2025-09-25 02:01

BOJ must avoid missing rate-hike chance, one member says Some saw inflation expectations nearing, or hitting, 2% Board engages in lengthy debate on price pressure July minutes prelude 2 hawkish dissent at September meeting TOKYO, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Some Bank of Japan board members, at a policy meeting in July, called for resuming interest rate hikes in the future, even as the board decided unanimously to keep borrowing costs steady, minutes of the July gathering showed on Thursday. While some members saw underlying inflation still short of the BOJ's 2% target, others saw inflation expectations approaching steadily or already having hit 2%, the minutes showed in a sign of growing awareness within the board of mounting inflationary pressure. Sign up here. At a subsequent meeting in September, two board members dissented from the BOJ's decision to keep interest rates steady at 0.5%, instead calling unsuccessfully for a hike to 0.75%. The July discussion reinforces the dominant market view that the BOJ will raise interest rates again this year as a U.S.-Japan trade agreement has reduced uncertainty over the economic outlook. "The BOJ's policy rate is lower than the level deemed neutral, with prices remaining relatively high and the output gap being around zero recently," one member was quoted as saying in the minutes of the July meeting. "In such a situation, it's appropriate for the BOJ to return the policy rate to its neutral level where possible," the member added. Another member said the BOJ should "avoid being overly cautious and miss the opportunity" to raise rates with stock prices reacting positively to the U.S.-Japan trade deal, the minutes showed. Several other opinions also called for timely rate hikes with one saying the BOJ could see scope to hike again by the end of this year if the hit from U.S. tariffs proves limited. The BOJ ended a decade-long, massive stimulus last year and raised interest rates to 0.5% in January on the view Japan was on the cusp of durably achieving its 2% inflation target. While Governor Kazuo Ueda has signaled the bank's readiness to keep raising rates, he stressed the need to tread cautiously due to the expected hit to Japan's exports from U.S. tariffs and uncertainty over the U.S. economy. At the July meeting, one member said the BOJ should wait for "a bit more data" as U.S. inflation and job market developments could cause big swings in U.S. monetary policy and exchange-rate moves, the minutes showed. Others, however, said the United States was likely to avoid recession, while the impact of higher U.S. levies on Japan's economy could prove limited, the minutes showed. The board also debated at length on Japan's inflation outlook. While one member said the recent overshoot in inflation was due largely to a temporary spike in food costs, others warned that persistent food inflation could push up, or keep elevated, public perceptions of future price moves, the minutes showed. "The fact there was so much debate about inflation shows many board members are worried about upward price risks," said Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities, who sees the chance of a rate hike in October. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/some-boj-policymakers-called-future-rate-hikes-july-minutes-show-2025-09-25/

2025-09-25 00:35

September 25 - Denmark's Aalborg airport, used for commercial and military flights, was closed due to drones in its airspace, police said early on Thursday, two days after Copenhagen airport was shut over drone sightings that raised European security concerns. A string of drone sightings and digital outages has repeatedly disrupted airports since 2017. These episodes bypass core flight‑safety systems and instead hit choke points such as check‑in and boarding systems, power infrastructure and airfield perimeters, causing ripple effects across networks. Sign up here. May 27, 2017: IT FAILURE AT BRITISH AIRWAYS' LONDON HUBS British Airways cancelled all flights from Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, and Gatwick on the first day of a holiday weekend after a data-centre power issue, affecting 75,000 passengers. A power surge on the morning of Saturday, May 27 hit BA's flight, baggage and communication systems. It was so strong it also rendered the back-up systems ineffective, with knock-on delays lasting into the following Monday as systems were restored. December 19, 2018: REPEATED DRONE SIGHTINGS AT LONDON GATWICK Persistent drone reports crippled London's Gatwick Airport for three days during peak travel in the run up to Christmas. Roughly 140,000 passengers and about 1,000 flights were affected in the biggest disruption since an Icelandic volcanic ash cloud in 2010. The British army was drafted in to Gatwick to deploy "specialist equipment" as the anti-drone capability needed was not yet commercially available. The length of disruption at an airport the size of Gatwick was unprecedented. Dubai airport was shut a number of times in 2016 due to unauthorised drone activity, but the longest period was for under two hours. January 11, 2023: SAFETY SYSTEM FAILURE CAUSES NATIONWIDE HALT IN U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop lasting about 90 minutes that disrupted more than 11,000 U.S. flights, following a "Notice to Air Mission" (NOTAM) system failure. This FAA system is meant to alert pilots to a range of hazards, including snow, volcanic ash or birds near an airport. It also provides information on closed runways and temporary air restrictions. August 28, 2023: NATS FLIGHT DATA GLITCH IN UK UK air traffic control limited flows after a flight‑plan processing fault, forcing manual input. Around 1,500 flights were cancelled and disruptions spilled into the following day. July 19, 2024: FAULTY CROWDSTRIKE UPDATE CAUSES GLOBAL WINDOWS OUTAGE A faulty security software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O) , opens new tab triggered widespread Windows crashes, which affected numerous industries and grounded more than 5,000 flights worldwide. Across the United States, Asia and Europe, carriers such as Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) , opens new tab, Ryanair (RYA.I) , opens new tab, United Airlines (UAL.O) , opens new tab and Air India said they had faced delays or disruption U.S. cancellations topped 2,200 on day one, with nearly 7,000 delayed, and some airlines took days to fully recover operations. March 21, 2025: SUBSTATION FIRE SHUTS LONDON HEATHROW Britain's Heathrow Airport, the world's fifth-busiest, was shut for 18 hours after a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation knocked out its power, stranding over 200,000 people and costing airlines millions of pounds The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights on the Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe. September 10, 2025: DRONE INCURSION INTO POLAND SHUTS SEVERAL AIRPORTS Several Polish airports were temporarily closed when around 21 suspected Russian drones entered Polish airspace. Warsaw Chopin and Modlin airports, as well as Rzeszow and Lublin airports in the country's east, temporarily closed before resuming operations. September 20, 2025: CYBER ATTACK AFFECTS MULTIPLE EUROPEAN HUBS A cyberattack targeting check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX (RTX.N) , opens new tab, disrupted operations at several major European airports including London's Heathrow, Berlin Airport and in Brussels. Brussels Airport canceled 25 flights on Saturday, 50 on Sunday and half of Monday's flight departures due to persistent problems. September 22, 2025: DRONE INCURSIONS IN DENMARK AND NORWAY Two to three large drones , opens new tab repeatedly flew over Copenhagen's airspace, prompting a nearly four‑hour airport shutdown, diversions and delays, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded. Authorities in Norway also shut the airspace at Oslo airport for three hours after a drone was seen. Denmark said the incident at Copenhagen airport was the most serious attack yet on its critical infrastructure and linked it to a series of suspected Russian drone incursions and other disruptions across Europe. September 24, 2025: DENMARK CLOSES ANOTHER AIRPORT DUE TO DRONES Drones were first sighted near Denmark's Aalborg airport at about 9:44 p.m. (1944 GMT) on Wednesday, police said. The drones followed a similar pattern to the ones that had halted flights at Copenhagen airport two days earlier, police said. The closure of Aalborg airport also affected Denmark's armed forces because it is used as a military base, police added. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/drones-cyber-outages-exposing-aviation-weak-spots-since-2017-2025-09-23/

2025-09-25 00:17

HONG KONG, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Hong Kong resumed flights out of its international airport on Thursday after a 36-hour suspension, reopening businesses, transportation services and some schools after the world's most powerful tropical cyclone this year lashed the financial hub. Ragasa brought the densely populated city to a standstill from Tuesday afternoon, after sweeping through the northern Philippines and Taiwan where it killed 14, before making landfall on the southern Chinese city of Yangjiang on Wednesday. Sign up here. More than 100 people were injured in Hong Kong, where authorities imposed the highest typhoon signal 10 for most of Wednesday. On Thursday, the observatory maintained its second-lowest typhoon signal 3, keeping kindergartens and some schools shut as Ragasa moved away from the city and weakened into a tropical storm. Huge waves crashed over areas of Hong Kong's eastern and southern shoreline on Wednesday, with widespread flooding submerging some roads and residential properties. Seawater surged through the Fullerton hotel on the island's south, shattering glass doors and inundating the lobby. No injuries were reported and the hotel said services were operating as normal. Hong Kong's Airport Authority said airlines would gradually resume flights starting from 6 a.m. (1000 GMT) on Thursday, with all three runways operating simultaneously. "It is anticipated that flights will be scheduled until late into late night tomorrow, handling over 1,000 flights at the normal level," it said, adding that it expected airport operations to be busy on Thursday and Friday. Authorities said they were urgently repairing collapsed roads, trying to clear more than 1,000 fallen trees and respond to around 85 cases of flooding. Prior to Ragasa's arrival authorities handed out sandbags on Monday for residents to bolster their homes in low-lying areas, while many people stockpiled daily necessities, leading to bare supermarket shelves and surging fresh vegetable prices. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/hong-kong-reopens-after-worlds-most-powerful-cyclone-ragasa-2025-09-25/

2025-09-24 23:45

Fourteen dead after flood caused by typhoon Many residents too elderly to escape flood in time Government studies ways to tackle barrier lake that caused flood Main highway cut after flood sweeps away bridge HUALIEN, Taiwan, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Taiwan searched on Thursday for 33 people missing after a strong typhoon flooded a lake above a small town on its remote east coast, leading to a disaster as many victims were too elderly to follow evacuation guidance to go upstairs in their homes. The deaths, their tally revised down to 14 from 17, followed heavy rains brought by the outer bands of Super Typhoon Ragasa to Hualien county, causing a barrier lake in the mountains to overflow and release a wall of water on the town of Guangfu. Sign up here. Sub-tropical Taiwan normally has a well-honed drill for evacuations ahead of typhoons, especially in the mountainous and sparsely populated east coast, which limits casualties. But the number of dead this time has prompted questions whether an order to head upstairs from the ground floor was appropriate, and what could have been done differently. "Beyond mourning the victims, we must investigate the causes of death, which predominantly occurred on the first floors," Premier Cho Jung-tai told a cabinet meeting on Thursday. "Clarifying these factors is essential for refining future evacuation protocols." ELDERLY POPULATION Many rural parts of Taiwan, especially in the east, have large elderly populations as the young move to cities to seek better job opportunities. The elderly with disabilities made up the majority of the dead, many found on the first floors of homes, Hualien official Lin Jung-lu told Reuters. "They had difficulty walking," he added. Chang Chih-hsiung, a youth representative of the Fata'an tribe of the Amis indigenous group which calls Hualien home, said the digital gap and ineffective communication were among the reasons why some older people did not evacuate. "Some of them are not familiar with using cellphones," he told Reuters. "The village chief had held briefings, but people didn't think it was that serious until it happened." Another problem was the sheer scale of flooding and the difficulty of predicting where it could hit. Parts of the village were entirely evacuated with people moved to shelters, but that area escaped the flood, Chang added, while other spots where many opted to move to higher floors, however, were hit far worse than expected. CUT BRIDGE Wang Tse-an, head of the village of Dama in the Guangfu region, said a mandatory evacuation order meant the hamlet suffered no deaths. "Dama was the first to be hit, but the damage is the smallest," he said. "That's because we designated houses for mandatory evacuation. But when the flood came to other villages people there thought they could just do 'vertical evacuation.' They did not expect the flood to reach that high." While Guangfu's train station has resumed services, the main highway has been cut off after flood waters swept away a bridge. Drone imagery from Reuters showed only the bridge supports left in the river bed after the road links snapped at both ends. In other images, homes were marooned in mud that blocked entrances. Wang said many meetings had been held since the lake was discovered in July, with several briefings delivered to villagers about the coming dangers and evacuation plans, some in the Amis language, as not all residents spoke Chinese. The rain has stopped, but the government maintains warnings on the barrier dam in a remote mountain area behind Guangfu. The tricky issues of how to tackle the lake, though much smaller than before, and prevent another disaster remain. Agriculture Minister Chen Junne-jih said using explosives to blow up the bank holding back the lake was too dangerous as it could set off more landslides. "While the red warning is still in place please do not go near to the river," he told reporters in Taipei. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/taiwan-revises-down-super-typhoon-ragasa-death-toll-14-33-missing-2025-09-24/

2025-09-24 23:33

G7 technical teams met in Chicago in September Form of carbon tax on China being considered, sources say China introduced rare earth export controls in April European firms struggling to secure supplies BRUSSELS/TORONTO, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Group of Seven (G7) members and the European Union are considering price floors to promote rare earth production, as well as taxes on some Chinese exports to incentivise investment, four sources with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters. Rare earths are difficult-to-extract metallic elements critical to the manufacture of products including cell phones, cars and high-tech weapons. Sign up here. China, the world's leading producer of rare earths, surprised buyers in April when it introduced export controls on the materials and on related magnets, in retaliation for tariffs imposed by the United States. After European automakers faced shutdowns, China agreed to fast-track licenses for European companies in May and "upgraded" its export mechanism to the EU in July. However, two months later European companies say rising license bottlenecks risk new losses and shutdowns. PUSH TO SECURE CRITICAL MINERALS G7 countries, with the exception of Japan, are heavily or exclusively reliant on China for a raft of materials from rare earth magnets to battery metals. To address the security risk, G7 leaders launched a Critical Minerals Action Plan in June. Technical teams met in Chicago earlier this month. "The heart of the conversation was whether to raise the bar on regulation of foreign investment in critical materials in order to avoid companies going to China," one of the sources said about the Chicago meeting, adding that there was uncertainty on whether to confront Beijing. Australia also attended the meeting. "The other option would be geographical restrictions but G7 countries were divided," the source added. These restrictions could include local content rules or limits on sourcing from select countries like China in public procurement tenders. Two other sources said the group discussed a type of carbon tax or tariff on Chinese exports of rare earths and small-volume metals based on the percentage of non-renewable energy used in their production. A Trump administration official told Reuters on Wednesday that the U.S. is in talks with G7 and EU leaders about broader trade measures to prevent rare earth price dumping that include tariffs, price floors, or other measures. The sources said officials were considering price floors backed by government subsidies, which the U.S. recently introduced to encourage domestic production. Australia is separately considering setting a price floor to support critical minerals projects, including rare earths. One of the sources added that Canada looked favourably on the price floor idea, though had not committed to such a move. A fourth source, an EU official not authorised to speak publicly on the topic, said the bloc was exploring various ideas such as price floors, joint-purchasing and reciprocal deals within the G7, but that no decisions had been taken. In June, the EU's commissioner for industry Stephane Sejourne said the EU should create a joint stockpile of rare earths and strategic materials, similar to those for oil and gas. Canada's natural resources department did not respond to a query from Reuters. The White House did not have an immediate comment. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/g7-weighs-price-floors-rare-earths-counter-chinas-dominance-sources-say-2025-09-24/

2025-09-24 23:12

LONDON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Britain has signed contracts for two commercial projects to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions which are expected to generate around 500 skilled jobs, the government said on Thursday. Britain has a climate target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and has said carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be needed to curb emissions from energy-intensive industrial sectors. Sign up here. The projects, Heidelberg Materials' Padeswood cement works in north Wales and Encyclis's Protos waste-to-energy facility in Ellesmere Port in the northwest of England, will capture a total of 1.2 million metric tons of CO2 a year. Emissions from the plants will be captured and transported via pipeline to be stored at Eni’s Liverpool Bay project. Heidelberg Materials said its project would be the world’s first carbon capture facility to enable fully decarbonised cement production. Construction will begin later this year with first net-zero cement expected to be produced in 2029. “Our constructive partnership with the UK Government has allowed us to reach this major milestone, which is fantastic news, not just for us, but for the industry as a whole," Simon Willis, CEO of Heidelberg Materials UK said in the government statement. The government did not give any financial details of the contracts, but the funding is part of the 9.4 billion pounds ($12.65 billion) the government pledged to carbon capture technology over the spending review period announced in June. CCS involves capturing emissions from power plants and industry to enable them to be stored underground. The technology has been available for years but projects globally have struggled to take off due to high costs. ($1 = 0.7431 pounds) https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/britain-signs-deals-carbon-capture-projects-creating-500-jobs-2025-09-24/