Tuesday, August 18
The Trump administration has expanded a US visa rule that requires passport holders from certain countries to post bonds of up to USD 15,000 before entering the United States. Seven more countries have been added to the list, taking the total to 13, most of them in Africa, a move that makes US visas unaffordable for many applicants. The US State Department last week added Bhutan, Botswana, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia and Turkmenistan to the list. According to a notice on the travel.state.gov website, the new designations took effect on January 1. The bond requirement is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to tighten US entry rules. In recent months, visa applicants from all countries have also been required to attend in-person interviews, sha
Shares of Hindustan Copper rallied as much 4% to its fresh 52-week high of Rs 574 on January 6, after the global copper prices scaled to fresh peaks fuelled by a renewed rush to ship metal to the US fired up bullish traders and investors. With today’s surge, the stock is up 11% in 2026, rising for all 4 sessions of the year. Benchmark prices on the London Metal Exchange surged as much as 4.4% to $13,000 per metric ton, the latest in a series of leaps higher that have lifted copper more than 20% since mid-November.The rally has been driven by a scramble to ship copper into the US, as the looming threat of import tariffs under President Donald Trump has pushed US copper prices to trade at a sustained premium to those on the LME. This arbitrage has raised concerns about potential copper sho
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has proposed a uniform 30-day lag for both sharing and usage of price data for educational and awareness activities. In a consultation paper released on Tuesday, the regulator noted that the 30-day lag would suffice to protect against misuse of exchange data while keeping the education content relevant.Currently, stock exchanges share live data only for the purpose of trading and its related activities. The regulator prescribed a one-day time lag for educational and awareness activities through a circular issued on May 24, 2024. Subsequently, Sebi’s circular dated January 29, 2025 further tightened the framework by specifying that entities engaged solely in education may use market data only with a three-month lag.While both
Further U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate changes will need to be "finely tuned" to incoming data given risks to both the Fed's unemployment and inflation goals, Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin said on Tuesday. "Both sides of our mandate bear watching. Unemployment remains low on a historic basis but has ticked up. Inflation has come down but remains above target," Barkin said in comments prepared for delivery to the Raleigh, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Interest rates are now "within the range of estimates of neutral," the level that will neither encourage nor discourage investment and spending, Barkin said. "Going forward, policy will require finely tuned judgments balancing progress on each side of our mandate." "No one wants the labor market to deteriorate m
