- Armenia PM Signals Foreign Policy Shift Away from Russia | Vantage with Palki Sharma Firstpost
- Joint working group to be established in Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region for civil activities Anadolu Agency | English
- Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict explained: Where is Nagorno-Karabakh and is Russia involved? The Telegraph
- Armenian Protests Continue After Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh Offensive Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
- The West has a moral responsibility to help build peace in Nagorno-Karabakh Al Jazeera English
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Tag Archives: Signals
It’s important the Fed signals it has a high bar for cutting rates, says Harvard’s Jason Furman – CNBC Television
- It’s important the Fed signals it has a high bar for cutting rates, says Harvard’s Jason Furman CNBC Television
- Markets ‘clearly’ in window for recession and it’s ‘coming soon’: James Iuorio Fox Business
- The Fed is trying to do the right thing: fmr. Goldman Sachs Asset Management chairman Jim O’Neill CNBC Television
- Economy is improving but the Fed isn’t ready to declare victory, says Georgetown’s Paul McCulley CNBC Television
- I’m more worried about prolonged anemic growth than hard of soft landing: Bleakley’s Peter Boockvar CNBC Television
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Dow Jones Futures: Stocks Fall, Google, CRM Flash Buy Signals, Meta Launches Twitter Rival, Instagram Threads | Investor’s Business Daily – Investor’s Business Daily
- Dow Jones Futures: Stocks Fall, Google, CRM Flash Buy Signals, Meta Launches Twitter Rival, Instagram Threads | Investor’s Business Daily Investor’s Business Daily
- Stocks end lower amid China headwinds, Fed minutes: Stock market news today Yahoo Finance
- Markets Fall at Midday Ahead of the Release of the Fed’s Latest Meeting Minutes Investopedia
- Dow Jones Falls Ahead Of Fed Minutes; Meta Plans To Launch ‘Twitter Killer’ Separator Site title Separator Site title Investor’s Business Daily
- Fed minutes may provide clues on US rate outlook Forex Factory
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Russia Signals It Will Take More Ukrainian Children, a Crime in Progress – Yahoo News
- Russia Signals It Will Take More Ukrainian Children, a Crime in Progress Yahoo News
- ‘We had to hide them’: how Ukraine’s ‘kidnapped’ children led to Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant The Guardian
- Are Russian transfers of Ukrainian children to re-education and adoption facilities a form of genocide? The Conversation
- Ukraine war: Mother tricked into sending daughter to Russian ‘indoctrination’ camp reveals rescue and emotional reunion Sky News
- ‘We hugged for a long time’: How Ukrainian father went to Moscow to reclaim his children The Guardian
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Russia signals it will take more Ukrainian children, a crime in progress – The Japan Times
- Russia signals it will take more Ukrainian children, a crime in progress The Japan Times
- ‘We hugged for a long time’: the Ukrainian father who rescued his children from Moscow The Guardian
- In Russia, an anti-war drawing can cost you your daughter POLITICO Europe
- Are Russian transfers of Ukrainian children to re-education and adoption facilities a form of genocide? The Conversation Indonesia
- ‘We had to hide them’: how Ukraine’s ‘kidnapped’ children led to Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant The Guardian
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Germany signals shift in veto on Leopard tanks for Ukraine
PARIS/LVIV, Ukraine, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Germany would not stand in the way if Poland wants to send its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Germany’s foreign minister said, signalling a possible breakthrough for Ukraine as it tries to bolster its forces ahead of an expected new Russian offensive.
Eleven months after Russia invaded its southern neighbour, the fighting is centred on the town of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east, where Russia’s Wagner mercenaries and Ukrainian forces have been locked in a battle of attrition.
Russia’s defence ministry said for the second straight day on Sunday that its forces were improving their positions in Ukraine’s southern region of Zaporizhzhia, though a Ukrainian military spokesperson told the state broadcaster the situation there was “difficult” but stable.
Reuters was not able to independently verify battlefield accounts.
Ukrainian officials have been calling on Western allies to supply them with the modern German-made tanks for months but Germany has held back from sending them or allowing other NATO countries to do so.
Leopard tanks, which are held by an array of NATO countries but whose transfer to Ukraine requires Berlin’s approval, are seen by defence experts as the most suitable for Ukraine.
Western allies pledged billions of dollars in weapons for Ukraine last week but they failed to persuade Germany to lift its veto on providing the tanks.
But in an apparent shift in Germany’s position, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said her government would not block Poland if it were to send its Leopard 2 tanks without German approval.
“For the moment the question has not been asked, but if we were asked we would not stand in the way,” she told France’s LCI TV, when asked about her government’s reaction to any such Polish decision.
Germany has been under heavy pressure to let Leopards go to Ukraine but the Social Democrat party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz is traditionally sceptical of military involvements and wary of sudden moves that could trigger Russia to escalation.
Baerbock’s remarks appeared to go further than Scholz’s comments at a summit in Paris earlier on Sunday that all decisions on weapons deliveries would be made in co-ordination with allies, including the United States.
Ukraine says the heavily armoured battle tanks would give its ground troops more mobility and protection ahead of a new Russian offensive expected in coming months.
But Germany has appeared to have tied any such contribution to a U.S. move to send its Abrams tanks, something American officials have said they are reluctant to do because the vehicles are complicated to maintain.
‘TERRIBLE WAR’
American lawmakers pushed their government on Sunday to export M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine, saying that even sending a symbolic number would be enough to push European allies to do the same.
Britain recently said it was supplying 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. Its foreign minister, James Cleverly, said on Sunday it still wanted an international deal to provide Ukraine with the German-made tanks.
French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, said he did not rule out the possibility of sending Ukraine Leclerc tanks.
Last week, the Kremlin’s spokesman said Western countries supplying additional tanks to Ukraine would not change the course of the conflict, but would add to the problems of the Ukrainian people.
A close ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that deliveries of offensive weapons to Kyiv that threaten Russia’s territories would lead to a global catastrophe and make arguments against using weapons of mass destruction untenable.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, warned that the United States and NATO’s support of Ukraine was leading the world to a “terrible war”.
Since its invasion on Feb. 24, which it has cast as defending itself from an aggressive West, Russia has taken control of parts of Ukraine and has said it will never return them. Ukraine has said that restoring its territorial integrity is not open for negotiation.
In Ukraine’s embattled east, the top Russian-installed official in the occupied parts of the Donetsk region said late on Sunday he had visited the town of Soledar that Russia says it captured this month.
Denis Pushilin, the administrator, published a short video on the Telegram messaging app that showed him driving and walking amidst uninhabited areas and destroyed buildings.
Reuters was not able to independently verify when and where the video was taken.
On Jan. 11, the private Russian military group Wagner said it had captured Soledar and Russian-installed authorities in the Donetsk region said last week they were in control of the salt-mining town.
Ukraine has never publicly said that the town was taken by Russian forces. On Sunday, the general staff of its armed forces said in a daily update that Russian forces had fired on Ukrainian positions in the area.
Reporting by Andreas Rinke and Leigh Thomas; Additional reporting by Tom Sims, Lidia Kelly and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Underground Italian lab searches for signals of quantum gravity
For decades, physicists have been hunting for a quantum-gravity model that would unify quantum physics, the laws that govern the very small, and gravity. One major obstacle has been the difficulty in testing the predictions of candidate models experimentally. But some of the models predict an effect that can be probed in the lab: a very small violation of a fundamental quantum tenet called the Pauli exclusion principle, which determines, for instance, how electrons are arranged in atoms.
A project carried out at the INFN underground laboratories under the Gran Sasso mountains in Italy, has been searching for signs of radiation produced by such a violation in the form of atomic transitions forbidden by the Pauli exclusion principle.
In two papers appearing in the journals Physical Review Letters (published on September 19, 2022) and Physical Review D (accepted for publication on December 7, 2022) the team reports that no evidence of violation has been found, thus far, ruling out some quantum-gravity models.
In school chemistry lessons, we are taught that electrons can only arrange themselves in certain specific ways in atoms, which turns out to be due to the Pauli exclusion principle. At the center of the atom there is the atomic nucleus, surrounded by orbitals, with electrons. The first orbital, for instance, can only house two electrons. The Pauli exclusion principle, formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfang Pauli in 1925, says that no two electrons can have the same quantum state; so, in the first orbital of an atom the two electrons have oppositely pointing “spins” (a quantum internal property usually depicted as an axis of rotation, pointing up or down, although no literal axis exists in the electron).
The happy result of this for humans is that it means matter cannot pass through other matter. “It is ubiquitous—you, me, we are Pauli-exclusion-principle-based,” says Catalina Curceanu, a member of the physics think-tank, the Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, and the lead physicist on the experiments at INFN, Italy. “The fact we cannot cross walls is another practical consequence.”
The principle extends to all elementary particles belonging to the same family as electrons, called fermions, and has been derived mathematically from a fundamental theorem known as the spin-statistics theorem. It has also been confirmed experimentally—thus far—appearing to hold for all fermions in tests. The Pauli exclusion principle forms one of the core tenets of the standard model of particle physics.
Violating the principle
But some speculative models of physics, beyond the standard model, suggest that the principle may be violated. For decades now, physicists have been searching for a fundamental theory of reality. The standard model is terrific at explaining the behavior of particles, interactions and quantum processes on the microscale. However, it does not encompass gravity.
So, physicists have been trying to develop a unifying theory of quantum gravity, some versions of which predict that various properties that underpin the standard model, such as the Pauli exclusion principle, may be violated in extreme circumstances.
“Many of these violations are naturally occurring in so-called ‘noncommutative’ quantum-gravity theories and models, such as the ones we explored in our papers,” says Curceanu. One of the most popular candidate quantum-gravity frameworks is string theory, which describes fundamental particles as tiny vibrating threads of energy in multidimensional spaces. Some string theory models also predict such a violation.
“The analysis we reported disfavors some concrete realizations of quantum gravity,” says Curceanu.
It is traditionally thought to be hard to test such predictions because quantum gravity will usually only become relevant in arenas where there is a huge amount of gravity concentrated into a tiny space—think of the center of a black hole or the beginning of the universe.
However, Curceanu and her colleagues realized that there may be a subtle effect—a signature that the exclusion principle and the spin-statistics theorem have been violated—that could be picked up in lab experiments on Earth.
Deep under the Gran Sasso mountains, near the town of L’Aquila, in Italy, Curceanu’s team is working on the VIP-2 (Violation of the Pauli Principle) lead experiment. At the heart of the apparatus is a thick block made of Roman lead, with a nearby germanium detector that can pick up small signs of radiation emanating from the lead.
The idea is that if the Pauli exclusion principle is violated, a forbidden atomic transition will occur within the Roman lead, generating an X-ray with a distinct energy signal. This X-ray can be picked up by the germanium detector.
Cosmic silence
The lab must be housed underground because the radiation signature from such a process will be so faint, it would otherwise be drowned out by the general background radiation on Earth from cosmic rays. “Our laboratory ensures what is called ‘cosmic silence,’ in the sense that the Gran Sasso mountain reduces the flux of cosmic rays by a million times,” says Curceanu. That alone is not enough, however.
“Our signal has a possible rate of just one or two events per day, or less,” says Curceanu. That means that materials used in the experiment must themselves be “radio-pure”—that is, they must not emit any radiation themselves—and the apparatus must be shielded from radiation from the mountain rocks and radiation coming from underground.
“What is extremely exciting is that we can probe some quantum-gravity models with such a high precision, which is impossible to do at present-day accelerators,” says Curceanu.
In their recent papers, the team reports having found no evidence for violation of the Pauli principle. “FQXi-funding was fundamental for developing the data analysis techniques,” says Curceanu. This allowed the team to set limits on the size of any possible violation and helped them constrain some proposed quantum-gravity models.
In particular, the team analyzed the predictions of the so-called “theta-Poincaré” model and were able to rule out some versions of the model to the Planck scale (the scale at which the known classical laws of gravity break down). In addition, “the analysis we reported disfavors some concrete realizations of quantum gravity,” says Curceanu.
The team now plans to extend its research to other quantum-gravity models, with their theoretician colleagues Antonino Marcianò from Fudan University and Andrea Addazi from Sichuan University, both in China. “On the experimental side, we will use new target materials and new analysis methods, to search for faint signals to unveil the fabric of spacetime,” says Curceanu.
“What is extremely exciting is that we can probe some quantum-gravity models with such a high precision, which is impossible to do at present-day accelerators,” Curceanu adds. “This is a big leap, both from theoretical and experimental points of view.”
More information:
Kristian Piscicchia et al, Strongest Atomic Physics Bounds on Noncommutative Quantum Gravity Models, Physical Review Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.131301
Kristian Piscicchia et al, Experimental test of noncommutative quantum gravity by VIP-2 Lead, Physical Review D (2022). journals.aps.org/prd/accepted/ … 182249cd253e38bf3406
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UAW’s EV battery plant win signals success ahead in organizing push
The United Auto Workers’ success this week in organizing its first joint-venture battery plant owned by a Detroit Three automaker will aid the union in its fight to organize other similar plants and bolster its position in the changing industry, experts say.
Workers at the General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution joint-venture Ultium Cells LLC plant in Warren, Ohio, this week overwhelmingly voted in favor of UAW representation, with 710 voting for the union and 16 voting against it. The plant is one of four U.S. facilities the companies are planning to open. Production launched first at the Warren facility this past summer.
The National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the election, confirmed the vote tally favoring the union on Friday. Both parties have five business days to file objections. If no objections are filed, the results will be certified and bargaining can commence.
“Our entire union welcomes our latest members from Ultium,” UAW President Ray Curry said in a statement. “As the auto industry transitions to electric vehicles, new workers entering the auto sector at plants like Ultium are thinking about their value and worth. This vote shows that they want to be a part of maintaining the high standards and wages that UAW members have built in the auto industry.”
The Warren Ultium facility is the first of several battery plants the UAW will look to organize as the Detroit automakers progress with their EV plans. The organization efforts come less than a year before the UAW starts national contract talks with the automakers, which are likely to focus on preserving union jobs in the move to EVs. Organizing the battery plants owned by GM, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis NV is critical for the UAW, union officials and industry analysts say, because these jobs will one day take the place of union-backed jobs for internal combustion engine production.
“The successful organizing of the new wave of electric battery manufacturing is essential to the UAW’s future position,” said Marick Masters, a professor at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business, in a statement.
The UAW’s challenge now will be “to meld the representation of these workers into the overall fabric of the auto negotiations so as (to) protect jobs and wages,” Masters said. “These workers should become ambassadors for the UAW’s efforts to replicate this success in other facilities in the offing and in the facilities of the nonunion electrical vehicle manufacturers such as Rivian and Tesla.”
Ultium spokesperson Brooke Waid said in a Friday statement the company respects “the decision of our Ohio workforce supporting representation by the UAW. We look forward to a positive working relationship with the UAW.”
What workers want
The Ultium plant neighbors the former GM Lordstown Assembly plant, where for more than 50 years UAW-represented workers made GM products until the plant closed in 2019. The closure of the Mahoning Valley region’s top employer was a devastating blow to the area, but the union support didn’t seem to waiver. The vote for union representation wasn’t surprising to experts and former union leaders from Lordstown’s UAW Local 1112 given the union’s long-lasting presence here and the strengthening national labor movement.
“This is a new generation coming alive with the UAW in this area,” said Anthony Russo, a production associate at the Ultium plant who voted in favor of the union. “We’re seeing it come back in a great way. And I think we’re going to take over and lead into the future … Ultium will be the new GM Lordstown.”
Russo, 20, grew up in Lordstown, the neighboring village to Warren, and dreamed of one day working at the local GM plant where his friends and family, including his late mother, also worked.
“Unfortunately, they closed the plant a year before graduation for me, so Ultium was seen as my opportunity to get in the company and bring the UAW in,” Russo said.
Russo actually sought out the union before he started working at Ultium since his friends working there were informing him of the situation: low wages, health and safety issues and disrespect from management. Now in the plant, he’s also noticed these issues.
Production associates make $16.50 per hour, Russo says, which is about half of what GM employees covered by the national UAW contract make (GM workers will make $32.32 per hour by next September). Russo has also experienced “egregious health and safety violations, blatant disrespect by management and front office staff.”
“My biggest concern is with safety of this plant,” he said. “We have had too many incidents to ignore, which the company chooses to do, and we don’t.”
Judi Viets, 60, and Megan Adams, 30, work in cell disposal at the plant. They also stressed the need for better health and safety protocols and voted for UAW representation hoping to see those changes.
In the area where Viets and Adams work, they have to be careful to avoid contact with the electrolyte in the battery. It took one month to get an eye-washing station, they said, and they are still waiting for a hand-washing station.
“There was no eye-wash station, which they did get us which we were happy for just in case,” Viets said. “We do wear quite a bit of PPE back there. But again, we have to literally run across the plant if we would get electrolyte on us.”
Both stressed that they do “love Ultium.”
“We just want some changes that are for our safety,” Viets said. “I love it here but let’s change. Let’s bring some good here for everybody.”
Voting yes in favor of the UAW was a “no brainer” for Ultium production associate Johnny Pence, 27. He’s the grandson of the legendary former Local 1112 shop chairman Al Alli, an innovative and sometimes controversial bargainer who workers saw as an ally.
“Coming from a long line of union workers in my family, I’ve witnessed first hand the benefits a union can offer someone especially the UAW,” Pence said in a statement. “You kind of become a family and have peace of mind knowing someone has your back.”
For former UAW Local 1112 Shop Chairman Dan Morgan, who worked for years to try and save GM Lordstown from closing, this moment is bittersweet. He’s excited that workers will have UAW representation but also wonders why GM and the UAW “walked away from such a great workforce” at GM Lordstown. Morgan is now at GM’s Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he’s still in union leadership as a district shop committeeman for the Local 2164.
“I am very happy for the workers because their wages, benefits and working conditions will be much improved here in the near future,” Morgan said in a statement.
UAW Local 1112 survived GM Lordstown’s closure even though its thousands of members transferred to plants in Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan, Texas, Indiana and other states.
Tim O’Hara, former 1112 president who worked at the plant for 41 years, said Friday’s win for the UAW “will help Local 1112 grow again, and that brings a smile to my face on this Victory Friday.”
The UAW’s landslide victory here “sets a blueprint for all the future Big 3 battery plants that are being built in Tennessee, Kentucky and other states,” O’Hara added. “These Ultium workers will produce the power for all future GM electric vehicles and they deserve to be well compensated.”
The effort to organize
The UAW had been trying to organize the Ohio Ultium plant all year. The union wanted to organize with a card-check agreement but the company pushed back on using that method. Ultium instead sought to have an election certified by the National Labor Relations Board for the union to be recognized.
In October, the union filed to have an election on behalf of about 900 workers. At the time, UAW president Curry said while most Ultium workers had signed cards to authorize UAW representation, Ultium declined to recognize the UAW as the employees’ union.
The UAW will have three other Ultium battery plants to organize in the next few years. An Ultium Cells plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will open late next year, and it just received a $275 million investment for expansion there. A third plant is under construction in Delta Township near Lansing and will open in 2024. GM and LG are considering a site in New Carlisle, Indiana, for the location of a fourth plant.
The success in Warren this week should pave a shorter path for the UAW to organize Ultium’s other plants, as well as the Ford and Stellantis battery plants, experts said.
“Once you get one plant it becomes easier to get to the next one,” said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s ILR School. And the landslide win “shows that not only were the workers willing to vote for the UAW, they were excited to vote for the UAW.”
When the UAW negotiates the contract for Ultium workers, health and safety and higher wages are likely to be top priorities but Wheaton also expects the UAW to push for “dignity in the workplace and a voice in the workplace.”
GM CEO Mary Barra during an Automotive Press Association event in Detroit on Thursday ahead of the UAW representation vote at the Warren plant said she would want to see a labor agreement done “as soon as possible. Wherever and whatever it is around the world. Because it’s one of those things that usually doesn’t get better with time.”
She also said GM is “a company that has worked with unions around the world for many years. So you know, we’re welcoming of the union at the battery plant.”
khall@detroitnews.com
Twitter:@bykaleahall
As Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Debuts, Multiple Signals Go Out To The World
North Korea did not name the girl, who is seen in photographs holding hands with her father Kim Jong Un.
North Korea hasn’t said whether she has any siblings. Her age remains a mystery. The world doesn’t even know her name. The important thing is that she’s the “most beloved” daughter of Kim Jong Un.
The young girl, who South Korean authorities believe is named Ju Ae and about nine years old, has suddenly been featured in North Korean state media alongside her all-powerful father. She most recently accompanied Kim on a photo op to celebrate the successful launch of the country’s most powerful ballistic missile — prompting “stormy cheers of ‘Hurrah!’,” according to a Korean Central News Agency dispatch published Sunday.
Despite all the mystery, the events sent clear signals to both the North Korean public and the wider world: First, the Kim regime is here to stay. Second, the ruling family won’t be bargaining away its nuclear arsenal any time soon.
Both points were driven home when Kim brought his daughter along to observe the launch a new intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads anywhere on the US mainland. Photos released by state media included a shot of Kim looking down on his child with the rocket looming behind them.
The debut was remarkable on several levels. While parading heirs before the public has been a feature of hereditary monarchies the world over, the Kim family has been far more reluctant to reveal potential successors during its almost 75 years in power.
Kim Jong Un didn’t make his official debut until he was around 26. Before Ju Ae’s first appearance in state media on Nov. 19, North Korea hadn’t even acknowledged Kim had children. It’s still not known whether the regime views his “precious child” as Kim’s heir, or whether that status would belong to the older brother she’s rumored to have.
“The optics of Kim and his daughter observing the launch together seem to underscore recent messaging that the nuclear program is no longer conditional, and now involves the next generation as part of this success,” said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington. In September, Kim told North Korean lawmakers he would “never give up” his nuclear weapons while pushing through a law that would allow “automatic” strikes if his leadership was threatened.
Since taking power a decade ago at 27, Kim has defied predictions that his regime would falter. Instead, he boasts an increasingly diverse stockpile of weapons designed to target the US and its allies in Japan and South Korea. The reports featuring Kim’s daughter show he also has a possible heir to bequeath them to.
“It is the truth taught by history that only when we become the strongest, not the weak, in the present world where the strength in showdown just decides victory, can we defend the present and future of the country and nation,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying Sunday.
The NIS believed Kim may have wanted to assure people that he is responsible for the “security of the future generation,” South Korean lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum told reporters last week after a closed-door briefing with the National Intelligence Service. He added that agency believes that Ju Ae is the second of three children between Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju.
“Under the North Korean regime, the position of Kim’s children can be compared to that of prince or princess in a dynastic system,” said Cheong Seong-Chang, director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute outside of Seoul.
North Korea’s ability to deliver a nuclear strike on the US and its allies in Asia has grown under Kim Jong Un to the point where there are calls to declare Pyongyang a nuclear weapons state and revamp a decades-old US policy of never allowing that to happen, while seeking the complete, verifiable and irreversible end of its atomic arsenal.
Kim has ignored the US’s calls to return to nuclear disarmament talks now stalled for more than three years.
Ju Ae’s debut is only the latest example of Kim’s willingness to share the spotlight with prominent women. Besides frequent appearances with his wife, he has made his sister, Kim Yo Jong, the face of the regime’s response to the US and South Korea. He also recently appointed, Choe Son Hui, to be the country’s first female foreign minister.
Still, it’s too early to say whether Kim Jong Un intends to make Ju Ae his formal heir. Such a move would likely face resistance from the country’s male-dominated political elite, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a regional issues manager at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network.
“While Kim himself may be ready to appoint a female successor, those around him may not be, and he cannot altogether ignore the opinions of the country’s top-ranking leadership,” said Lee, who previously worked as an open source analyst for the CIA. “North Korea is a very traditional and conservative society, and Kim may not be confident that a female successor could navigate a male-dominant party, government, and military without jeopardizing regime security.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Dow sheds more than 100 points as investors digest mixed economic signals, await Powell speech
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell Wednesday as Wall Street waded through new economic data and awaited an afternoon speech on the economy from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
The 30-stock index lost 179 points, or 0.5%. The S&P 500 shed 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.2%.
Investors were hit with conflicting economic reports Wednesday morning. Payroll processing firm ADP reported fewer job listings in October than expected, pointing to a contracting workforce. But while the Labor Department also said job openings fell in the month, it said there were still more available than there were workers.
Another indicator of the tightening economy came when October data from the National Association of Realtors showed a fifth consecutive month of declines in pending home sales. But that was tempered with the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ upward revision on third-quarter gross domestic product, which indicated the economy was stronger than previously thought.
“The data was somewhat mixed,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. “But it does show there’s a lot of resilience in this economy. And it still is highlighting a labor market that is weakening, but is still in relatively good shape. I think that we’re not going to get any answers on what will policy be like at the end of next year based on these reports.”
Investors are waiting for Powell’s speech at the Brookings Institution this afternoon that may give further insight into the central bank’s thinking on future interest rate increases.
The Fed is slated to meet later this month and is largely expected to deliver a smaller 0.5 percentage point rate hike after four consecutive 0.75 percentage point increases to tame high inflation. Any signal of a pivot on future rate hikes would likely send markets higher.
“All eyes will be on Chairman Powell’s speech today, but we don’t believe he will break any new ground,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance. “He wants the stock market lower and he’s willing to endure a recession in order to get inflation back under control.”