市场消息

LONDON (Reuters) – Work is continuing at pace to secure the changes Britain is seeking to its exit deal with Brussels in order to win the backing of parliament, Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokeswoman said on Friday.

May discussed the changes with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday and has now spoken to 26 EU leaders over the last two weeks. She will also hold bilateral meetings with EU leaders on at a summit in Egypt over the weekend.

“She will have a period of engagement again on Sunday and Monday with European leaders … work is continuing at pace to make the kind of progress that we need,” the spokeswoman said.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Humanitarian aid should not be forced into Venezuela, lest it cause violence, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday, warning that Beijing opposed military intervention in the country.

Speaking at a daily news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that the Venezuelan government had “remained calm and exercised restraint”, effectively preventing large-scale clashes.

“If so-called aid material is forced into Venezuela, and then if it causes violence and clashes, it will have serious consequences. This is not something anyone wants to see,” Geng said.

“China opposes military intervention in Venezuela, and opposes any actions causing tensions or even unrest,” he said.

Maduro retains the backing of both Russia and China.

Beijing has lent more than $50 billion to Venezuela through oil-for-loan agreements over the past decade, securing energy supplies for its fast-growing economy.

A change of government in Venezuela would favor Russia and China, who are the country’s two main foreign creditors, Guaido told Reuters in an interview last month.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro threatened to close the border with Colombia on Thursday as opposition leader Juan Guaido and some 80 lawmakers ran a gauntlet of roadblocks trying to get to the frontier to receive humanitarian aid.

Guaido, who is recognized by dozens of countries as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state, was poised for a showdown with Maduro’s government on Saturday, when the opposition will attempt to bring in food and medicine being stockpiled in neighboring countries.

Maduro denies there is a humanitarian crisis and said on Thursday he was considering closing Venezuela’s key border with Colombia and would close the country’s other main border with Brazil, effectively shutting off any legal land access.

The government has said soldiers will be stationed at official crossing points to repel any “territorial violations”, although the opposition could attempt to cross anywhere along Venezuela’s porous borders.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will leave “a small peacekeeping group” of 200 American troops in Syria for a period of time after a U.S. pullout, the White House said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump pulled back from a complete withdrawal.

Trump in December ordered a withdrawal of the 2,000 American troops in Syria, saying they had defeated Islamic State militants there, even as U.S.-backed Syrian forces continued a final push against the group’s last outpost.

But Trump has been under pressure from multiple advisers to adjust his policy to ensure the protection of Kurdish forces, who supported the fight against Islamic State and who might now be threatened by Turkey, and to serve as a bulwark against Iran’s influence.

“A small peacekeeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for a period of time,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

The decision was announced after Trump spoke by phone to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. A White House statement said the two leaders agreed, regarding Syria, to “continue coordinating on the creation of a potential safe zone.”

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States is foolish enough to want one and that his country currently has the edge when it comes to a first nuclear strike.

The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in 1962 when Moscow responded to a U.S. missile deployment in Turkey by sending ballistic missiles to Cuba, sparking a standoff that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

More than five decades on, tensions are rising again over Russian fears that the United States might deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe as a landmark Cold war-era arms control treaty unravels.

Putin’s comments, made to Russian media late on Wednesday, follow his warning that Moscow will match any U.S. move to deploy new missiles closer to Russia by stationing its own missiles closer to the United States or by deploying faster missiles or both.

Putin fleshed out his warning in detail for the first time, saying Russia could deploy hypersonic missiles on ships and submarines which could lurk outside U.S. territorial waters if Washington now moved to deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe.

The pact, which banned Russia and the United States from stationing short- and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe, is in its death throes, raising the prospect of a new arms race between Washington and Moscow.

Putin has said he does not want an arms race with the United States, but that he would have no choice but to act if Washington deployed new missiles in Europe, some of which he says would be able to strike Moscow within 10-12 minutes.

Putin said his naval response to such a move would mean Russia could strike the United States faster than U.S. missiles deployed in Europe could hit Moscow because the flight time would be shorter.

ST ATHAN, Wales/GAYDON, England (Reuters) – In three cavernous former Royal Air Force hangars at an old airbase in Wales, luxury carmaker Aston Martin is forging ahead with construction of a new vehicle assembly plant.

The paint shop is in, robots are being unpacked, and production of the company’s critical new sport utility vehicle is on track to start this year – Brexit deal or no deal.

“I still have to believe that we’ll get to a proper and right decision because a no-deal Brexit is frankly madness,” Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer told Reuters at the company’s Gaydon headquarters in England, where designers are working on a diverse lineup of vehicles for the 2020s and beyond.

Headlines have focused on plant closures and job losses ahead of Britain’s divorce from the EU.

Nissan has scrapped plans to build its new X-Trail SUV in the country, while Honda will close its only UK car plant in 2021 with the loss of up to 3,500 jobs – though it said the decision was not related to Britain’s exit from the EU.

However many auto companies – from luxury marques like Aston Martin to mass-market brands such as Vauxhall – are working on ways to survive after March 29.

On the outskirts of London, workers at Vauxhall’s operation in Luton are preparing to produce a new line of commercial vans following fresh investment from the brand’s owner PSA which they are counting on to sustain over 1,000 jobs.

While post-Brexit market conditions remain a big unknown, Vauxhall boss Stephen Norman told Reuters Britain’s exit from the European Union could present an opportunity to increase the brand’s market share. He is pursuing a marketing campaign to boost demand for the company’s modestly priced cars and SUVs.

The continued investment by some carmakers and the potential sales upside seen by Vauxhall reflect the conflicting decisions and opportunities that brands face depending on their size, their customers and where they are in the production cycle.

All automakers in Britain will anyway have to find ways make Brexit work, even if only in the short term.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – NASA has warned SpaceX and Boeing Co of design and safety concerns for their competing astronaut launch systems, according to industry sources and a new government report, threatening the U.S. bid to revive its human spaceflight program later this year.

NASA is paying SpaceX $2.6 billion and Boeing $4.2 billion to build rocket and capsule launch systems to return astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil for the first time since America’s Space Shuttle program went dark in 2011.

Just ahead of the first scheduled un-manned test flight slated for March 2 under NASA’s multibillion-dollar Commercial Crew Program, NASA’s safety advisory panel cited four “key risk items” in its 2018 annual report earlier this month.

For Boeing, they include the capsule’s structural vulnerability when the heat shield is deployed. For SpaceX, the report mentioned the redesign of a SpaceX rocket canister following a 2016 explosion and its “load and go” process of fueling the rocket with the crew already inside the capsule. “Parachute performance” remained an issue for both companies.

“There are serious challenges to the current launch schedules for both SpaceX and Boeing,” the report said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to introduce a resolution on Friday to end President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration on border security, according to aides to Representative Joaquin Castro.

So far, 92 lawmakers have joined Castro in backing the legislation, which under House rules could advance within weeks to a debate by the full chamber, which is controlled by Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter on Wednesday to both Democratic and Republican members inviting them to cosponsor Castro’s resolution. She said the House “will move swiftly to pass this bill.”

Both the House and the Republican-led Senate could pass a resolution terminating the emergency by majority vote. However, any such measure would then go to Trump, who would likely veto it. Overriding the veto would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers.

LONDON (Reuters) – Three lawmakers from Britain’s governing Conservatives quit over the government’s “disastrous handling of Brexit” on Wednesday, in a blow to Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to unite her party around plans to leave the European Union.

The lawmakers, long critical of May’s Brexit strategy to leave the EU which they believe is being driven by Conservative eurosceptics, said in a statement they would join a new group in parliament set up by seven former opposition Labour politicians.

May said she was saddened by the resignations, but signaled she would press on with her attempts to win a deal before Britain is due to leave the bloc on March 29.

But the resignations put May in an even weaker position in parliament, where her Brexit deal was crushed by lawmakers last month when both eurosceptics and EU supporters voted against an agreement they say offers the worst of all worlds.

They could also undermine May’s negotiating position in Brussels, where she is going later on Wednesday for talks with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to try to secure an opening for further technical work on revising the agreement.