The European Union’s antitrust watchdog says it is probing whether U.S. companies Honeywell and DuPont are restricting competition in the market for new refrigerants for car air-conditioning systems.
The European Commission said Friday it has received complaints that the two companies entered into “development, licensing and production arrangements” that prevent rivals from also developing new refrigerants that fulfill updated environmental standards.
Commission says it is also investigating whether Honeywell International Inc. is abusing its dominant position in the production of the new refrigerant, known as 1234yf, and deceived authorities during the evaluation of 1234yf.
The opening of a probe does not mean that Honeywell and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. actually broke EU law.
A key central bank survey showed Thursday that confidence at major Japanese manufacturers fell over the last quarter, as the export-reliant country battled a strong yen and an increasingly precarious global economy.
In the Bank of Japan’s “tankan” survey of business sentiment, the main index for big manufacturers fell to minus 4, in the first deterioration in two quarters. Three months ago, it stood at 2.
The figure represents the percentage of companies saying business conditions are good minus those saying conditions are unfavorable, with 100 representing the best mood and minus 100 the worst.
The result is in line with Kyodo News agency’s average market forecast.
Japan has been battling a strong yen, which has hit multiple historic highs this year against the dollar. Amid economic uncertainty in Europe and the U.S., global investors have looked to the Japanese currency as a relatively safe haven.
But Japan relies on exports to drive growth, and the yen’s appreciation has hit companies such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp. hard. When the yen climbs, it reduces the value of exporters’ overseas profits when repatriated to Japan payday advance.
That has forced companies to shift more production overseas, prompting worries about a hollowing out of Japanese industry.
Big non-manufacturers were feeling slightly more optimistic. Their confidence index rose to 4 from 1 three months earlier.
Medium-sized manufacturers’ reading was flat, at minus 3, while the small manufacturers’ index improved to minus 8, up from minus 11.
The tankan, which helps guide monetary policy, showed that large companies overall plan to boost capital spending by 1.4 percent this fiscal year through March 2012. The figure is down from 3 percent in the September survey.
Large manufacturing companies assume an average exchange rate of 79.02 yen per dollar for this fiscal year, compared with 81.15 yen three months ago.
The Bank of Japan surveyed 10,846 companies nationwide. About 99 percent responded.
The bank’s next policy board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.
President Ollanta Humala declared a 60-day state of emergency Sunday in a northern region wracked by protests against a highlands gold mine, the country’s biggest investment, by peasants who fear for their water supply.
The emergency restricts civil liberties such as the right to assembly and allows arrests without warrants in four provinces of Cajamarca state that have been paralyzed for 11 days by increasingly violent protests against the $4.8-billion Conga gold-and-copper mining project. U.S.-based Newmont Mining Corp. is the project’s majority owner.
Dozens have been injured in clashes between police and protesters, some of whom have vandalized Conga property. The general strike also shuttered schools and snarled transportation as protesters mounted roadblocks.
Humala said in a brief televised address Sunday night that protest leaders had shown no interest “in reaching minimal agreements to permit a return of social peace” after a day of talks in Cajamarca with Cabinet chief Salmon Lerner and three other ministers.
Humala said the government “has exhausted all paths to establish dialogue as a point of departure to resolve the conflict democratically” and blamed “the intransigence of a sector of local and regional leaders.”
He said the emergency would take effect at midnight Sunday.
Lerner’s group was accompanied by Peru’s military and police chiefs and guarded by hundreds of heavily armed police.
Cajamarca state’s governor, Gregorio Santos, who has been leading the protests, called Humala’s announcement an unnecessary provocation. He said protest leaders had been planning to end the strike and had asked government officials for 12 hours to consult with protesters.
“I think what’s being sought is for this to end in a bloodbath,” Santos told The Associated Press by telephone. Police have already used tear gas and bullets against protesters.
“We will continue with our fight,” Santos added, without specifying how.
Local elected officials have led protests against Conga, an extension of the nearby Yanacocha mine, for more than a month.
They say they fear it will taint and diminish water supplies affecting thousands and have demanded a new study of the environmental impact of the mine, which was to begin production in 2015.
Peruvian government officials have expressed no intention of redoing Conga’s environmental impact study, which was approved by the Ministry of Mining in October 2010.
Those plans call for displacing four lakes more than two miles high and replacing them with reservoirs. Local residents say they fear that could affect an important acquifer on which thousands depend.
Several weeks ago, the Interior Ministry asked prosecutors to file criminal charges against Santos and four other local leaders who have led protests against Conga, a top ministry lawyer, Julio Talledo, told The Associated Press.
The charges include “hindering the functioning of public services” and carry prison terms of at least two years. It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors have acted on them.
The streets of the regional capital, Cajamarca, and the city of Celendin, a flashpoint of protests, were empty Sunday night after Humala’s announcement but people remained tense, local police told the AP by phone. Local reporters reported seeing busloads of soldiers and police with assault rifles arriving in recent days.
Cajamarca police duty officer Miguel Vigil said police commanders were meeting to plan their next steps.
“We can’t yet say what measures will follow,” he said.
Newmont announced last week that it was suspending work at Conga until order could be restored.
Its chief executive, Richard O’Brien, said in a statement then that if Newmont was unable to continue with Conga, “the scale and diversity of Newmont’s global portfolio” would allow the Denver-based company to “reprioritize and reallocate capital” to “alternatives in Nevada, Canada, Ghana, Indonesia and Suriname.”
Humala told Cajamarca residents during campaign swings before his June election that clean water was more important for him than gold. Many local inhabitants said they now feel betrayed by the president.
Peru’s economy depends heavily on mining, which accounts for 61 percent of its export income.
Humala, a former radical leftist who moved toward the center before being elected this year, agreed to a tax on windfall profits from the industry that the government says will yield about $1 billion a year to help fund social programs.
One protest leader, Milton Sanchez, told the AP on Sunday night that “this government that has put itself on the side of mining companies and distanced itself from its electoral promises.”
“We are not radical,” he added. “It’s just that the Conga project has not legitimacy in the eyes of the people.”
Will my flight still operate?
ST. LOUIS
Forecasters say Hurricane Kenneth is weakening rapidly and has been downgraded to a Category 1 storm in the eastern Pacific.
There is no threat to land from what had been the strongest late-season hurricane in that area on record when it earlier reached Category 4 status.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Wednesday that Kenneth has maximum sustained winds near 90 mph (150 kph). The storm was centered about 860 miles (1,385 kilometers) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico.
It is moving west at 9 mph (15 kph)
Kenneth is expected to weaken further and could be downgraded to a tropical storm by Thursday. There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
The eastern Pacific hurricane season ends Nov. 30.
Efforts to clean up areas near Bangkok that were flooded as much as a yard (meter) deep just two weeks ago are gaining pace as the threat of inundation of the Thai capital eases.
Hundreds of volunteers joined monks in gathering flood detritus into garbage bags Tuesday near the massive temple that houses the Dhammakaya Buddhist sect in Pathum Thani province, just north of Bangkok.
Businesses in unaffected parts of central Bangkok are removing their sandbag barriers as it becomes clear that floodwaters have been diverted east and west of the center of the city low fee cash advance.
Since July, more than a fifth of the country’s 64 million people have been affected by the worst flooding in more than 50 years, leaving at least 606 people dead.
A decade ago, Rusdi Kirana sat on the grass at an air show in Britain, eating burgers with his wife. “I didn’t know anybody,” he says, “and nobody knew me.” That will change now that his company, Lion Air, has announced the biggest order ever from Boeing.
The once little-known Indonesian airline says it is planning to buy 230 planes from Boeing Co. The bill _ with a list price of $21.7 billion _ is to be paid over 12 years though bank financing.
Dozens of airlines have emerged in Indonesia since it deregulated its aviation industry in the 1990s, making air travel affordable for the first time for many across the sprawling island nation of 240 million, and luring passengers away from ferries and trains.
Kirana _ a travel agent before he and his brother, Kusnan, pooled $850,000 to start Lion Air in 1999 _ saw the opportunity and jumped.
“Last year we had 21 million passengers, this year I think I can carry 27 million,” said the 48-year-old CEO, adding that with plans for an open-sky arrangement in Asia by 2015, a massive Boeing purchase “is not much of a gamble.”
Kirana said his company’s first plane was a leased Boeing 737-200, which flew from Jakarta to the tiny airport of Pontianak on jungle-clad Borneo island.
“I didn’t have any money after that, because it all went to pay for the deposit on the aircraft,” he said.
Though the name Lion Air doesn’t resonate internationally, it’s hardly an unknown, said Peter Harbison, executive chairman of the Sydney-based Center for Asia Pacific Aviation.
“It’s operating 67 aircraft at the moment and had 125 on order before this deal,” he said, adding with new routes to Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan, it’s clear it wants to be a real player in the region as well.
“It’s a bet on Asia,” Harbison said of the proposal to buy the 230 planes _ most of which are 737 Max, a new version of Boeing’s most popular plane with more fuel-efficient engines.
The biggest market for now is home.
The number of air passengers in Indonesia jumped 22 percent from 43 million in 2009 to 53 million in 2010, according to Indonesia’s statistics agency.
That trend has continued in 2011.
But the country also has had its share of accidents, raising concerns that the supply of trained aviation professionals, regulatory oversight and ground infrastructure can’t keep up with growth.
In 2007, the European Union banned all of Indonesia’s 50 airlines from landing on its runways for two years, and Lion Air has not gone unscathed.
In 2004, a Lion Air MD-82 crash-landed at the airport in Surakarta, killing 25 people in its only fatal accident. There also have been scores of other incidents, including hard landings and overshooting runways, some causing injuries or damage to planes.
“Yes, we’ve had some problems,” said Kirana, adding that planes now have equipment that warns pilots when they are flying too high or too fast. “But we’re improving.”
With 50,000 passengers a day, his bet, he says, is on the future.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledges the pace of economic growth is likely to be “frustratingly slow,” after the Fed downgraded its forecast for the next two years.
Bernanke says the central bank is looking for economic activity and labor market conditions to improve gradually over the next two years, but at a sluggish pace.
Bernanke cited the debt crisis in Europe as a particular concern. He says that could have adverse effects on confidence and growth. He says the Fed is closely monitoring the situation.
It was Bernanke’s third news conference this year, a practice he started in April in an effort to provide more background on the Fed’s actions and its thinking behind its latest economic forecast.
Asian stock markets fell Tuesday as new concerns emerged about the viability of a much-heralded plan to contain Europe’s debt crisis.
Benchmark oil fell to near $92 a barrel. The dollar rose slightly against the yen, a day after jumping about 5 percent following Japan’s move to buy dollars and sell the strong yen to protect its exporters.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 1.4 percent to 8,859.21. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.4 percent to 19,584.69, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 1.5 percent to 4,232.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, India and Indonesia were also down.
South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.1 percent to 1,911.39. Key indexes in Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand also rose.
Wall Street tumbled Monday, with confidence shaken by the collapse of the brokerage house MF Global. The securities firm filed for bankruptcy protection after it was downgraded by ratings agencies for holding too much European debt.
The company’s collapse startled investors already nervous that the United States _ with an economy growing at the slowest pace since the end of the Great Recession _ is in danger of falling back into recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average spiraled down 2.3 percent to close at 11,955.01. The S&P 500 fell 2.5 percent to 1,253.30, and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.9 percent to 2,684.41.
European leaders reached an agreement Thursday aimed at shoring up the region’s banks and preventing a severe debt crunch in Greece from bringing down Europe’s financial system.
But the European debt crisis is still far from fixed. One troubling sign is that borrowing costs for Italy and Spain have increased, a signal that traders remain worried about those countries’ ability to pay their debts.
Complicating the picture further was the announcement by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Monday that his debt-strapped country will hold a referendum on whether to accept the European debt deal faxless cash advances.
“That puts everything in question. No longer do you have Greece backing it,” said Andrew Sullivan, principal sales trader at Piper Jaffray in Hong Kong. “It is putting another level of uncertainty into it, and the markets don’t like uncertainty.”
Meanwhile, surveys showing China’s manufacturing remained sluggish in October also weighed on investor sentiment. Hong Kong-listed GOME Electrical Appliance Holdings, China’s largest appliances retailer, fell 5.8 percent. Anhui Conch Cement Co. fell 3.6 percent. China’s biggest steel company, Baoshan Iron & Steel Ltd., lost 0.4 percent.
But Qantas Airways rose 1.6 percent as the world’s 10-largest airline took to the skies again after a debilitating series of strikes and subsequent staff lockout were halted by an Australian court.
Negative earnings also weighed on shares.
Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic Corp. tumbled 4.5 percent, a day after reporting a quarterly loss and projecting a huge annual loss due to slumping TV sales and a strong yen.
Australian retailer Harvey Norman fell 3.7 percent after the company reported a drop of almost 20 percent in pre-tax earnings in the three months to September.
In energy trading, benchmark crude for December delivery was down 82 cents at $92.37 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract slipped 13 cents to settle at $93.19 in New York on Monday.
The euro fell to $1.3804 from $1.3924 late Monday in New York. The dollar rose slightly to 78.07 yen from 78.05 yen.
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