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FILE PHOTO: A charging cable is seen hooked to a car at a State Grid Corporation of China charging point for electric vehicles in Beijing, China March 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
April 23, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will push ahead with the development of China’s hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle industry, a government official said on Tuesday, as part of wider efforts to promote green energy in the world’s largest auto market.
“Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and pure electric vehicles with lithium batteries are important technical routes for new energy vehicles,” said Huang Libin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Pure electric vehicles are more suitable for urban and short-distance passenger travel, while hydrogen fuel cells are more suitable for long-distance and large commercial vehicles, Huang said.
“We believe that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and pure electric vehicles will coexist and complement each other for a long time to meet the needs of transportation and people’s travel,” Huang said.
Senior industry executives and academics in China have urged the government to support hydrogen fuel cell technology due to its suitability for commercial vehicles.
Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp plans to supply fuel cell components to China’s commercial vehicle makers after launching a joint research institute with Tsinghua University last week.
(Reporting by Yilei Sun in Beijing and Brenda Goh In Shanghai, editing by Louise Heavens)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A real estate sign advertising a new home for sale is pictured in Vienna, Virginia, U.S. October 20, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo
April 23, 2019
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Sales of new U.S. single-family homes jumped to a near 1-1/2-year high in March, boosted by lower mortgage rates and house prices.
The Commerce Department said on Tuesday new home sales increased 4.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 692,000 units last month, the highest level since November 2017.
It was the third straight monthly increase in new home sales. February’s sales pace was revised down to 662,000 units from the previously reported 667,000 units.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for about 11.7 percent of housing market sales, decreasing 2.5 percent to a pace of 650,000 units in March.
New home sales are drawn from permits and tend to be volatile on a month-to-month basis. They increased 3.0 percent from a year ago. The median new house price dropped 9.7 percent to $302,700 in March from a year ago, the lowest level since February 2017.
New home sales have not been severely impacted by the supply problems that have plagued the market for previously owned homes. A report on Monday showed home resales tumbled in March, weighed down by a persistent shortage of lower-priced houses.
Despite the broader housing market’s struggles with supply, the fundamentals for housing are improving. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate has dropped by about 80 basis points since November, according to data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac. That followed a recent decision by the Federal Reserve to suspend its three-year monetary policy tightening campaign.
In addition, house price inflation has slowed and wage growth has picked up. Still, land and labor shortages are constraining builders’ ability to break more ground on lower- priced housing projects. Investment in homebuilding contracted 0.3 percent in 2018, the biggest drop since 2010.
New home sales in the South, which accounts for the bulk of transactions, increased 3.6 percent in March to their highest level since July 2007. Sales in the Midwest soared 17.6 percent, while those in the West surged 6.7 percent. But sales in the Northeast tumbled 22.2 percent.
There were 344,000 new homes on the market last month, down 0.3 percent from February. At March’s sales pace it would take 6.0 months to clear the supply of houses on the market, down from 6.3 months in February.
About 62 percent of the houses sold last month were either under construction or yet to be built.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Source: OANN
President Donald Trump once again lashed out against the press in a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, stressing a common theme of his presidency that the news media criticizes him in an unfair and unprecedented manner.
“Paul Krugman, of the Fake News New York Times, has lost all credibility, as has the Times itself, with his false and highly inaccurate writings on me,” Trump wrote in his first tweet of the day. “He is obsessed with hatred, just as others are obsessed with how stupid he is. He said Market would crash, Only Record Highs!”
He followed that up with another tweet in which he wrote, “I wonder if the New York Times will apologize to me a second time, as they did after the 2016 Election. But this one will have to be a far bigger & better apology. On this one they will have to get down on their knees & beg for forgiveness-they are truly the Enemy of the People!”
As Politico pointed out, Trump frequently claims that the Times apologized to him for its coverage following his election victory, but the paper repeatedly denies that, instead emphasizing that it wrote a letter to readers pledging the paper would rededicate itself to investigating the driving forces of the election and wondered whether Trump’s “sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters.”
In continued barbs at the press, the president wrote in yet another tweet that “The Radical Left Democrats, together with their leaders in the Fake News Media, have gone totally insane! I guess that means that the Republican agenda is working.”
He also claimed in a further tweet that “in the ‘old days’ if you were President and you had a good economy, you were basically immune from criticism.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
FILE PHOTO: An oil tanker is being loaded at Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia May 21, 2018. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah/File Photo
April 23, 2019
By Rania El Gamal
DUBAI (Reuters) – Gulf OPEC producers can step in to meet any oil supply shortage following a U.S. decision to end waivers on buyers of Iranian crude, but will first wait to see whether there is actual demand, OPEC and industry sources said.
The United States has decided not to renew exemptions from sanctions against Iran granted last year to buyers of Iranian oil, taking a tougher line than expected.
Eight countries, including China and India, were granted waivers for six months, and several had expected those exemptions to be renewed.
A senior U.S. administration official said Trump was confident Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would fulfill their pledges to compensate for the shortfall in the oil market.
Gulf oil producers are committed to market stability and have the capacity to raise production, but any decision to boost output has to be a measured one depending on demand, the sources said.
“The question is how fast and by how much will OPEC raise output. This still needs to be done after consultations with other countries,” one source said.
“It needs to be discussed and studied. There is an (OPEC) agreement that must be respected, we will not (raise output) immediately for sure.”
Another OPEC source said any decision to raise output must depend on demand.
“There must be actual impact on the market and a real demand from customers,” this source said, adding that any physical additional barrels by Gulf oil producers to compensate for a supply drop from Iran are unlikely to be seen until June.
Saudi Arabia’s oil exports in May are not expected to be much higher than April, two sources said.
The sources said Saudi Arabia’s May oil output will be higher than April, but still within its production target under the OPEC+ supply-cutting deal of 10.3 million bpd. The rise in Saudi May oil output is not related to Iran sanctions, the sources said.
The kingdom’s exports in April will be below 7 million barrels per day, while production is around 9.8 million bpd, Saudi officials said.
Washington reimposed sanctions in November on Iran’s oil exports after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers.
Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Monday that his country, the world’s top oil exporter, was monitoring oil market developments after the U.S. statement. He also said Riyadh would coordinate with other oil producers to ensure a balanced market and adequate supply.
A source familiar with Saudi thinking told Reuters on Monday that the country was willing to compensate for any potential loss of crude supply from Iran, but would assess the impact on the market before raising output.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers, an alliance known as OPEC+, are reducing output by 1.2 million bpd from Jan. 1 for six months. They meet on June 25-26 to decide whether to extend the pact.
On May 19, a panel of energy ministers from major oil producers, known as the JMMC, is due to discuss the oil market and make recommendations ahead of the June policy meeting, the sources said.
(Reporting by Rania El Gamal. Editing by Dale Hudson and Jane Merriman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference at the Bank of England in London, Britain February 25, 2019. Kirsty O’Connor/Pool via REUTERS
April 23, 2019
By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union’s system of financial-market access needs adapting to avoid disputes between the EU and Britain over rules after Brexit, a top UK regulator said on Tuesday.
Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, said future regulation in Britain will hinge on where the EU system of “equivalence” leads to.
Equivalence refers to Brussels granting foreign banks direct access to customers in the EU if it determines that their home rules are similar enough to those in the EU.
But for this to work after Brexit, it needs a “rules of the game” agreement setting out how equivalence is determined and a mechanism for handling disputes, Bailey said.
Equivalence should be based on whether the outcomes of foreign and EU regulation are the same, rather than on actual rules being written in the same way, Baile said.
Focusing on outcomes was critical, since Britain has a history of common law and preference for broad principles, while the EU has moved to harmonized rules, Bailey said.
“Left to our own devices, I think the UK regulatory system would evolve somewhat differently,” Bailey said in a speech at Bloomberg.
The EU has said that equivalence was the most likely form of market access for Britain’s financial sector to the EU, its most important customer.
Critics say the system is patchy, unpredictable and access can be withdrawn at short notice, citing the four years it took for the Europe and the United States to agree on clearing rules.
“We need to be careful here because I would submit that the record to date indicates that all of us are good at talking the language of outcomes but practicing the world of rules,” Bailey said in a speech at Bloomberg.
Britain’s government has called for “enhanced” equivalence to avoid the UK becoming a “rule taker” or continually copying EU law, but Brussels has shown little appetite for radically overhauling its system.
Faced with a major foreign financial center on its doorstep after Brexit, the EU has instead tightened access for foreign clearing houses and investment firms.
Banks, insurers and fund managers in Britain have opted to play safe and open new EU hubs.
Britain has introduced equivalence along with all EU financial rules into national law as part of its Brexit preparations.
The FCA is already fending off pressure for a tit-for-tat response to moves by EU regulators to ban trading of thousands of shares outside the bloc – including leading UK stocks – if there is a no-deal Brexit.
(Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Larry King)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
April 23, 2019
PARIS (Reuters) – A management shake-up at Europe’s Airbus accelerated on Tuesday as Nicolas Chamussy was replaced as the head of Space Systems.
Airbus said the 51-year-old space engineer would have an unspecified future role, while his job as head of space activities including the company’s 50 percent share of the ArianeGroup rocket venture will be taken by Jean-Marc Nasr.
The move comes less than four months after Nasr, 57, was named head of Asia-Pacific, responsible for group strategy and industrial issues and regional sales for Airbus Defence & Space.
Chamussy is a former chief of staff to Tom Enders, who stepped down earlier this month to make way for planemaking chief Guillaume Faury, and has been facing mounting competition from a new breed of private U.S. and other space contractors.
Companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, LeoSat Enterprises, and Canada’s Telesat are working to enable data networks with hundreds or even thousands of tiny satellites that orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a radical shift made possible by leaps in laser technology and computer chips.
Faury, 51, has implemented a tighter structure designed to simplify Europe’s largest aerospace group, while sidelining a number of executives previously close to Enders or former planemaking boss Fabrice Bregier, according to company watchers.
La Tribune, which first reported the changeover at space systems, said the reorganization could lead to other departures, accelerating a sweeping management overhaul already driven partly by an ongoing corruption probe and scheduled retirements.
An Airbus spokesman said Chamussy would stay inside Airbus and declined further comment on management changes.
The Space Systems division makes up 27 percent of Airbus Defence & Space revenues, which grew 4.4 percent last year to 11.1 billion euros ($12.5 billion). Space spending is rising but established players face increase competition within the United States, China, Japan and India.
Airbus is seeking to shore up its position by prioritizing a fledgling market for constellations of tiny satellites designed to broaden internet access and support new services. It launched six mini-satellites in February, the first of at least 600 to be launched in the next two to three years together with partner OneWeb.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher, editing by Louise Heavens)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: The company logo and trading information for BlackRock is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 23, 2019
By Simon Jessop and Ludwig Burger
LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Fund manager BlackRock will not support Bayer’s management in a key vote at its annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday, two people familiar with the situation told Reuters.
About 30 billion euros ($34 billion) has been wiped off the German drugmaker’s market value since August, when a U.S. jury found Bayer liable because Monsanto, which it bought for $63 billion last year, had not warned of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.
Bayer suffered a similar courtroom defeat last month and more than 11,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages.
BlackRock, which latest filings show owns 7.2 percent of Bayer’s voting rights, plans to either abstain from or vote against ratifying the management board’s actions during the year under review, the sources said.
The largely symbolic vote of confidence “will send a message to the board” that BlackRock is not happy with the way Bayer’s management handled the Monsanto deal, one of the sources said.
A vote to ratify the board’s actions features prominently at every German AGM. It has no bearing on management’s liability, but is seen as a key gauge of shareholder sentiment.
Bayer’s next two biggest shareholders, Singapore state investor Temasek and Norway’s oil fund, both declined to comment on their AGM voting intentions when contacted by Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Patricia Weiss, Anshuman Daga and Terje Solsvik; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh arrives for an OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/File Photo
April 23, 2019
(Reuters) – The United States has made a bad mistake by politicizing oil and using it as a weapon, Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said in a parliamentary session on Tuesday, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.
“America has made a bad mistake by politicizing oil and using it as a weapon in the fragile state of the market,” Zanganeh said, according to IRNA.
Oil prices on Tuesday hit their highest level since November after Washington announced all waivers on imports of sanctions-hit Iranian oil would end next week, pressuring importers to stop buying from Tehran and further tightening global supply.
Zanganeh added that the United States will not be able to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero.
“With all our power, we will work toward breaking America’s sanctions,” Zanganeh said in parliament, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).
The United States on Monday demanded that buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May 1 or face sanctions, ending six months of waivers which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers, most of them in Asia, to continue importing limited volumes.
(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh in Geneva; editing by Jason Neely and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Source: OANN
People, including passengers of a flight from the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, gather in the baggage claim area upon their arrival at Almaty International Airport, Kazakhstan April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mariya Gordeyeva
April 23, 2019
By Mariya Gordeyeva
ALMATY (Reuters) – Beset by economic hardship, enterprising Turkmens have found a way to supplement their incomes – smuggling towels and bed linen into neighboring Kazakhstan.
Moving hundreds of items every trip in trademark Chinese plaid bags which at times have clogged airport luggage belts, informal traders – mostly women in their late forties and fifties – hand them over to relatives or local partners to be resold for up to five times the purchase price.
Dressed in traditional Central Asian garb such as headscarves and long skirts, these women arrive on almost every flight from Ashgabat to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city.
Textiles are among the few items manufactured domestically from local feedstock and prices for items produced by state-owned companies have remained stable for years even as the Turkmen manat lost four-fifths of its value on the black market due to Turkmenistan’s falling gas export revenue.
A deal to resume gas exports to Russia this month brought hope, but turned out to be small and short-term.
Turkmenistan, where president Kurbanguly Berdimukhamedov rules with an elaborate personality cult, is one of the world’s most closed countries.
There are no opposition parties or media critical of the government and Berdymukhamedov, often referred to as Arkadag (Protector), wields sweeping powers.
Turkmenistan rarely allows visits by foreign journalists and the textile trade offers a glimpse into the depth of its economic problems.
INDUSTRIAL SCALE
The trade attracted the attention of Almaty airport officials this year when luggage from Turkmenistan started clogging its belts. The planes, it turned out, were stuffed with textiles.
“My daughter trades at a bazaar (in Kazakhstan) and I bring her goods little by little… which I buy from our (Turkmen) stores,” said a Turkmen woman picking up bags from the luggage belt in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial hub.
Like all other people involved in this informal textiles trading, the woman spoke on the condition of anonymity because traders like her dodge customs duties by claiming their goods are personal belongings not meant for resale.
These de facto smuggling operations reached industrial scale in early 2019, prompting the Almaty airport to lodge an official complaint with the Turkmen flag carrier.
“There were parcels weighing over 50-60 kilograms (110-130 pounds) each,” said Marina Zabara, a complaints inspector at the airport.
Oversized parcels have since disappeared but the flow of textiles continues. A Reuters reporter saw Turkmen travelers pick up parcels of textiles upon arrival in Almaty this month.
“A woman from Turkmenistan moved to our village last year and offered us to sell their textiles,” said a Kazakh trader working at a market on the outskirts of Almaty. “Her mother brings the goods as luggage, as many items as she can.”
At Almaty’s biggest market, traders display Turkmen bedding – often with traditional patterns based on deer and sheep horns or abstract human figures – from fully-packed cargo containers.
“The demand is good, with the most expensive bedding set priced at 10,000 tenge ($26),” said one trader.
Some hotels have also become wholesale buyers, Turkmens say.
The official exchange rate of the manat is 3.5 per dollar, but on the black market a dollar fetches 18.6 manat.
A Kazakh citizen who used to live in Turkmenistan told Reuters that by buying out luggage allowances from other travelers and bribing airline officials, a “shuttle trader” can move up to 200 kilograms (441 pounds) in one trip.
(Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty and Marat Gurt in Ashgabat,; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov, editing by Ed Osmond)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
April 23, 2019
By Sruthi Shankar
(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures pointed to a subdued opening on Wall Street on Tuesday, as investors parsed through a fresh batch of reports from Coca-Cola, Twitter and a handful of industrial companies.
Stock markets across the globe were listless as European markets reopened after a four-day Easter break only to be supported by gaining energy shares, spurred by oil prices near six-month highs. [O/R]
About a third of the S&P 500 companies including Boeing Co and Facebook Inc are scheduled to report this week, making it the busiest period this reporting season.
With Wall Street’s main indexes struggling to make headway, even as they hover below record levels, investors are waiting to see if results from major companies ease concerns about earnings recession.
Profits at S&P 500 companies are expected to decline 1.7% in the first quarter, in what could be the first earnings contraction since 2016. However, the forecasts have improved slightly since the start of April.
“It’s still expected to be a challenging quarter for the corporates, but the bar has been sufficiently lowered which may allow them to get through the season relatively unscathed,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said.
“The lack of direction at the start of the week isn’t surprising given the quiet bank holiday weekend.”
Trading volume has been at its lowest so far in 2019.
At 7:17 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 16 points, or 0.06%. S&P 500 e-minis were down 2 points, or 0.07% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 7.75 points, or 0.1%.
Among the major names that have reported, Coca-Cola Co was up 3.5% after quarterly sales beat analysts’ estimates, while Twitter Inc gained 6.8% after the social media company reported a surprise rise in the number of monthly active users.
Dow component United Technologies Corp gained 2.8% after reporting a higher-than-expected quarterly profit, boosted by robust demand for aircraft parts.
Lyft Inc’s shares rose 2.7% as multiple underwriters started coverage of the ride-hailing firm on an upbeat note.
Economic data due at 10:00 a.m. ET is expected to show sales of new U.S. single-family homes dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 650,000 units in March, from 667,000 units in February.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Source: OANN
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