市场消息

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Britain’s government will only hold another meaningful vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal on Tuesday if it is certain that the divided House of Commons would back it at a third attempt, the foreign minister said.

Jeremy Hunt, in Brussels for talks with his EU peers, told journalists on Monday when asked if the vote would take place the following day: “We hope it will. “But we need to be comfortable that we’ll have the numbers.”

“The risk of no-deal, at least as far as the UK parliament is concerned, has receded somewhat but the risk of Brexit paralysis has not,” he said.

Hunt said there were “cautious signs of encouragement” that May’s deal could go through.

LONDON (Reuters) – British companies look set to cut investment by the most in 10 years in 2019 because of Brexit, even if Prime Minister Theresa May gets a deal to ease the country out of the bloc, an employers group said on Monday.

Business investment was forecast to fall by an annual 1.0 percent in 2019, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said.

Weak investment by companies drags on productivity which puts a brake on wage rises and weighs on the overall economy.

“Political inaction has already had economic consequences, with many firms hitting the brakes on investment and recruitment decisions,” Adam Marshall, the BCC’s director general, said.

“Worse still, some companies have moved investment and growth plans as part of their contingency preparations. Some of this investment may never come back to the UK.”

Many financial firms have set up operations in other EU countries and carmakers have reduced their expansion plans in Britain. BMW said this month it could move some output in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

In 2018, business investment fell in each of the four calendar quarters, the longest such run since the global financial crisis, official figures have shown.

Finance minister Philip Hammond says he expects a pickup in investment by companies once a Brexit deal is done.

But the BCC said that the diversion of resources to prepare for the risk of a no-deal Brexit and the high up-front costs of doing business in Britain, as well as questions over Britain’s future ties to the EU, would limit any quick investment rebound.

The BCC said business investment was expected to grow by 0.6 percent in 2020 and 1.1 percent in 2021.

It lowered its overall growth forecast for Britain’s economy to 1.2 percent in 2019 – in line with the Bank of England’s latest forecast – from a previous estimate of 1.3 percent.

That would be the economy’s weakest growth in a decade, reflecting a slowdown in the global economy as well as Brexit.

The BCC saw only a weak pickup, with growth edging up to 1.3 and 1.4 percent in 2020 and 2021.

It said its forecasts assumed that Britain would avoid a disorderly exit from the EU.

“A messy and disorderly exit from the EU would do real and lasting damage to the UK’s economic prospects,” Marshall said.

Prime Minister Theresa May expected to ask lawmakers once again to back her Brexit plan this week after they rejected it twice previously.

Also on Monday, property website Rightmove said the asking price of homes put up for sale rose by a monthly 0.4 percent in the four weeks to March 9, the weakest increase for that period since 2011.

Prices in London, where the property market has shown most weakness in the run-up to Brexit, fell by 1.1 percent.

“The closer you get to the wire without the clarity of an agreed way forward, the greater the propensity for buyers to wait and see rather than acting now,” Rightmove director Miles Shipside said.

ADDIS ABABA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that killed 157 people had “clear similarities” with October’s Lion Air crash, Ethiopia said on Sunday, shown by initial analysis of the black boxes recovered from the wreckage of the March 10 disaster.

The crash has generated one of the most widely watched and high-stakes inquiries for years, with the latest version of Boeing’s profitable 737 workhorse depending on the outcome.

Both planes were MAX 8s, and both crashed minutes post take-off after pilots reported flight control problems. Concern over the plane’s safety led aviation authorities to ground the model, wiping billions of dollars off Boeing’s market value.

“It was the same case with the Indonesian (Lion Air) one. There were clear similarities between the two crashes so far,” Ethiopian transport ministry spokesman Muse Yiheyis said.

“The data was successfully recovered. Both the American team and our (Ethiopian) team validated it,” he told Reuters, adding that the ministry would provide more information after three or four days.

In Washington, however, U.S. officials told Reuters the FAA and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had not yet validated the data.

Boeing’s safety analysis of a new flight control system known as MCAS on MAX jets had several crucial flaws, one of which was that it understated the power of the system, the Seattle Times said on Sunday.

The FAA also did not delve in detailed inquiries and followed a standard certification process on the MAX, the paper said, citing an FAA spokesman.

The FAA declined to comment on the report but referred to previous statements about the certification process. It has said the process followed FAA’s standard process.

Citing people familiar with the inquiry, the Wall Street Journal said Department of Transportation officials are scrutinizing the FAA’s approval of MAX jets and a Washington, D.C. grand jury issued a subpoena to at least one person involved in the MAX’s development.

The subpoena dated March 11 – a day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash – listed as a contact a prosecutor from the Justice Department’s (DoJ) criminal division and sought documents to be handed over later this month, the paper said.

It was not immediately clear whether the DoJ subpoena was related to the DoT’s inquiry, which focuses on MCAS, implicated in the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people, the WSJ added.

Boeing and the FAA declined to comment on the WSJ report.

Two government officials briefed on the matter told Reuters it would not be surprising for the Transportation Department to investigate a major safety issue, but could not immediately confirm the report.

SAFETY ANALYSIS

An official told Reuters that when investigators – after reviewing black box data from the Ethiopian Airlines crash – return to Addis Ababa to conduct interpretive work, the NTSB and FAA will assist in verification and validation of the data.

A second source said little information had been circulated between parties about the contents of data and voice recordings.

It was not clear how many of the roughly 1,800 parameters of flight data and two hours of cockpit recordings, spanning the doomed six-minute flight and earlier trips, had been taken into account in the preliminary Ethiopian analysis.

International rules require a preliminary report on the crash to be released within 30 days.

Previous air crash reports show that in such high-profile cases there can be disagreements among parties about the cause.

In Paris, France’s BEA air accident investigation agency said data from the jet’s cockpit voice recorder had been successfully downloaded. The French agency said on Twitter it had not listened to the audio files and the data had been transferred to Ethiopian investigators.

In Addis Ababa, a source who has listened to the air traffic control recording of the plane’s communications said flight 302 had an unusually high speed after take-off before it reported problems and asked permission to climb quickly.

Last Monday, Boeing, shares of which have fallen 10 percent in the week since the crash, said it would deploy a software upgrade to the 737 MAX 8, hours after the FAA said it would mandate “design changes” in the aircraft by April.

Boeing was finalizing the software change and a training revision and would evaluate new information as it became available, Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement on Sunday, after the Ethiopian transport ministry’s comments.

A Boeing spokesman said the 737 MAX was certified in line with identical FAA requirements and processes that governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives. The spokesman said the FAA concluded that MCAS on 737 MAX met all certification and regulatory requirements.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Only one in five U.S. taxpayers expect to pay less income tax this year as a result of the tax reform law passed in 2017 by Republicans who promised big savings for everyday Americans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday.

The poll suggested that the tax overhaul, mostly geared to helping businesses, may not be as strong a 2020 campaign talking point as Republicans and President Donald Trump had hoped.

Just prior to approval of the tax reform by the Republican-controlled Congress, Trump said, “This is going to be one of the great gifts to the middle-income people of this country that they’ve ever gotten for Christmas.”

The tax overhaul lowered federal income tax rates for individuals as well as for corporations, but it also capped certain deductions, such as for state and local taxes, which could mean that some people will wind up paying more.

The March 6-11 survey found about 21 percent of adults who had either filed their taxes or planned to said “the new tax plan that Congress recently passed” would let them pay less this year; about 29 percent said they would pay more; 27 percent said there would be no impact; 24 percent said they were not sure.

The responses differed along party lines, with Republican taxpayers more likely than others to expect a tax benefit.

According to the poll, about 33 percent of Republicans said they would pay less tax; 17 percent said they would pay more.

Among Democrats, about 8 percent said they would pay less; about 45 percent said they would pay more.

The $10,000 cap imposed on the deduction of state and local taxes, which was previously unlimited, has been seen having the greatest effect on taxpayers in high-tax states, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, which are all largely Democratic.

The Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,755 people, including 1,439 who said they either “already filed” or “will file” an income tax return. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 5 percentage points.

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea is considering suspending talks with the United States and may rethink a ban on missile and nuclear tests unless Washington makes concessions, news reports from the North’s capital on Friday quoted a senior diplomat as saying.

Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui blamed top U.S. officials for the breakdown of last month’s summit in Hanoi between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Tass news agency and the Associated Press said.

“We have no intention to yield to the U.S. demands (at the Hanoi summit) in any form, nor are we willing to engage in negotiations of this kind,” TASS quoted Choe as telling reporters in the North Korean capital.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton “created the atmosphere of hostility and mistrust and, therefore, obstructed the constructive effort for negotiations between the supreme leaders of North Korea and the United States”, Tass quoted Choe as saying.

Kim is set to make an official announcement soon on his position on the denuclearisation talks with the United States and the North’s further actions, it added, citing Choe.

Choe said Washington threw away a golden opportunity at the summit and warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests, the Associated Press news agency said.

“I want to make it clear that the gangster-like stand of the U.S. will eventually put the situation in danger,” AP quoted her as saying. But she added: “Personal relations between the two supreme leaders are still good and the chemistry is mysteriously wonderful.”

South Korea, which has an ambitious agenda of engagement with North Korea that is dependent on Pyongyang and Washington resolving at least some of their differences, said it was too early to tell what Choe’s comments might mean.

“We cannot judge the current situation based solely on Vice Minister Choe Son Hui’s statements. We are watching the situation closely. In any situation, our government will endeavor for the restart of North Korea-U.S. negotiations,” South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement.

Choe’s comments echoed the North’s usual rhetoric at tense points in its dealings with Washington. North Korea expert Joshua Pollack said North Korea may be delivering an ultimatum.

“They’re putting down a marker, saying which way things are headed if nothing changes,” Pollack, of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, said.

“NO OVERNIGHT SOLUTION”
The second Trump-Kim summit broke down over differences about U.S. demands for Pyongyang to denuclearise and North Korea’s demand for dramatic relief from international sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests, which it pursued for years in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Choe had said after the Hanoi talks that Kim might lose his commitment to pursue a deal with the United States after seeing it reject a request to lift some sanctions in return for the North destroying its main known nuclear complex.

In Washington this week, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said the United States expected to be able to continue its close engagement, though he offered no specifics on when new talks might be held.

“Diplomacy is still very much alive,” Biegun said on Monday, but stopped short of saying if there had been any talks since the summit.

Bolton, who has argued for a tough approach to North Korea, said last week that Trump was open to more talks but also warned of tougher sanctions if the North did not denuclearise.

In Beijing, Premier Li Keqiang urged patience and further dialogue between North Korea and the United States.

“The peninsula problem can be said to be complicated and long-standing, and it cannot be solved overnight,” Li told an annual news conference on Friday, although his remarks were not made in response to the TASS report.

Earlier on Friday, a spokeswoman for South Korea’s Ministry of Unification told a press briefing that the weekly inter-Korean meeting scheduled at a liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea, had been canceled after the North Koreans said they would not be sending senior officials.

The spokeswoman said the ministry had not confirmed why the North Korean officials decided not to attend.

The South Korean won fell to its weakest intraday level in four months soon after the report, whereas the stock market’s KOSPI was muted in its reaction.

South Korean and Japanese defense-related shares surged following the reports.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers said after a briefing with the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday that Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes will remain grounded for “weeks” at a minimum, until a software upgrade could be tested and installed in all of the planes.

FAA Administrator Dan Elwell told reporters on Wednesday the software update will be ready within a couple of months after regulators around the world grounded the plane following a second fatal crash in the 737 MAX 8 since October.

The FAA said Monday it planned to require the upgrade it termed “design changes” by April. An FAA spokesman confirmed Thursday that the FAA will not unground the airplanes until the software patch is approved and installed.

The software patch may not be enough to allow the planes to be ungrounded depending on the findings from the ongoing investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Airlines 302 that killed 157 people on Sunday.

Boeing declined to comment, but said Monday it would roll out the software improvement “across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks.”

Representative Rick Larsen said after the briefing the software upgrade would take a few weeks to complete and installing on all aircraft would take “at least through April.” He said additional training would also have to take place.

Larsen, the top Democrat on an aviation subcommittee, said despite the fact that the FAA was the last major regulator to ground the plane, the “rest of the world is looking to the FAA to lead the effort on the fix and to make a decision about ungrounding the airplanes.”

Representative Peter DeFazio, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the software upgrade will result in the airplanes behaving more like older versions of the 737.

The upgrade will revise an automated protection system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS, which come under scrutiny in October’s fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia.

“After the pilot has tried to correct, the MCAS is going to not keep repeating itself, which is what it does now. It keep triggering automatically and the pilot has to do it again,” DeFazio said, unless it is manually disengaged by the pilot. “It will essentially shut itself off.”

The upgrade will address if there is a disagreement between censors, DeFazio said.

Lawmakers noted that there have been no confirmed incidents in 50,000 North America flights with the 737 MAX 8 and questioned if training by carriers abroad was an issue.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – At least one gunman killed 40 people and wounded more than 20 during Friday prayers at two New Zealand mosques in the country’s worst ever mass shooting, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described as terrorism.

New Zealand was placed on its highest security threat level, Ardern said, adding that four people in police custody, three men and one woman, held extremist views but had not been on any police watchlists.

The visiting Bangladesh cricket team was arriving for prayers at one of the mosques when the shooting started but all members were safe, a team coach told Reuters.

The killings in the city of Christchurch were condemned by political and Islamic leaders across Asia.

“We believe that 40 people have lost their lives in this act of extreme violence,” Ardern said. “It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack.”

Video footage widely circulated on social media, apparently taken by a gunman and posted online live as the attack unfolded, showed him driving to one mosque, entering it and shooting randomly at people inside.

Worshippers, possibly dead or wounded, lay huddled on the floor, the video showed. Reuters was unable to confirm the authenticity of the footage.

One man who said he was at the Al Noor mosque told media the gunman was white, blond and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest. The man burst into the mosque as worshippers were kneeling for prayers.

“He had a big gun … he came and started shooting everyone in the mosque, everywhere,” said the man, Ahmad Al-Mahmoud. He said he and others escaped by breaking through a glass door.

Radio New Zealand quoted a witness inside the mosque saying he heard shots fired and at least four people were lying on the ground and “there was blood everywhere”.

Ardern said 30 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, the city’s main mosque, and another 10 at a mosque in the suburb of Linwood. It was not immediately clear if the attacks were carried out by the same man.

“This is one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” Ardern said.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush said four people had been taken into custody.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said one of the men in custody was Australian.

The online video footage, which appeared to have been captured on a camera strapped to the gunman’s head, showed red petrol canisters in the back of his car, along with weapons.

Police said improvised explosive devices were found with a vehicle they stopped.

All mosques in New Zealand had been asked to shut their doors, police said.

“Indonesia strongly condemns this shooting act, especially at a place of worship while a Friday prayer was ongoing,” Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said in a statement.

She was earlier cited by media as saying six Indonesians had been inside one mosque when the attack occurred, with three managing to escape and three unaccounted for.

In Muslim-majority Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the biggest party in its ruling coalition, said: “I am deeply saddened by this uncivilized act, which goes against humanistic values and took the lives of civilians.”

Muslims account for just over 1 percent of New Zealand’s population, a 2013 census showed.

‘BLOOD EVERYWHERE’
The online footage showed the gunman driving as music played in his vehicle. After parking, he took two guns and walked a short distance to the entrance of the mosque.

He then opened fire. Over the course of five minutes, he repeatedly shot worshippers, leaving more than a dozen bodies in one room alone. He returned to the car during that period to change guns, and went back to the mosque to shoot anyone showing signs of life.

One man, with blood still on his shirt, said in a television interview that he hid from the gunman under a bench and prayed that he would run out of bullets.

“I was just praying to God and hoping our God, please, let this guy stop…,” Mahmood Nazeer told TVNZ.

“The firing went on and on. One person with us had a bullet in her arm. When the firing stopped, I looked over the fence, there was one guy, changing his gun.”

The video shows the gunman then driving off at high speed and later firing at parked cars and a building. Another unconfirmed video taken by someone else appeared to show police apprehending the gunman by the side of a road.

The Bangladesh cricket team is in Christchurch to play New Zealand in a third cricket test starting on Saturday.

“They were on the bus, which was just pulling up to the mosque when the shooting begun,” Mario Villavarayen, team strength and conditioning coach, told Reuters in a message. “They are shaken but good.”

The third cricket test was canceled, New Zealand Cricket said later.

Violent crime is rare in New Zealand and police do not usually carry guns.

Before Friday, New Zealand’s worst mass shooting was in 1990 when a gun-mad loner killed 13 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the tiny seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police.

Bloomberg – A meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping to sign an agreement to end their trade war won’t occur this month and is more likely to happen in April at the earliest, three people familiar with the matter said.

Despite claims of progress in talks by both sides, a hoped-for summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort will now take place at the end of April if it happens at all, according to one of the people. China is pressing for a formal state visit rather than a lower-key appearance just to sign a trade deal, the person said.

Xi’s staff have scrapped planning for a potential flight to the U.S. following a trip to Europe later this month, a separate person said. The people asked not to be named as the details are private.

Fear of Trump Walking Out on Xi Haunts China as Talks Near End

U.S. stock index futures dropped on the news. China’s offshore yuan extended its drop to as much as 0.51 percent, the most since Feb. 1.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer this week pointed to “major issues” still unresolved in the talks, with few signs of a breakthrough on the most difficult subjects including treatment of intellectual property. Chinese officials have also prickled at the appearance of the deal being one-sided, and are wary of the risk of Trump walking away even if Xi were to travel to the U.S.

White House communications staff didn’t immediately respond to an early morning request for comment. The State Council in Beijing also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump himself has shifted tone in recent days, walking back from a more urgent approach to getting a deal signed as early as March. He acknowledged concerns in Beijing about the possibility of him walking away from a trade deal, offering to push back a summit with Xi until a final deal is reached.

“We could do it either way,” Trump told reporters Wednesday at the White House. “We can have the deal completed and come and sign or we can get the deal almost completed and negotiate some of the final points. I would prefer that. But it doesn’t matter that much.”

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s attorney-general on Thursday rejected Vietnam’s request to free a woman accused of the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader, and a court set April 1 for her trial to resume.

Vietnam’s call had followed Monday’s release, at Indonesia’s request, of an Indonesian woman, who had been accused along with the Vietnamese, Doan Thi Huong.

Huong and Siti Aisyah were charged with killing Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX poison, a banned chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.

“It’s our complaint that the public prosecution has not acted fairly and justly to Doan Thi Huong,” her lawyer Hisyam Teh, who asked for an adjournment on the grounds that his client was unwell.

Teh told the court the rejection of Vietnam’s request was “perverse”, and a case of discrimination, as the attorney-general had favored one party over another, since the court had ordered both to enter their defense.

Vietnam’s ministers of justice and foreign affairs are communicating with their Malaysian counterparts to secure his client’s release, Teh added.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry said it regretted the Malaysian court’s decision not to immediately free Huong.

“Vietnam has mentioned this case in all its exchanges with Malaysia and we have also requested that Malaysia conduct a fair trial,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang told a news conference in Hanoi, the capital.

Prosecutors had sprung a surprise on Monday by asking the court to drop the charge against Siti Aisyah and free her. The Indonesian embassy flew her to Jakarta the same day.

The trial featured airport video recordings of two women allegedly assaulting Kim Jong Nam while he prepared to check in for a flight.

In one, a woman identified as Huong puts her hands on Kim’s face, while a blurry image shows someone the prosecution identified as Siti Aisyah hurrying away.

Teh rejected speculation that Siti Aisyah’s release was due to a lack of video evidence against her, saying the court had already established a case against both.

“So it makes no difference whatsover if Doan’s image was caught on the CCTV camera, none at all,” he said after the hearing.

Defense lawyers have maintained the women were pawns in an assassination orchestrated by North Korean agents. The North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur was defaced with graffiti just hours before the trial was to resume.

Interpol had issued a red notice for four North Koreans identified as suspects by Malaysian police who had left the country hours after the murder.

After the ruling, Huong was seen sobbing as she spoke with Vietnamese embassy officials, before being whisked away by police.

In Vietnam, Huong’s stepmother, Nguyen Thi Vy, said the decision saddened her.

“I don’t understand why the other girl was released, but not my daughter,” Vy told Reuters after the decision. “They were charged with the same thing, it’s such an injustice.”

Kim Jong Nam was living in exile in Macau before the killing, having fled his homeland after his half-brother Kim Jong Un became North Korea’s leader in 2011 following their father’s death.

Some South Korean lawmakers said the North Korean regime had ordered the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who had been critical of his family’s dynastic rule. Pyongyang has denied this.