Tag: crash
Stock Futures, U.S. Dollar, Oil Prices Plunge As Markets Recoil From Trump

Stock Futures, U.S. Dollar, Oil Prices Plunge As Markets Recoil From Trump

By Wayne Cole

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The U.S. dollar sank and stocks plummeted as mayhem came to world markets on Wednesday as investors faced the possibility of a shock win by Republican Donald Trump that could upend the global political order.

Every new TV network projection in the U.S. presidential election showed the race to be far closer than anyone had thought, sending investors stampeding to safe-haven assets.

Sovereign bonds and gold surged while the Mexican peso went into near free-fall as stations gave North Carolina to Trump.

“Markets are reacting as though the four horsemen of the apocalypse just rode out of Trump Tower,” said Sean Callow, a forex strategist at Westpac in Sydney.

“Or at least 3 of them – it might be 4 when the prospect of a clean sweep of Congress sinks in.”

As of 0425 GMT, Trump was leading Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by 19 Electoral College votes, with a tally of 228-209, with several key battleground states yet to be decided. It takes 270 to win.

U.S. stock futures recoiled more than 4.5 percent, matching the carnage that followed the British vote to leave the European Union in June that wiped trillions of dollars of value off global markets.

Investors fear a Trump victory could cause global economic and trade turmoil, discouraging the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates in December as long expected.

Fed fund futures were even starting to toy with the idea of a cut in rates next year <0#FF:> and it was possible the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank might be forced to ease policy further.

South Korean authorities were thought to have intervened to steady their currency, and dealers were wondering if central banks globally would step in to calm nerves.

The scale of the scare was clear in the Mexican peso, which plunged more than 12 percent against the dollar in the biggest daily move in two decades.

“There’s a lot of panic in the market, it is definitely an outcome it was not expecting,” said Juan Carlos Alderete, a strategist at Banorte-IXE.

The peso has become a touchstone for sentiment on the election as Trump’s trade policies are seen as damaging to its export-heavy economy.

But the story was very different against the safe-haven yen, with the dollar shedding 3.5 percent to 101.70 yen. The euro jumped 2.2 percent to $1.1265.

Graphic of live election results: http://tmsnrt.rs/2fxyZV0

Graphic of live market reaction: http://tmsnrt.rs/2fXfo0L

Live Coverage: http://live.reuters.com/event/election_2016

MAXIMUM UNCERTAINTY

Asian stocks skidded, with MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan down 2.5 percent and the Nikkei off nearly 4 percent.

With voting completed in more than two-thirds of the 50 U.S. states, the race was still too close to call in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, states that could be vital to deciding who wins the presidency.

Fox News projected Trump had taken Florida and North Carolina, and projected Clinton would win Virginia.

Markets have tended to favor Clinton as a status quo candidate who would be considered a safe pair of hands at home on the world stage.

“In contrast, a Trump victory would trigger massive uncertainty that would likely undermine risk assets at least initially, which in turn could preclude a Fed rate hike this year,” warned Michelle Girard, chief U.S. economist at RBS.

Sovereign bonds flew ahead, pushing yields on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes down a huge 13 basis points to 1.74 percent, again the largest drop since Brexit.

Yields had briefly touched a six-month high around 1.8960 percent in early trade.

In commodity markets, gold climbed 3.4 percent to $1,318 an ounce as the dollar slid.

Oil turned tail on concerns over the global economic outlook, with U.S. crude shedding $1.34 to $43.63 a barrel, while Brent fell $1.24 to $44.80. [O/R]

(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Kim Coghill & Shri Navaratnam)

4 Crew Members Dead After Helicopter Crash At Fort Hood

4 Crew Members Dead After Helicopter Crash At Fort Hood

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

HOUSTON — Four crew members on an Army helicopter were killed when it crashed Monday evening at Fort Hood in central Texas, officials said.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down sometime after 5:49 p.m. in the northeastern part of the massive Army post.

Emergency crews conducted “an extensive search” and reported that all four crew members were found dead.

A statement released early Tuesday said the crew had been assigned to Division West, First Army and were on a routine training mission. The names of the crew members will be released after their families have been notified, the statement said.

The cause of the crash remained unknown.

Located between Dallas and San Antonio, Fort Hood is one of the Army’s largest posts, with a population of about 218,000 and its own businesses, parks, schools and churches. It is home to the 1st Cavalry Division and the West Division of the First Army as well as other units, including the Headquarters Command III Corps, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 3rd Air Support Operations Group.

Monday’s incident was the latest crash this year at U.S. military installations.

In May, two Marines aboard a MV-22 Osprey died after it experienced a “hard landing mishap” at Hawaii’s Bellows Air Force Station. In March, 11 service members were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter aborted its training mission due to bad weather and then crashed off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.

Photo: Texas Military Forces fly over Fort Hood. Texas Military Forces/Flickr

Lufthansa: Flight School Knew Of Lubitz’s Depression

Lufthansa: Flight School Knew Of Lubitz’s Depression

By Jessica Camille Aguirre and Jean-Baptiste Piggin, dpa (TNS)

PARIS — Lufthansa’s flight training school knew of Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz’s problems with depression during his training, the air carrier reported Tuesday.

The company produced a 2009 email Tuesday in which Lubitz explained that he was prepared to resume flight training after a break. In it, he informed the school of a “previous episode of severe depression.”

Lufthansa provided the email along with other documents to prosecutors and said it was cooperating fully with the investigation.

The revelation is likely to raise questions about why the news didn’t raise red flags at Lufthansa, which had insisted last week that Lubitz — who is believed to have intentionally crashed Germanwings flight 4U9525 in the French Alps on March 24 — “was fit for flying without any restrictions.”

“His performance was without criticism. Nothing was striking,” said Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr on Thursday.
Germanwings is the budget subsidiary of Lufthansa.

Data from the recovered black box prompted the Marseille prosecutor, who is leading a criminal investigation, to say that Lubitz locked himself alone in the cockpit and manually changed the plane’s course — intentionally causing its demise.

Speculation has been rife as to what prompted Lubitz to bring the plane down, and German authorities have been reluctant to share information about the young pilot’s personal life.

Prosecutors in the German city of Dusseldorf said Monday that Lubitz had been in treatment with psychiatrists and neurologists, and that a doctor had noted a suicidal tendency in him before he received his pilot’s license. Lubitz began working for Lufthansa in 2013.

Though he possessed notes from a doctor excusing him from work on the day of the crash, prosecutors said they had not found evidence he suffered from a physical illness. A hospital where Lubitz was treated said earlier that reports he was treated for depression were false.

The disclosures triggered debate in Germany about whether doctors should flag mental illness issues to employers. Under confidentiality rules, German sick notes for work do not disclose any diagnosis.

Several politicians have said doctors should routinely warn employers whenever a worker in a high-responsibility job such as a pilot has mental health issues, but the president of the German Chamber of Psychotherapists, Rainer Richter, rejected that.

He told dpa that German law already overrides confidentiality if a therapist learns that a patient intends to harm people.

“Doctors and psychotherapists are already empowered to breach confidentiality if that would avert harm to third parties. In cases where it’s a matter of life and death, that’s not just permission, it’s duty,” he said.

Tuesday’s news came after French aviation officials narrowed their probe, focusing on cockpit rules and psychological screenings, as experts worked to formally identify victims from pieces of human remains recovered at the plane’s crash site.

Aviation authority BEA is attempting to reconstruct the history of the flight from the cockpit black box voice recorder. The contents of a second black box, the flight data recorder, are still being sought amidst the wreckage of the plane, which had been carrying 150 people when it slammed into a mountainside in southern France.

“The safety investigation will be oriented towards the cockpit door locking system logic and cockpit access and exit procedures, as well as the criteria and procedures applied to detect specific psychological profiles,” the BEA said in a statement.

The BEA will submit its findings to French authorities, along with possible recommendations for changes to national flight safety regulations.

Last week’s crash has already reverberated widely, as airlines around the world introduced new rules requiring two people to be present in the cockpit.

Separately, an insurance consortium has set aside $300 million to meet claims connected to the Germanwings crash, a Lufthansa spokesman said.

The sum is to cover compensation claims by the families of the 150, the loss of the Airbus A320 and associated personnel costs, he said.

Patricia Willaert, the head of the prefecture where the crash site is, said at a news conference that there were 2,000 available lodging places for victims’ relatives who wanted to travel to the region.

French authorities in Paris are working to identify the victims, and officials have said they hope to have DNA from every victim by the end of the week. Francois Daoust, the head of the lab in charge of tracing each victim using DNA technology, said the process of formal identification could take up to four months.

Workers finished a road up to the crash site Tuesday, which should make collecting the remains and other evidence easier.

Photo: Jens via Flickr

Seven Dead After Train Hits Car Outside New York City

Seven Dead After Train Hits Car Outside New York City

New York (AFP) – A packed commuter train crashed into a car on the rails outside New York City during evening rush hour, killing seven people, officials said.

The driver of the car and six people in the first carriage of the train were killed when the train slammed into an SUV vehicle around 6:30 pm, triggering an explosion and fire, Governor Andrew Cuomo told a late night news conference.

The blast caused the electrified third rail of the train tracks to rise and ram through the train car, Cuomo said.

“This is a truly ugly and brutal sight,” he said.

“You have seven people who started out today to go about their business and aren’t going to make it home tonight,” the governor said.

Metro-North, the train operator, confirmed a Harlem line train had struck a vehicle but did not immediately announce fatalities or details.

Authorities scrambled to help hundreds of shell-shocked passengers off the train, which had departed from Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and passengers told NBC.

The collision occurred in Valhalla, just outside New York City. Several U.S. media outlets reported a dozen people were hurt.

Pictures posted on Twitter showed a train car ablaze with thick black smoke billowing into the evening sky. Others showed what appeared to be the same carriage, gutted by smoke and fire and with its windows shattered.

Passenger Neil Rader was sitting in the middle-back of the train when he felt a “small jolt,” he told NBC.

“It felt not even like a short stop, and then the train just completely stopped,” he said.

Frantic passengers had to evacuate by breaking glass on the doors to get out, said Rader. He added that he saw 50 to 60 ambulances at the scene.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said.

Justin Kaback, 26, a passenger in the third train car, was doing his daily commute home when the train felt like it hit a bump, he told The Wall Street Journal.

But then people began entering his car from the front of the train, reporting gas smells.

“I started moving,” Kaback said. “Nobody wanted to yell out, ‘The train’s on fire’ because there would have been a panic.”

Photo: Police investigate a Metro-North train crash on February 3, 2015 in Valhalla, New York (AFP/Michael Graae)