the end of September, the second biggest after China, about one-tenth of which are held as deposits parked with foreign central banks and the Bank for International Settlements and can be readily tapped for dollar-selling, yen-buying intervention.

Moreover, four-fifths of Japan’s total foreign reserves are held as U.S. Treasuries, bought during bouts of dollar-buying intervention at those times when the yen was surging. Those can easily be converted into cash.

Other holdings include gold, reserves at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and IMF special drawing rights (SDRs), although procuring dollar funds from these assets would take time, ministry officials say.

($1 = 148.4900 yen)

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

By Pavel Polityuk

KYIV (Reuters) – Ships carrying grain sailed from Ukrainian ports on Monday despite Moscow’s suspension of its participation in a U.N. programme to ensure the safety of such cargoes amid an unrelenting war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country would continue implementing the programme, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July and aimed at keeping the supply of food commodities to world markets flowing.

“We understand what we offer the world. We offer stability on the food production market,” Zelenskiy told a news conference.

But Moscow said it was “unacceptable” for shipping to pass through a Black Sea security corridor as Ukraine was using it to conduct military operations against Russia.

The Russian defence ministry said it could not guarantee security in the area until the Kyiv agreed not to use the route for military purposes – an accusation Ukraine denies.

However, the ministry did not say what Russia would do if ships continued to sail the route. It stressed that Russia was not withdrawing from the deal but only suspending it.

Moscow announced the suspension on Saturday after what it said was a Ukrainian drone attack on its Black Sea fleet.

Meanwhile on the 250th day of a war that has ground on since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian missiles rained down across the country. Explosions boomed out in Kyiv, sending black smoke into the sky.

Ukrainian officials said energy infrastructure was hit including at hydro-electric dams, knocking out power, heat and water supplies.

Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 44 of 50 Russian missiles. But strikes left 80% of Kyiv without running water, authorities said. Ukrainian police said 13 people were injured in the latest attacks.

“FOOD MUST FLOW”

Still, the resumption of food exports from Ukrainian ports suggested that the prospect of rising world hunger had been averted for now. International officials had feared that Moscow would reimpose a blockade on Ukrainian grain.

Earlier on Monday, Amir Abdullah, the U.N. official who coordinates the programme, said in a Tweet: “Civilian cargo ships can never be a military target or held hostage. The food must flow.”

Shortly afterwards, Ukraine confirmed that 12 ships had set sail. The 354,500 tonnes of grain they carried was the most in a day since the programme began.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, in a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, said it was very important for the grain deal to continue, the Turkish defence ministry said.

MISSILE STRIKES

Russia’s missile strikes during the Monday morning rush hour repeated a tactic it has pursued this month of targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, especially power stations.

The U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, tweeted: “Like millions of Ukrainians, our @USEmbassyKyiv team is once again taking shelter as Russia continues its callous and barbaric missile strikes on the people of Ukraine in an effort to leave the country cold and dark as we approach winter.”

For the past three weeks, Russia has attacked Ukrainian civil infrastructure using expensive long-range missiles and cheap Iranian-made “suicide drones” that fly at a target and detonate.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said 18 targets, mostly energy infrastructure, were hit in missile and drone strikes on 10 Ukrainian regions on Monday.

In Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, the strikes had caused a blackout that left trolleybus driver Ihor Polovikov stranded in his electric cable-powered vehicle.

He was fed up, he said, adding: “But nobody will give up just like that. We got used to it, it’s the ninth month. Everyone has understood that this is necessary.”

“BLACKMAILING THE WORLD”

Moscow said it was forced to pull out of the Black Sea grain shipping deal after blaming Kyiv for blasts that damaged Russian navy ships in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Saturday.

Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied it was behind the explosions that hit the Crimea base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, but says Russia’s navy is a legitimate military target. Moscow said the blasts were caused by a wave of sea and air drones.

After Russia suspended its participation in the grain shipping programme, the United States accused Russia of using food as a weapon. President Zelenskiy said Moscow was “blackmailing the world with hunger”. Russia denies that is its aim.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the U.N.-brokered deal was “hardly feasible” since Russia could no longer guarantee the safety of shipping.

Ukraine and Russia are both among the world’s largest exporters of food. For three months, the U.N.-backed deal has guaranteed Ukrainian exports can reach markets, lifting a Russian de facto blockade. The news that Moscow was pulling out of the deal had sent global wheat prices soaring by more than 5% on Monday morning.

The ships that sailed on Monday included one hired by the U.N. World Food Programme to bring 40,000 tonnes of grain to drought-hit Africa.

Also on Monday, the Russian Defence Ministry said Moscow had completed the partial military mobilisation announced by President Vladimir Putin in September and no further call-up notices would be issued.

Putin announced Russia’s first mobilisation since World War Two on Sept. 21, one of a series of escalatory measures in response to Ukrainian gains on the battlefield.

Defence Minister Shoigu said at the time that some 300,000 additional personnel would be drafted. But the mobilisation has proceeded chaotically and thousands have fled Russia to avoid being drafted.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux, additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London; Writing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson)

(Reuters) -Wells Fargo & Co said on Monday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has begun investigating its hiring practices, after the Department of Justice had opened a related probe.

In its quarterly report filed with the SEC, the fourth-largest U.S. bank said both agencies “have undertaken formal or informal inquiries or investigations regarding the company’s hiring practices related to diversity.”

Wells Fargo drew scrutiny in June when it suspended a policy requiring that it interview a “diverse” group of people for some jobs, with half of the candidates being female or nonwhite.

The halt came after The New York Times said the policy had led some employees at the San Francisco-based bank to conduct “fake” interviews for jobs that had already been filled.

In reinstating the policy, Wells Fargo said on Aug. 1 it had interviewed recruiters and hiring managers to assess ways to improve hiring diversity, without the alleged abuses.

The SEC can pursue civil cases, while the Justice Department has criminal enforcement power.

Wells Fargo also said in Monday’s filing that it is in talks with another federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to settle “a number” of probes, including for automobile lending, consumer deposit accounts and mortgage lending.

The bank had set aside $2 billion in the third quarter for legal bills. It estimated that its maximum legal exposure in excess of reserves was $3.7 billion on Sept. 30, up from $3.2 billion three months earlier.

An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment. The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment after market hours.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

(Reuters) -Instagram said on Monday it had fixed a software bug that prevented thousands of users from accessing the photo-sharing platform for about eight hours and led to complaints of accounts being suspended.

“We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers,” Meta Platforms Inc-owned Instagram said in a tweet on Monday.

A spokesperson for Instagram did not comment on suspension of accounts. Several Instagram users had tweeted that they were asked for email IDs and phone numbers to access their suspended account.

From over 7,500 reports at 10:09 ET on outage-tracking website Downdetector, the number of user reports declined to nearly 500 around 6 PM ET.

Downdetector collates status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may be affecting a much larger number of users.Shares of Meta closed down 6.1% amid a wider selloff in stock markets.

(Reporting by Tiyashi Datta and Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Arun Koyyur and Anil D’Silva)

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday said a lawsuit accusing Geico Corp of overcharging more than 2 million California policyholders on car insurance early in the COVID-19 pandemic may proceed as a class action.

U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California, rejected Geico’s contention that a group lawsuit over the alleged inadequacy of its “Geico Giveback” program would create “insurmountable manageability problems.”

Geico, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, said a class action would not sufficiently account for differences among policyholders, including the time periods they had insurance.

The Chevy Chase, Maryland-based insurer also said it would be difficult to assess damages, isolate pandemic costs and adjust rates retroactively.

But the judge said a class action was preferable to individual lawsuits, and the plaintiffs’ damages model “could present an appropriate percentage refund over a sufficiently long time” to address manageability concerns.

Lawyers for Geico did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs’ lawyers did not immediately respond to similar requests.

Policyholders objected to Geico’s decision to provide $2.5 billion of credits, including 15% on renewals, starting in April 2020, reflecting how people were at the time driving and getting into accidents less often.

They said Geico reaped a “windfall” because the credit fell “well short” of adequate given the lessened risks, and accused the insurer of falsely claiming that its credits provided “substantial and full relief.”

Some insurers, including State Farm and Allstate Corp, offered pandemic-related refunds to policyholders.

The class covers California residents who bought Geico car, motorcycle or RV insurance between March 1, 2020 and now.

Geico is defending against a similar federal lawsuit in Chicago, and in May persuaded an appeals court in Manhattan to uphold a judge’s dismissal of a similar lawsuit there.

Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, has owned all of Geico since 1996.

The case is Day v. Geico Casualty Co et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 21-02103.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)