AFP

Stock markets mostly retreated and the dollar firmed Monday as forecast-beating US jobs data fanned expectations for more large interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

A rally across equity trading floors last week has given way to gloom as investors grow increasingly worried that central bank rate hikes to tame runaway prices will plunge the global economy into recession.

Adding to the stress is the upcoming corporate earnings season, which many fear will show that companies are feeling the pain of tightening monetary policies.

European and Asian equities mostly suffered Monday following heavy losses Friday on Wall Street.

Last week closed out with news that the United States created a net 263,000 jobs in September.

While that was down from August it was more than expected, highlighting the tough job Fed officials face in their battle against decades-high inflation. 

With the spotlight on a US consumer price index reading later in the week, policymakers continue to take a hawkish tone, warning they will not ease up on their rate hikes even if that means causing a recession.

Elsewhere on Monday, the Moscow stock exchange plunged nearly 12 percent following multiple strikes on Ukrainian cities and a weekend explosion that partially destroyed the bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.

In foreign exchange and amid a strong dollar, the pound won little support from Britain ramping up efforts to calm markets after a heavily criticised budget.

In what was seen as co-ordinated action, the government brought forward key economic forecasts and the Bank of England boosted liquidity.

“With the pound remaining weak and (UK) government borrowing costs inching up again towards worrying levels, the UK government and the Bank of England have launched a two-pronged attempt to calm markets,” noted Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Oil prices meanwhile fell after the biggest weekly gain since March that followed a decision by OPEC and allied producers led by Russia to slash crude output by two million barrels per day.

The drop Monday came also on demand concerns caused by China’s Covid flare-ups and more weak data out of Beijing owing to lockdowns.

– Key figures around 1030 GMT –

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.4 percent at 6,967.02 points

Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.4 percent at 12,319.65

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.4 percent at 5,842.82

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.3 percent at 3,365.99

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 3.0 percent at 17,216.66 (close) 

Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 1.7 percent at 2,974.15 (close)

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: Closed for a holiday

New York – Dow: DOWN 2.1 percent at 29,296.79 (close)

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.1058 from $1.1082 on Friday

Euro/dollar: DOWN at $0.9703 from $0.9743

Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.75 pence from 87.97 pence

Dollar/yen: UP at 145.46 yen from 145.38 yen

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.5 percent at $92.16 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.7 percent at $97.22 per barrel

The woman who picked Kate Bush for “Stranger Things”, creating an unlikely summer smash, says Bush’s song allowed the world a much-needed sigh of relief after the stress of the pandemic.

As the Emmy-winning music coordinator for the Netflix show, Nora Felder takes a big part of the credit for turning “Running Up That Hill”, a song first released in 1985, into arguably the defining song of 2022. 

After Bush’s song featured on season four in May, it saw an 8,700-percent boost on Spotify, hitting the number one slot around the world. 

“No-one imagined what it would become. It swept the world,” Felder told AFP.

“I think the song was a way for the world to exhale, to let go of their breath. 

“The primary message of the song is stepping out of your shoes and understanding what the people around you are going through, that sometimes it’s a long road to the top.

“And I think we all felt trapped and didn’t know what was going to happen with the pandemic and everything else.”

– ‘Kate is very particular’ –

Felder’s job is more than just sitting around thinking of great tunes for a scene. Her day is filled with budgets, copyright negotiations, hiring bands and composers.

“I’m usually involved in the very early stages of the scripts,” she said. 

“It helps me a lot to have the stories in my head, to start building song ideas before it’s shot. When I get to know the characters, that’s when the ideas start coming to me.”

It was a tense moment when she approached Bush’s representatives, not knowing the singer-songwriter was already a fan of the show. 

“Because Kate is very particular about how her songs are used, I took a lot of time preparing the context and what it meant to the story and the characters,” Felder said. 

“Kate approved it because she understood and accepted the vision that the Duffer brothers (the showrunners) had created.”

It was a huge relief.

“I did have other selections but that was the best one. This song ticked all the check marks — the message behind the song, the way it built, the way it resonated with everything Max (the character) had gone through.” 

– ‘Open their ears’ –

Felder’s other major success in season four was using “Master of Puppets” by Metallica. 

She credits the love for character Eddie, who plays the song, with helping it connect to non-metal fans. 

“Because the audience fell in love with Eddie, it made them open their ears to the song that exemplified him. They are tough on the outside but on the inside, there’s an emotionality,” she said.

“‘Stranger Things’ is magical. People love the characters so much that it allows them to keep their mind open.” 

Metallica sent Felder flowers on the day she won the Emmy for music supervision last month. 

“And they followed me on Twitter. I’m still a little kid with certain bands, and I was thinking: ‘Oh my god, Metallica followed me!'” she said.

Felder began her career in music production, assisting on albums by Paul Simon, Sinead O’Connor and Iggy Pop, before moving into soundtracks on “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” and TV shows like “Ray Donovan” and “Baskets”.

With another season of “Stranger Things” in the pipeline, the pressure is on.

“With what happened this year, I suspect a lot of artists are going to be hoping they can be the next ‘Running Up That Hill’,” she said. 

“Who knows, maybe there will be another one or two.”

Air France and Airbus will go on trial on Monday on charges of involuntary manslaughter over the fatal 2009 crash of a jet heading to Paris from Brazil, killing all 228 people aboard.

Victims’ families and some aviation experts say the pilots were insufficiently trained to handle a loss of speed readings caused by crucial equipment freezing over in a storm.

Flight AF 447 from Rio de Janeiro plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of June 1, 2009, after entering a zone near the Equator known for strong turbulence.

The Airbus A330 was carrying 12 crew members and 216 passengers. It was the carrier’s deadliest crash.

It took nearly two years to locate the bulk of the fuselage and recover the “black box” flight recorders.

French flagship carrier Air France and aircraft maker Airbus were charged as the inquiry progressed. 

Experts determined the crash resulted from mistakes made by pilots disorientated by so-called Pitot speed-monitoring tubes that had frozen over in thick cloud.

But investigating magistrates overseeing the case dropped the charges in 2019, a decision that infuriated victims’ families.

Prosecutors appealed against the decision and in 2021 a Paris court ruled there was sufficient evidence for a trial to go ahead. 

Ophelie Toulliou, who lost her brother on the flight, said it was essential “the truth come out, and that the sentences, if deserved, are handed down”.

“But the message is also to make companies that think they’re untouchable understand ‘You’re like everyone else and if you make mistakes, they will be punished,'” she told AFP.

– ‘Lost our speeds’ –

The court will hear testimony from dozens of aviation experts and pilots over two months of hearings, and each company faces a maximum fine of 225,000 euros ($220,000).

There will also be analysis of the final minutes in the cockpit before the plane went into free-fall after entering a so-called “intertropical convergence zone” that often produces volatile storms with heavy precipitation.

In the cold, the Pitot tubes froze, a problem that had already been reported by other pilots. The tubes were quickly replaced on planes worldwide in the months after the accident.

“We’ve lost our speeds,” one pilot is heard saying in the flight recordings, before other indicators mistakenly show a loss of altitude and a series of alarm messages appear on the cockpit screens. 

The pilots start climbing and even though a “STALL” alert sounds, reach 11,600 metres (38,060 feet). 

“I don’t know what’s happening,” one of the pilots is heard saying as the stall begins.

– Training overhaul –

Air France pilots’ union SPAF said it was now “indispensable for a court to hear all the parties and decide where responsibility lies in a public hearing”.

The crash prompted an overhaul of training protocols across the industry, in particular to prepare pilots to handle the intense stress of unforeseen circumstances.

Pilots are also now required to continually practice stall responses on simulators.

“That was the big change after this accident for all civil airline companies. Before, it was something pilots learned in basic training and then they were never trained again,” one airline executive told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

Testimony will also be heard from some of the 476 members of victims’ families who are civil plaintiffs in the case.

But Nelson Faria Marinho, president of the Brazilian association of victims’ relatives, said, “I’m not expecting anything from this trial.”

“Even if there is a conviction, who will be punished? The CEOs? They were changed at Airbus and Air France a long time ago,” he told AFP during an interview at his Rio home.

He will be represented by former French pilot Gerard Arnoux, who has advised several of the victims’ families and wrote a book titled “Rio-Paris Is Not Responding: AF447, the Crash that Should Not Have Happened”.

North Korea’s recent missile tests involved “tactical nuclear” drills to simulate hitting the South, and were overseen by leader Kim Jong Un in response to US-led joint military exercises in the region, state media said Monday.

Kim made acquiring tactical nukes — smaller, lighter weapons designed for battlefield use — a top priority at a key party congress in January 2021, and this year vowed to develop North Korea’s nuclear forces at the fastest possible speed.

The country revised its nuclear laws last month to allow pre-emptive strikes, with Kim declaring North Korea an “irreversible” nuclear power — effectively ending the possibility of negotiations over its arsenal.

Since then, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have ramped up combined military exercises, including deploying a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier to the area twice, infuriating Pyongyang, which sees such drills as rehearsals for invasion.

In response, North Korea “decided to organise military drills under the simulation of an actual war” that gamed out hitting South Korea’s ports, airports and military command facilities, the Korean Central News Agency said.

North Korean army units involved in “the operation of tactical nukes staged military drills from September 25 to October 9 in order to check and assess the war deterrent and nuclear counterattack capability,” the report said.

Kim “guided the military drills on the spot,” KCNA said, with images released by state media showing him clad in a white shirt, cheerfully giving instructions to uniformed soldiers.

Kim, who was also shown watching missiles soaring into the sky trailing columns of fire, dismissed the idea of restarting talks, saying North Korea “felt no necessity to do so,” KCNA reported.

The report also said that North Korea’s October 4 missile launch, which flew over Japan and prompted rare evacuation warnings, involved a “new-type ground-to-ground intermediate-range ballistic missile”.

That test — for which state media images showed Kim observing the missile flight data — aimed to “send more powerful and clear warning to the enemies”.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson acknowledged KCNA’s reports, and echoed North Korea’s mention of the US-led joint drills in the region.

“We noted the relevant reports. We also noted the recent (US-Japan-South Korea) drills in the seas around DPRK,” Mao Ning told a regular briefing Monday, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name.

– Dangerous dynamic –

North Korea’s claim its missile launches are a “response” to US-South Korea drills is part of a “familiar spiral dynamic” on the Korean peninsula, said US-based security analyst Ankit Panda.

“I worry that this is the start of a dangerous dynamic on the Korean Peninsula, where we have two states in a bitter rivalry and each faces strong incentives to fire first in a serious crisis,” he said.

“We also have no real measures of negotiated restraint or hotlines to manage crises,” he told AFP.

It is significant that North Korea is not framing the recent launches as tests of the missiles themselves, but of the units that launch them, analysts said.

“That suggests these systems are deployed,” Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies wrote on Twitter.

– ‘Nuclear harbinger’ – 

In addition to the array of “tactical nuclear” drills, North Korea said it had carried out “a large-scale combined air-attack drill”, which was also overseen by Kim.

KCNA said this involved “more than 150 fighter planes” but analysts dismissed this as domestic propaganda, and Seoul said last week it had only detected 12 North Korean warplanes flying in formation.

The volley of KCNA statements about its recent tests — which are unusual, as state media no longer routinely comments on launches — indicates Pyongyang is concerned about the recent US-led joint drills, analysts said.

“To strengthen its self-proclaimed deterrent, it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“The KCNA report may also be a harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field,” he added.

Officials in Washington and Seoul have been warning for months that North Korea has completed preparations for another nuclear test — which would be the country’s seventh, and first since 2017.

“The fears of a nuclear war in Ukraine are no longer someone else’s concern,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, told AFP.

“We need to take more seriously the fact that the possibility of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula has increased.”