• The yen hit five-month highs against the dollar, euro and sterling on Wednesday, as simmering geopolitical tensions checked risk appetite and put the safe-haven Japanese currency in favour.
Investors' flight-to-safety underpinned traditional safe-havens like the yen, Treasuries and gold, amid fresh concerns about the French presidential election and possible U.S. military action against Syria and North Korea.
The dollar was at 109.465 yen after going as low as 109.350, its weakest since Nov. 17.
The euro, which sank more than 1 percent overnight, extended losses and touched a five-month low of 116.020 yen. The common currency was on track to post its 13th straight session of losses versus the yen.
While the euro sagged against the yen, it fared better versus the struggling dollar. The common currency was up 0.1 percent at $1.0610, adding to modest overnight gains.
It was a similar story for the pound, which retreated to a near five-month low of 136.60 yen but edged up against the dollar. Sterling was steady at $1.2489 after gaining about 0.6 percent overnight.
The dollar index against a basket of major currencies was steady at 100.710, after losing 0.3 percent the previous day.
• Japan is preparing to send several warships to join a US aircraft carrier strike group heading for the Korean peninsula, in a show of force designed to deter North Korea from conducting further missile and nuclear tests.
• President Donald Trump, who has proposed cuts to an array of government agencies, is asking department heads to offer up plans to operate more efficiently.
Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters on Tuesday he would be instructing agencies to outline how they will comply with the president's budget, which slashed spending for foreign aid and many domestic programs.
• China's producer price inflation cooled for the first time in seven months in March as iron ore and coal prices tumbled, pressured by fears that Chinese steel production is outweighing demand and threatening a glut of the metal later this year.
On a month-on-month basis, the PPI rose just 0.3 percent, the smallest increase since September 2016 and half the pace seen in February.
China's consumer inflation rate has been far milder, edging up to 0.9 percent in March, from 0.8 percent in February.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the situation in North Korea with U.S President Donald Trump on a telephone call on Wednesday, China's state broadcaster said.
Xi stressed that a resolution of tensions on the Korean peninsula should be achieved by peaceful means. The phone call came a week after Trump and Xi met face-to-face for the first time at a summit in Florida.
• German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview published on Wednesday he would propose moderate tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners after an election in September.
Schaeuble is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives who have made security and tax relief a main component of their campaigning platform and are ahead in the polls of their Social Democrat (SPD) junior coalition partners.
Schaeuble has said the tax cuts would amount to some 15 billion euros ($15.92 billion) a year, which economists says is too little to boost private consumption.
• French centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen clung on as frontrunners in France's tight presidential race on Tuesday, but the unpredictable outcome is pushing some pollsters to calculate the most extreme runoff scenarios.
In a new twist in the two-round election, Jean-Luc Melenchon, a far-left veteran who for most of the campaign has been dismissed as a distant no-hoper, has surged into the top four and lies just a few percentage points behind the leaders.
Polls showed Macron and Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant and anti-EU National Front, still several percentage points ahead of Fillon and Melenchon in the first round - something which would send them through to a face-off with each other on May 7.
• Euan Graham, a security analyst with the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, told that the real risk for the U.S. and North Korea conflict would be a widening of the conflict.
nine.com.au
"The North Koreans have artillery along the border with the south that is capable of reaching Seoul. If that happened, South Korea which has a strong military would be compelled to get involved."
"Their nuclear missiles can also reach US bases in Japan and South Korea."
• Oil prices rose on Wednesday, putting crude futures on track for their longest streak of gains since August 2016, as Saudi Arabia was reported to be lobbying OPEC and other producers to extend a production cut beyond the first half of 2017.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were up 20 cents, or 0.36 percent, at their highest since early March at $56.43 per barrel at 0656 GMT (02:56 a.m. EDT).
If Wednesday's rise holds, it would mark the seventh straight daily increase. That would beat a six-day bull-run from August 2016, although the price jump then was 17.5 percent versus a 6-percent rise in the current rally.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were up 18 cents, or 0.34 percent, at $53.58 a barrel, also their highest since early March.
Reference: Reuters, 9News, The Guardian
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