2025-09-01 16:41

Sept 1 (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal South Africa (ACLJ.J) , opens new tab (MT.LU) , opens new tab (AMSA) is planning to lay off 4,000 workers, nearly half its workforce and more than initially expected, with cuts now set to extend to its main Vanderbijlpark plants, a union said on Monday. The steelmaker previously announced plans to shut its long steel plants at Newcastle and Vereeniging this month, cutting 3,500 jobs, as talks with the government have failed to provide an alternative solution. Sign up here. AMSA said it was "limited in what we can say in the public domain given the complexities of the matters under discussion and a cautionary announcement we issued recently", adding that "certain processes are still ongoing." The company produces some 2.4 million metric tons of steel annually, about 4% of group output. The Solidarity union said AMSA had told employees that it was preparing "mass retrenchments involving more than 4,000 jobs". Its statement said the cuts had been expanded to include Vanderbijlpark - AMSA's flagship operation, making flat steel. The company has been reporting losses since 2023 and posted a half-year headline loss of 1.0 billion rand ($56 million) on persistently low sales volumes and low prices. AMSA has twice deferred closing its long steel operations, which are buckling under the pressure of weak local demand, high electricity tariffs, poor freight logistics, competition from local scrap recycling mills and imports from China. The union accused the government of dragging its heels in seeking solutions. AMSA had asked the government to lower scrap export duties, which it says give recyclers an unfair advantage, and to impose tariffs on imports. It also sought favourable electricity and freight costs from state-owned utilities. https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/arcelormittal-south-africa-job-cuts-could-rise-above-4000-union-says-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 16:39

MUMBAI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The Indian rupee recovered from its record low to end unchanged on Monday, helped by likely intervention from the Reserve Bank of India towards the later part of the session, according to traders. The rupee ended at 88.1950 to the U.S. dollar, identical to Friday's close. The currency fell 0.7% in August, its fourth consecutive monthly decline. Sign up here. The rupee plummeted to a fresh record low of 88.33 earlier in the day, reflecting mounting concerns over higher U.S. tariffs on Indian goods and the broader economic implications for the South Asian country. "Today being a U.S. holiday there was thin liquidity, thus flows had power to create unusual moves in the currency," said Kunal Sodhani, vice president at Shinhan Bank India. "Overall, rupee weakness may persist in order to maintain export competitiveness. For USD/INR, 87.94 now acts as an important support, which was earlier the all-time high, while 88.50 levels may be tested." The unit is the worst-performing Asian currency year-to-date, down about 3% against the dollar, and the underperformance is expected to continue as Indian goods face the highest U.S. tariffs among Asian countries. Higher tariffs are likely to drag the nation's export competitiveness, and a slowdown in exports could weigh on corporate revenues and profits. India's trade balance and broader growth outlook could also be affected, forcing foreign portfolio investors to reconsider allocations to Indian equities. Foreign investors have pulled out $2.4 billion from Indian equities over the past three sessions, and continuous outflows are expected to exacerbate volatility in the currency and equity markets. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/rupee-recovers-record-low-end-flat-after-likely-rbi-intervention-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 16:37

MUMBAI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - India has allowed production of ethanol from sugarcane juice, syrup and all types of molasses without any restrictions on volumes in 2025/2026, the government said in a notification on Monday. The world's second-biggest sugar producer had restricted production in the current marketing year because of a drop in sugarcane supplies. Sign up here. In the new ethanol supply year starting from November 1, sugar mills and distilleries are allowed to produce ethanol without any quantitative restriction, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution said. The government will periodically review sugar diversion to ethanol to ensure year-round domestic availability of the sweetener, it said. In the new season, sugarcane supplies are expected to jump as ample monsoon rains for two straight years have helped farmers to expand area under the crop. "This is a welcome move. The government should also raise the ethanol procurement price so that mills can pay farmers the government-fixed cane price," said a sugar miller based in the western state of Maharashtra. Indian sugar mills such as E.I.D.-Parry (EIDP.NS) , opens new tab, Balrampur Chini Mills (BACH.NS) , opens new tab, Shree Renuka (SRES.NS) , opens new tab, Bajaj Hindusthan (BJHN.NS) , opens new tab and Dwarikesh Sugar (DWAR.NS) , opens new tab have increased their ethanol production capacity in the last few years. India, the No.3 oil importer and consumer of petroleum products, aims to increase the blending of ethanol into gasoline to 20% by 2025/26. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/india-allows-production-ethanol-sugarcane-juice-molasses-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 16:30

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will hold bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at China's World War Two anniversary celebrations in Beijing this week, Fico said on Monday. He will then meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in eastern Slovakia on Friday, he said in a statement. Sign up here. Fico, who leads a NATO and EU member country but has opposed Western sanctions on Russia, has had tense relations with Zelenskiy and broken ranks with European allies. He met with Putin in Moscow in December. Fico will also be the only European Union country leader to attend the celebrations in Beijing, where Xi will be flanked by Putin and also the leaders of North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar in a show of solidarity against the West. "I respect every single victim of the fight against fascism, therefore I have in the past stood with respect in front of memorials in Moscow, Normandy, or Washington," Fico said in an emailed statement. "I personally regret, and I admit I do not understand why, that from among EU countries, only Slovakia will be present in Beijing. New world order is being built, new rules of multipolar world, new balance of powers, which is extremely important for stability in the world." He said it was necessary to use the opportunity to meet world leaders, and that he had informed EU representatives about his trip. He did not further specify the agenda of his meetings in Beijing nor the meeting with Zelenskiy. Slovakia lashed out at Ukraine when it did not renew a contract to ship Russian gas to Slovakia after the old one expired at the end of last year, forcing Slovakia to use alternative routes for Russian gas and look for other suppliers. Slovakia has also been keen to keep imports of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline running through Ukraine, which were temporarily halted in the past two weeks after Ukrainian attacks on the pipeline in Russia. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/slovak-prime-minister-fico-meet-xi-putin-zelenskiy-this-week-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 16:17

Degraded land, polluted air and water hitting economies Around 80% of low-income populace face all three World Bank 'will not waver' on mission, senior MD says LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Degraded land, polluted air and water stress pose a direct global economic threat but using natural resources more efficiently could cut pollution by half, one of the World Bank's senior managing directors told Reuters. The damage is particularly acute for low-income countries most at threat from poverty, climate change and biodiversity loss, Axel van Trotsenburg said. Sign up here. Speaking alongside the publication of a new report on Monday, he said around 80% of people in low-income nations were exposed to all three and the World Bank was committed to responding even as many countries cut aid budgets. "Our commitment... is ending poverty on a liveable planet, full stop. We will not waver on this," van Trotsenburg said. Among the most impacted countries are Burundi, where 8 million people face water risk and air pollution, and 7 million face land degradation. In Malawi, 12 million people face all three risks, the report said. More broadly, 90% of the world's population face at least one of the challenges, with the report urging countries to repurpose subsidies currently spent on harmful activities. The report is published against a fractious political backdrop ahead of November's COP30 climate talks in Brazil. The World Bank and other multilateral lenders are also awaiting the outcome of a U.S. review , opens new tab of their operations ordered by President Donald Trump in February. The World Bank would provide data-backed evidence to inform discussions on environmental degradation among its member governments, van Trotsenburg said. The report estimated that forests help around half of the world's rain clouds form and said deforestation cut rainfall at a cost of $14 billion a year for the nine-country Amazon region alone, a material hit for the affected nations. It also means landscapes are less able to store and release moisture slowly over time. That amplifies the effects of droughts and results in a $379 billion hit, or 8% of global agricultural economic output. While ecological threats were often seen as being distant, the report zeroed in on economic impacts happening now. "We've often had this mantra that we believed countries need to grow first, pollute and clean up later. What this evidence is telling you is that is simply false," the bank's chief economist for sustainable development and report co-author, Richard Damania, said. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/world-bank-urges-fresh-push-economic-threat-pollution-2025-09-01/

2025-09-01 15:44

LONDON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Britain has experienced its warmest summer since records began in 1884 and is now more likely to see similar hot weather in the future due to human-induced climate change, the Met Office weather forecaster said on Monday. Countries worldwide have experienced record-breaking heat in recent years as global warming intensifies, with the summer of 2024 now considered the world's hottest on record. Sign up here. In Europe, sweltering heatwaves this summer contributed to deadly wildfires in countries such as Spain and Portugal. Britain's summer months of June, July and August saw a mean temperature this year of 16.10 degrees Celsius (60.98 degrees Fahrenheit) - surpassing a 2018 record of 15.76 C, the Met Office said. The summer 2025 mean is 1.51 C above the long-term meteorological average. "Our analysis shows that the summer of 2025 has been made much more likely because of the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution," head of climate attribution at the Met Office, Mark McCarthy, said. "We could plausibly experience much hotter summers in our current and near-future ... what would have been seen as extremes in the past are becoming more common in our changing climate." Britain saw four heatwaves this summer, with the highest temperature of 35.8 C recorded in Faversham, southeast England. This peak was lower than the UK's all-time high of  40.3 C in the summer of 2022. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/uk-summer-was-its-warmest-since-records-began-says-met-office-2025-09-01/