Venezuela’s defense minister told socialist President Nicolas Maduro to step down last month, and said he would offer his own resignation if he did not, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing an anonymous U.S. intelligence official.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) delayed several major U.S. and world crop reports because of the two-week-old partial government shutdown, the agency said on Friday. New release dates for the monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report and other data originally scheduled for Jan. 11 will be set once government funding is restored, USDA said.
Latin American stocks in the region's main markets closed on Tuesday at new highs on the positive outlook for the ongoing US/China trade talks in Beijing. Brazil's Bovespa index ended trading above 92,000 points for the first time ever after hitting several record highs last week.
A Brazilian man facing allegations of bribing officials at state-run oil company Petrobras on behalf of Vitol Group, Glencore and other major oil trading firms has been arrested in the United States, authorities said Tuesday.
US energy company ExxonMobil has started drilling one of two new exploration wells offshore Guyana. It’s the first of two wells to be drilled this month. The world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company said in a statement that the Stena Carron drillship is drilling the Haimara-1 well, located 19 miles east of the Pluma-1 discovery in the southeast Stabroek Block.
United States president Donald Trump has demanded funding for his long-promised US-Mexico border wall to halt “a growing humanitarian and security crisis”. But in his first TV address to the nation from the Oval Office, Mr Trump did not declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build the barrier.
EU says the US government has changed the bloc's diplomatic status in Washington, in practice downgrading it. The Trump administration did not notify the EU about the change. The EU has asked the US to explain the move, EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic says.
A group of nine leading retail broker-dealers, banks, financial services firms, and global market makers, have agreed to launch an equities exchange, MEMX, or Members Exchange. The new exchange will be owned entirely by its founding members and will seek to deliver benefits to retail and institutional investors by introducing greater competition to the marketplace. MEMX will file an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission in early 2019 for approval to operate as a national securities exchange.
Millions of US taxpayers will still receive refunds despite an ongoing partial government shutdown, the White House has said. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has previously delayed tax refunds during a government shutdown.
World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim has made the surprise announcement that he is stepping down after six years in the post. His resignation will take effect from 1 February. Mr Kim, 59, was not due to leave until 2022, after he was re-elected for a second five-year term in 2017.