By Lisa Richwine LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor George Clooney, a key Democratic fundraiser who made a public call for President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday as the party’s nominee for the November presidential election. Biden ended his campaign on Sunday following pressure from Democrats in Congress and top donors such as Clooney who were disturbed by the president’s disastrous debate performance in June. Harris became … Read more…

By Jason Lange (Reuters) – Vice President Kamala Harris opened up a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and passed the torch to her, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. The poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, followed both the Republican National Convention where Trump on Thursday formally accepted his party’s nomination and the Biden announcement on Sunday he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris. Harris, whose … Read more…

(Reuters) – U.S. companies borrowed 4% less to finance equipment investments in June than a year ago, industry body Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA) said on Tuesday. New loans, leases and lines of credit signed up by companies in June were down 2% from $10.20 billion a month ago. ELFA, which reports economic activity for the more than $1-trillion equipment finance sector, said credit approvals for U.S. companies came in at 75%, unchanged from … Read more…

By Karin Strohecker and Libby George LONDON (Reuters) -Ukraine said on Monday it had reached an agreement in principle with a group of creditors to restructure $20 billion of international bonds, bringing the war-torn country closer to an unprecedented debt rework. Ukraine’s announcement comes just over a week before a two-year debt suspension agreement struck in 2022 is due to run out and marks the first time a country has embarked on a debt restructuring … Read more…

By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden may not have gotten much credit politically for the thousands of grants and public investments his administration showered across the country, with airport or road projects in places like South Carolina and Wyoming unlikely to dent former President Donald Trump’s locked-in status in those deeply conservative states. It may take years, moreover, to reveal whether what Biden attempted – jump-starting a post-carbon energy transition, reshoring … Read more…

(Reuters) -The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday confirmed two additional cases of bird flu in Colorado poultry farm workers. Last week, Colorado reported four confirmed infections of H5N1 bird flu and was checking on the status of a fifth suspected case. The two new cases were in poultry workers with exposure to infected poultry during depopulation and disposal activities, the CDC said on Friday. The cases are part of an outbreak … Read more…

By Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly TOKYO (Reuters) – A U.S. plan to use Japanese factories to boost production of Patriot air defence missiles – used by Ukraine to defend against Russian attacks – is being delayed by a shortage of a critical component manufactured by Boeing, four sources said. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) already makes about 30 PAC-3 missiles each year under licence from defence contractor Lockheed Martin and can increase that number … Read more…