Asia markets waver after Wall St retreats from record

Equities wavered Wednesday following a down day on Wall Street, where worries about high valuations were compounded by mixed messaging from the Federal Reserve on its plans for interest rates.Investors have enjoyed a months-long rally that has pushed some markets to record highs but the run-up took a pause Tuesday amid talk that the gains may have gone too far.All three main indexes in New York were dragged down from peaks by tech titans including Nvidia and Amazon, which have been at the forefront of the global surge owing to huge bets on artificial intelligence.Another key driver of the gains has been expectations that the Fed will cut borrowing costs several times this year, with last week’s reduction followed by forecasts that two more were in the pipeline.However, comments from key officials stoked uncertainty among investors.Boss Jerome Powell warned there was “no risk-free path”.”If we ease too aggressively, we could leave the inflation job unfinished and need to reverse course later to fully restore two-percent inflation,” he said at an event in Rhode Island.But he added: “If we maintain restrictive policy too long, the labour market could soften unnecessarily.”The remarks came as Atlanta Fed chief Raphael Bostic and Chicago counterpart Austan Goolsbee warned of more inflation.However, governor Michelle Bowman called on her colleagues to slash rates amid fears they were “at serious risk of already being behind the curve in addressing deteriorating labor market conditions”.”Now that we have seen many months of deteriorating labour market conditions, it is time for the committee to act decisively and proactively to address decreasing labor market dynamism and emerging signs of fragility,” she said in prepared remarks ahead of an event in Kentucky.Investors are now awaiting the release Friday of the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, the Fed’s favoured gauge of inflation, and key jobs figures the week after.New governor Stephen Miran, who was appointed by Donald Trump, also called for more reductions.Pepperstone’s Chris Weston wrote: “One assumes that if we see US core PCE inflation print at 0.2 percent month-on-month, followed by a tick higher in the layoff rate… and another weak non-farm payrolls release, Bowman may conclude the time for insurance cuts has passed and revert back to a 50-basis-point dissent.”In Asian trade, Tokyo fell along with Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Wellington, though there were small gains in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Manila.- Key figures at around 0230 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.4 percent at 45,300.30 (break)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.2 percent at 26,223.11 Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.3 percent at 3,832.38Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1802 from $1.1816 on TuesdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3514 from $1.3524Dollar/yen: UP at 147.74 yen from 147.66 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.33 pence from 87.37 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.3 percent at $63.58 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.2 percent at $67.08 per barrelNew York – Dow: DOWN 0.2 percent at 46,292.78 (close)London – FTSE 100: FLAT at 9,223.32 (close)

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Climat: le monde répond à Trump à New York, la Chine en tête

118 pays mais pas les Etats-Unis: de nombreux dirigeants défendront mercredi lors d’un mini-sommet à New York la poursuite de la lutte contre le dérèglement du climat, fustigée par Donald Trump, même si beaucoup continuent à produire plus de pétrole ou se focalisent sur d’autres crises.”C’est la plus grande arnaque jamais menée contre le monde”, a déclaré le président américain mardi à l’ONU. Les prévisions climatiques viennent de “gens stupides qui ont fait dépenser des fortunes à leurs pays”.Mercredi, le Premier ministre chinois Li Qiang sera le premier dirigeant à la tribune pour offrir un contrepoint. Son pays, dont les usines, les centrales, les véhicules et autres activités rejettent 30% des gaz à effet de serre de l’humanité, est attendu sur un chiffre crucial: son engagement de réduction des émissions d’ici 2035.Jamais la Chine ne s’est engagée à ce jour à réduire ses émissions de CO2. Elle promettait jusqu’à présent d’atteindre un pic avant 2030, ce qu’elle semble en voie de réaliser avec cinq ans d’avance grâce à l’essor formidable du solaire et des voitures électriques. La plupart des pays riches ont passé leur pic depuis des décennies mais n’ont pas de plan crédible pour aller jusqu’à zéro dans 25 ans.”Tous les regards sont tournés vers la Chine”, dit à l’AFP Li Shuo, expert au centre de réflexion Asia Society, bien renseigné à Pékin.Lui s’attend à un objectif de réduction conservateur, autour voire en dessous de -10% sur les dix prochaines années, inspiré de ce qu’Américains et Européens ont réussi à leur époque. Une trajectoire qui décevra par rapport à l’effort général requis, mais aura le mérite de démontrer l’attachement de Pékin au multilatéralisme climatique.Li Shuo préfère se focaliser sur un fait plus majeur: “La Chine est désormais la superpuissance des technologies vertes”.- COP30 difficile -Le secrétaire général Antonio Guterres n’a convié à ce sommet que les pays prêts à présenter un nouvel engagement pour 2035. C’est une obligation de l’accord de Paris de 2015: les pays membres, soit la quasi-totalité de la planète sauf une poignée dont l’Iran, la Libye et bientôt les Etats-Unis, fixent librement leurs objectifs mais doivent les rehausser tous les cinq ans. Mais pour beaucoup, les engagements s’annoncent insuffisants. Et la plupart ont du retard, le plus spectaculaire étant celui de l’Union européenne, où France et Allemagne notamment ont bloqué un accord à temps.Ce qui renforce l’attente pour la feuille de route chinoise. Elle permettra de recalculer la trajectoire mondiale avant la conférence climatique de l’ONU en novembre au Brésil (COP30), qui s’annonce difficile.- “La courbe s’améliore” -“Les COP ne sont pas des événements isolés. Elles reflètent les tensions géopolitiques”, dit à l’AFP la directrice générale de la COP30, Ana Toni.L’ONU tâche de maintenir l’équilibre entre catastrophisme et foi dans la diplomatie.D’un côté, Antonio Guterres a admis, dans un entretien à l’AFP, que l’espoir de limiter le réchauffement à 1,5°C par rapport au XIXe siècle était “sur le point de s’effondrer”. Le réchauffement du climat est en effet actuellement déjà estimé à environ 1,4°C.De l’autre, le chef de l’ONU Climat, Simon Stiell, répète que l’accord de Paris fonctionne. “Sans la coopération climatique à l’ONU, nous nous dirigerions vers 5°C de réchauffement, un avenir impossible. Aujourd’hui, nous allons plutôt vers 3°C. C’est encore trop haut, mais la courbe s’améliore”, a-t-il dit lundi à New York.Une partie de l’amélioration vient de Chine. La moitié de l’électricité chinoise est certes encore générée en brûlant du charbon, mais c’était les trois quarts il y a une décennie.

In just one year, Google turns AI setbacks into dominance

Caught off guard by ChatGPT and mocked for early blunders with its own generative artificial intelligence efforts, Google has pulled off a dramatic turnaround in just one year, becoming a major player in consumer-facing AI.”The market had written off Alphabet in the AI race,” Matt Britzman, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said of Google’s parent company. “That was short-sighted.”In March 2023, Google hastily launched its version of ChatGPT, called Bard, four months after the original shook the world.During its launch event, Bard made an error answering a question about the James Webb telescope, drawing ridicule from viewers tuning in from around the world.Several analysts subsequently downgraded their recommendations of Alphabet, worried that ChatGPT would eat into the Google search engine’s generation-long dominance of the internet.A year later, in May 2024, the Mountain View, California giant unveiled AI Overviews, a feature integrated into Google Search that again caused online ridicule after recommending a glue pizza recipe and eating a rock a day in answers to queries.Despite massive investments in AI technology for over a decade — acquiring the DeepMind lab in 2014 and producing high-level research publications that inspired the ChatGPT phenomenon — Google kept stumbling.Much of Google’s AI development “focused on powering its platforms rather than delivering services directly to consumers,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight.Ted Mortonson, an analyst at financial services firm Baird, said Google leadership was caught “flat-footed” and had grown “too complacent” about their AI advantage.- Turnaround trajectory -Amid the crisis, change was afoot. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was seen back at the Googleplex, and the company undertook a drastic internal reorganization.In spring 2024, AI developers were consolidated under a single Google DeepMind banner with Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis put in charge.”It took us time to bring these teams together,” CEO Sundar Pichai explained on the “Lex Fridman Podcast” in early June.Google also needed time to deploy its new in-house AI chips, the TPUs (Tensor processing units), essential to the company’s ambitions.But “I could see, internally, the trajectory we were on,” he said.Despite the “glue pizza” missteps, or hallucinations in AI parlance, Overviews marked the first step in Google’s turnaround.Next came the commercial launch of NotebookLM — a digital document tool that can synthesize uploaded content into easy-to-understand writing or even a chatty podcast.At Google’s developer conference in May 2025, the company unveiled video generation tool Veo 3, whose precision and consistency made a big splash, along with AI Mode, a feature that completed the transformation of search engine into ChatGPT-style chatbot.August brought a new version of the Pixel smartphone, whose AI enables 100x zoom and real-time translation. Mid-September saw the launch of video generation on YouTube.”Today’s tools, especially from Google, can be used in the real world, as opposed to just being developer conference demos,” emphasized Avi Greengart of Techsponential.With Pixel, “Google is in pole position in AI equipment,” said Wood.Google drove the point home with its image editing program integrated into Gemini, informally called Nano Banana, which became such a sensation that Gemini topped ChatGPT in iPhone downloads for the first time earlier this month.The outlook brightened further for Google when it avoided having to sell its Chrome browser — a government demand in its search monopoly trial that was rejected by a federal judge in early September.Signaling the shift, Apple is reportedly considering using Gemini for its overhaul of AI voice assistant Siri, according to Bloomberg.A partnership with the iPhone giant would hand Google a new revenue stream, though monetizing its AI “is still somewhat of a question mark,” said Greengart.”Google is playing the long game,” said Wood. “It knows that right now, it needs to offer free services to get consumers engaged with Gemini. However, in the longer term, it’s hoping this can be turned into a substantial revenue stream.”

New York’s finance sector faces risks from Trump visa crackdown

On a bright September morning, employees stream through the turnstiles and vast lobby of Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in the sunlit Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan.More than 9,000 people work at the investment bank’s New York head office.And hundreds of them depend on the H-1B skilled worker visa, recently targeted by the Trump administration for a dramatic overhaul.A September 19 order by President Donald Trump mandates $100,000 payments from companies for every new hire through the program.Though the major impact will be on the tech sector — the largest source of H-1B hiring — financial companies like Goldman Sachs will also be forced to re-evaluate their practice of hiring from abroad.- Concentration in New YorkIn the first two quarters of 2025, Goldman Sachs was the biggest recipient of H-1B visas in New York City. The Big Apple was, in turn, the single location with the most H-1B recipients in all of the United States.Aggregated at the state level, California and Texas both attract more H-1B visa holders than the state of New York; but there is no one city or town in either of these states that boasts a higher number of H-1B holders than the east coast metropolis.This concentration of H-1B visas in New York is driven by hiring at Wall Street’s financial giants.Data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services analyzed by AFP shows that four of the top five H-1B visa recipients in New York City are financial services companies: the investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, and financial data company Bloomberg. The other company in the top five is the consulting and professional services firm McKinsey.Further down the list, and outside of the finance sector, universities such as Columbia and NYU and medical institutions like the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weil Cornell Medical College also brought a number of H-1B hires to the city.- Negative impactsAccording to 2025 data, H-1B positions filled by the banks skewed towards the more technical side of the finance industry, with many visa holders working in software engineering, quantitative analytics, and data science.Goldman Sachs did not respond to emailed questions asking how a $100,000 price tag would impact their ability to hire for such roles in the future. Contacted by AFP with similar questions, Bloomberg and Citigroup declined to comment.In general, experts believe the fee will lead to a large reduction in applications for the visa scheme, which could have further negative impacts on the economy.”A visa fee of this scale is likely to drastically curtail the use of H-1B visas,” Ethan G. Lewis, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, told AFP.”It will lead to reduced hires of US workers and slower productivity growth, and, longer term, discourage people [from other countries] from going to college and beyond in the US, because many tend to rely on H-1B visas for their first job out of studies.”In the tech industry the announcement of the visa fee has caused consternation, with many entrepreneurs — among them Trump’s ally Elon Musk — warning that the US will not be able to fill highly skilled roles with only homegrown talent.Others have speculated that, rather than being offered to American workers, some jobs will simply be outsourced overseas.

New York’s finance sector faces risks from Trump visa crackdown

On a bright September morning, employees stream through the turnstiles and vast lobby of Goldman Sachs’ headquarters in the sunlit Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan.More than 9,000 people work at the investment bank’s New York head office.And hundreds of them depend on the H-1B skilled worker visa, recently targeted by the Trump administration for a dramatic overhaul.A September 19 order by President Donald Trump mandates $100,000 payments from companies for every new hire through the program.Though the major impact will be on the tech sector — the largest source of H-1B hiring — financial companies like Goldman Sachs will also be forced to re-evaluate their practice of hiring from abroad.- Concentration in New YorkIn the first two quarters of 2025, Goldman Sachs was the biggest recipient of H-1B visas in New York City. The Big Apple was, in turn, the single location with the most H-1B recipients in all of the United States.Aggregated at the state level, California and Texas both attract more H-1B visa holders than the state of New York; but there is no one city or town in either of these states that boasts a higher number of H-1B holders than the east coast metropolis.This concentration of H-1B visas in New York is driven by hiring at Wall Street’s financial giants.Data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services analyzed by AFP shows that four of the top five H-1B visa recipients in New York City are financial services companies: the investment banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, and financial data company Bloomberg. The other company in the top five is the consulting and professional services firm McKinsey.Further down the list, and outside of the finance sector, universities such as Columbia and NYU and medical institutions like the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weil Cornell Medical College also brought a number of H-1B hires to the city.- Negative impactsAccording to 2025 data, H-1B positions filled by the banks skewed towards the more technical side of the finance industry, with many visa holders working in software engineering, quantitative analytics, and data science.Goldman Sachs did not respond to emailed questions asking how a $100,000 price tag would impact their ability to hire for such roles in the future. Contacted by AFP with similar questions, Bloomberg and Citigroup declined to comment.In general, experts believe the fee will lead to a large reduction in applications for the visa scheme, which could have further negative impacts on the economy.”A visa fee of this scale is likely to drastically curtail the use of H-1B visas,” Ethan G. Lewis, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, told AFP.”It will lead to reduced hires of US workers and slower productivity growth, and, longer term, discourage people [from other countries] from going to college and beyond in the US, because many tend to rely on H-1B visas for their first job out of studies.”In the tech industry the announcement of the visa fee has caused consternation, with many entrepreneurs — among them Trump’s ally Elon Musk — warning that the US will not be able to fill highly skilled roles with only homegrown talent.Others have speculated that, rather than being offered to American workers, some jobs will simply be outsourced overseas.

Toxic homes a lasting legacy of Los Angeles fires

The fires that tore through Los Angeles nine months ago didn’t destroy Karen Girard’s home. But the smokeleft her walls, floors and furniture infused with a toxic cocktail.Tests have found heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and zinc, as well as volatile organic compounds like cyanide and furfural that have left her home uninhabitable.When the flames razed neighboring houses in January during a terrifying firestorm in Altadena, Girard was astonished to learn her property was spared.”I thought I should go out and buy lottery tickets, because I never thought I would be this lucky again,” she told AFP.But even after only short visits Girard finds herself suffering from increasing asthma attacks.Tests revealed problems she couldn’t see — things she says mean the house is no longer safe.”I realized that even though the home was still standing, it might be lost to me,” the 58-year-old designer said.- Unseen disaster – The wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area in January killed 31 people directly, and razed more than 16,000 buildings, tearing a swathe through the working- and middle-class neighborhood of Altadena and the upmarket enclave of Pacific Palisades.Horrifying pictures of a burned out landscape were broadcast around the world, showing acres (hectares) of almost unimaginable devastation, in one of the most expensive natural disasters the world has ever seen.But among the embers smoldered another, less-visible disaster: the pollution released when homes, cars, televisions, household goods and batteries burned.Driven by gusts reaching 100 miles (160 kilometers) and hour, this poisonous soup seeped under neighbors’ doors and through vents. “The potential toxicity of the mixture that came off these fires is probably much greater than what we saw in other major fires we’ve experienced in the US, because those fires did not affect as many urban structures,” explained Michael Jerrett, a professor of environmental science at the University of California Los Angeles. His team tested the atmosphere in affected communities this spring and found abnormal levels of hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.Nanoparticles could have been transported up to six miles, potentially affecting tens of thousands of people, he says.”They are so small that they’re capable of penetrating the indoor environment with high efficiency.””It’s really important that people trying to move back into their homes have them properly remediated.”But getting insurance companies to pay up has proven complicated.Girard says she is stuck in a battle between experts, with the damage restoration company she hired recommending replacing all her furniture, and even treating the frame of her house.The firm hired by her insurance company, however, insists that a vacuum cleaner equipped with a filter to capture fine particles will be enough to make the place habitable. – Insurers – To Girard it seems like the company is prioritizing profit over her wellbeing.”While it feels like business to them, it doesn’t feel like business to me,” she said.”This is my home. This is a place that I’ve lived for a couple of decades, and it is a place I desperately want to come home to.”Girard’s insurer, Farmers, told AFP: “We continue to work with our customer to resolve this claim and remain willing to review any additional information they may wish to provide.”The problem when dealing with insurance companies — a frequent topic of complaint in high-cost California, even without a major disaster — is that they appear to be a law unto themselves, says Jane Lawton, founder of the Eaton Fire Residents United association.”There are no clear standards on (smoke claims), so insurance companies can deny what they want,” she said.Her organization has mapped more than 200 tests conducted on homes in Altadena. All show varying degrees of contamination. “This is going to be like 9/11,” said Lawton, referencing the 2001 attack in New York where people in a wide area around the World Trade Center suffered from chronic respiratory illnesses and elevated rates of some cancers after the twin towers collapsed, releasing clouds of dust and debris. California’s largest insurer, State Farm, which has so far paid out $4.5 billion in relation to the fires, said it “evaluates each claim, including smoke claims, on a case-by-case basis.”But for Priscilla Munoz, they are dragging their feet.Munoz, who lives a mile from the disaster area, spent $10,000 on a study that found lead in her home and still doesn’t know if the insurer will pay to clean it up.”Lead… goes into things,” she says, worrying about her two young children and their plush toys. “I don’t want them snuggling up to a toxic stuffy.”

Guineans approve new constitution by wide margin, pave way for electionsWed, 24 Sep 2025 01:15:26 GMT

Four years after the military seized power, voters in a Guinea referendum have resoundingly chosen to implement a new constitution, with 89 percent supporting the charter, according to official provisional results announced Tuesday evening.The constitution paves the way for elections in the west African country, but also permits General Mamady Doumbouya, its junta leader, to …

Guineans approve new constitution by wide margin, pave way for electionsWed, 24 Sep 2025 01:15:26 GMT Read More »