TOKYO -- Asian stocks advanced on Monday as Wall Street rallied after a deal was announced to reopen the US government following a prolonged shutdown that had shaken investor sentiment.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan climbed 0.2 percent.
South Korea's KOSPI edged up 0.2 percent, New Zealand stocks were up a touch, while Japan's Nikkei bucked the trends and eased 0.2 percent. Australian financial markets were shut for their 'Australia Day' holiday.
Facing mounting pressure, US President Donald Trump agreed on Friday to temporarily end a 35-day-old partial US government shutdown without getting the $5.7 billion he had demanded from Congress for a border wall.
In response Wall Street rallied broadly on Friday as investors were heartened to see the back of the longest US government shutdown in history.
The shutdown had left investors anxious and frustrated as it came at a time of heightened worries over slowing global growth, signs of stress in corporate earnings and a still unresolved Sino-US trade war.
"The rise in the broader stock markets looks to keep going. The US government reopening is definitely a plus for market sentiment," said Soichiro Monji, senior economist at Daiwa SB Investments.
"There are still potential risk factors, such as the US-China trade row and Brexit," he said.
In the currency market, the pound stood tall, hovering near a three-month high of $1.3218 set on Friday on the back of optimism that Britain can avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Britain is set to leave the European Union on March 29, but the country’s members of parliament remain far from agreeing a divorce deal. That has kept markets, worried about the possibility of a disorderly Brexit, on edge for much of the last several weeks.
The euro was also on the front foot against the sagging dollar.
The single currency was 0.05 percent higher at $1.1412 after gaining 0.9 percent on Friday, paring the losses from earlier last week on dovish-sounding comments by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
The dollar was slightly lower at 109.48 yen following mild losses at the end of last week.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield was little changed at 2.754 percent after popping up 4 basis points on Friday in the wake of surging US shares.
US crude oil futures were down 0.55 percent at $53.39 per barrel, losing some momentum after two sessions of gains.
Oil prices rose towards the end of last week as political turmoil in Venezuela threatened to tighten crude supply, with the United States signalling it may impose sanctions on exports from the South American nation.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of furloughed federal employees chanting "We want our pay!" marched on the White House on Thursday, the 20th day of a partial government shutdown over US President Donald Trump's demand for border wall funding.
"Stop the shutdown!" protesters shouted in the bitter cold at the union-organized demonstration that started at the AFL-CIO headquarters and ended in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where they hoisted signs reading "Trump: End the Shutdown" and "Not a strike - we want to work."
Some 800,000 federal government employees have been ordered to stay home or work without pay during the shutdown brought on by a standoff between Trump and Democrats in Congress over Trump's demand for $5.7 billion to build a wall on the southern US border with Mexico.
Trump, in a 2016 presidential campaign promise, repeatedly vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. But he has said he will not sign any bill to reopen the government that does not provide wall funding.
Elaine Suriano, 62, a furloughed scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, said she would have to dip into her retirement savings if the shutdown continued and robbed her of yet another paycheck.
"It's just clear that this administration doesn't understand normal people and real life or they wouldn't do this," Suriano said.
In its third week, the shutdown of about a quarter of the federal government is the second longest since the mid-1970s. Trump has said it could continue for months or even years.
Many furloughed federal workers have turned to online fundraising outlets such as GoFundMe.com to help cover expenses from food to utility bills.
Mathew Crichton, 32, a furloughed Peace Corps employee, said uncertainty over how long the shutdown will last made it impossible to budget for food, lodging and other needs.
"It could go on another day, and it could go on more weeks. It could go on for months," Crichton said. "It's really a shame that I'm ready to go to work. I'm able to go to work and I can't." Protesters, many wearing neon green vests reading, "I am a worker. I demand a voice," on Thursday demanded the government be reopened, separate from any debate over wall funding.
Smaller protests across the country – from Palm Beach, Florida, to New York City - had similar demands. In Ogden, Utah, dozens of out-of-work federal employees gathered to urge an end to the shutdown, some holding signs reading “I am TSA. I am furloughed. I am not a pawn. I’m a voter” and “800,000 unemployed. Hurts our family and our economy.”
Trump was not at the White House when the protesters arrived, having traveled to the US-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas.
The president has said he has the right to declare a national emergency if no deal with Congress can be reached on funding the border wall project.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON -- Democratic and Republican congressional leaders emerged from a meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday giving no indication of progress toward ending a partial government shutdown in its 12th day as Trump held fast to his demand for $5 billion in funding for a border wall.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters that Trump asked congressional leaders to return to the White House on Friday for more talks aimed at ending the shutdown.
Democrats said they would proceed with plans to hold votes on Thursday, when they formally take control of the House of Representatives from Trump's fellow Republicans, on legislation that would end the shutdown without providing the wall money sought by Trump. The White House has called the two-part package a "non-starter."
"We're asking the president to open up government," Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the presumptive incoming House speaker, told reporters outside the White House after top lawmakers met with Trump and his homeland security officials behind closed doors.
Trump's demand for $5 billion in funding for a wall along the US-Mexico border triggered the shutdown affecting about a quarter of the federal government and 800,000 federal workers. Before meeting with lawmakers, Trump said the shutdown would last for "as long as it takes" as he pushes for wall money - fiercely opposed by Democrats - as part of any legislation to reopen agencies shuttered when their funding lapsed on Dec. 22.
"It could be a long time," Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting, "or it could be quickly."
"We know that we have a challenge along the border," McCarthy said. "We want to solve that issue. We want to make sure we open this government up. And I think at the end of the day, the president, listening to him, he wants to solve this as well."
Pelosi noted that the legislation being presented in the House had previously won backing in the Senate, which will remain in Republican hands in the new 2019-2020 Congress that convenes on Thursday.
SITUATION ROOM
Trump's meeting with lawmakers was held in the White House Situation Room, generally used for high-level security concerns such as military planning.
The House legislation sets up the first major battle of the new Congress between House Democrats and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said Senate Republicans will not approve a spending measure Trump does not support.
Trump made the border wall a key part of his presidential campaign. Before meeting with the Democrats, Trump called the border a "sieve," rebutted Pelosi's complaint that a wall was immoral, provided an estimate of the US illegal immigrant population far higher than the figures most experts cite and made disputed comments about progress toward building a wall.
The visit by Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was their first to the White House since their sharp exchange with Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 11 during which the president told them he would be "proud to shut down the government for border security."
He has since blamed Democrats for the shutdown.
Schumer said he hoped Trump and his Republican allies would not use the shutdown and the affected government workers as "hostages" to try to extract wall funding. Schumer said Trump "could not give a good answer" for his opposition to the House Democratic legislation that would provide stopgap funding for the Department of Homeland Security and funding for the rest of the current fiscal year for the remaining shuttered agencies to provide time to reach a border security compromise.
The $5 billion Trump is seeking would cover only a portion of the money needed for a border wall, a project estimated to cost about $23 billion. Trump had said Mexico would pay for the wall, but Mexico refused.
Trump said he was open to working on a path to legal status for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants known as Dreamers who were brought into the country as children, pointing toward a potential broader deal with Democrats that could resolve the shutdown.
Federal courts have blocked Trump's effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, begun in 2012 under Democratic former President Barack Obama, that protected the Dreamers from deportation and gave them work permits.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
