2025-11-04 12:30
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Britain on Tuesday imposed a mandatory housing measure for birds covering the whole of England, effective Thursday, in a bid to slow the spread of bird flu. The disease is spreading rapidly in Europe, with the highest number of countries in at least a decade reporting early outbreaks, raising concerns of a repeat of past crises that led to the culling of tens of million birds and higher food prices. Sign up here. Two outbreaks at commercial poultry units were confirmed on Monday, one in North Yorkshire and the other in Devon, and a third among captive birds in East Sussex. There have now been 23 outbreaks of the disease in the United Kingdom so far in the 2025/26 season, which began on October 1, including 19 in England. Keepers of less than 50 birds are exempt from the housing measure, as long as any eggs and poultry products are for their own use only. The disease is spread primarily by wild birds migrating south in the autumn. The risk of bird flu for humans remains low, with most people infected having been in close contact with infected animals, but the virus needs to be monitored as it increasingly spreads to mammals, the World Health Organization says. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/mandatory-bird-housing-imposed-england-bird-flu-spreads-2025-11-04/
2025-11-04 12:26
TSA raises boost retention during government shutdown Officer pay and benefits improved during Biden administration TSA attrition rate dropped significantly in 2023 NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Airport security screeners working without pay during the U.S. government shutdown are in a stronger financial position than they were during the last prolonged closure in 2019, thanks to improvements in pay and benefits. Airport delays have begun to worsen as they did during Donald Trump's first presidential term, but higher pay and better working conditions could keep Transportation Security Administration workers in their jobs longer during the current shutdown. Even though TSA workers have not been paid for a month, there is less of a threat that lengthy travel delays will pressure lawmakers to end the shutdown this time around. Sign up here. In 2021, former President Joe Biden's administration expanded workplace rights, pay, and other benefits for TSA workers to mirror those of other federal employees. In 2023, their pay was boosted as much as 31%. Pay for the average TSA screener shot up to $61,840 in 2024 from $42,310 in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that shutdown, some screeners opted for comparable wages in the fast-food, construction and other industries. "A lot of people just said the hell with it and quit and went and got other jobs. People are more invested in the job now because of the pay,” said Neal Gosman, treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 899 in Minnesota. DELAYS START TO INCREASE On Day 31 of the 2019 shutdown, 10% of TSA workers called in sick - triple the normal absence rate. While there is no similar data this time around, security wait times are rising, causing issues at various airports. On Sunday, travelers waited in line close to an hour on average at New York's LaGuardia and JFK airports as well as in San Diego. Houston's airport has reported more than three-hour lines at times with people stretching outside onto the sidewalk. Previously, TSA officers were excluded from civil service protections, with lower wages and limited workplace rights. “We were sort of second-class employees,” Gosman said, adding poor compensation increased turnover rates in the past. "While I'm casually looking at going back to the private sector, my salary and a tough job market makes it hard to leave," Tyler Ditmar, an officer based in Ohio, told Reuters. In 2023, then-TSA administrator David Pekoske said the pay raise played a major role in retention and recruitment at the agency, with a 30% increase in the applications for all positions at TSA. The agency has seen notable improvements in workforce stability. TSA's overall attrition rate fell from 15.7% in 2022 to 11.5% in 2023, and currently stands at 7.8% for 2024. A 30-year-old officer based at New York's LaGuardia Airport told Reuters in October that she saw her annual salary jump in 2023 from $50,000 to about $60,000 before locality-based pay. She said she hasn't noticed an uptick in officers quitting their jobs since the shutdown began. "Not from my airport, there are not a lot. From what I know," she said. The TSA did not respond to a request for comment. "I am reporting to work every day knowing I’ll eventually get paid. Where I work, everyone to this point is also reporting to work for now and I don’t hear any talk of that changing," said a Florida-based officer named Frank, who declined to provide his last name. Recruitment has surged. As of July 1, TSA received 328,590 applications for fiscal year 2024 ending that September, surpassing its typical average of under 300,000. Hiring events have drawn record interest for officer roles, federal air marshals, and other positions. “We have a long history at TSA of not trusting the administration to look out for our best interests. The last couple of years is an exception,” Gosman said, noting that the raises and other improvements under Biden "boosted our morale." https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/us-airport-security-tsa-workers-ride-out-shutdown-with-better-pay-benefits-than-2025-11-04/
2025-11-04 12:26
PARIS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - French authorities have detected for the first time a microscopic worm that can ravage pine trees, extending the presence of the pathogen in Europe after it spread in Portugal and Spain in recent decades, France's agriculture ministry said. Known as the pine wilt nematode, the organism originated in North America and causes trees to perish by stopping their resin from circulating. Sign up here. The first French case was confirmed in the district of Seignosse in the southwestern Landes region, about 60 km from Spain, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. The zone is considered vulnerable to the pathogen given its proximity to Spain and prevalence of pine trees in its forests. France's overall forest area has expanded steadily in recent decades, though the authorities are concerned that a hotter, drier climate is increasing tree losses in some regions. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/france-reports-first-case-parasite-that-destroys-pine-trees-2025-11-04/
2025-11-04 12:23
BUCHAREST, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Romania will set up an infrastructure fund to address flood emergencies over at least five years, a requirement to unblock European Union recovery funds, Environment Minister Diana Buzoianu said. The country has seen some of its worst floods in at least two decades in 2024 and this year, causing 10 deaths, burst river banks, collapsed bridges and damage to thousands of homes. Sign up here. Under a reform plan agreed with the European Commission in exchange for recovery funds, Romania has until the first quarter of 2026 to set up a mechanism to fund infrastructure works against floods. Buzoianu said the fund will be based off a study conducted by the World Bank, which shows Romania needs between 10 billion and 40 billion euros ($11.66 billion-$46.65 billion) over at least five years to rehabilitate dams, build bridges, reinforce defences and other works. But the months-old coalition government, which is struggling to lower the largest budget deficit in the EU, could not accommodate the full cost at present. "At the moment we cannot cover absolutely all the ideal necessary works," Buzoianu told Reuters in an interview late last week. "But what I want is for this fund to cover works in areas where we already know we have high risk of flooding without which communities and lives are endangered." While the value of the fund will be decided at government level, Buzoianu said the funds will come from water management fees and taxes and will be allocated for priority works put forward in the study. The environment ministry has lost out on 2 billion euros ($2.33 billion) worth of EU recovery funds due to delays which made it impossible for projects due to be financed by the EU funds to be completed before an August 2026 deadline. Buzoianu, who took over the ministry in late June, is working to reform forestry and water management agencies and meet EU targets to access remaining funds. Some 40% of the lost funding will be covered from the state budget. (1 euro = 5.0840 lei) ($1 = 0.8575 euros) https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/romania-set-up-fund-critical-flood-infrastructure-2025-11-04/
2025-11-04 11:51
Nov 4 (Reuters) - India's power ministry has asked the country's renewable energy implementation agencies (REIA) to explore signing power purchase agreements with clean energy developers for projects without a buyer, according to a ministry document reviewed by Reuters. About 50 gigawatts of clean energy projects have been unable to come online due to unfinished transmission lines and legal and regulatory delays, Reuters reported in August, resulting in state power utilities delaying signing purchase agreements. Sign up here. REIAs are intermediaries that act as traders, aggregating power from various generators and selling it to the buyer. Typically, power purchase agreements are signed between an REIA and a developer based on agreements signed between the REIA and the end-buyer. According to the document, the ministry has directed REIAs to sign agreements directly with the developer, bypassing the buyer-side agreement, or, alternatively, cancel the tenders as a last resort. The ministry issued the directive following a high-level meeting chaired by India's Power Secretary on October 17. The meeting included officials from power generating firms NTPC (NTPC.NS) , opens new tab, NHPC (NHPC.NS) , opens new tab, SJVN (SJVN.NS) , opens new tab as well as the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), all designated as REIAs. The power ministry and the REIAs did not immediately respond to Reuters' email seeking comment. The agencies have been asked to act by November 30. STRANDED PROJECTS The decisions come as India attempts to streamline its renewable energy procurement framework and address bottlenecks in project execution as part of the country's push to double its non-fossil fuel power capacity to 500 GW by 2030. Of the 93 GW of renewable capacity tendered since fiscal year 2024, about 42 GW are without buyers, according to data shared during the meeting, the document showed. NHPC had 15.8 GW of projects, the highest number of clean energy projects without a buyer, while NTPC had 12.4 GW worth stranded clean energy projects. SJVN had 10 GW, and SECI had 3.9 GW, as per the document. SECI, the largest REIA in the country, had already cancelled tenders for projects unlikely to secure buyers, according to the document. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/india-pushes-government-clean-energy-agencies-sign-purchase-agreements-stranded-2025-11-04/
2025-11-04 11:49
Nov 4 - What matters in U.S. and global markets today By Mike Dolan , opens new tab, Editor-At-Large, Finance and Markets Sign up here. With one eye on Tuesday's U.S. local elections, stocks have been knocked back sharply from Monday's heady highs - partly on Palantir's 6% earnings-day drop and ahead of Wednesday's Supreme Court hearings on the legality of some U.S. import tariffs. Despite a headline beat and decent revenue forecast, the poor reaction to the update from AI and data analytics darling Palantir - whose stock has more than doubled this year on AI excitement and government and business demand - tapped a nerve in markets about excessive valuations and the increasingly high bar required to impress. Even the suggestion of slowing revenue growth can be jarring for a stock trading at a whopping 12-month-forward price-to-earnings ratio of 246 - many times even that of AI behemoth Nvidia's 33 times. What's more, chief executives of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs cautioned that global equity markets could be heading towards a correction. With Fed officials turning equivocal about another rate cut this year even as U.S. manufacturing activity remained in contractionary territory last month, Fed lending data showed business loan demand from large and mid-sized firms strengthened by the most in about three years in the third quarter - questioning the case for more rate cuts. That added to earnings and valuation jitters to sweep across world markets. Wall Street index futures were down more than 1% ahead of Tuesday's open and global bourses were in the red too. AMD, Super Micro, Amgen and Pfizer top today's diary. Perhaps also partly related to Palantir, crypto tokens were also hit by the 'risk off' tone and Bitcoin skidded to its lowest in more than four months. Hit by the stock swoon and Monday's ISM survey, Treasury yields retreated - but the dollar was knocked about in different directions. Japan's yen jumped sharply after the country's new finance minister Satsuki Katayama warned against excessive yen weakness and said the government was monitoring the situation with "a high level of urgency". But Britain's pound slid to its lowest in more than six months on the dollar as an unusual pre-budget speech by UK finance minister Rachel Reeves trailed tighter fiscal policy and higher taxes later this month, encouraging bets on offsetting interest rate cuts from the Bank of England - which meets this week. The Australian dollar fell after the Reserve Bank of Australia left its cash rate steady as expected and cautioned about further easing. Tuesday's sudden bout of market doubts and burst of volatility, which have lifted the VIX gauge back above long-term averages around 20, came after another effervescent day of dealmaking and AI investment spending on Wall Street on Monday. Amazon's shares jumped 4% after it announced a $38 billion deal with OpenAI to allow the ChatGPT maker to run and scale its AI workloads on Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure. And Kimberly-Clark shares slid 15% after the consumer goods firm moved to buy Tylenol-maker Kenvue for more than $40 billion. Kenvue jumped 12%. Worldwide mergers and acquisitions totaled $3.5 trillion during the first ten months of 2025 - a 38% increase from year-ago levels and the second-biggest year-to-date tally on record, according to LSEG data. It was the most active October since 2016. In today's column, I discuss the difficult political dance the Bank of England has to perform around this month's critical annual government budget announcement - and how it may affect the sequencing of further interest rate cuts. Today's Market Minute Chart of the day U.S. manufacturing contracted for an eighth straight month in October as new orders remained subdued, and suppliers were taking longer to deliver materials to factories against the backdrop of tariffs on imported goods. Still, the PMI remained above 42.3, a level that the ISM said over time was consistent with an expansion of the overall economy, and the survey's prices paid measure eased to a still-high 58.0 from 61.9 in the prior month. Today's events to watch Want to receive the Morning Bid in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up for the newsletter here. You can find ROI on the Reuters website , opens new tab, and you can follow us on LinkedIn , opens new tab and X. , opens new tab Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles , opens new tab, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/global-markets-view-usa-2025-11-04/
