World

Wall Street stocks made modest gains Wednesday following the previous day’s rout on stronger-than-expected US inflation data that sparked fears of a prolonged campaign of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

The US inflation data still pulled European and Asian equities sharply lower, London the heaviest faller in Europe after news that UK inflation had slowed last month but remained close to a 40-year high.

The dollar edged down in choppy trade, as oil prices climbed.

US consumer price inflation (CPI) slowed slightly in August to 8.3 percent on an annual measure, but this trumped market expectations of about eight percent. Prices actually rose on a monthly comparison. 

– ‘Caught up’ –

European markets are “caught up in the negative sentiment that has taken hold across global markets,” said Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor.

“Hotter-than-expected US inflation figures prompted heavy selling on Wall Street” on Tuesday, she added, when the blue-chip Dow index tumbled almost four percent.

Global consumer prices have soared for months, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — which has hiked energy and food costs — as well as owing to supply chain strains and Covid lockdowns in China.

The Fed has already instituted two consecutive 75-basis-point hikes, and a third such move is widely expected at its meeting next week.

After the latest US inflation data, some investors are even predicting the next Fed hike could be a full percentage point.

Aggressive rate tightening by central banks worldwide is denting economic activity as consumers and businesses face higher loan repayments.

Investors “still appear to be in a state of shock, trying to process how high the Fed will go with its policy rate and how low the economy and earnings growth will go as a result of the restrictive policy,” said market analyst Patrick O’Hare at Briefing.com.

In the UK, inflation slowed to 9.9 percent in August but remained almost in double digits.

The news boosted the pound on hopes of another interest rate hike next week from the Bank of England.

“There has been a fresh bout of anxiety on financial markets amid worries that inflation is still proving to be a formidable opponent to take down,” said Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter.

In Asia, Tokyo led the region’s losses with the Nikkei plunging 2.8 percent.

Hong Kong stocks closed down more than two percent, with Chinese conglomerate Fosun hit hard by media reports that the group was under regulatory scrutiny.

But after slipping into the red early in the session, Wall Street stocks pushed modestly higher during morning trading on Wednesday.

A dip in US wholesale prices helped boost sentiment. 

The drop “suggests that inflation pressures are moderating albeit not as quickly as one would like,” said market analyst Michael Hewson at CMC Markets.

– Key figures at around 1330 GMT –

New York – Dow: UP 0.2 percent at 31,163.58 points

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.5 percent at 3,567.56

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 1.5 percent at 7,277.30 (close) 

Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 1.2 percent at 13,028.00 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.4 percent at 6,222.41 (close)

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 2.8 percent at 28,818.62 (close) 

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 2.5 percent at 18,847.10 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.8 percent at 3,237.54 (close)

Euro/dollar: UP at $0.9993 from $0.9970 late Tuesday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.1564 from $1.1493 

Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.39 pence from 86.75 pence 

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 142.77 yen from 144.58 yen 

Brent North Sea crude: UP 2.1 percent at $95.10 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 2.4 percent at $89.42 per barrel

burs-rl/jj

Armenia on Wednesday accused Azerbaijan of occupying a pocket of its land seized in fierce clashes between the warring neighbours that left more than 150 people dead, jeopardising fledgling peace talks.

The fighting that erupted on Tuesday came with Yerevan’s closest ally Moscow distracted by its nearly seven-month war in Ukraine.

The scale of hostilities significantly subsided on Wednesday, but Baku and Yerevan traded accusations of violating a fragile Russian-brokered truce which has rarely held.

Armenia said Azerbaijan’s shelling of its villages forced hundreds of civilians to flee their homes — a claim which Baku flatly denied.

Addressing lawmakers in Yerevan, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said: “The enemy occupied 40 square kilometres (15 square miles) of Armenian land last May and has occupied 10 square kilometres more now.”

The neighbours fought two wars — in the 1990s and in 2020 — over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated enclave.

Pashinyan said he cancelled his visit to the Uzbek city of Samarkand where he planned to attend a heads of state summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Azerbaijan’s commission on prisoners of war called for a ceasefire and said it was “ready to unilaterally hand over the bodies of 100 Armenian servicemen to Armenia.”

Yerevan confirmed Wednesday that 105 of its troops were killed in the recent clashes, while Baku reported the death of 50 its servicemen.

– Peace efforts ‘undone’ –

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said a delegation of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation — a Moscow-led grouping of ex-Soviet republics — was due in Yerevan later Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Armenia’s security council asked for military help from Moscow, which is obligated under the treaty to defend Armenia in the event of foreign invasion.

The Ukraine conflict changed the balance of force in the region as Russia — which deployed thousands of peacekeepers in the region after the 2020 war — is increasingly isolated.

The European Union has since led the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalisation process, which involves peace talks, border delimitation and the reopening of transport links.

Analyst Gela Vasadze of the Georgian Strategic Analysis Center said the latest escalation “has undone EU-led efforts to bring Baku and Yerevan closer to a peace deal.” 

“Brussels agreements are now practically nullified,” he said, adding that the clashes “have further radicalised public opinion in both countries.”

During EU-mediated talks in Brussels in May and April, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Nikol Pashinyan agreed to “advance discussions” on a future peace treaty.

Armenia’s rights ombudsperson, Kristina Grigoryan, said “at least 2,750 people were forced to flee their homes” as a result of Azerbaijani shelling.

– ‘Neither war, nor peace’ –

In the village of Sotk, resident Vardanush Vardanyan, 66, told AFP that “women and children were evacuated” after Azerbaijani forces shelled a nearby Armenian military base.

“I’ve stayed and watched houses burning as the shelling continued.”

In Yerevan, emotions ran high among relatives of wounded Armenian servicemen, as they gathered outside a military hospital late Tuesday.

“We must fight for our lands, for our homeland and for our country. Victory will be ours, if not today, then tomorrow. We are unbreakable,” one of the relatives, Sokrat Khachaturyan, 65, told AFP.

On Tuesday, Armenia appealed to world leaders for help over the latest fighting. 

The European Union, France, Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States expressed concern over the escalation and called for an end to fighting.

The six weeks of fighting in autumn 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops from both sides and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce, which analyst Vasadze called “neither war, nor peace.”

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.

The number of newly reported Covid-19 cases has dropped dramatically, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, urging the world to seize the opportunity to end the pandemic.

Newly reported cases of the disease, which has killed millions since being identified in late 2019, last week fell to the lowest level since March 2020, said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

“We have never been in a better position to end the pandemic,” he told reporters. “We are not there yet, but the end is in sight.”

But the world needed to step up to “seize this opportunity”, he added.

“If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty.”

According to WHO’s latest epidemiological report on Covid-19, the number of reported cases fell 28 percent to 3.1 million during the week ending September 11, following a 12-percent-drop a week earlier.

– ‘Underestimate’ –

But the agency has warned that the falling number of reported cases is deceptive, since many countries have cut back on testing and may not be detecting the less serious cases.

“The number of cases that are being reported to WHO we know are an underestimate,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO technical lead on Covid, told reporters.

“We feel that far more cases are actually circulating than are being reported to us,” she said, cautioning that the virus “is circulating at a very intense level around the world at the present time”.

Since the start of the pandemic, WHO has tallied more than 605 million cases, and some 6.4 million deaths, although both those numbers are also believed to be serious undercounts.

A WHO study published in May based on excess mortality seen in various countries during the pandemic estimated that up to 17 million people may have died from Covid in 2020 and 2021.

Van Kerkhove noted that going forward there will likely be “future waves of infection, potentially at different time points throughout the world, caused by different sub-variants of Omicron or even different variants of concern”.

But, she added, “those future waves of infection do not need to translate into future waves of death”.

– ‘Seize this opportunity’ –

In a bid to help countries to do what is needed to rein in the virus, the WHO on Wednesday published six policy briefs.

Among the recommendations, the WHO is urging countries to invest in vaccinating 100 percent of the most at-risk groups, including health workers and the elderly, and to keep up testing and sequencing for the virus.

“These policy briefs are an urgent call for governments to take a hard look at their policies, and strengthen them for Covid-19 and future pathogens with pandemic potential,” Tedros said.

“We can end this pandemic together, but only if all countries, manufacturers, communities and individuals step up and seize this opportunity.”

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan agreed.

“Even as the pandemic wanes, and as the number of cases may drop, we are going to have to maintain high levels of vigilance,” he told reporters.

“We still have a highly mutable, evolving virus that has shown us time and time again over two and a half years how it can adapt, how it can change.” 

The funeral service of Queen Elizabeth II at London’s Westminster Abbey on September 19 will be the culmination of decades of meticulous planning.

Here’s what we know so far about how the day will unfold.

– Return to the abbey –

The last time Westminster Abbey was used for a monarch’s funeral was for George II in 1760.

Since then, the preferred church has been St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, but Elizabeth opted for a larger venue.

On the morning of the funeral, the lying in state — begun at Westminster Hall in parliament on Wednesday — will continue until 6:30 am (0530 GMT).

The funeral will be conducted by the Dean of Westminster, David Hoyle, with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby giving the sermon.

– Gun carriage –

At around 10:30 am a bearer party will transfer the coffin from the catafalque, a raised platform in Westminster Hall, to a gun carriage which will be waiting outside the north door of Westminster Hall.

The gun carriage will be pulled not by horses but by junior enlisted sailors — naval ratings — using ropes.

Members of the royal family will walk behind the coffin to the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, where it will be carried up the west steps and through the nave to a platform in the choir. 

– Major security operation –

Westminster Abbey can hold up to 2,200 people. Those present will include family members, Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss, senior politicians, former premiers, more than 100 kings, queens and heads of state and other VIPs.

US President Joe Biden has confirmed he will attend, sparking a major security operation.

Biden will reportedly be allowed to travel to the funeral in his armoured presidential limousine, known as The Beast. 

Other leaders, such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, are also expected to have their own transport. 

Others, however, will be transported to the abbey by shared bus. 

Invitations are expected to be sent to representatives of all countries with which Britain has diplomatic relations.

“Russia and Belarus have not been invited to Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral next Monday which will see more than 100 kings, queens, heads of state and other VIPs attend”, a government source said.

The source linked this to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Military-run Myanmar and isolated North Korea have also not been invited, the source said on condition of anonymity.

There will be no attendance either by representatives from Syria, Venezuela or Taliban-run Afghanistan.

– Journey to Windsor –

After the funeral, the coffin will be drawn on the gun carriage from the abbey to Wellington Arch at London’s Hyde Park Corner from where it will continue to Windsor by hearse.

On arrival in Windsor, the hearse will make its way to St George’s Chapel via the Long Walk, a historic avenue, for a televised committal service.

The king and senior members of the royal family are expected to join the procession for the last stage of the journey from the Quadrangle in Windsor Castle.

St George’s is where Prince Harry and his wife Meghan married in May 2018. The funeral of the queen’s husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, was held there in April 2021. 

It is also regularly chosen for royal christenings.

– Final resting place – 

A private interment service held later will be attended only by close family members.

The queen’s final resting place will be the King George VI memorial chapel, which is an annex to the main chapel.

The queen’s mother and father — king George VI and queen Elizabeth the queen mother — were buried there as well as the ashes of her younger sister princess Margaret.

The coffin of Prince Philip will be moved from the royal vault to the memorial chapel.

Pope Francis cautioned against leveraging religion for political power, addressing a religious summit in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan Wednesday, in what appeared to be criticism of pro-Kremlin Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill.

The Russian Orthodox Church meanwhile said it was ready for a new meeting between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis following weeks of diplomatic tensions sparked by the Ukraine war.

Pope Francis warned on Wednesday that faith should not be manipulated to defend conflict or buttress power.

“May we never justify violence. May we never allow the sacred to be exploited by the profane.

“The sacred must never be a prop for power, nor power a prop for the sacred,” he said, to applause from the crowd.

Over the summer, the pope went to so far as to warn Kirill not to become “Putin’s altar boy”, which irritated Moscow’s patriarch.

While the pope has previously called for peace in Ukraine, denouncing a “cruel and senseless war”, Kirill has defended Putin’s operation and arguing that Russia is fighting “evil forces” there.

The meeting the pope addressed on Wednesday was attended by around 100 delegations from 50 countries — but Patriarch Kirill was a notable absentee.

The pope did however speak with Kirill’s “foreign minister,” Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, for around 15 minutes.

– ‘Manipulations’ –

Anthony said a meeting between the two pontiffs was “a possibility,” provided it was “well prepared.”

“We need to see when, where (this would happen) and the most important thing is that we want something concrete to come out of the meeting, such as the joint call that we had in Havana,” he told journalists, referring to a historic 2016 meeting between Francis and Kirill in Cuba — the first since the schism in the Christian church in 1054.

Anthony said the pope himself thought a meeting was “needed” and regretted that a meeting planned in June in Jerusalem had been scrapped. 

“We were ready for this meeting, but it was cancelled by the Holy See,” after an announcement by Pope Francis in an interview to Italian daily Corriere della Sera in May.

Anthony stressed the need for the two religious leaders to “move forward”.

A message from Kirill, published on the Orthodox Church’s website and sent to participants of the meeting, said that “we have witnessed distortions of historical facts and unprecedented manipulations of mass consciousness.

“More than ever before, people find it difficult to navigate the flow of information, resist ideological indoctrination, and maintain a sober mind and peace of mind” Kirill said. 

Russia paints itself as a target of anti-Russian campaigns that it says “the collective West” is conducting to try to shore up waning influence.

But Kirill’s pro-war stance caused upheavals in the religious world, prompting the Moscow-backed branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox Church to sever ties with Russia.

It also put a damper on Kirill’s relationship with the Vatican: in March, the pope had already said that “the Church must not use the language of politics”.

– ‘A beautiful sign’ –

The pope gave a mass on Wednesday afternoon in front of a quiet crowd of 3,000 people, who he greeted from his “Popemobile”. 

“It can be sometimes challenging to be Catholic here, and that visit renews my belief,” 27-year-old Sagynysh Mukhametkaliyeva told AFP.

The population of Kazakhstan is 70% Muslim, 25% Orthodox and less than 1% Catholic.

Jeremy Convert, a 25-year-old French citizen said he was “touched” to “see worshippers from many different faiths, muslims, orthodox people, atheists” in the crowd.

“It’s a beautiful sign for Kazakhstan because the country has been working hard on finding unity,” he added.

The 85-year-old Argentinian pope, who is forced by knee pain to use a wheelchair, arrived on Tuesday in Nur-Sultan for his 38th trip abroad since becoming pontiff in 2013.

He is the second pope to visit Kazakhstan after John Paul II’s trip in September 2001.