By Fasika Tadesse, Bloomberg News Africa’s biggest coffee producer has revised rules to allow foreign companies to buy the commodity directly from farmers and processors, the latest in reforms to liberalize East Africa’s biggest economy. Until now Ethiopia — which prides itself as the birthplace of coffee — required buyers such as Starbucks Corp., Volcafe Ltd., Louis Dreyfus Co., Olam International Ltd. and Sucafina SA to purchase shipments from local companies. Controls have also been lifted off other commodities including oilseeds, pulses, hides and skins, forest products, poultry and livest ..read more

Construction is getting underway on a $12 billion high-speed train between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, an inter-state project local officials say will be boon to the Southern California economy as service rolls out in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Under a white tent just south of the Las Vegas Strip, officials from California and Nevada are gathering today, April 22, to drive the first nail for the fully electric rail system that will be operated by Brightline West, whose sister company already operates a fast train between Miami and Orlando in Florida. The Brightlin ..read more

Robbie Sequeira | Stateline.org (TNS) When Denise Brown peruses the tightly packed gift card display at her local CVS in Harlem, New York, she sees the perfect present for her grandson: a Sony PlayStation gift card. Others, acting in bad faith, see these gift card displays as easy money in one of the country’s costliest and most common consumer scams: card draining. Scammers drain a gift card by obtaining the bar code, CVV number, PIN number or activation code from beneath the slim cardboard packaging. They reseal the card, wait for a consumer to buy it and load it with money, and th ..read more

Lauren Rosenblatt | The Seattle Times (TNS) SEATTLE — In December 2020, 15-year-old Tyler Schmidt took a deadly chemical to a wooded area near his home in Camas, Clark County, Washington. His body was found two days later. The chemical was determined to be his cause of death. That year, four more individuals died the same way. In 2021 and 2022, 10 more died after ingesting the same chemical. All 15 individuals purchased the chemical — a substance that can be used as a food preservative or in medical lab settings in a low purity form — from Amazon. It was sold there with 99% purity. The familie ..read more

By Henry Meyer and Galit Altstein, Bloomberg News The Israeli military said the head of its intelligence division quit over the failure to prevent the Oct. 7 invasion by Hamas, an attack that left about 1,200 dead and triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. Aharon Haliva, head of military intelligence, handed in his resignation after 2 1/2 years in the role, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Monday. He’s the first senior Israeli official to step down over the assault by Hamas, an Iran-backed group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union. Related Articles Wor ..read more

By Nick Perry and Dave Collins Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday and new demonstrations broke out on other U.S. college campuses as tensions continue to grow over Israel’s war in Gaza. Protesters rallied throughout the weekend at the Ivy League school’s New York City campus, where police last week arrested more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had set up an encampment. Since those arrests, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have set up encampments on other campuses around the country, including at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ..read more

By Alan Crawford, Bloomberg News In a year of elections, populist leaders from Europe to the Americas are pushing a narrative that migration is out of control. Yet for all the hysteria, the number of international migrants worldwide according to the latest United Nations estimate remains a small minority of the total population. Movement within national borders is still “overwhelmingly the norm,” it says. The real change of recent years, says the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), is that the core drivers of displacement — geopolitics, technology and climate change — are inte ..read more

Michael Hirtzer | Bloomberg News (TNS) America’s wheat crop is making a comeback. Too bad U.S. grocery shoppers want to buy less food made with it. Related Articles Business | 63 Albertsons in California to be sold to C&S Wholesale if Kroger merger OK’d Business | Navy review highlights challenges behind yearslong shipbuilding delays Business | Is Musk controversy responsible for Tesla's struggles? Business | Housing developers win first ‘builders remedy’ battles in fight to bypass local zoning Business | What’s new: GLO Mini Golf location opens in San Bernardino Although crop condi ..read more

In order to understand the Chargers’ needs in the NFL draft, it’s important to consider who they already have on their roster and what they’ve already addressed via free agency during the first months of the tenures of Jim Harbaugh as coach and Joe Hortiz as general manager. When it comes to the Chargers’ offense, it would seem clear that vacancies have been filled at the running back and tight end positions, with the free-agent signings of J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards and Will Dissly and Hayden Hurst. Does that mean they won’t seek additions at those spots? Not necessarily. During an extended ..read more

While this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio is now in the past, Goldenvoice is already looking to the future, having announced the dates for the next installment in 2025. The three-day, two-weekend festival will return on April 11-13 and April 18-20, 2025. Advance ticket sales for general admission and VIP passes will go on sale Friday, May 3, 2024 at coachella.com. More information on times and details on ticket pricing will be released soon. In past years, Coachella has reliably sold out for both weekends. However, this year, the second weekend ..read more