China’s Defence Ministry said on Thursday its aircraft followed the rules after two Chinese fighter jets carried out what the United States said was an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea.The incident took place in international airspace last week as the plane carried out “a routine U.S. patrol”, the Pentagon said.A U.S. defense official said two Chinese J-11 fighter jets flew within 50 feet (15 meters) of the U.S. EP-3 aircraft. The official said the incident took place east of Hainan island.Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a monthly news briefing China’s aircraft acted completely professionally and in line with an agreement reached between the countries on rules governing such encounters.

However, he said the agreement, called the Rules of Behaviour for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters, could only provide a “technical standard”, and the best way of resolving the problem was for the U.S. to stop such flights.“That’s the real source of danger for Sino-U.S. military safety at sea and in the air,” he said.The encounter came shortly after China scrambled fighter jets as a U.S. Navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.Another Chinese intercept took place in 2014 when a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic maneuvers around a U.S. spy plane.China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea after creating artificial islands, while Beijing, in turn, has criticized increased U.S. naval patrols and exercises in Asia.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, while renewed job cuts in the energy sector boosted layoffs announced by U.S.-based employers in July.Despite the increases, the labor market remains healthy and will probably continue to support economic growth for the rest of this year. While other data on Thursday showed orders for factory goods fell for a second straight month in June, largely on weak demand for transportation equipment, there were signs spending cuts in the energy sector were easing.

“The data do indicate the economy and the labor market are improving. It appears that the collapse in the energy sector is ending. For two months now, new orders for mining and oil and gas field equipment were up,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 269,000 for the week ended July 30, the Labor Department said. Economists had forecast initial claims slipping to 265,000 in the latest week.

Claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with a strong labor market, for 74 consecutive weeks, the longest streak since 1973. With the labor market perceived to be either at or approaching full employment, there is probably limited scope for further declines in claims.The dollar gained versus a basket of currencies, surging against the British pound after the Bank of England cut interest rates and resumed bond purchases in a move aimed at mitigating the impact of the country’s vote to exit the European Union.

Longer-dated U.S. Treasuries rallied and stocks on Wall Street were trading higher.Claims tend to be volatile around this time of the year when automobile manufacturers typically idle assembly lines for retooling. Some, however, keep production running, which can throw off the model the government uses to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data.

Through the gyrations, the trend in claims has remained consistent with jobs market strength. The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 3,750 to 260,250 last week.This level of unemployment claims points to continued very subdued layoff rates at the start of the third quarter,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.The claims data has no impact on July’s employment report, scheduled to be released on Friday, as it falls outside the survey period. According to a Reuters poll of economists, nonfarm payrolls likely increased by a healthy 180,000 jobs in July after surging 287,000 the prior month. June’s jump in job gains was viewed as unsustainable given anemic economic growth. Labor market strength is boosting consumer spending, which is expected to help the economy regain speed after growth braked to an average 1.0 percent annual rate in the last three quarters.

In separate report, global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas said employers in the U.S. announced plans to shed 45,346 workers from their payrolls in July, a 19 percent increase from June.Though it was the second straight monthly increase, layoffs were 57 percent lower than in July last year. Job cuts in the energy sector surged 796 percent to 17,725 last month.“This was somewhat unexpected in light of recent projections of increased oil prices and possible labor shortages in the industry,” said John Challenger, chief executive officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In a third report, the Commerce Department said new orders for manufactured goods declined 1.5 percent in June after falling 1.2 percent in May. Orders for machinery gained 0.2 percent, with orders for machinery, oil field and gas field machinery soaring 207.9 percent after vaulting 139.1 percent in May.Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft increased 0.4 percent in June instead of the 0.2 percent gain reported last month. These so-called core capital goods are seen as a measure of business confidence and equipment spending.

An outright drop in inventories and sustained weakness in business spending weighed on GDP growth in the second quarter, with output rising at a tepid 1.2 percent annualized rate after increasing at a 0.8 percent pace in the first three months of the year.The advance growth estimate reported last week could be revised to about a 1.0 percent pace, economists said, as the factory orders report showed lower nondurable goods inventories in June than the government had assumed in the GDP report.Factory goods dipped 0.1 percent in June. Inventories have declined in 13 of the last 14 months. Shipments increased 0.7 percent. That lowered the inventories-to-shipments ratio to 1.35 from 1.36 in May.

The Supreme Court next week will hear a Roman Catholic bishop\\\'s challenge to the requirement that employers must pay for contraception under the rules of the Affordable Care Act.The Wall Street Journal reports the outcome could affect 1 million Catholic nonprofit employees.

The high court will decide whether employers with religious affiliations who object to including contraception in their workers\\\' insurance plans can refuse to pay for them.At the center of the case is the Most Rev. David Zubik, Bishop of Pittsburgh, who has long opposed the contraception requirement.
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But, as The Journal reports, the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia could work against his case, with Justice Anthony Kennedy, as the likely swing vote.

Kennedy, according to The Journal, \\\"has appeared to voice approval of the government\\\'s workaround system as a solution for employers the court recognizes as having conscience rights.\\\"

An Uber [UBER.UL] driver told a British tribunal on Wednesday he had earned less than the minimum wage, despite the firm saying he received nearly three times as much, in a case that could threaten the app’s business model.Lawyers are representing two drivers at an employment tribunal, arguing that Uber is acting unlawfully by not offering rights such as holiday and sick pay.Uber, which allows users to book and pay for a taxi by smartphone, says its more than 30,000 London drivers enjoy the flexibility of being able to work when they choose and receive on average much more than the minimum wage.The case could hit Uber’s reliance on using self-employed drivers.

James Farrar, a driver with the firm since December 2014, said that last August he earned less than the 6.70 pounds ($8.80) an hour for those aged 21 and older which was then the rate for the minimum wage in Britain.“They claim that, based on the total number of hours logged into the app, I have been paid 13.77 pounds on an average hourly basis,” he wrote in a witness statement.“I calculated my net earnings for August 2015 after the expenses I set off and they came to 5.03 pounds an hour.”Uber’s lawyer David Reade said that Farrar had picked a month in which he had logged onto the app for the longest period of time but canceled or not accepted the most amount of jobs, thereby reducing his hourly pay.Most employees in Britain are entitled to the minimum wage but the self-employed are among those who do not qualify.The issue of low pay and a lack of job security has sparked a public outcry in Britain in recent years with firms such as sports retailer Sports Direct facing a backlash over their use of zero-hour contracts.

Last year Uber, whose investors include Goldman Sachs and Alphabet Inc unit Google, said its drivers received average payments of 16 pounds an hour in October after the firm’s service fee.The former start-up has grown rapidly and is valued at $62.5 billion but has faced protests, bans and restrictions in several cities, including in London where traditional black-cab drivers tried to have the app ruled illegal.The case is due to last until next Tuesday and a decision on whether Uber is acting unlawfully is unlikely to be given by the judge for several weeks.

Former candidate Jeb Bush endorsed Ted Cruz for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday, saying the U.S. senator from Texas represents the party\\\'s best chance of winning the White House.
In a statement, the former Florida governor called Cruz a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated an ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests.\\\"Washington is broken, and the only way Republicans can hope to win back the White House and put our nation on a better path is to support a nominee who can articulate how conservative policies will help people rise up and reach their full potential,\\\" Bush said.

The 63-year-old Bush, whose father and brother served as president, dropped out of the presidential nomination fight after losing badly in South Carolina on Feb. 20.The endorsement comes as establishment Republicans scramble to stop front-runner Donald Trump from winning the nomination because of his divisive proposals like a plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants.Cruz has run in second place behind Trump and could conceivably win enough Republican delegates to take the nomination.

Ohio Governor John Kasich\\\'s lone path to the nomination is to extend the nomination race until the party\\\'s national convention in July. The idea is to deny Trump the required 1,237 delegates needed and force party leaders to consider someone else.A source close to Bush said Bush picked Cruz because he has the most viable path to the nomination and has shown that he can win states. The source said Bush considers a push for a contested convention to be a \\\"hail-Mary strategy at best.\\\"

In the weeks after he withdrew, Bush met in Miami with former rivals Cruz, Kasich and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Rubio dropped out of the race after losing Florida last week. Bush spoke by phone to Cruz on Monday.In his statement, Bush resumed his sharp criticism of Trump, saying Republican voters must move to overcome \\\"the divisiveness and vulgarity\\\" that Trump has brought into the political arena \\\"or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President (Barack) Obama\\\'s failed policies.\\\"

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\\\"To win, Republicans need to make this election about proposing solutions to the many challenges we face, and I believe that we should vote for Ted as he will do just that,\\\" Bush said.In a statement, Cruz said Bush\\\'s endorsement \\\"is further evidence that Republicans are continuing to unite behind our campaign to nominate a proven conservative\\\" to defeat Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.