After a half-century immersed in the world of trade, customs broker Amy Magnus thought she'd seen it all, navigating mountains of regulations and all sorts of logistical hurdles to import everything from lumber and bananas to circus animals and Egyptian mummies.
Then came 2025.
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France's fractured parliament is debating an emergency bill Tuesday designed to prevent a U.S.-style government shutdown next week, after negotiations on a 2026 budget collapsed.
With just days left before the new year, President Emmanuel Macron and his Cabinet met Monday night to present the brief draft law. It aims "to ensure the continuity of national life and the functioning of public services," including collecting taxes and disbursing them to local authorities based on tax and spending levels in the 2025 budget, the Cabinet said.
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A suspected cyberattack knocked France's national postal service and its banking arm offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments at the height of the busy Christmas season.
The postal service, called La Poste, said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, "rendered its online services inaccessible." It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package and mail delivery.
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World shares were mixed on Monday after a rebound in AI-related stocks like Nvidia spurred a late-in-the-week rally on Wall Street.
Germany's DAX edged 0.1% higher to 24,315.90, while the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.2% to 8,135.23. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.3% to 9,864.71.
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China will impose up to 42.7% of provisional tariffs on dairy products including milk and cheese imported from the European Union, its Commerce Ministry said Monday.
The elevated duties, which take effect Tuesday, were based on preliminary results from an investigation opened by China's Commerce Ministry in August 2024 as tensions between Beijing and Brussels flared. Beijing reviewed subsidies provided by EU countries for their dairy and other farm products.
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Depositors gathered Monday on the presidential palace road, ahead of a ministerial session in Baabda that will discuss a long-awaited banking draft bill, which distributes losses from the 2019 economic crisis.
The law stipulates that each of the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors will share the losses accrued as a result of the financial crisis.
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India and New Zealand announced Monday they have reached a free trade deal, seeking to deepen economic ties and shore up growth at a time of mounting global trade uncertainties.
The move comes as New Delhi accelerates efforts to diversify export destinations as part of a broader strategy to offset the impact of steep U.S. import tariffs.
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The Association of Banks in Lebanon has issued a statement expressing its "fundamental reservations and strong objection to the draft law presented to Cabinet concerning financial regulation and the handling of deposits, due to its provisions and procedures."
ABL said the draft law’s provisions “constitute an unjustified and unacceptable infringement on the rights of banks and depositors, and lack sound legal and financial standards and established precedents for addressing banking crises in other countries."
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Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has published a long-awaited banking draft bill, which distributes losses from the 2019 economic crisis between banks and the state.
The draft law is a key demand from the international community, which has conditioned economic aid to Lebanon on financial reforms.
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A French court on Friday rejected the state's request to suspend Shein's site in France as "disproportionate" after the Asian e-commerce giant removed illicit products sold on its platform.
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