Washington Financial News

Top US banking regulators have updated decades-old rules that are meant to tackle redlining and boost lending to lower-income areas. 

Washington state senator was arrested in Hong Kong for carrying a gun that was not registered in the semi-autonomous Chinese city, his website and local media reported. He was released on bail Monday. Jeff Wilson, a Republican from Longview, was arrested after landing at the Hong Kong International Airport on Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration finally has a Senate-confirmed leader

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted 98-0 to approve President Joe Biden's nominee to head the Federal Aviation Administration, Michael Whitaker, as the agency faces questions about near-miss safety incidents and air traffic control staffing issues.

NBA season officially begins Tuesday and the first game will be played between the defending champion Denver Nuggets and the L.A Lakers. It will be followed by the Golden State Warriors vs. the Phoenix Suns game. TNT has the exclusive rights for Tuesday night’s games. It will come out with a variety of ways to stream the action live online without cable.

This storm is anticipated to disrupt travel significantly in at least six states, according to AccuWeather. As of midday Tuesday, roughly 2.5 million residents are living in areas under some form of winter weather alert due to the storm, according to the National Weather Service. States affected include Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Winter storm warnings and watches have been issued for sections of the Cascades and northern Rockies as the storm approaches. Meanwhile, tropical Storm Otis strengthened early Tuesday as it approached Mexico’s southern Pacific coast and was forecast to become a hurricane before making landfall near the resort of Acapulco late Tuesday or early Wednesday. The US National Hurricane Center said that Otis was about 155 miles (250 kilometers) south-southeast of Acapulco on Tuesday morning with winds of 70 mph (110 kph). It was moving north-northwest at 8 mph (13 kph). In the Atlantic, Hurricane Tammy has made landfall on the Caribbean's Barbuda as Category 1 hurricane.

By Hyunjoo Jin and David Shepardson

Lynas Rare Earths has won a reprieve from Malaysia to operate its flagship refinery which produces key ingredients for wind turbines, electronics, and military applications.

Washington | Venture capital investor DYNE Maritime has launched a $US100 million ($157 million) fund to invest in maritime technologies related to the AUKUS military intelligence sharing pact.

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The White House will request another supplemental spending package this week to address child care, disaster relief, and other priorities, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

By Kirsty Needham

By Pete Schroeder

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON—Top U.S. banking regulators have been struggling for more than five years to update anti-redlining rules aimed at making banks lend more in lower-income communities. On Tuesday, they plan to complete a revamp of them for the era of online banking.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Washington on Thursday for high-level talks, the US state department has announced, as the two countries try to “responsibly manage” their fraught relations.

The White House says the dozens of U.S. technology hubs President Joe Biden is announcing will help communities across the country become centers of innovation critical to its competitiveness

An ambitious 2021 agreement by more than 140 countries and territories to weed out tax havens and force multinational corporations to pay a minimum tax has been weakened by loopholes and will raise only a fraction of the revenue that was envisioned, a ...

While the world’s eyes were fixed on the unfolding horrors of the latest Middle East war, China was busy pushing the envelope in the South China Sea. On Sunday, a Chinese coast guard vessel and another Chinese ship rammed a Philippine supply boat and coast guard ship in international waters claimed by China around the Spratly Islands. The State Department gravely noted that the Chinese actions “violated international law," but China appears unimpressed.

EU Tax Observatory said on Monday. If levied, the sum would be equivalent to only 2% of the nearly $13 trillion in wealth owned by the 2,700 billionaires globally, the research group hosted at the Paris School of Economics said. Currently billionaires' effective personal tax is often far less than what other taxpayers of more modest means pay because they can park wealth in shell companies sheltering them from income tax, the group said in its 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report. «In our view, this is difficult to justify because it risks to undermine the sustainability of tax systems and the social acceptability of taxation,» the observatory's director Gabriel Zucman told journalists. Billionaires' personal tax in the United States is estimated to be close to 0.5% and as low as zero in otherwise high-tax France, the Observatory estimated. Growing wealth inequality in some countries is fuelling calls for the richest citizens to bear more of the tax burden as public finances struggle to cope with aging populations, huge financing needs for climate transition and legacy COVID debt. U.S.

UN General Assembly will meet Thursday to discuss the conflict triggered by the attack by Hamas militants on Israel, the body's president announced in a letter to member states. The Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution concerning the war, but a number of states — including Jordan on behalf of an Arab group of nations, Russia, Syria, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia — formally requested General Assembly President Dennis Francis to schedule the meeting. Last week, the UN Security Council, regularly divided on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, rejected a Russian draft resolution calling for a «humanitarian pause.» Only five of the 15 member states had supported the text, which condemned all violence against civilians and all terrorist acts, but did not name Hamas, an unacceptable omission to the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Washington then vetoed a second resolution put forward by Brazil as the text did not mention Israel's right to defend itself. Twelve out of 15 Council members voted in favor of that resolution, which also condemned the «heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas,» while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained. The United States was the only vote against, but as one of the body's five permanent members its vote counts as a veto. The Security Council will meet to discuss the issue Tuesday ahead of the General Assembly's gathering Thursday at 10:00 am (1400 GMT).