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| Analysis: Indonesia's stock market set for another boost from earnings Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:57 PM PDT  By Vidya Ranganathan and Abhishek Vishnoi SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asia's best performing stock market this year, Indonesia, is now seeing a string of upgrades in corporate earnings forecasts that could give the rally further momentum and cement its lead in the region. Jakarta's stock market is basking in the quick turnaround the economy made from last year's currency crisis, helped by a rise in interest rates and an improvement in the country's huge trade deficit. Indonesia has presidential elections in April, and the stock market has historically rallied after elections. "Once people could see that Indonesia's macro was improving faster than the other countries that are perceived to be risky, then Indonesia's risk premium vanished pretty quickly. Full Story | Top |
| Australia to buy U.S. Triton drones to secure Indian Ocean resources Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:45 PM PDT  By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia has committed to purchasing the U.S. Navy's MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft, its prime minister said on Thursday, continuing a trend amongst Asia-Pacific nations to protect commercial maritime interests amid rising regional tensions. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that Australia will acquire an undisclosed number of the surveillance aircraft once they become available. The U.S. Navy is still testing the Triton and has plans to buy 68, with the first due in service in 2017. The aircraft will be used "to secure our ocean resources, including energy resources off northern Australia, and help to protect our borders", Abbott said in the statement. Full Story | Top |
| Timeline - The search for missing Malaysian jet Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:38 PM PDT Here is a timeline of events in the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner which vanished from radar screens on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday: SATURDAY, MARCH 8 - Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12:41 a.m. (1641 GMT Friday), and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. (2230 GMT) the same day. - Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City. - Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. - Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Full Story | Top |
| Loan defaults in China won't stir systemic risks: Premier Li Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:30 PM PDT  BEIJING (Reuters) - Any default of loans in China will not set off systemic risks in the world's second-largest economy, Premier Li Keqiang said at a press conference on Thursday. Li reiterated the government's standard line that debt risks in China are under control. (Reporting by Adam Rose and Shao Xiaoyi; Editing by Paul Tait) Full Story | Top |
| China Premier Li calls for relevant party to step up plane search Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:29 PM PDT  Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said as long as there remains a "glimmer of hope" China will not stop the search for a missing Malaysian airliner flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and called for the "relevant party" to step up coordination. "This is an international and large-scale search operation involving many countries. The Chinese government has asked the relevant party to enhance coordination, investigate the cause, locate the missing plane as quickly as possible and properly handle all related matters," Li said in remarks to reporters. The so-far fruitless search for the plane entered its sixth day on Thursday and China has dispatched multiple aircraft, ships and satellite in the multinational search mission. Full Story | Top |
| Asian shares tick up cautiously as China data looms Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:17 PM PDT  By Hideyuki Sano TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares cautiously rebounded from two-week lows on Thursday though investors were in no mood to embrace risk ahead of a batch of Chinese data that may offer clues about the extent of its economic slowdown. A standoff in Ukraine, signs of weakness and other risks in China's economy and a massive fall in copper prices are spooking investors, though a flat close on Wall Street and some positive regional data helped to underpin some markets. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.9 percent, recouping a large chunk of its losses the previous day, with Australian shares gaining on strong local employment data. Japan's Nikkei rose 0.5 percent as Japanese machinery orders beat expectations, though the gain came only after a 2.6 percent drop the previous day, when both European shares and emerging market shares fell to one-month lows. Full Story | Top |
| Search planes checking China satellite report on missing airliner Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:17 PM PDT  By Eveline Danubrata and Nguyen Phuong Linh KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC, Vietnam (Reuters) - Search planes were flying on Thursday to an area where a Chinese satellite has seen objects that could be debris from the Malaysian airliner missing for almost six days, but those waters had been checked before and nothing found, officials said. At the same time, China heaped pressure on Malaysia to improve its coordination over the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, which disappeared early on Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Premier Li Keqiang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, demanded that the "relevant party" step up coordination while China's civil aviation chief said he wanted a "smoother" flow of information from Malaysia, which has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster. Full Story | Top |
| China Premier Li says will target corruption, no matter how high Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:15 PM PDT China will "seriously deal with" corrupt officials no matter how senior they are, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday. "We will show zero tolerance for corrupt behavior and corrupt officials. No matter who it is, or how senior their position, everyone is equal before the law," Li said in remarks to reporters at the closing of the country's annual parliamentary session. "If they violate party discipline or national law they will be seriously dealt with and punished according to the law." Chinese President Xi Jinping has made fighting corruption a central pillar of his administration and has said it threatens the ruling Communist Party's very survival. Full Story | Top |
| World Bank panel rejects Venezuela's appeal over Conoco Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:13 PM PDT  A World Bank panel has rejected Venezuela's request for a new hearing to contest a 2013 partial ruling that it failed to act in good faith regarding negotiations to compensate U.S. oil company ConocoPhillips for expropriations. The dispute dates from then-President Hugo Chavez's socialist government's takeover of three oil projects in 2007. "The majority of the tribunal concludes that it does not have the power to reconsider the decision," the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) said on its website. Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA said that decision last year was unfair because it had offered $2.3 billion in compensation, which was higher than its $1.8 billion estimate of the assets' value, excluding tax and royalties claims. Full Story | Top |
| Front companies, embassies mask North Korean weapons trade: U.N. Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 08:08 PM PDT  By James Pearson SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has developed sophisticated ways to circumvent United Nations sanctions, including the suspected use of its embassies to facilitate an illegal trade in weapons, a United Nations report issued on Tuesday said. It said North Korea was also making use of more complicated financial countermeasures and techniques "pioneered by drug- trafficking organizations" that made tracking the isolated state's purchase of prohibited goods more difficult. The report, compiled by a panel of eight U.N. experts, is part of an annual accounting of North Korea's compliance with layers of U.N. sanctions imposed in response to Pyongyang's banned nuclear weapons and missile programs. "From the incidents analyzed in the period under review, the panel has found that (North Korea) makes increasing use of multiple and tiered circumvention techniques," a summary of the 127-page report said. Full Story | Top |
| 777 mystery sharpens hunt for black-box alternatives Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 07:23 PM PDT By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) - The search for Malaysia's missing jet could speed development of new ways of locating wreckage, but such technology is unlikely to replace the traditional "black box" any time soon, France's top crash investigator said on Wednesday. Mystery over the Boeing 777's whereabouts deepened on Wednesday when Malaysia said it was searching an area hundreds of miles from its last known position. As well as scouring the area with ships, planes and satellites, investigators are trying to pick up signals from beacons on the jet's data and cockpit voice recorders. A French probe into the crash of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009, which triggered a two-year $50 million search to find its crucial black boxes, led to a series of recommendations from France's BEA crash investigation agency. Full Story | Top |
| Massive car pileup in Ohio kills three, injures state trooper Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 07:12 PM PDT By Kim Palmer CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Three people were killed and a state trooper was seriously injured in a pileup of about 50 cars and trucks in Ohio after a winter storm covered the Great Lakes region in ice and snow Wednesday afternoon, according to state and county officials. The injured Ohio State Highway Patrol officer was pinned between two vehicles at the scene of the chain-reaction accident that stretched for 2 miles with crashed vehicles in both east- and west-bound lanes of the Ohio Turnpike between Toledo and Cleveland. The trooper, Andrew Clouser, 29, remained hospitalized in serious condition with non-life threatening injuries and was transferred to St. Vincent's Hospital in Toledo, according to the highway patrol. The crippled section of the turnpike remained closed for at least four hours, and traffic was re-directed by law enforcement, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation The winter storm caused white-outs and snarled traffic throughout northeastern Ohio. Full Story | Top |
| NYC buildings explosion kills three, others missing Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 07:01 PM PDT  Mayor Bill de Blasio, who rushed to the scene in East Harlem, where a cascade of twisted and burnt metal blocked the sidewalk and covered parked cars, said preliminary information showed the explosion was caused by a gas leak. Edward Foppiano, Con Ed's vice president for gas operations, said while the utility could not say for certain what caused the explosion, it was treating the incident as a gas leak issue. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the "gas explosion and subsequent fire." Metro-North Railroad, which had shut down train traffic moving through Manhattan while it cleared debris from the tracks, announced in late afternoon it had restored all commuter rail service through the area. One of the victims was identified as Griselde Camacho, a campus public safety officer for Hunter College in East Harlem, according to a message posted on the school's website. Full Story | Top |
| GM waited on Ion recall despite awareness of fatal crashes Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 06:58 PM PDT  By Ben Klayman, Richard Cowan and Paul Lienert DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - General Motors Co waited more than two weeks to expand a major recall to include the Saturn Ion and other compact cars, even though its engineers were aware of four fatalities in crashes involving the model, GM said in filings published on Wednesday. In an amended submission to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, GM also said it had identified an issue with the ignition switch, the central failing in the recall of more than 1.6 million cars, in 2001 preproduction testing on the Ion. Before Wednesday, GM had said that it became aware of the problem in 2004, in the Chevrolet Cobalt. GM says the switch has been connected with at least 34 crashes and is linked to at least 12 deaths. Full Story | Top |
| Vietnam to recheck area for missing airliner after China satellite spots objects Wednesday, Mar 12, 2014 06:57 PM PDT Vietnam has already searched the area where Chinese satellites showed objects that could be debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines jet but a plane has been sent to check the area again, Vietnamese military officials said. "We are aware and we sent planes to cover that area over the past three days," Deputy Transport Minister Pham Quy Tieu told Reuters. Another military official said Vietnam was waiting to see photographs taken by a Chinese satellite on Sunday in waters northeast of Kuala Lumpur and south of Vietnam in order to identify the exact location for further inspection. Full Story | Top |
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