2024-10-15 07:53

TAIPEI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - China said its day of war games around democratically governed Taiwan on Monday was a warning against "separatist acts" and threatened more could be in the offing, drawing condemnation from the governments of Taiwan and the United States. Though apparently shorter than previous drills, they were intense in terms of swift simulated attacks and deployment of ships and aircraft. The previous major war games in May followed Taiwan's inauguration of Lai Ching-te as its new president. Here is what we know about China's strategic intentions behind this week's drills and their new features. BLOCKADES The Chinese military said part of the drills practiced what it called a "key port blockade", severing Taiwan's maritime lifeline for imports of trade, food and energy. It aimed to show China's ability to stop energy imports, especially at its ports offloading liquefied natural gas (LNG), military expert Zhang Chi of China's National Defence University told the state-backed Global Times. "The People's Liberation Army wants to prove that we have the ability to block the import of energy resources for Taiwan, thereby having an important impact on the economy and society," the newspaper quoted Zhang as saying. Foreign military attaches and analysts say this element of the drills is being closely scrutinised, as such a tactic could pressure and isolate Taiwan ahead of any full-blown invasion. On Monday, Taiwan's state-run energy company CPC said LNG imports had been unaffected, decrying as false news online suggestions to the contrary. "This time there was a rather special component, the so-called quarantine or blockade, during which they practiced their blockading abilities," said Su Tzu-yun, director of defence strategy and resources at Taiwan's top military think tank, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research. CHINA IS EDGING CLOSER The drill zones portrayed in a map issued by China's military were closer to Taiwan than in previous exercises, with all, for the first time, including areas within Taiwan's 24-mile (39-km) contiguous zone. "All the drill zones they announced are more closely approaching Taiwan island, and all include the 24-mile zone," Ma Chen-kun, a Chinese military expert at Taiwan's National Defence University, told a forum in Taipei on Monday. A MORE INVOLVED COAST GUARD China's coast guard, now the world's largest by far, was more heavily involved in Monday's drills than earlier, encircling the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands beside the Chinese coast and operating on both sides of Taiwan's mainland. Taiwan officials say use of the coast guard is part of a "grey zone" strategy that stops short of war and aims to enforce what China calls its right to manage and control the Taiwan Strait. Analysts say China's coast guard is able to keep up a near-constant presence near Taiwan and down into the disputed South China Sea. Taiwan is particularly wary of Chinese coast guard efforts to board its civilian ships on law enforcement grounds. Such instances could be a very serious provocation that Taiwan's coast guard would do everything to prevent, its deputy chief, Hsieh Ching-chin, said on Monday. It was "unprecedented" for so many coast guard ships to patrol simultaneously around the island, said Collin Koh, of Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. The step "could herald a new norm for Beijing's grey zone pressure on Taiwan," he added. PROPAGANDA Previous Chinese war games have been accompanied by the release of military videos of animations of missile attacks on Taiwan. This time, one caricatured Taiwan President Lai Ching-te with devil-like pointed ears, in what one security source in Taiwan called an unusually personal attack on a man Beijing already detests as a "separatist". China also released two less slickly-made videos of navy sailors commenting on weather conditions and their locations, close to Taiwan's major ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung. Taiwan television stations show such videos as part of regular drill coverage. Taiwan's government calls them part of "cognitive warfare" waged to sap confidence in its military. INFILTRATION? Shortly after the drills began, Taiwan's coast guard said it detained a Chinese person using a rubber boat to approach one of the highly militarised Taiwan-controlled islets opposite China's city of Xiamen. The coast guard said it could not rule this incident out of China's "grey zone" activities threatening Taiwan's offshore islands during the drills. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/takeaways-chinas-latest-war-games-around-taiwan-2024-10-15/

2024-10-15 07:39

FTSE 100 down 0.1%; FTMC 250 up 0.2% British unemployment rate down to 4% from 4.1% Bellway up after upbeat 2025 forecast Oct 15 (Reuters) - Britain's benchmark index opened lower on Tuesday, dragged down by heavyweight oil stocks and industrial metal miners, while investors parsed through wage and employment data released earlier in the day. The FTSE 100 (.FTSE) , opens new tab was down 0.1% at 8,283.31 points by 0715 GMT, while the mid-cap index FTSE 250 (.FTMC) , opens new tab ticked up 0.2% Oil stocks (.FTNMX601010) , opens new tab lost 2.7% and the index was the biggest sectoral loser, after oil prices slid on the back of weaker demand outlook and after a media report said Israel is willing not to strike Iranian oil targets. Industrial metal miners (.FTNMX551020) , opens new tab shed 1.9% as copper prices were pressured by a firmer U.S. dollar and uncertainty about top consumer China's economic recovery. Meanwhile, Britain's labour report revealed that the unemployment rate dropped to 4% in the three months through August, down from 4.1%. Analysts polled by Reuters expected the data to be unchanged. However, wage growth in the UK slowed to its lowest pace in over two years during this period, and job vacancies continued to decline. These figures are likely to be welcomed by the Bank of England (BoE) as it considers when to cut interest rates again. The further fall in wage growth, along with signs that the labour market continues to cool, support expectations that the BoE will cut interest rates at its policy meeting in November, Capital Economics said in a note. Traders have priced in an 83% chance of a rate cut by the BoE at its next meeting. Among stocks, Bellway (BWY.L) , opens new tab rose to the top of the FTSE 250, up 6.9% after the homebuilder said it expects to build more homes in the 2025 financial year, buoyed by prospects of further reductions in borrowing costs. The house-builders' sector (.FTNMX402020) , opens new tab led sectoral gains, up 2.9% Paragon Banking Group (PAGPA.L) , opens new tab lost 6.7% after Jefferies downgraded the stock to "hold" from "buy". Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/oil-firms-industrial-metal-miners-drag-down-londons-ftse-100-2024-10-15/

2024-10-15 07:18

N'DJAMENA Oct 15 (Reuters) - Father-of-seven Dah Toubada Kadapia stood on a stack of homemade sandbags in his backyard in Chad's capital N'Djamena, surrounded by floodwaters that locals say have risen higher than past years, causing more damage than ever. Over the last few months, heavy rains have flooded every one of Chad's 23 provinces, burst a dam in northern Nigeria, damaged ancient buildings in Niger's desert town of Agadez, and killed more than 1,460 people in the countries on the fringes of the Sahara, according to U.N. aid agency OCHA. On one hand they were annual rains flagged up in advance with forecasts of particularly heavy downpours, raising the question, said Kadapia, why officials were not better prepared. "If only the authorities could find a solution in advance, so that every year it wasn't just water, water, water and floods," he said. On the other, some of the inundations were not so predictable. Rains fell further north than usual, flooding desert areas that usually see little rainfall in Chad and elsewhere, exposing gaping holes in infrastructure and official preparedness plans. Africa's economic losses linked to floods have been rising. A report by the World Meteorological Organization, published in 2021, said they jumped to $12.5 billion in 2010-19, more than double the average of the preceding three decades. And experts say there is worse to come. The Sahel is increasingly threatened by floods due to changes in natural climate patterns, greater rainfall intensity, poor urban planning and other causes, according to a 2021 study in the Journal of Hydrology, which noted that "widespread havoc and devastation are becoming commonplace". 'WE LOST EVERYTHING' A year after that paper was published, West and Central Africa was swept by one of the worst seasonal flooding disasters on record with more than 8.5 million people affected across 20 countries, according to OCHA. This season, intense heat over the Sahara and other factors pulled the monsoon belt further north than usual, causing downpours in usually arid desert areas, said Wassila Thiaw, deputy director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Centre. Compared with the 1991-2020 rainfall record, this July-September period was among the five wettest years in much of Niger, Chad and parts of western Mali. Some areas in western Niger and Mali, and the border between Niger and Nigeria, saw more rainfall than in the calamitous 2022 season, Thiaw said. Social media was awash with videos of roads turned to rivers, half-submerged trucks and displaced people desperately trying to salvage their belongings from flooded homes. Mali declared a state of national disaster and pushed back the start of the academic year by a month as schools filled with families driven from their homes by the floods. Grandmother Iya Kobla sought shelter after a river in the Mali's capital Bamako burst its banks, swamped her fishing village in ankle-deep water, and destroyed some of its mud-built homes. "We lost everything and now my grandchildren are all sick," she said, next to makeshift beds on a school floor. A CRITICAL MOMENT Some of these events were foreseeable. Climate experts say global warming has increased the frequency and intensity of rain. West Africa is also going through a decades-long natural cycle of wetter monsoons following prolonged drought from the 1970s to 1990s, NOAA's Thiaw said. In 2023, the WMO and other international organisations launched an action plan to improve early warning systems for impending natural disasters in Africa, which has the lowest rate of access to such systems of anywhere in the world. However, data show that the vulnerable communities most in need of these warnings are often the worst equipped to act on them, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior researcher at Columbia University's Climate School, said. In Chad, more than 40% of the population live in poverty. Meagre resources are stretched further by the presence of 2 million refugees, many living in basic camps. "It's incomplete to say if there were an early warning system, that action would have been taken and impact would be averted ... There are many other elements that must be addressed," Kruczkiewicz said, referring to the need for a pre-agreed plan, funding, community buy-in and other essentials. "We're at a critical moment and the West and Central Africa case exemplifies that, because the (rain) forecasts were there." Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/monsoon-havoc-exposes-west-central-africas-rising-flood-risks-2024-10-15/

2024-10-15 07:15

MILAN, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Global investor optimism posted its biggest jump since June 2020 in October due to Federal Reserve rate cuts, stimulus pledges from China and expectations of a soft landing for the U.S. economy, a BofA survey of fund mangers published on Tuesday showed. Cash allocations dropped to 3.9% from 4.2% in September month, while equity allocations rose to a net 31% overweight, and bond allocations suffered a record drop to a net 15% underweight, according to the survey. "Our broadest measure of (fund manager survey) sentiment, based on cash levels, equity allocation, and economic growth expectations, rose from 3.8 to 5.6, its largest monthly rise since Jun’20," BofA said. The survey showed investors expect the upcoming U.S. election will most likely impact trade policy (47%), followed by geopolitics (15%) and taxation (11%). In terms of how investors are positioning in light of the soft-landing narrative, the survey showed the biggest rise in global equity allocation since June 2020. However, the steep drop in cash levels has triggered the first contrarian "sell signal" since last June, based on the bank's own metrics. "Since 2011, there have been 11 prior 'sell' signals which saw global equity (ACWI) returns of -2.5% in the 1 month after and -0.8% in the three months after the 'sell' signal was triggered," the bank said, in reference to the performance of MSCI's All-World index (ACWI) (.MIWD00000PUS) , opens new tab, which is up 0.6% so far in October, heading for its sixth monthly rise. The survey, which took place from Oct 4 to Oct 10, polled 231 panellists with $574 billion in assets under management. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-investor-optimism-sees-biggest-jump-since-june-2020-bofa-2024-10-15/

2024-10-15 06:56

Israeli PM Netanyahu says not targeting Iran nuclear, oil sites -report OPEC, IEA cut global oil demand growth outlook Hedge funds unwinding net long positions HOUSTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Oil prices tumbled more than 4% to a near two-week low on Tuesday due to a weaker demand outlook and after a media report said Israel would not strike Iranian nuclear and oil sites, easing fears of a supply disruption. Brent crude futures settled down $3.21, or 4.14%, at $74.25 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate futures finished down $3.25, or 4.4%, at $70.58 a barrel. Both benchmarks had earlier fallen by $4, reaching their lowest since the beginning of October, after settling about 2% lower on Monday. "We're seeing an unwinding of the war premium we built up last week," said Phil Flynn, senior analyst at Price Futures Group. "What we're seeing, it's not really about supply, it's about the risk to supply and demand." Brent and WTI are down about $5 so far this week, nearly wiping out cumulative gains made after investors became concerned Israel could strike Iran's oil facilities in retaliation for Tehran's Oct. 1 missile attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United States that Israel was willing to strike Iranian military targets and not nuclear or oil ones, the Washington Post reported late on Monday. Both the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the International Energy Agency this week cut their forecasts for global oil demand growth in 2024, with China accounting for the bulk of the downgrades. OPEC has projected a much stronger expansion of global demand for the year than the IEA. But its "run of lower adjustments is something of an admission of wishful thinking," said John Evans at oil broker PVM. OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, may change production plans for late this year, said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. "I think OPEC+ is going to defer raising production later this year," Lipow said. Current crude prices are below levels needed for many of those countries to meet their national budgets, Lipow added. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-prices-drop-2-demand-concerns-israel-comments-2024-10-15/

2024-10-15 06:53

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 15 (Reuters) - South Africa's rand was little changed on Tuesday after the release of a local business confidence index and the central bank's bi-annual Monetary Policy Review. At 1501 GMT, the rand traded at 17.6050 against the dollar , near its previous close of 17.60. The dollar last traded about 0.04% softer against a basket of global currencies. South African business confidence dipped in September on lower vehicle and retail sales and a drop in the value of building plans, but the overall trend since May's election remains positive, data from the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry showed. Meanwhile the South African central bank said it would shift its policy focus to monitoring how core inflation and inflation expectations respond as price pressures continue to moderate. With a light domestic calendar, local investors will continue to watch developments indicating the Federal Reserve's rate-cutting path and Chinese asset volatility, both of which could influence the risk-sensitive rand's direction. In stocks, the Top-40 (.JTOPI) , opens new tab index closed 0.52% lower. South Africa's benchmark 2030 government bond was marginally weaker, with the yield up 1 basis point at 9.215. ($1 = 17.6086 rand) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/south-african-rand-softer-ahead-business-confidence-index-monetary-policy-review-2024-10-15/