Stocks Are Sliding After Weak Eurozone Data | ||
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European markets are slumping after some dreary economic data. Businesses in the eurozone are signalling the weakest growth in 16 months, and stocks are reflecting that this morning. Here's the scorecard: France's CAC 40 is down 0.91% Germany's DAX is down 0.55% The UK's FTSE 100 is down 0.58% Italy's FTSE MIB down 1.47% Spain's IBEX is down 1.73% Asian markets were basically flat: Japan's Nikkei closed up 0.07% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng ended down 0.10% US futures have followed European markets lower: the Dow is 53 points down, and the S&P 500 is 6.75 points lower Later today, there's US consumer price inflation for October at 1.30 p.m. GMT. Economists are expecting the inflation figure to come in at 1.6%, a slight dip from September's 1.7%. At 3 p.m. GMT, we'll also get US existing home sales. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Eurozone growth at 16-month slow point: survey | ||
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Brussels (AFP) - Growth in the eurozone has slowed to its slowest pace in 16 months as new orders dip, survey company Markit said Thursday, raising pressure on policymakers to crank up measures to support the economy. Markit's flash reading of its composite purchasing managers' index (PMI) for the eurozone in November came in at 51.4 points, down from 52.1 in October. A reading above 50 indicates growth. Such surveys of businesses are the most current reading of economic activity, and are thus closely watched by markets and policymakers. While manufacturing ticked up slightly, growth slowed in the service sector slowed to its weakest reading since last December, said Markit. New orders fell marginally, but it was a first decline since July 2013, which Markit said suggests growth could slow further in December. "A fall in the eurozone PMI to a 16-month low raises the risk of the region slipping back into a renewed downturn," Markit Chief Economist Chris Williamson said in a statement. He said the PMI points to economic growth of 0.1-0.2 percent in this quarter. The eurozone grew by an anaemic 0.2 percent in July through September. "Policymakers will no doubt be disappointed that recent announcements and stimulus measures are showing no signs of reviving growth," said Williamson. "The deteriorating trend in the surveys will add to pressure for the ECB to do more to boost the economy without waiting to gauge the effectiveness of previously-announced initiatives," he added. The European Central Bank has launched new programmes to pump money into banks to step up lending and begun limited buying of assets to free of their balance sheets. It has signalled it is ready to step up asset purchases if necessary, but so far has shied away from massive purchases of government bonds like the British, Japanese and US central banks due to sensitivities over subsidising government borrowing. Markit said a key area of weakness remained France, where business activity fell for a seventh consecutive month, although the flash composite PMI ticked up to 48.4 from 48.2 in October, indicating the rate of contraction slowed. Germany's composite flash PMI for November dipped to 52.1 from 53.9 the previous month, a 16-month low, pointing to a slowdown in growth in the eurozone's biggest economy.
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Alonso to leave Ferrari | ||
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Rome (AFP) - Former Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso will leave Ferrari next week, the Italian constructor announced Thursday, setting off a chain reaction of changes among major teams. The Spaniard, who won the drivers' title in 2005 and 2006, has been widely tipped to join McLaren next season. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Detective Who Investigated Death Of 8-Year-Old Says Westminster Coverup Was Possible | ||
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Jackie Malton, a former detective sergeant who investigated the death of an 8-year-old Vishal Mehrotra in 1981, has told The Telegraph she believes the crime may have been covered up to protect senior Westminster political figures. The press has been rife with headlines in the last few days because a man identified only as "Nick" alleged to the Exaro investigative news site that a Conservative MP killed a boy at a paedophile sex party in the early 1980s and that, separately, a Conservative cabinet member watched as another boy was murdered at a different party. Following that, the father of Vishal Mehrotra has claimed that he passed to the police a tape recording of a phone call he received after his 8-year-old son was killed in which a male prostitute said the boy might have been abducted and murdered near the notorious Elm Guest House, a building nearby where Vishal went missing. Elm Guest House has been the focus of a police investigation into whether it was a base for child sex abusers. The late liberal MP Cyril Smith has been named by police as someone they believe abused children in connection with the home. There is no concrete connection between the death of Vishal and the claims by "Nick". But Malton's interview with The Telegraph adds a new layer to the mystery. She claims that it was possible that police were brushed off the investigation into Vishal's death by senior politicians. She told The Telegraph: “During my time in the police there was a feeling of misuse of power,” she told The Telegraph. “There were a lot of powerful people saying, 'Don’t you know who I am?’” Miss Malton, now aged 63 and living in Surrey, worked on Vishal’s disappearance for about four months in 1981 before being seconded to another investigation, weeks before his father’s tape was handed in. She said the culture of policing at the time meant it was possible the recording was ignored and the murder covered up due to the alleged involvement of senior figures at Westminster. “There is clear evidence that something was happening at that guesthouse,” she said. “If nothing has been done about it in retrospect, then Mr Mehrotra is right. Either the police disbelieved it, or they covered it up one way or another. “I do remember that the officers were highly passionate about the Mehrotra case, but for some reason we never managed to get anywhere.” Malton adds that she has no specific evidence of a coverup, and that she did not work on the Elm House probe. Part of Vishal's body was found in a West Sussex woodland in 1982. A second boy, Martin Allen, 15, was lost in 1979 and never found. Police raided Elm House, and the Allen death was linked to the house at the time. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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CEO Of South Korean Ferry Operator Jailed For 10 Years | ||
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The head of the company that operated South Korea's ill-fated Sewol ferry was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday, after being convicted of manslaughter over the disaster that killed more than 300 people. A court in the southern city of Gwangju determined that Kim Han-Sik, CEO of Chonghaejin Marine Co., had allowed the ferry to be routinely overloaded and approved illegal renovations to increase its passenger capacity.
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Mexico's President Reveals $3 Million In Assets Under Pressure Over Mansion | ||
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Facing conflict of interest accusations over a luxury home, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto disclosed late on Wednesday ownership of nine properties among assets worth at least 45.2 million pesos ($3.3 million). The assets also included investments, jewelry and works of art, a document posted on the president's website showed. Owned by a government contractor that was bidding for a lucrative rail contract, the nearly $4 million house at the center of the scandal was being acquired by Pena Nieto's wife. First Lady Angelica Rivera, a former leading actress, said she was paying for the property with her own earnings, but on Tuesday said she would give it up. The contractor, Mexican company Grupo Higa, was part of a Chinese-led consortium that won the $3.75-billion high-speed rail contract. That deal was abruptly canceled earlier this month. Rivera was one of Mexico's most popular soap actresses before marrying Pena Nieto in 2010. Also on Tuesday, she said that in that year she was paid severance of 102.8 million pesos by broadcaster Televisa. Televisa reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission that it paid 98.4 million pesos in 2010 for "retirement and termination benefits" for the entire company. Reuters could not immediately ascertain if Rivera had been paid from the same pool of cash, and analysts said she could have been paid from a non-consolidated subsidiary. Televisa and the president's office did not immediately respond to questions about the difference. Rivera's explanation and details of the payout spurred ridicule across social media on Wednesday. Many users plastered jokes over her image, some suggesting the payout was way out of line with industry standards. Ana de la Reguera, a former Mexican soap star now working in Hollywood, joked on her Twitter account that she never should have left Mexico. Rivera said her salary proved she could afford the home, but other social media users said this glossed over whether Pena Nieto had questions to answer. "The problem was never Angelica Rivera's patrimony, but the conflict of interest. Her husband is the one who should be facing up to this," wrote political columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog. The government canceled the rail contract days before a local news outlet published an investigation into the house. (Reporting by David Alire Garcia, Noe Torres, Elinor Comlay and Michael O'Boyle; Editing by Simon Gardner and John Stonestreet) SEE ALSO: Former Senator Jim Webb Just Launched His 2016 Presidential Exploratory Committee Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Blizzard-weary Americans brave more snow as eight die | ||
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New York (AFP) - Americans smothered in mountains of snow after a stunning blizzard hit the northeast are in for more of the white stuff through the end of the week. Tuesday's monster storm in and around Buffalo, New York, dumped more than five feet of snow, stranding scores of motorists, canceling flights and killing at least eight people around Lake Erie in the northeastern United States. A few more feet fell Wednesday, and the National Weather Service said in its latest update that "impressive lake effect snowfall continues across the eastern Great Lakes on Thursday and through Friday morning. "Up to three feet of additional snowfall is forecast for some locations," it added. Areas east and southeast of Buffalo could receive a year's snow or even more in just two days, Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters Wednesday. The deadly burst, named Winter Storm Knife, may see as much as another three feet (one meter) of snowfall on Thursday, which could prompt a federal disaster declaration, Poloncarz said. The Arctic blast will keep temperatures below normal until the weekend, with all 50 states recording below freezing temperatures on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. A state of emergency and travel bans are in effect across Buffalo's Erie County and authorities ordered people to stay at home to allow crews to clear roads, repair power lines and provide emergency assistance to the most vulnerable.
- 'Difficult, paralyzed situation' - County spokesman Peter Anderson said runways at Buffalo Niagara International Airport were open, but that "a lot of flights" were being canceled because people cannot get to the airport. The National Guard was called in to assist with military Humvee vehicles after New York's transportation department worked through the night to rescue stranded motorists and take people to shelters. "This is something that we're not going to be able to solve on our own. Many communities are still in a very difficult, in some ways paralyzed situation," Poloncarz said. "From a public health standpoint this has been a killer storm. We've had six deaths in the area, five of which have been preventable," said Erie county health commissioner Gale Burstein. Three of those who died suffered heart attacks while shoveling snow and another person died while using a snowplow. US media reported two other deaths in the states of New Hampshire and Michigan.
- An 'extreme event' - Dave Zaff, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service, said areas east and southeast of Buffalo city received upwards of five feet (1.5 meters) of snow. "That is somewhat of an extreme event," he told AFP. "From a forecast standpoint, it will be historic. "The impact alone when you have hundreds of thousands of people stranded, roads closed everywhere, you start to get fatalities," he said. "It becomes a very memorable event that people will never forget." A university women's basketball team was eventually rescued after spending more than 24 hours trapped in a bus on a highway. And New York-based rock band Interpol was among those trapped in the snowstorm outside Buffalo overnight, forcing them to cancel a concert across the Canadian border in Toronto. "Still trapped yo! Haven't really moved in 30 hours and we've been on the bus for nearly 40 hours. Nutso. Never seen anything like it," the band said on Twitter. One young woman in Buffalo tweeting from @SpecialCassie said her father had finally made it home after spending nearly 40 hours stuck in a car. "Snow to his shoulders, had to climb a tree to get out," she wrote.
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China's President Xi Visited New Zealand And Got A Very Warm Greeting | ||
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Wellington (AFP) - China and New Zealand agreed to expand their burgeoning trade relationship during a state visit by President Xi Jinping Thursday, including a deal to allow television co-productions to be aired on Chinese media. Wellington became the first developed nation to sign a free trade agreement with Beijing in 2008, and Xi joined New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in hailing the success of the agreement. "The New Zealand-China relationship shows that countries with different political systems, history and cultural traditions and at different stages of development can constructively cooperate together," they said in a joint statement. Xi's visit, off the back of his trip to Brisbane for last weekend's G20 summit and a state visit to Australia, focused on broadening the 2008 agreement in key areas, including encouraging television co-productions between the two countries. "(It) will allow programmes co-produced by New Zealand and Chinese companies to be officially broadcast on Chinese TV, where potential viewing audiences are huge," Key said. They also signed off on a food traceability scheme in the wake of an infant formula contamination scare last year which resulted in New Zealand milk powder being pulled from Chinese shelves until it was revealed as a false alarm. Dairy remains New Zealand's largest export to China, with consumers keen on the country's "clean, green" image. China displaced Australia as New Zealand's largest export market last year, and two-way trade between the nations was almost NZ$22 billion ($17.4 billion) in the year to June 2014, according to official figures. Xi received a 21-gun salute and a traditional Maori welcome in Wellington before meeting Key, who presented him with an All Blacks rugby union jersey bearing the lucky number 8. Meanwhile, Xi's wife Peng Liyaun celebrated her 52nd birthday by receiving an honorary doctorate from Wellington's Massey University in acknowledgment of her career as a singer. "This is the best gift for me for my birthday," she said through a translator. About a dozen protesters were outside the Xi-Key meeting but they were outnumbered by more than 100 pro-China students waving flags and banners. Xi will travel to Fiji on Friday to meet leaders from Pacific island nations, where China has become a major aid donor in recent years. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Iran refuses to give ground on key Arak reactor | ||
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Tehran (AFP) - Iran sees "no more room" for negotiations on the design of its Arak reactor, Tehran's nuclear chief said, refusing to give ground on a key issue in international negotiations. "On Arak, we have said we were ready to design it so that the concerns are lifted. This matter is settled to some extent on the technical aspect and there is no more room for further negotiations," Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted Thursday by media as saying. Western nations fear the Arak heavy water reactor could provide Iran with weapons-grade plutonium, but Tehran insists it is solely for research purposes. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Duchess with most titles in world dies in Spain at 88 | ||
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Madrid (AFP) - Spain's eccentric Duchess of Alba, one of the nation's richest women who has more titles than any other aristocrat on earth, died on Thursday at the age of 88, a spokesman for her family said. Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fritz-James Stuart passed away at her Duenas Palace in the southern city of Seville on Thursday morning, a family spokesman told AFP. She had been moved to her home on Tuesday night after being hospitalised with pneumonia. The socialite is survived by her husband, who is 24 years her junior. Known for her frizzy hair and colourful dress sense, Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart owned swathes of real estate, palaces, great houses and treasures including paintings by Great Masters from Goya to Velazquez. Her premier title was Duchess of Alba de Tormes but she had more than 40 others due to a series of complicated marriages by her ancestors, which made her the noble with the most officially recognised titles in the world according to Guinness World Records.
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Germany Just Dragged Europe's Growth To A 16-Month Low | ||
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The Eurozone's composite PMI just came in at 51.4, the lowest in 16 months. That's after some unexpectedly poor numbers for Germany. The major business survey is pointing to a significant slowdown in Europe. Analysts had expected the PMI (purchasing managers index) figure to come in at 52.3 overall, an improvement from October's 52.1. Output in the eurozone is falling back toward the neutral 50 mark. Anything below that level signals a contraction, and recession. Here's how it looks against European growth.
The German figures weren't the only poor ones out this morning. France's PMI numbers were poor again, coming in at just 48.4. Just as the PMI numbers came out, the Italian government confirmed a 1.5% drop in industrial orders between August and September. Chris Williamson, Markit's chief economist, weighed in on what the figures mean for Europe's politicians and central bankers: Policymakers will no doubt be disappointed that recent announcements and stimulus measures are showing no signs of reviving growth. The deteriorating trend in the surveys will add to pressure for the European Central Bank to do more to boost the economy without waiting to gauge the effectiveness of previously-announced initiatives. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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