Reuters News Now

Hong Kong

A state of “panic and chaos” exists in Hong Kong, the city’s embattled leader said, defying calls to quit as the stock market tumbled, airlines flagged further flight disruptions and anti-government protesters filled the airport. Flight check-in services have been suspended at Hong Kong’s international airport, the airport authority said, citing disruptions caused by anti-government protests.

Hong Kong’s last British governor Chris Patten cautioned that if China intervened in Hong Kong it would be a catastrophe and that Chinese President Xi Jinping should see the wisdom of trying to bring people together. Patten said it was counter productive of the Chinese to warn of “other methods” if the protests did not stop. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned China that any violent crackdown on protests would be “completely unacceptable,” while Trump administration officials urged all sides to refrain from violence.

Business

Share markets fell for a third straight day as fears about a drawn out global trade war, protests in Hong Kong and a crash in Argentina’s peso currency kept investors huddled in bonds, gold, and the Japanese yen for safety. Investors were also still assessing the wider damage caused by Monday’s crash in Argentina after its President Mauricio Macri became the latest pro-free market, pro-reform leader to be given a beating at the polls by a populist rival.

Google’s fast-growing tool for searching job listings has been a boon for employers and job boards starving for candidates, but several rival job-finding services contend anti-competitive behavior has fueled its rise and cost them users and profits.

China’s yuan is at an appropriate level currently and two-way fluctuations in the currency will not necessarily cause disorderly capital flows, a senior official at the People’s Bank of China told Reuters. The yuan has weakened nearly 2.4% since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened earlier this month to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods from Sept. 1, though there are signs China is trying to stem the declines.

U.S.

A top U.S. lawmaker joined the chorus of officials demanding answers from the Bureau of Prisons over the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in federal custody. The chairman and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrat Jerrold Nadler, sent a scathing letter to the acting director of federal prisons stating that the “competency and rigor of our criminal justice system has been marred.”

The Trump administration unveiled a sweeping rule that some experts say could cut legal immigration in half by denying visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor. The long-anticipated rule, pushed by Trump’s leading aide on immigration, Stephen Miller, takes effect Oct. 15. It would reject applicants for temporary or permanent visas if they fail to meet high enough income standards or if they receive public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, public housing or Medicaid.

Many African Americans have difficulty accumulating savings in part because they lack access to mainstream financial services like banking, a new study on the contributing factors to the U.S. racial wealth gap by McKinsey & Co found. Many minorities in the United States depend on more expensive financial services like check-cashing counters since there are fewer banks in non-white neighborhoods.

More El Paso residents than ever before crowded into a class over the weekend to become certified to carry a concealed gun in public in Texas after this month’s mass shooting at a Walmart store that killed 22 people. The vast majority of people at the classes were Hispanic; El Paso is a predominantly Latino city. Police say the accused gunman deliberately attacked Hispanics in the Walmart.