Moonies leader banned from leaving South Korea amid bribery probe
Han Hak-ja Moon, 82, the widow of the founder of the controversial Unification Church, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, faces allegations of links to a shamanic figure who delivered luxury goods to the former first lady, Kim Keon-hee.
Items given to Kim in the summer of 2022, shortly after her husband's inauguration, are alleged to include a Graff diamond necklace and Chanel handbag worth a total of 60 million won (£32,500).
Investigators earlier this month questioned Jeon Seong-bae, a shaman who goes by Geonjin, over whether he presented the gifts to the then
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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Asia shares slip, dollar steadies ahead of Jackson Hole
SINGAPORE, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Shares in Asia fell on Wednesday, weighed down by a tech-led selloff on Wall Street, while the dollar gained some ground ahead of a key meeting of central bankers later in the week. Oil prices inched higher after falling in the previous session, as traders bet that talks over a possible agreement to end the war in Ukraine could ease sanctions on Russian crude oil, boosting global supply. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS), opens new tab fell 0.47%, as did stock futures in Europe and the U.S.. EUROSTOXX 50 futures slid 0.55%, while DAX futures lost 0.5% and FTSE futures eased 0.14%. S&P 500 futures dipped 0.2% and Nasdaq futures lost 0.34%, extending its fall from the cash session overnight. "The S&P 500 and Nasdaq slumped overnight as investors ditched high-flying tech stocks with their lofty valuations," said Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG. Adding to headwinds for the sector, news that Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab have agreed to give the U.S. government 15% of the revenues from chip sales in China, as well as reports that the U.S. is considering taking a 10% stake in Intel, have stoked investor worries of the Trump administration's growing influence on tech companies. Sources also told Reuters that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive CHIPS Act funding to build factories in the country. "These developments signal that U.S. government is heading in a concerning and more interventionist direction," said Sycamore. Other bourses in Asia were similarly in the red on Wednesday, with Japan's Nikkei (.N225), opens new tab down 1.2%, while China's CSI300 blue-chip index (.CSI300), opens new tab fell 0.5%. Much of investors' attention at the start of the week was on a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a group of European allies over the Russia-Ukraine war. While the talks concluded without much fanfare, Trump said the United States would help guarantee Ukraine's security in any deal to end Russia's war there. He later said on Tuesday that the United States might provide air support to Ukraine, while ruling out putting U.S. troops on the ground. "The U.S. is not categorically underwriting anything, any security for Ukraine, even if they're open to provide some, because we don't know the conditions under which they will. So there's quite a bit of risk left out there," said Vishnu Varathan, head of macro research for Asia ex-Japan at Mizuho. Oil prices recovered after a fall in the previous session, with Brent crude futures last up 0.46% at $66.09 a barrel. U.S. crude advanced 0.6% to $62.72 per barrel. All eyes are now on the Kansas City Federal Reserve's August 21-23 Jackson Hole symposium, where Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to speak on the economic outlook and the central bank's policy framework on Friday. Focus will be on what Powell says about the near-term outlook for rates, with traders almost fully pricing in a rate cut next month. "Given the apparent tensions between U.S. CPI and PPI data, (it) does come across as... premature to declare one way or the other. And most importantly, given this kind of dilemma embedded within the data, it is hard to decipher whether the Fed would take or would emphasise the risks that start to mount on the job side of the equation or (the) need to sit firm," said Mizuho's Varathan. Ahead of the gathering, the dollar firmed slightly, pushing the euro down 0.13% to $1.1633, while sterling fell 0.16% to $1.3470. The New Zealand dollar eased 0.17% to $0.5885 ahead of a rate decision by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand due shortly on Wednesday, where a rate cut is expected. Elsewhere, spot gold fell 0.07% to $3,312.89 an ounce.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump's tariffs replace diplomacy as other US tools of statecraft are discarded
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pledged to use tariffs to revitalise American industry, bringing jobs home and helping to make America great again. But more than six months into his administration, experts say the president's trade war is increasingly being wielded as a political cudgel, in lieu of more traditional forms of diplomacy. The president's current target, India, has been unable to reach a trade agreement and Trump appears ready to follow through with his threat to impose a further 25% tariff on Delhi – bringing the total to 50% – the joint highest levy on any country, along with Brazil. It is a whiplash-inducing turnaround from a few months ago, when the newly minted Trump administration seemed intent on continuing a years-long bipartisan effort to deepen ties with India as a geopolitical counterweight to China. It's part of a trend which highlights how tariffs are used as threats against countries perceived to be recalcitrant. Rather than a tool of economic coercion, Trump instead wields tariffs as a political weapon. Five rounds of trade talks between the two sides have brought India no closer to conceding to US demands that it open up its vast agriculture and dairy sectors. Negotiations planned for early next week have been abruptly called off, as India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, grapples with Trump's demand that India cease to buy oil from Russia; sales that the US says are helping to fuel Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine. The demand – that India wean itself off the Russian oil, which accounts for about 35% of its total supply – sits at odds with the original stated purpose of Trump's tariff regime: to bring manufacturing back to the US and rebalance trade deficits. 'Tariffs have a very specific purpose of protecting domestic industry from competition,' says Dr Stuart Rollo from the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. 'That's not really what this is about … It's kind of pivoted to a tool of geopolitical compulsion.' Trump himself has come to admit this. Along with the threatened additional 25% tariff on India in retaliation for continuing to purchase Russian oil, the president has tied Canada's 35% tariff to its recognition of Palestinian statehood. In the case of Brazil – which has a rare trade surplus with the US, meaning it buys more than it sells – Trump has stated that the huge 50% tariff is due to the trial of his political ally, Jair Bolsonaro, who is charged with plotting a military coup after he lost the 2022 presidential election. The president's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, even has a new term for these explicitly political trade threats: 'national security tariffs'. The Democratic senator Chris Murphy put it more bluntly, writing in the Financial Times in April that the tariffs are not designed as economic policy but as a 'means to compel loyalty to the president'. Rollo says: 'It's a way of the United States to compel as much of the world as possible into realignment with its global leadership at a time when its actual weight and gravity is diminishing.' In some ways, this is not new; the Biden administration used trade restrictions to limit China's access to state of the art semiconductors at a time of heated geopolitical tensions. But Devashish Mitra, professor of economics at Syracuse university, says that for many in India, the threat faced over Russian oil purchases seems incoherent, ill thought out, and could push India closer to China. 'India did consider the US an ally,' says Mitra. 'It was a country that the US was relying on as a counter to China in that region. So it had a huge geopolitical importance, but it doesn't seem like Trump values any of that.' This week China's foreign minister has been in Delhi for talks, and Modi is expected in Shanghai at the end of the month; his first visit in seven years. It's a part of a recent pattern of tightening relations between the Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which make up 40% of global GDP – that experts say is a response to Trump's aggressive trade policies. For future US administrations, winning back the trust of some of these countries could be difficult, as Trump's escalating trade war comes at the same time as his administration dismantles its instruments of global statecraft. From mass firings at the state department, to the slashing of foreign assistance programmes at USAID, America's diplomatic toolbox is vastly diminished. Tariffs have 'come to replace diplomacy', says Rollo. And so with his attention divided between crises at home and abroad, the president has left himself armed with only a hammer, with every global flashpoint looking to him like a nail.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
US commerce secretary says trade documents wanted by Japan are 'weeks away'
TOKYO, Aug 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday that documents memorializing trade agreements with Japan and South Korea -- a sensitive topic in Tokyo -- are "weeks away" from being ready. Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba, who is facing calls to step down after the ruling coalition's loss in the July upper house election, has come under attack for not insisting on getting the details of the U.S.-Japan trade deal in writing. He has said Japan skipped this to avoid delaying a reduction in U.S. tariffs on Japanese goods. Lutnick told CNBC the United States has reached a common understanding with both Japan and South Korea on these trade agreements. Under the deal reached last month, the U.S. agreed to reduce tariffs on Japanese car imports to 15% from the previous 27.5%, but did not announce when the change would take effect.
