By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Georgia’s legislature approved a bill expanding law enforcement’s power to investigate election fraud over the objections of voting rights groups, adding to a wave of Republican-backed legislation passed after former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

The legislation passed late Monday would give the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the state’s top investigative agency, the authority to initiate probes of election crimes. Under current law, the secretary of state’s office looks into allegations of irregularities and can ask the GBI for assistance as needed.

Trump has fiercely criticized Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both fellow Republicans, for their refusal to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in which President Joe Biden became the first Democrat in nearly 30 years to win the state.

Raffensperger and state election officials have said there were no major problems with the election results after conducting multiple audits and investigations. Trump has endorsed Republican challengers to both Kemp and Raffensperger and held rallies with them in Georgia on March 26.

The legislation, which passed the state Senate along party lines, was significantly pared back from a version that earlier passed the state House of Representatives. That bill included several other provisions that were stripped out, including restricting nonprofit grant money to local elections officials and added ballot security measures.

The bill now goes to Kemp for either his signature or veto. A spokesperson for the governor did not comment on the bill specifically, saying only that he has 40 days to consider the legislation.

Voting rights groups and Democrats have pointed out that election fraud is extremely rare in the United States and argued that greater law enforcement involvement in elections could intimidate voters, particularly those of color.

The proposed state budget includes approximately $580,000 to fund four election investigators at the GBI.

“This year’s rushed process looks likely to cost Georgia taxpayers $580,000 a year – which will be spent chasing conspiracy theories,” Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a good government group, said in a statement.

The bill’s supporters have said it simply ensures that any allegations are fully investigated, which will improve public confidence in the results.

Republican lawmakers in Florida last month approved a measure creating a first-of-its-kind elections police force to investigate allegations of fraud.

Georgia and Florida last year passed sweeping voting restrictions, along with several other states controlled by Republicans.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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TOMS RIVER, NJ – Robert Shapiro, a candidate for Congress in New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District representing Ocean and Monmouth Counties, has filed his petition for office but has raised a few eyebrows.

Shapiro is running under the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon – FJB”. Shapiro, one of several candidates challenging incumbent Chris Smith, now has his petition under review by Governor Phil Murphy appointed Secretary of State Tahesha Way.

Way can choose to reject the slogan under a law that says candidates may not use other people’s names in their campaign slogans without express written consent being provided.

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NEW YORK, NY – A dispute between two groups of men in Upper Manhattan near Highbridge Park turned into an armed standoff as the men drew their guns at each other. One man fired shots, missing his target but hitting an innocent bystander across the street.

At 7:05 pm, officers from the 46th precinct responded to a shooting at a Manhattan grocery store on 188th Street between Crescent and the Grand Concourse.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found a 61-year-old woman bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound in her back. Officers requested EMS and performed CPR, but she later died at St. Barnabas Hospital.

Police said the victim was an innocent bystander, just walking down the street at the time of the shooting.

New York City Police Commi Keechant Sewell said no expense would be spared in finding the suspects.

“This is not New York, and this is not just the way it is,” Sewell said. “This is unacceptable. We are absolutely focused on curbing the violence in the city.”

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HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA –  The Harrisburg Police Department is investigating a shooting that took place on April 2nd. This incident happened on North 5th and Woodbine Street at approximately 7:34pm.

According to Investigators, “Upon their arrival they discovered a 12 year old female victim of a gunshot to her leg. The victim was transported to a local hospital for treatment. She is expected to make a full recovery.”    

This case remains under investigation. 

If you have any information about this incident, please contact the Harrisburg Police at 717-558-6900. 


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ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, MARYLAND – On Friday April 1st, Anne Arundel Police Officers were on patrol when they heard a crash at approximately 9:15pm in Severn-Danza Park. The officers discovered a vehicle half-submerged in a drainage pond. A vehicle had lost control and went through trees and a fence before coming to rest in the pond.

The officers quickly sprung into action to rescue the occupants of the vehicle. After rescuing a 9 month-old baby and a 3 year-old child, the officers broke the passenger windows and rescued the remaining two passengers.

The four passengers were unharmed in the incident, although the driver was arrested for outstanding warrants. He was an unlicensed driver.

Oswaldo Ramirez-Lopez , 27 , from Glen Burnie was arrested at the scene.

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BERLIN – Germany’s Sono Motors has signed up a new partner for its partly solar-powered cars and is sticking to its goal of commercial production in 2023, after abandoning talks with the electric carmaking arm of indebted Chinese property developer Evergrande.

Sono said on Tuesday it would produce its first vehicles in Finland with supplier Valmet Automotive, rather than in Sweden as originally envisaged.

The company had said in 2019 its production partner would be National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS), the Swedish electric vehicle unit of Evergrande Group, but a binding agreement was not signed.

NEVS was in talks with venture capital firms late last year to find new owners as its Chinese parent struggled under more than $300 billion of debt.

Sono, founded in 2016 in Munich, is developing a fully-electric vehicle with solar cells integrated into the body, boosting the car’s range by an average of 112 kilometres per week beyond the 305-kilometre range of its battery.

Valmet Automotive, whose largest shareholders include China’s battery cell manufacturer CATL, also produces cars for Mercedes-Benz and makes battery modules at two plants in Finland, with a third opening in Germany this year.

Sono, which began trading on the NASDAQ in November to try to attract early-stage investors after finding itself on the brink of insolvency, is currently working to validate its mass production plans with vehicles being built in Germany.

It expects to produce a low four-digit volume of cars in its first year, with a view to ramping up to 43,000 a year, it said.

The net price of Sono’s vehicle, currently 23,950 euros ($26,271), will rise to 25,126 euros once the company hits 18,500 reservations from the around 17,000 registered so far, it said, citing rising manufacturing costs.

The company aims to keep costs down by offering just one model, relying on third-party production and using off-the-shelf components from suppliers including Vitesco and Hella GmbH, it said in a November regulatory filing.

($1 = 0.9117 euros)

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Mark Potter)

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(Reuters) – Peloton Interactive Inc’s strength training product, Peloton Guide, would be available at a starting price of $295, about 40% lower than what it had originally planned, the company said on Tuesday.

In the company’s first major product launch since Barry McCarthy took charge as chief executive, Peloton said Guide is available for purchase in the United States, Canada, UK and Australia beginning Tuesday.

The Guide, which is available to existing all access members at no cost, has a TV-connected camera that displays workouts and helps users track their movements and is different from the Peloton’s other products such as bikes and treads that focus on cardio exercises.

Peloton, a pandemic winner, unveiled the ‘Peloton Guide’ last year and had fixed a starting price of $495.

The company replaced co-founder John Foley with former tech executive McCarthy in February, amid investor pressure over sagging sales.

Under McCarthy, the company intends to explore various pricing models in select U.S. markets, as it hoped to attract more customers and return to profitability.

(Reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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WASHINGTON – Countries around the world should provide $15 billion in grants this year and $10 billion a year thereafter to manage the long-term risks of COVID-19, the International Monetary Fund said in a new staff paper released on Tuesday.

The paper, prepared with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the Global Fund, and charitable group Wellcome, said a new, more comprehensive approach was needed immediately to strengthen global health systems and limit the already staggering $13.8 trillion cost of the pandemic.

“The cost of inaction – for all of us – is very high. We need to act – now,” IMF First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said in a statement.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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handcuffs

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Washington D.C. Metro Police Department made an arrest in a April 3rd stabbing in Northwest D.C.. This incident took place on at the intersection of 15th Street and I Street.

According to police, “At approximately 1:35 pm, the suspect approached the victim at the listed location. The suspect brandished a knife and stabbed the victim.

The suspect then fled the scene. The victim sustained minor injuries. The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”

 45 year-old Jamaal Ware was arrested and charged with Assault with a dangerous weapon on Sunday, April 3.

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By Julien Ponthus and Sudip Kar-Gupta

LONDON/PARIS -French stocks and bonds fell on Tuesday as markets started to acknowledge the risk of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen winning this month’s presidential elections against incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

France’s benchmark CAC-40 equity index was down 1.3% by 1215 GMT, underperforming the pan-European STOXX 600 index which was flat.

French government borrowing costs also surged, with yields on 10-year debt up 10 basis points.

The spread between the yield of 10-year French and German government bonds — essentially the premium demanded by investors to hold French debt — rose to 54 basis points, levels unseen since the COVID-19 market crash of 2020.

Le Pen, whose presidential campaign has gained momentum in recent days, on Monday captured 48.5% of voter intentions in an opinion poll of a likely runoff against Macron, the highest score she has ever notched.

The Harris Interactive poll for business magazine Challenges said a Macron victory – which pollsters had considered almost a foregone conclusion – was now within the margin of error.

“Markets woke up on Le Pen,” said Jerome Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments.

French banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole took the biggest hits with losses of 4-6%, far more than the 1.3% fall on a broader European banking index.

One trader said the selloff was particularly notable in stocks seen vulnerable to a Le Pen election.

“Look at Vinci and Eiffage, their underperformance is a casualty of Le Pen risk”, the trader said, pointing to the far-right leader’s plans to nationalise French highway operators.

Shares in the two infrastructure groups fell around 5% on the day.

The turmoil rekindles memories of the 2017 election when fears of a far-left or far-right win sent French government borrowing costs soaring and pushed stocks sharply lower.

Many investors see Le Pen’s platform, which aims to keep the legal retirement age at 62 years, as generous in terms of public spending. She is also viewed as less business-friendly than Macron.

“Le Pen would likely be seen by markets as less reliable on public spending and economic competitiveness, and an unenthusiastic motor and/or unreliable partner for Germany and NATO at a crucial moment for Europe and the West,” NatWest economist Giovanni Zanni told clients last week.

FRENCH DEBT

Zanni reckons a surprise win for Le Pen could deliver a 50 basis points hit to French 10-year spreads over Germany — essentially the premium demanded by investors to hold French debt. That would take the spread to a similar level as Spain which has a lower credit rating.

In the run up to the 2017 election, spreads had blown out to nearly 80 bps.

Francois Raynaud, multi-asset fund manager at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management, said selling French debt — known as OATs – versus the German Bund through 10-year futures was a good hedge against a surprise election result.

“By default, it seems judicious to us to take up protection by being underweight in terms of French weightings versus other indexes, or via the OAT futures,” Raynaud told Reuters on Monday, before the latest sell-off.

Many investors remain unfazed — Grace Peters, head of EMEA investment strategy at JP Morgan Private Bank, still favours French stocks, especially luxury and energy which are less vulnerable to the domestic economy.

“A Le Pen victory is the wild card out there which could be disruptive. But the base case is still for Mr Macron,” Peters said.

Others are scanning markets for risks.

The euro fell a quarter percent against the safe-haven Swiss franc on Tuesday to a one-month low but Adam Cole, a strategist at RBC Capital Markets, sees the euro’s risk premium as likely to rise in coming weeks.

“Might financial markets also be showing signs of complacency ahead of the polls? We think that is a significant risk,” he said.

(Reporting by Julien Ponthus and Samuel Indykin London, Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris and Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Sujata Rao and Ed Osmond)

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LONDON -Global sovereign borrowing will reach $10.4 trillion in 2022, nearly a third above the average before the coronavirus pandemic, S&P Global Ratings said in a report.

Despite an economic recovery, borrowing will stay elevated because of high debt rollover requirements and war in Ukraine, the ratings agency said in an annual note.

While 137 countries will borrow an equivalent of $10.4 trillion in 2022, an estimated 30% lower than 2020, the overall figure is one-third higher than average borrowing between 2016 and 2019, S&P said.

“Tightening monetary conditions will push up government funding costs,” S&P analysts said.

“This will pose additional difficulties to sovereigns that have been unable to restart growth, reduce reliance on foreign currency financing, and where interest bills are already critically high on average.”

Borrowing in the economies of emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will rise $253 billion to the equivalent of $3.4 trillion by the end of the year, S&P said in an accompanying report on Thursday.

Egypt, which has recently sought IMF assistance, is set to overtake Turkey as the region’s largest issuer of sovereign debt, with $73 billion worth of bond sales, S&P analysts forecast.

Among larger countries globally, Kenya, Egypt and Japan have the biggest share of debt that needs to be rolled over this year, the analysts said, pointing to short-term debt of 26% and 30% of total debt stocks in Egypt and Kenya respectively.

Commercial debt in EMEA emerging markets is set to increase to 37% of GDP from 31% in 2016, boosted by pandemic-related costs, a rise in commercial borrowing in Oman and Saudi Arabia and “persistently high fiscal deficits” in Egypt and Romania.

Across emerging markets, JPMorgan analysts said in a note on Monday, the corporate default rate could reach 8.5% this year, more than double the 3.9% they expected before Russia invaded Ukraine and the highest since the global financial crisis.

(Reporting by Saikat Chatterjee and Rachel Savage; Additional Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Danilo Masoni and Clarence Fernandez)

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By Julie Gordon

OTTAWA -Canada’s Liberals find themselves in a bind ahead of this week’s budget: the economy has recovered from the pandemic, yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged billions in new stimulus, a political poker chip that could further torch runaway inflation.

Trudeau’s Liberals will present their 2022 budget on Thursday, just seven months after promising C$78 billion ($62.7 billion) in new spending in a re-election campaign. Much of that, to be spread over five years, has not yet been budgeted.

But fresh fiscal spending could be risky at a time when inflation is already running at a 30-year high. If too broad, measures could fuel further price increases and end up hurting lower-income Canadians.

“When you look at the impact of this elevated inflation on lower-income households, clearly they are hurting,” said Rebekah Young, director of fiscal & provincial economics at Scotiabank.

“But at the same time, from an economic perspective, there’s a risk that if you put even more money at the problem, it can create more pressures.”

Young said major new spending initiatives should be set aside for the near term, even though total government revenues are expected to be higher than previously forecast due to higher inflation-linked tax revenue.

But that may be easier said than done. The government has already committed to spend more on defense following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trudeau’s Liberals currently spend less than 1.4% of GDP on defence, under the NATO threshold of 2%.

The budget will also include about C$2 billion on a strategy to accelerate Canada’s production and processing of critical minerals needed for the electric vehicle supply chain, Reuters reported exclusively on Monday.

Green technologies and initiatives on housing will be focal points of the budget, said one senior source.

And the Liberals will have to start to deliver a national dental-care program for low-income Canadians – a costly initiative that is a cornerstone of a support deal with the New Democrats meant to keep Trudeau in power until 2025.

Structural spending will end up adding to the deficit once the stronger than expected revenues are no longer rolling in.

This could derail efforts to reduce Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio, which skyrocketed during the pandemic amid extraordinary emergency spending and was last forecast to peak at 48.0% this year.

“Any near-term drop in the federal deficit from today’s improved economic outlook could be fleeting. As such, we feel the risks to our baseline debt-to-GDP forecast are very much skewed to the upside,” said Randall Bartlett, senior director of Canadian economics at Desjardins.

Rising interest rates – the Bank of Canada is widely expected to hike its policy rate by 50 basis points to 1% at a decision on April 13 – will add to debt pressures. Canada’s federal debt was last forecast to top C$1.19 trillion this year.

Trudeau, facing backlash over surging home prices and rents, has also promised to make housing more affordable, including measures to make it easier for first-time buyers to get into the market.

“That does get us into a problem where typically the prices just adjust to reflect the improvement in affordability,” said Stephen Brown, senior Canada economist at Capital Economics.

($1 = 1.2449 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Julie Gordon in OttawaEditing by Matthew Lewis)

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By Jesús Aguado and Emma Pinedo

MADRID – Spain’s central bank on Tuesday lowered its economic growth forecast for this year and next due to the impact of inflation stoked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and said the pace of recovery had already slowed down in the first quarter.

Inflation is projected to rise to 7.5% in 2022.

The Bank of Spain now expects gross domestic product to expand 4.5% in 2022, down from its December estimate of 5.4%. Growth is then expected to slow to 2.9% in 2023, also less than the previously predicted 3.9%.

“The conflict in Ukraine and the economic sanctions imposed on Russia are expected to have a severe impact on growth prospects for the coming quarters,” it said in a report.

It said it did not expect Spain to reach pre-pandemic output levels before the third quarter of 2023.

Last year, the Spanish economy rebounded 5.1% after a record 10.8% slump in 2020 induced by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government has yet to revise its bullish 7% growth projection for 2022 made last year. Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said the Ukraine conflict would weigh on growth, but recovery should continue.

The central bank put first-quarter GDP growth at 0.9% from the previous three-month period, when the expansion was 2.2%, and expects European Union-harmonised consumer inflation to have clocked 7.9% in the first quarter.

“The impact of the conflict will be concentrated in the second quarter under our central scenario which does not encompass an escalation,” said Bank of Spain Chief Economist Angel Gavilan. He expected the economy to still eke out small growth in the second quarter but did not rule out a contraction.

Gavilan saw inflation, which hit 9.8% in March year-on-year, hovering around 10% until the summer, when it should start abating. For all of 2022, Gavilan said, inflation should reach 7.5%, double the bank’s previous forecast of 3.7%, before gradually dropping to 1.6% by 2024.

Soaring energy prices have already caused transport strikes and stoppages in some sectors in Spain, aggravating supply chain disruptions and inflation.

Public debt is expected to fall to 112.6% of GDP in 2022 from 118.4% last year.

(Reporting by Jesús Aguado and Emma Pinedo, editing by Andrei Khalip and Mark Heinrich)

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(Reuters) – Memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc on Tuesday named chip firm Qorvo Inc’s finance chief Mark Murphy as its new chief financial officer.

Micron lost its former CFO David Zinsner to chipmaker Intel Corp in January.

Murphy will take the reins from interim finance chief Sumit Sadana, who will return to the role of chief business officer, the company said.

Murphy has also been named as Micron’s executive vice president.

Qorvo, a supplier for Apple Inc, said it has started the search for a new CFO and named vice president of treasury Grant Brown as the interim finance head.

(Reporting by Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON -An agreement to provide $10 billion in U.S. funding for COVID-19 aid has been reached in the Senate, lawmakers said on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber, and Republican Senator Mitt Romney hailed the deal, but Schumer said he was disappointed that an agreement on $5 billion of global health funding had not also been reached.

The deal provides $10 billion in funding for COVID needs and therapeutics by repurposing unspent COVID funds. It is well below the $22.5 billion the Biden administration had sought.

Senate Republicans demanded any new requests for COVID funding be paid for by repurposing existing funds from prior COVID relief funds. Romney said the deal repurposes “$10 billion to provide needed domestic COVID health response tools.”

The White House said it was “grateful for the Senate’s work on a bipartisan plan to help meet some of the country’s COVID response needs” but still wants more funding.

It urged Congress “to move promptly on this $10 billion package because it can begin to fund the most immediate needs, as we currently run the risk of not having some critical tools like treatments and tests starting in May and June.”

Schumer said the bill provides “urgently needed funding to purchase vaccines and therapeutics, maintain access to testing and accelerate the work on next generation vaccine research.”

Romney noted the agreement does not include funding for the U.S. global vaccination program, but he said he is “willing to explore a fiscally-responsible solution.”

The bill cuts $2.31 billion from a COVID program to boost aviation manufacturing and repair businesses. The U.S. Transportation Department offered $673 million nationwide in three rounds of awards in the $3 billion program to support aviation jobs. Some major aerospace companies like Boeing and General Electric opted not to participate.

It also eliminates nearly $2 billion in grant funding for shuttered venues like live performance venues, museums, and movie theaters. The program stopped taking applications in August.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Eric Beech; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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FRANKFURT – Germany’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry on Tuesday agreed a lump sum payment for workers and put further collective wage bargaining on hold, citing uncertainty stemming from Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Instead of the usual percentage increase, drug and chemical makers agreed to pay workers 1,400 euros each ($1,534), with companies below a certain profitability threshold paying only 1,000 euro per worker, the employers group and trade union IG BCE said in separate statements.

Wage talks for the 580,000 employees are due to resume in October, they added.

“The ramifications of this war will pose big challenges for our industry for years to come. It’s all the more important that the social partners remain unified,” said employers’ association president Kai Beckmann, who is a Merck KGaA executive board member.

Germany, which relies on Russia for 40% of its natural gas and 25% of oil needs, has supported Western sanctions against Russia but has balked at the prospect of a near-term energy delivery cuts.

Germany will likely face a steep recession, with the energy intensive chemical industry exposed in particular, if sanctions were extended to Russian gas and oil.

Workers’ purchasing power is already taking a hit from 7.6% inflation in March, the highest level in Germany in more than 40 years, as prices of natural gas and oil products soared.

The wage talks were the first due to conclude in an industrial sector in Germany after the invasion of Ukraine.

Germany’s public-sector banks last week agreed to pay their workers 3% more from July and another 2% more a year later, affecting 60,000 employees.

($1 = 0.9124 euros)

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss; Editing by Madeline Chambers)

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By Hari Kishan and Vivek Mishra

BENGALURU – The U.S. Treasury yield curve, already hammered into a flat line after one of its worst quarters in decades, is set to remain off its normal upwardly-sloping shape over the coming year, according to a Reuters poll of bond strategists.

The gap between two-year and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields has been inverted in the last several trading sessions. Such an inversion, when sustained, has been a reliable early warning of most U.S. recessions since the Second World War.

Forecasts for a flat to slightly inverted curve come despite expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon start reducing its bond holdings, letting securities accumulated during the pandemic roll off its near-$9 trillion balance sheet.

The March 29-April 5 poll of nearly 60 fixed-income strategists showed no sharp rise was imminently expected in 10-year notes, leaving the yield curve either flat or consistently at risk of further inversion over the coming year.

“If you asked me what’s going to be the dominant trend over the next phase, six to 12 months, it’s going to be the Fed pushing up the short rate expectations and a split between the behaviors of the yield curve that will drive further flattening,” said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist and head of global bonds at PGIM Fixed Income.

He said two-year notes would keep following the fed funds rate up but alongside that, “the five-year and longer part of the curve keeping faith that at some point the secular fundamentals are going to become soft again.”

Just in the past few months, as inflation has soared to multi-decade highs, market expectations have surged from a series of steady 25 basis point Fed rate rises at each meeting this year to a succession of half-point moves.

That has led to concerns the Fed may end up overdoing its tightening campaign and put at risk the economic recovery from the pandemic, which has already shifted down a gear.

Median forecasts showed the U.S. 2-year Treasury note yield, currently at 2.47%, trading at 2.30%, 2.49% and 2.60% in the next three, six and 12 months respectively, suggesting those Fed rate rises have already been priced in.

The benchmark 10-year bond yield was expected to trade around the current rate of 2.45% for the next three to six months before rising to 2.60% in a year, with the highest forecast at 3.25%.

If the median view is realized, that would be the flattest prediction and the first consensus forecast on a six-month horizon for a slight inversion in any Reuters poll for two decades.

Apart from a handful of respondents, most expected the spread to be less than 25 basis points, smaller than a single normal rate move by the Fed in a year when they are expected to deliver several increases twice that size.

“They (2s-10s) will remain inverted until the Fed stops. As long as they keep talking about going, it will remain inverted,” said Michael Every, global market strategist at Rabobank, who said the yield curve was flashing a warning signal.

However, many analysts argue the Fed, which now owns a significant percentage of the U.S. Treasury market through years of quantitative easing, has robbed it of its predictive powers.

“The yield curve is also distorted by QE since the Fed has bought a significant share of Treasuries, depressing term premiums and flattening the curve,” noted Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities.

“The market is likely pricing in balance sheet run-off later this year, but implementation details are still forthcoming. This makes it difficult to have much conviction about the extent to which QT is priced in.”

There was no clear consensus among analysts asked to describe the gap between current U.S. Treasury market pricing and impending quantitative tightening from the Fed. Very few regular respondents to the poll ventured a guess.

(Reporting and analysis by Hari Kishan and Vivek Mishra; Polling by Shrutee Sarkar and Sarupya Ganguly; Editing by Ross Finley and Chizu Nomiyama)

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By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -The world’s cities are a big driver of planet-warming emissions, but can play a major role in addressing climate change in the near future.

U.N. scientists on Monday laid out ways to rein in emissions and curb climate change, including a chapter on actions that city planners can follow.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found urban infrastructure and activities caused about two-thirds of today’s emissions.

That means that cities can potentially “solve two-thirds of the problem. So that’s pretty exciting,” said Yale University geographer Karen Seto, a lead author of the chapter.

Many cities are already acting. London has introduced fees on highly polluting vehicles in the city center, and Paris has outlawed diesel cars.

Other actions cities can take include improving energy efficiency in buildings, designing streets to avoid traffic congestion, planting “green roofs” and incorporating more parks and trees that help remove some carbon dioxide emissions and also help to keep cities cooler, the report says.

Planning for and encouraging population density is recommended to prevent rural and suburban sprawl, which is less energy efficient and destroys natural habitats.

“The 21st-century will be the urban century, defined by a massive increase in global urban populations,” the report said. About 55% of the world’s population lived in cities in 2018, a figure expected to jump to 68% by 2050 – with Asian and African cities seeing the biggest increases.

Climate-friendly urban policies would also improve public health by reducing air pollution, the report said.

For the world to have a chance of limiting global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels, cities need to act fast – and financing would need to be boosted significantly, the report says.

Cities in 2020 were responsible for up to 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions, up from 62% in 2015. Aggressive climate action could bring city emissions to net-zero by 2050. But failing to act could instead see urban emissions double in that time, the report said.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Donna Bryson, Leslie Adler, Katy Daigle and Barbara Lewis)

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By Muhammed Husain

(Reuters) -Britain’s Go-Ahead said it plans to expand its transport operations and reinstate its pre-COVID-19 dividend policy after a months-long strategic review, lifting its shares on Tuesday.

Go-Ahead, which runs more than 6,000 buses in England and Britain’s largest passenger rail contract, said it plans to turn around underperforming businesses and grow in existing markets, which include Norway, Germany, Singapore and Ireland.

Its shares were up 6.8% to 900 pence at 1010 GMT after it said it plans to explore acquisitions and is looking at new urban mass transit services such as metro and light rail.

“Transport is at a tipping point as we recover from the pandemic,” Chief Executive Christian Schreyer, who was appointed in November, said in a statement.

Go-Ahead plans to pay at least 50 pence per share in dividend for the year ending July 2, and said it would start distributing between 50% and 75% of its underlying earnings per share as payouts to shareholders from the current fiscal year.

The group suspended dividends in March 2020 after its operations were hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

Go-Ahead’s new strategy comes after it was fined 23.5 million pounds ($31 million) last month by Britain’s transport department for overcharging by the operator’s London and Southeastern railway franchise.

Schreyer said he was confident about the group’s future.

“Go-Ahead’s core strength is in commuter transport and we see opportunities to grow by encouraging people to leave their cars at home, by winning new contracts and through carefully selected acquisitions,” he said.

Go-Ahead is also targeting annual operating profit of at least 150 million pounds and an increase in revenue to around four billion pounds in the medium-term, up by around 30% from 2021 after excluding recently discontinued operations.

Peel Hunt analysts said Go-Ahead could achieve the targets without new international contracts.

($1 = 0.7617 pounds)

(Reporting by Muhammed Husain in Bengaluru; Editing by Uttaresh.V and Alexander Smith)

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PARIS – Poland on Tuesday blocked a French-proposed compromise on how to implement a minimum corporate tax across the European Union in another blow to a global overhaul of international tax rules.

The Polish revenue chief said that despite amendments, Warsaw still had concerns that the minimum tax could enter into force without the new rules preventing big multinationals from booking profits in the most favourable countries.

Nearly 140 countries, including Poland, reached a two-track deal in October on a minimum tax rate of 15% on multinationals and agreed to make it harder for companies such as Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Meta’s Facebook to avoid tax by booking profits in low-tax jurisdictions.

France, which holds the EU’s rotating six-month presidency, has pushed for a quick implementation of the deal in the 27-nation bloc, where tax issues require unanimous approval.

Poland was one of four countries to block an attempt last month to find a compromise, but Sweden, Estonia and Malta dropped their opposition after tweaks to the deal.

“It (the proposed compromise) is not a legally binding solution for assuring that both pillar I and pillar II enter into force in a similar point in time,” Polish revenue chief Magdalena Rzeczkowska told a meeting in Brussels.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that he was “absolutely not convinced” by Poland’s position, that Warsaw’s concerns had been taken into account and other member states had also made concessions.

Le Maire said that he would put the issue back on the agenda of the EU finance ministers’ next monthly meeting.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Alexander Smith)

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(Reuters) – Russia’s banks will need a wider recapitalisation, Andrey Kostin, CEO of No.2 lender VTB, has told the TASS news agency, with the scale of it to be determined later this year once there is a clearer picture of the losses the sector faces.

“I don’t know yet where the capital boost will come from but it will come for sure. Not only for VTB but for the wider banking sector, I think,” Kostin said on Tuesday, as he expected the financial sector to post losses this year.

Western sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February have cut Moscow off from the global financial system and from nearly half of its $640 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves.

Some of Russia’s biggest banks, VTB included, were cut off from the SWIFT global banking messaging system, and international payment cards Visa and MasterCard stopped servicing Russian accounts abroad, adding pressure on banks.

Since major private banking bailouts in 2017 worth over 2 trillion roubles, the central bank has opted for removing banking licences over providing cash injections.

Previously, VTB was allowed to pay smaller dividends on preferred shares held by the state to boost the bank’s capital, in a non-cash form of the support.

Russia’s banks may need as much as 2.2 trillion roubles in state support, according to the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting, of which the bulk, or 1.5 trillion, would be needed for top lenders, private included.

The central bank did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Jason Neely)

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ATHENS – Credit servicer doValue Greece, a subsidiary of Italy’s biggest debt recovery firm doValue, said on Tuesday it was awarded a new loan servicing mandate for a 500 million euro ($548.4 million) bad loan portfolio named Project Neptune.

The portfolio comprises small and medium-size business loans secured by real estate.

In 2020, an entity affiliated with funds managed by Fortress Investment Group bought the portfolio from Alpha Bank, one of Greece’s four biggest lenders, with a gross book value of about 1.1 billion euros. Fortress assigned transitional servicing to Greek loan servicing company Cepal.

DoValue will assume the servicing of about 50% of the initial portfolio comprising small business non-performing loans secured by real estate assets in Greece.

Greek banks have been cleaning up their balance sheets from NPLs via outright sales and securitisations in an effort to reach single-digit ratios to bring them close to euro zone averages.

Last October, doValue agreed a deal with National Bank, one of Greece’s largest lenders by assets, to service a 5.7 billion euro bad loan portfolio.

Verona-based doValue was set up in 2015 when UniCredit spun off its debt-servicing arm in a deal with Fortress Investment Group, the U.S. fund that was later bought by SoftBank.

($1 = 0.9118 euros)

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Mike Harrison)

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By Elvira Pollina

MILAN -The chances of the U.S. fund KKR pushing ahead with a firm bid for Telecom Italia (TIM) faded, with the two sides deadlocked on Tuesday over access to the company’s books.

KKR has told TIM it cannot confirm its 10.8 billion euro ($11.9 billion) bid unless Italy’s biggest telecoms group provides access to its data under a due diligence process, according to two sources with knowledge of a KKR letter to TIM’s board.

TIM, which is pushing ahead with its own standalone plan, wants to give the fund access only once a formal bid is made.

KKR said in its letter it remained interested in buying TIM but would not confirm a bid without a due diligence as the war in Ukraine had changed market conditions, the sources said. TIM has cut its outlook and suffered a series of credit rating downgrades.

The letter said KKR remained available to assess deals that would create value for TIM and all its shareholders, the sources added.

“Whilst at present we are not able to reconfirm our proposed offer, we remain at your disposal to either complete due diligence or explore any other transaction in the interest of shareholders and the country of Italy”, KKR said in comments seen by Reuters.

TIM shares slipped in Milan to just 0.31 euros, a long way short of the 0.505 euro price at which KKR’s non-binding approach was pitched last November.

“The odds of the deal seem now very low,” analysts at Banca Akros said in a note.

RESHAPING TIM

TIM boss Pietro Labriola is pressing ahead with a strategy to revamp the company centred around a split of its wholesale network operations from its services business in an attempt to unlock what the debt-laden group calls its untapped value.

As part of this, TIM has signed a non-disclosure agreement with Italian state lender CDP to start formal talks on potentially combining the phone group’s network with that of smaller broadband rival Open Fiber.

Such a deal, advocated by the government, would entail a role for infrastructure and private equity funds, including KKR, sources have previously said.

Separately, European private equity fund CVC has approached TIM about potentially taking a stake in an enterprise services business that could be spun out of the group.TIM’s board is expected to discuss KKR’s letter and the proposal from CVC on Thursday.

($1 = 0.9106 euros)

($1 = 0.9117 euros)

(Reporting by Elvira PollinaWriting by Keith WeirEditing by Mark Potter)

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By Jonathan Saul

LONDON – The risk of coming across floating mines in the major Black Sea shipping route is adding to perils for merchant ships sailing in the region, and governments must ensure safe passage to keep supply chains running, maritime officials say.

The Black Sea is key for shipping grain, oil and oil products. Its waters are shared by Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Turkey, as well as Ukraine and Russia, which have been at war since President Vladimir Putin invaded his southern neighbour on Feb. 24.

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of laying mines in the Black Sea, and in recent days, Turkish and Romanian military diving teams have defused stray mines around their waters.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) union and the Joint Negotiating Group of maritime employers said they were trying to find ways to ensure that seafarers and their vessels don’t become “collateral damage in the continuing conflict in Ukraine”.

“We strongly urge governments to do all in their power to mitigate the threat and secure the safe passage for vessels trading near these conflict areas,” said David Heindel, chair of the ITF Seafarers’ Section.

“It is essential that the world’s seafarers can continue to perform their duties safely and keep global supply chains moving.”

Two seafarers have been killed and five merchant vessels hit by projectiles – which sank one of them – off Ukraine’s coast since the start of the conflict, shipping officials say.

“The information available points to a clear threat to shipping and seafarers from floating and drifting mines in areas of the Black Sea,” said a spokesperson with UN shipping agency the International Maritime Organization. 

NATO’s Shipping Centre said in an updated advisory on April 4 that there were ongoing searches by national authorities for “mine-like objects” and that “the threat of additional drifting mines cannot be ruled out.”

Last month, the insurance industry’s Joint War Committee widened the high-risk area of waters around the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to include areas close to Romania and Georgia, which has contributed to underwriters raising premiums.

“If it transpires that there are significant numbers of live mines that exceed littoral state abilities to contain them, then JWC will move to reassess the listed areas,” the Committee said in a separate note on March 31.

(Reporting by Jonathan Saul; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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By Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO – An advisory panel to Japan’s finance minister on Tuesday recommended that the law should be changed to revoke Russia’s most-favoured-nation trading status following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The recommendation was made weeks after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to deprive Moscow of the status as Japan kept in line with the Group of Seven (G7) advanced nations over sanctions against Russia.

“Following G7 leaders’ statement and from the standpoint of coordinating with international community in further adopting sanctions as needed against Russia, we will revoke Russia’s most-favoured nation treatment on tariffs,” the panel said.

The panel called for revoking Russia’s adoption of preferential WTO treaty tariffs by revising the law and ordinances.

The law revision would raise tariffs on Japan’s imports from Russia by 10%, or 150 billion yen. Currently, Japan’s imports from Russia stand at an annual 1.5 trillion yen.

In 2021, Russia accounted for 81% of Japan’s sea urchin imports and 47.6% of crab imports, government data showed.

As preferential World Trade Organisation treaty tariffs are removed when Russia’s most-favoured-nation status is revoked, tariffs would rise to 5% from WTO rates of 3.5% on some fishery products such as salmon roe, salmon and trout. Crabs would face a tariff rise to 6% from 4%.

Tariffs on shaven wood such as pine trees would rise to 8% from the WTO preferential rate of 4.8%, the panel said, adding the measures would take effect a day after promulgation through fiscal year-end of March 2023.

Russia calls the Feb. 24 invasion in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm its neighbour. The West says it launched an unprovoked invasion.

Following the invasion, the Japanese government slapped asset-freeze sanctions on more than 100 Russian officials, oligarchs, banks and other institutions, in step with G7 economies. Japan has also banned high-tech exports to Russia.

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Bernadette Baum)

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