Global stocks sank Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with talks that are aimed at averting a trade war with China. Equities were also dented by poor eurozone economic data, and as Trump cast doubt on a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Trump (is) continuing to drive uncertainty over global trade,” said analyst Joshua Mahony at trading firm IG. “European markets are following their Asian counterparts lower, as a pessimistic tone from Trump is compounded by downbeat economic data,” he added. Markets had surged Monday after US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said they had agreed to pull back from imposing threatened tariffs on billions of dollars of goods, and continue talks on a variety of trade issues. However, Trump has declared that he was “not satisfied” with the status of the talks, fuelling worries that the world’s top two economies could still slug out an economically pain...
A 27-year-old man has been charged on two counts of fraud after making over a million euros by illegally manipulating a bottle deposit machine in his shop. Artur K. faces a court in Bochum this week, after he was accused of defrauding the German Deposit Society (DPG) out of of €1.2 million. The 27-year-old shop manager is said to have illegally manipulated two bottle deposit machines in his shop. Deposit machines allow customers to return empty bottles and cans, and claim back a small amount of money from their purchase. When a bottle is inserted, the machine crushes and records the item. The vendors are then able to claim back money from providers, based on the the data stored in the machine. Artur K. is accused of manipulating the machines into not crushing the bottles, allowing him to retrieve and insert the same bottle multiple times, Der Westen reported. This allowed him to claim significantly higher sums than he would otherwise have been able to from the DPG. If h...