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DUBLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she hoped discussions between Prime Minister Theresa May’s government and the opposition Labour Party could break the Brexit impasse by an April 10 emergency European Union summit.

Brexit is now mired in doubt, nearly three years since the United Kingdom shocked the world by voting 52 percent to 48 to leave the bloc. Supporters fear betrayal and opponents are pushing for another referendum.

Unless May can agree to a closer post-Brexit economic relationship with the EU as advocated by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Britain could be forced at the summit, two days before Britain is due to leave the bloc, into a long Brexit delay of around a year.

May offered to quit to get her deal passed but it was defeated for a third time on Friday, the day Britain was originally due to leave the EU, so she turned to Labour. Two days of talks have not yet produced a way out of the maze.

“We hope that intensive discussions in London can lead even by next Wednesday, when we will have our extraordinary summit, to a position that British Prime Minister Theresa May can present to us, that we can then discuss,” Merkel told a news conference with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin.

“We will then stay together as 27. We will do everything, as I’ve already said, to the last hour, to prevent a disorderly exit,” Merkel said.

Merkel added that there had been a lot of movement in the British position over the past few days. Varadkar said EU leaders must be patient while talks continue in London.

Corbyn, a veteran socialist campaigner whom May has repeatedly derided as unfit for office, said on Wednesday that she had not moved far enough in talks which continued, at a lower level, for four and a half hours on Thursday.

A Downing Street spokesman said Thursday’s talks were “detailed and productive” and that they hoped to meet again on Friday, mindful of the need to make progress ahead of the European Council summit on Wednesday.

Corbyn has insisted that May agree to a confirmatory referendum on any deal. The Guardian newspaper said a letter was being drafted from May’s government to Labour with the idea that such an idea should be put to parliament.

Labour did not call the talks productive but simply said they were detailed and technical. May’s de-facto deputy, David Lidington, and Labour’s Brexit point man, Keir Starmer attended the talks, along with the parties’ business and strategy chiefs.

CORBYN DEAL?
Twenty-five lawmakers in Labour urged Corbyn to go the “extra step” if there was a chance of agreeing a Brexit deal.

The 25 lawmakers, almost all from areas which voted to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum, said the talks “represent a real opportunity” for Corbyn, a way to get a deal which would meet Labour’s demands for a Brexit that protected workers’ rights.

Finance minister Philip Hammond said that if talks with Labour failed, the government would try to take ideas from the discussions and present them to parliament, adding a confirmatory vote idea deserved to be tested in parliament.

The Brexit vote exposed deep fractures in British society, though the crisis it triggered has also shown a political system in dire need of reform. It is unclear how, when or if Britain will leave the EU.

The chaos has raised fears of a disorderly exit that would shock the British economy, roil financial markets and even hurt global trade. The European Central Bank has warned that markets need to price in a no-deal Brexit.

Pro-Brexit lawmakers in Britain’s upper house of parliament tried on Thursday to thwart the approval of a new law which would force May to seek a delay to prevent a disorderly EU exit on April 12 without a deal.

After more than two years of tortuous discussions about the minutiae of the separation, EU leaders are weary of London’s failure to agree its own divorce and patience is wearing thin.

The EU is discussing different options: a delay until the end of the year, next spring or the end of 2020 though in recent days discussions have focused mostly on a one year delay.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian investigators urged Boeing to review its flight control technology and said pilots of state carrier Ethiopian Airlines had carried out proper procedures in the first public findings on the crash of a 737 MAX jet that killed 157 people.

The doomed flight repeatedly nosedived as the pilots battled to control the nearly full aircraft before it crashed six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in clear conditions, Ethiopian authorities said on Thursday.

“The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft,” Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told a news conference, presenting the outlines of a preliminary report.

Investigators are expected to publish the report by Friday.

Boeing’s top-selling aircraft has been grounded worldwide since the March 10 disaster, which came just five months after a Lion Air 737 MAX crash in Indonesia that killed 189. An initial report into that accident also raised questions about the jet’s software, as well as training and maintenance.

Families of the victims, regulators and travelers around the world have been waiting for signs of whether the two crashes are linked, and the extent to which Boeing technology and the actions of the Ethiopian Airlines pilots played a role.

Ethiopian investigators did not blame anyone for the crash, in line with international rules requiring civil probes to focus on technical recommendations for safer flight. Nor did they give a detailed analysis of the flight, which is expected to take several months before a final report due within a year.

But in a clear indication of where Ethiopian investigators are directing the attention of regulators, they cleared the pilots of using incorrect procedures and issued two safety recommendations focused on the recently introduced aircraft.

They suggested that Boeing review the flight control system and that aviation authorities confirm any changes before allowing that model of plane back into the air.

“Since repetitive uncommanded aircraft nose down conditions are noticed … it is recommended that the aircraft control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer,” Dagmawit said.

The nose-down commands were issued by Boeing’s so-called MCAS software. The preliminary report into the Lion Air disaster suggested pilots lost control after grappling with MCAS, a new automated anti-stall feature that repeatedly lowered the nose of the aircraft based on faulty data from a sensor.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which has come under fire over the way it decided to certify the MCAS software, cautioned the investigation had not yet concluded.

“We continue to work toward a full understanding of all aspects of this accident. As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action,” the U.S. agency said in a statement.

Boeing said it would study the report once it was released.

NO TENSIONS
Ethiopian Airlines said its crew had followed all the correct guidance to handle a difficult emergency.

However, the report could spark a debate with Boeing about how crew responded to problems triggered by faulty data from an airflow sensor, particularly over whether they steadied the plane before turning key software off.

Questions on whether the pilots had leveled out the plane before disengaging MCAS and how many times MCAS activated were not answered in a news conference that lasted about 40 minutes.

Following a previous Ethiopian Airlines accident off Beirut in 2010, Addis Ababa authorities rejected the conclusions of a Lebanese investigation citing pilot error and suggested the aircraft had exploded in a possible act of sabotage.

Officials denied reports of tensions between Ethiopian officials and U.S. and other foreign investigators accredited to the current probe.

“We don’t have any reservations from different stakeholders who were engaged in the investigations,” chief investigator Amdye Ayalew Fanta said.

Aviation safety analyst Paul Hayes said deeper investigation would delve into the role played by software and how pilots were able to respond, and said he hoped scars from the 2010 dispute would not get in the way of a comprehensive investigation.

“Pilots shouldn’t have to cope with such an emergency situation. We need to understand what are the factors that meant these two crews were overcome,” said Hayes, safety director at UK-based consultancy Flight Ascend.

“It is unusual for there to be a single cause,” he added.

Boeing said on Wednesday it had successfully tested an update of the MCAS software designed to make it easier to handle.

(Reuters) – European stocks took a breather on Thursday after hitting an eight-month high in the previous session, with banking mergers in focus while investors awaited more developments in U.S.-China trade talks.

At 0720 GMT, the pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.4 percent, having risen more than 3 percent climb in the previous four sessions on hopes that a U.S.-China trade deal could be imminent after both sides reported progress.

Commerzbank shares rose 3 percent as the race to acquire the German lender heated up. The Financial Times reported that Italy’s UniCredit was preparing a bid as Deutsche Bank’s attempt faces obstacles.

The FT said UniCredit was unlikely to gatecrash current merger negotiations with Deutsche but might make a move if these fell apart.

The news is likely to rekindle expectations of further consolidation in the battered European banking sector, which has underperformed the STOXX 600 this year. It was also among leading decliners on Thursday.

Britain’s exporter-heavy FTSE 100 continued to be pressured by a rise in sterling, boosted by hopes of progress or at least a longer Brexit delay as Prime Minister Theresa May seeks a joint approach with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn to end a parliamentary deadlock.

Dampening sentiment was data out of Germany that showed an unexpected drop in industrial orders in February, hit by a slump in foreign demand.

Saga Plc shares crashed nearly 40 percent, on course for its worst daily performance, after the over-50s tourism and insurance firm forecast lower annual underlying pretax profit and cut its dividend as it struggles to keep up in a competitive motor and home insurance sector.

Steel maker Thyssenkrupp fell 1.5 percent as workers demanded substantial guarantees for jobs and plants even if a planned joint venture with India’s Tata Steel falls apart.

Novartis dipped after an influential non-profit organization said the $4 million to $5 million value put on a course of its experimental gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is excessive.

Among bright spots was the British home repairs provider HomeServe Plc, which led gains on the STOXX after forecasting full-year adjusted pretax profit at the upper end of market expectations.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso on Thursday said using government spending as a primary policy tool to boost employment and spur inflation, an idea backed by some U.S. academics, would backfire on the world’s third-biggest economy given its huge debt pile.

Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda echoed Aso’s view in parliament, saying that the idea was unacceptable because it does not take into account the dangers of running a huge fiscal deficit.

“It’s an extreme idea and very dangerous because it would weaken fiscal discipline,” Aso told parliament, when asked about the theory by a ruling party lawmaker.

“I have no intention of making Japan a platform for experimenting such ideas,” he added.

Advocates of the so-called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) argue that government spending, and deficits as needed, should be used to meet the full employment and inflation mandates currently tasked to the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Taxes may not be needed to support all spending since the government can create more money and inflation is the main restraint on government spending, according to the theory.

While MMT has yet to gain traction among mainstream Japanese politicians, some analysts say it could appeal to lawmakers who favor big fiscal spending to lure votes.

“It’s an extreme theory that is hard to accept because it does not take into account (the impact of) fiscal deficit and outstanding debt,” Kuroda said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan was not conducting fiscal policy along the lines of MMT because it was aiming to stably lower the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP).

He also repeated his view that Japan must proceed with the scheduled sales tax hike to 10 percent from 8 percent in October to meet rising social welfare costs of a rapidly ageing population.

“Japan must go ahead with the sales tax hike. On the other hand, we hope to achieve growth with a mix of flexible fiscal spending and bold monetary policy,” Abe said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trade talks between the United States and China made “good headway” last week in Beijing and the two sides aim to bridge differences during talks that could extend beyond three days this week, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said.

Kudlow, speaking to reporters on Wednesday at an event organized by the Christian Science Monitor, said China had recognized problems for the first time during the talks that the United States has raised for years.

Negotiations continued in Washington on Wednesday after meetings last week in Beijing, spearheaded by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

President Donald Trump will meet Vice Premier Liu He, who is leading the Chinese side in the talks, in the Oval Office at 4:30 p.m. (2030 GMT) on Thursday, the White House said.

A date for a meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could be announced as early as Thursday, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources, which would signal that a deal could be close. But the WSJ, citing an administration official, said discussions remained fluid and those plans could change.

The United States and China have levied tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of two-way trade since July 2018. Trump has said he wants a “great deal” with China and has hinted that tariffs could remain in place for some time.

Chinese commitments to increase purchases of American agricultural, energy and manufactured products are expected to be part of a final deal, and a person familiar with the talks said China would get about six years to meet those commitments, or until 2025.

The deadline was reported earlier by Bloomberg, but Trump administration officials previously said that a six-year timeline for purchases exceeding $1 trillion had been under discussion.

A final number for the amount of purchases has not been settled, the person said.

Kudlow said Liu and his team would remain in Washington for three days and possibly longer.

“We’re covering issues that have never really been covered before, including enforcement,” Kudlow said, listing U.S. accusations that Beijing engages in intellectual property theft, forced transfer of technology from U.S. companies doing business in China, cyber hacking, tariffs and non-tariff barriers for commodity trading.

“All making good progress, all making good headway, but we’re not there yet,” he said about those areas. “We hope this week to get closer.”

Kudlow said it was significant that China had “acknowledged these problems for the first time. They were in denial.”

Those structural issues along with the way a potential deal would be enforced have been sticking points during months of talks between the world’s two largest economies.

Kudlow said on Wednesday that U.S. charges against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd had generally not come up during trade talks.

Kudlow also said no decisions had been made on tariffs on auto imports coming from top U.S. allies.

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday to thrash out a Brexit compromise, a gamble that could finally see a European Union divorce deal agreed but also tear her party apart.

After her EU withdrawal deal was rejected three times by lawmakers, with parliament and her Conservative Party hopelessly divided over Brexit, May said on Tuesday she would reach out to Corbyn in a bid to break the impasse.

The United Kingdom was supposed to leave the EU last Friday, but three years after Britons backed leaving the bloc in a referendum, it is still unclear how, when or even if it will do so.

May has been unable to persuade a hardcore eurosceptic group of own lawmakers to back the divorce agreement she struck with the EU because they argued it did not provide a decisive break with Europe.

Her decision to seek another short delay to the current Brexit date of April 12 and turn instead for support from Labour, which wants to stay in a customs union with the EU, may make a “soft” Brexit more likely – one that keeps Britain’s economy closely aligned to the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Sterling rose on Wednesday over hopes for a “softer” Brexit, hitting its highest level since March 28.

“I personally think a customs union is highly undesirable,” Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told BBC radio.

“It is regrettable that what we have been saying for several months now is coming to pass, but that is the remorseless logic of not backing the prime minister’s deal.”

May’s decision to approach Corbyn, a veteran socialist deeply disliked by many Conservatives and mocked by May herself as unfit to govern, still leaves many questions unanswered.

She did not spell out how long a delay to Brexit she wanted, merely saying it should be “as short as possible and which ends when we pass a deal”. She has repeatedly said she did not want an extension which would see Britain having to take part in elections to the European Parliament on May 23.

European Council President Donald Tusk said the bloc should be patient with Britain as May tries to find a way forward but it was not certain how European leaders would view her request.

As it stands, Britain will still leave the EU on April 12 without a deal, something many Conservative lawmakers would like to happen but a scenario businesses fear could wreak chaos and cause huge economic damage.

A cross-party group of British lawmakers will try on Wednesday try to rush through legislation in parliament to make such an outcome impossible.

WHAT DOES LABOUR WANT?
Ahead of their talks, May and Corbyn said there would be no preconditions, but the leaders might well struggle to find a compromise position that can satisfy their own parties.

“This isn’t a blank cheque,” Barclay said.

The Conservatives have been divided over Europe for three decades, leading to the demise of three former prime ministers, David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher.

But Labour is far from united itself. Corbyn, who voted against joining the bloc in 1975, has previously set out a series of demands he wanted May to agree to before he would back her deal.

“Labour has put forward our proposals to ensure there is a customs union with the EU, access to vital markets and protections of our standards of consumer, environmental and workers’ rights,” he said on Tuesday.

However, many Labour supporters want the party to throw its weight behind a second referendum, while some Labour lawmakers, who represent areas that voted strongly to leave the EU, are fearful that they will be viewed as betraying such traditional voters if they do not strongly back Brexit.

IT’S A TRAP
“I thought momentarily last night May’s ‘offer’ might be genuine,” said one pro-EU Labour lawmaker Bradshaw.

“Having heard Barclay…it is clearly a trap designed to try to get May’s terrible deal through, which some people have fallen for, but Labour mustn’t,” he wrote on Twitter.

It is also unclear where May’s last-ditch attempt to get a Brexit deal through will ultimately leave her minority government.

She had already promised to step down if her withdrawal agreement was passed by parliament, although that failed to persuade all her lawmakers to back her, and her overture to Corbyn has alienated some Conservatives still further.

“She needs to take a long look in the mirror and for the good of our country, our democracy and the Conservative Party she needs to go now,” lawmaker Andrew Bridgen told Sky News.

The Democratic Unionist Party, the small Northern Irish party on whose support May relies on to govern, were also wary of her plans.

“It remains to be seen if sub-contracting out the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, someone whom the Conservatives have demonised for four years, will end happily,” the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said in a statement following May’s change of strategy.

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday she would seek another Brexit delay to agree an EU divorce deal with the opposition Labour leader, a last-ditch gambit to break an impasse over Britain’s departure that enraged many in her party.

Nearly three years since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a shock referendum result, it is still unclear how, when or if it will ever indeed quit the European club it first joined in 1973.

In a hastily arranged statement from her Downing Street office after spending seven hours chairing cabinet meetings on how to plot a way out of the Brexit maze, May said she was seeking another short extension to Brexit beyond April 12.

Her move offers the prospect of keeping the United Kingdom in a much closer economic relationship with the EU after Brexit – though it could also rip her Conservative Party apart as half her lawmakers want a decisive split from the bloc.

“I am offering to sit down with the leader of the opposition and to try to agree a plan – that we would both stick to – to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal,” she said.

“We will need a further extension of Article 50 (divorce notification), one that is as short as possible and which ends when we pass a deal. We need to be clear what such an extension is for – to ensure we leave in a timely and orderly way.”

Corbyn said he would be “very happy” to meet May and that he would set no limits ahead of the talks, while reiterating that his party aimed to keep a customs union with the EU, access for Britain to its single market and protections for workers.

He added that he would hold a vote of no-confidence in the government in reserve if any eventual accord still failed to achieve majority support in a deeply split British parliament.

Germany and France called for more clarity from London, warning that without a clear sense of what Britain wanted it could be heading towards a disorderly Brexit within days. The EU’s Donald Tusk called for patience with London.

MAY’S GAMBLE INFURIATES PARTY EUROSCEPTICS
Keeping Britain closely tied to the EU after Brexit is anathema to much of the Conservative Party. Many Brexit-backing Conservatives were livid at May over her overture to Corbyn.

“This is a deeply unsatisfactory approach, it is not in the interests of the country, it fails to deliver on the referendum result and history doesn’t bode well for it,” Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Brexiteer, told reporters following a meeting of the party’s hardline eurosceptic parliamentary group.

Boris Johnson, the face of the 2016 Brexit campaign, said a compromise with Labour would betray the referendum, asserting that the world’s fifth biggest economy could be outside the EU but still subject to EU rules.

“Brexit is becoming soft to the point of disintegration,” said Johnson, who resigned as foreign minister last July. Still, May faced no immediate resignations from her senior team.

Prominent Brexit supporters in May’s cabinet, such as Michael Gove, defended her plan in public after a marathon meeting at which ministers haggled for hours over coffee and sandwiches. They finished with Chilean red wine.

Any plan, May said, would have to include the current Withdrawal Agreement that she agreed with the EU in November and which the bloc says it will not reopen.

May last week offered to quit if parliament approved her deal but lawmakers defeated it a third time on Friday, the very day Britain had been due to leave the EU. Brexiteers say her deal would trap Britain in the EU’s orbit indefinitely but pro-EU opposition parties say her proposed break would isolate Britain and cause lasting economic damage.

Lawmakers failed on Monday to find a majority of their own for any alternative plan ranging from a permanent customs union to a confirmatory referendum on any deal and a revocation of the divorce papers to avoid a no-deal crash-out.

NEW OPTIONS FOR PARLIAMENT?
May said that if she could not agree a unified approach with Corbyn, a veteran socialist who voted against joining the bloc in 1975, then the government would come up with a number of options on the future relationship with the EU.

Then, she said, the government would put them before the House of Commons in a series of votes.

“Crucially, the government stands ready to abide by the decision of the house,” May said.

Her move could cleave apart her Conservatives, who have been grappling with an internal schism over Europe for the past three decades. Over half of her lawmakers voted last week to go for a no-deal Brexit, much to the alarm of British business.

“It seems to me that she wants to rely upon Labour votes to get this extension through,” David Jones, a Brexit-supporting former Conservative minister, told Reuters. “If she does that, then she is putting the future of the party in peril.”

May said she wanted the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to be passed before May 22 so that the United Kingdom did not have to take part in elections that month to the European Parliament.

Her spokesman said it was possible to cancel participation in the European elections right up to the day of the vote.

The impasse has already delayed Brexit for at least two weeks beyond the planned departure date of March 29 to 2200 GMT on April 12.

“This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands,” May said. “But we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump took a step back on Tuesday from his threat to close the U.S. southern border to fight illegal immigration, as pressure mounted from companies worried that a shutdown would cause chaos to supply chains.

Trump threatened on Friday to close the border this week unless Mexico acted. He repeated that threat on Tuesday but said he had not made a decision yet: “We’re going to see what happens over the next few days.”

Closing the border could disrupt millions of legal crossings and billions of dollars in trade. Auto companies have been warning the White House privately that it would lead to the idling of U.S. plants within days because they rely on prompt deliveries of components made in Mexico.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest U.S. business lobbying group, has been in contact with the White House to discuss the “very negative economic consequences that would occur across the country,” said Neil Bradley, the group’s top lobbyist, on a call with reporters.

Trump praised efforts by Mexico to hinder illegal immigration from Central America at its own southern border. On Monday, the Mexican government said it would help regulate the flow of migrants.

“I really wanted to close it,” Trump said on Tuesday night at a fundraiser for congressional Republicans.

The Mexican government has not published apprehension statistics, but a senior White House official said it had provided daily updates to the Trump administration, including specific apprehension numbers.

“They say they’re going to stop them. Let’s see. They have the power to stop them, they have the laws to stop them,” Trump said earlier on Tuesday.

PUSH BACK
Trump has made fighting illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America a key part of his agenda, but shutting down one of the world’s most used borders might be a step too far, even for many of his fellow Republicans.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined Democrats in warning Trump against such a move.

“Closing down the border would have potentially catastrophic economic impact on our country and I would hope we would not be doing that sort of thing,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday.

A group representing General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said in a statement that “any action that stops commerce at the border would be harmful to the U.S. economy, and in particular, the auto industry.”

Dozens of U.S. vehicle, engine, transmission and other auto parts plants could close because of a lack of components in the days after a border shutdown. It would also prevent thousands of vehicles built in Mexico from landing in U.S. dealer showrooms.

Automakers exported nearly 2.6 million Mexican-made vehicles to the United States in 2018, accounting for 15 percent of all vehicles sold in the country. Some, like the Chevrolet Blazer SUV, are only made in Mexico.

Retailers are also raising alarm bells, according to officials with two groups that represent hundreds of U.S. retail firms.

“It will be unprecedented self-inflicted pain,” said David French, senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation. “We are still nervous about this and we have been talking to some of our companies about maybe ramping up direct pressure on the White House by getting CEOs to call.”

SLOWER BORDER
Senior U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said on Tuesday a recent redeployment of some 750 officers on the border to deal with a surge in migrants – mostly Central American families turning themselves in to border agents – had already led to a slowing of legal crossings and commerce at ports of entry.

“Wait times in Brownsville (Texas) were around 180 minutes, which were two times the peaks of last year,” said a senior DHS official on a call with reporters. “We ended the day yesterday at Otay Mesa (California) with a backup of 150 trucks that hadn’t been processed,” the official said.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday that backups were delaying commercial traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border at several crossings. He said the government had not drastically changed its migration strategy following the shutdown threats.

DHS officials said border facilities had been overwhelmed by families seeking asylum, fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Manuel Padilla, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol, would now serve as the agency’s coordinator on the border response.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimated that some 100,000 migrants were apprehended or encountered at the border in March, the highest level in a decade. “The system is on fire,” a DHS official said.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs.

To try to address the problem, the Trump administration in January started sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities. On Monday, DHS said it would dramatically ramp up that program, despite court challenges.

The biggest priority for Nielsen is to seek action from Congress to change the immigration laws, said a DHS official. She sent a letter to Congress last week repeating many of the Trump administration’s demands, including a request to quickly deport Central American minors that cross the border alone.

Under current law, minors who are not from the contiguous countries of Canada and Mexico are placed in the care of sponsors in the United States, which Nielsen called a “dangerous ‘pull’ factor” for migrants. Migrant advocates and some Democrats in Congress oppose the proposed legislative changes, saying they would send vulnerable children back to dangerous situations in their home countries.

Trump said he had spoken with “a few” Democrats on Tuesday about the administration’s proposals and added: “They’re changing their minds.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Asian shares rose to fresh seven-month highs on Wednesday as investors cheered signs of progress in U.S.-China trade talks and brisk economic data, while oil approached the key $70 per barrel mark.

Shares in Europe were seen following Asia’s lead, with London’s FTSE futures adding 0.1 percent and Frankfurt’s DAX futures jumping 0.7 percent.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.8 percent on Wednesday afternoon in Asia, after earlier touching its highest level since late August.

The index has risen more than 3 percent since Thursday following reports of progress in trade talks between the United States and China, as well as reassuring factory activity data from China and the U.S.

The run of gains for stock markets worldwide has also pushed MSCI’s key gauge of global equities to a six-month high. The global index was up more than 0.2 percent on Wednesday.

Hopes for a deal to end the trade war between the world’s two largest economies were fanned by fresh comments from White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow that Washington expects “to make more headway” in talks this week.

Even so, analysts struggled to point to a clear catalyst for the extended rally in equities.

“I think there’s a tendency for markets at times to just want to be positive unless you hit them repeatedly, and not just with bad news, but with new bad news,” said Rob Carnell, chief economist and head of Asia-Pacific research at ING in Singapore.

“There’s been an awful lot of bad news priced in. So perhaps the absence of new negatives are enough to allow for a small sense of positivity to creep in,” he said.

Australian shares were up 0.7 percent and Japan’s Nikkei stock index added 1 percent. Chinese blue-chips were 0.5 percent higher after a tentative start, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 0.9 percent.

On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3 percent to 26,179.13 points, the S&P 500 was flat and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.25 percent to 7,848.69.

“After such a strong rise it is no surprise that the risk rally stalled a little,” said Greg McKenna, strategist at McKenna Macro, in a morning note to clients.

But after a brief consolidation in risk sentiment, U.S. Treasury yields were once again ticking higher.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes yielded 2.5044 percent, up from a U.S. close of 2.479 percent on Tuesday, and the two-year yield touched 2.3247 percent compared with a U.S. close of 2.308 percent.

Oil prices also stood near multi-month highs amid concerns about supply, with Brent crude rising as much as 0.72 percent to $69.87 per barrel, its highest since November and near the psychologically important level of $70 per barrel.

It was last up 0.52 percent at $69.73. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 0.37 percent to $62.81 per barrel.

News that the United States is considering more sanctions against Iran, the fourth-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and the halting of production at a crude terminal in Venezuela threatened to squeeze supply and pushed oil prices up on Tuesday.

In currency markets, the pound was about 0.1 percent higher at $1.3139, having recovered its footing after British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would seek another delay to Brexit to work out an European Union divorce deal with opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The dollar strengthened 0.06 percent against the yen to 111.38 and the euro added 0.18 percent to buy $1.1222.

The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, eased 0.19 percent to 97.176.

Cryptocurrency bitcoin, which surged 18.7 percent on Tuesday following a major order by an anonymous buyer, extended its gains by another 1.2 percent to $4,958.98.

Spot gold gained 0.05 percent to trade at $1,293.38 per ounce.