NEW YORK: Bitcoin breached the $60,000 mark for the first time since April on growing optimism that American regulators will greenlight the first US futures exchange-traded fund for the cryptocurrency. 

FRANKFURT: Global shortages in industrial components and raw materials have cramped Germany’s export driven economy, prompting the country’s leading economic institutes to slash their forecast for growth this year yesterday. 

ISTANBUL: The Turkish lira sank to a record low against the US dollar yesterday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired three central bank members in an overnight decree. The embattled Turkish currency has lost nearly a fifth of its value so far this year as market concerns over the policy-setting bank’s independence hit fever pitch.

BEIJING: China’s factory inflation hit its highest level in a quarter of a century on surging commodity costs last month, with yesterday’s figures fanning concerns that higher prices could filter through supply chains and into the global economy. 

KANDAHAR: Afghanistan’s festive pomegranate season has begun, but this year thousands of tons of the juicy red fruit risk rotting on trucks blocked at Pakistan’s frequently shuttered border-leaving thousands of farm workers unemployed. 

LONDON: The United States has overtaken China as the biggest miner of bitcoin following Beijing’s crackdown on the method used to unearth the world’s major cryptocurrency, a study showed yesterday. 

WASHINGTON: American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said Tuesday they will continue requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, deferring to federal regulations as Texas and the White House square off over vaccine mandates. 

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers rubber-stamped a short-term bill to lift the nation’s borrowing authority Tuesday, averting the threat of a first-ever debt default — but only for a few weeks. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted along party lines to pass the stop-gap $480 billion hike, which advanced from the Senate last Thursday after weeks of heated debate.

WASHINGTON: Kristalina Georgieva was secured in her job at the helm of the International Monetary Fund Monday, after the Washington-based crisis lender’s board reaffirmed its confidence in the scandal-hit Bulgarian economist.