This artist’s concept shows the spectacular glare of two quasars residing at the centers of two galaxies that are in the chaotic process of merging. The gravitational pull between two galaxies ignites the firestorm of star birth. Quasars are brilliant beacons of intense light from the centers of distant galaxies. They are powered by supermassive black holes that feed on falling material. This feeding frenzy unleashes a stream of radiation that can outshine the collective light of the billions of stars in the host galaxy. Over a few billion years, the black holes and their galaxies will merge to form a quasar pair, an even larger black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

A pair of merging galaxies ignite black holes on a collision course

Quasars are among the brightest fireworks in the universe. Scattered across the sky, they burn with the richness of more than 100 billion stars. And, like brilliant 4th of July stretches across the sky, they dazzle for relatively short periods of time — on cosmic time scales. That’s because they’re powered by turbulent supermassive black holes that ingest copious amounts of gas and dust that heat up to high temperatures. But the quasar food buffet only lasts so long.

This rapid property of quasars has enabled astronomers to detect two quasars colliding with each other. They are embedded in a pair of galaxies that collided 10 billion years ago. Such energetic twins are rare in the distant universe. The findings provide clues to how unstable the universe was long ago, when galaxies frequently collided and black holes were engulfed in flotsam and jetsam from close encounters.

As the two quasars glow at different rates as their fuel waxes and wanes, they were identified as an unusual process in space. Hubble zoomed in and clearly resolved the pair and their host galaxies.

Hubble Space Telescope photo of a pair of quasars from when the universe was just 3 billion years old. They are embedded in a pair of colliding galaxies. Quasars are separated by less than a galactic size. Quasars are powered by turbulent, supermassive black holes that blast out ferocious fountains of energy as they engage themselves in gas, dust, and whatever else is in their gravitational grip. Black holes eventually merge. Credit: NASA, ESA, Yu-Ching Chen (UIUC), Hsiang-Chih Hwang (IAS), Nadia Zakamska (JHU), Yue Shen (UIUC)

The Hubble Space Telescope unexpectedly discovered a twin quasar in the distant universe

The early universe was a hectic place where galaxies often collided and merged together. Using[{” attribute=””>NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based observatories, astronomers investigating these developments have made an unexpected and rare discovery: a pair of gravitationally bound quasars, both blazing away inside two merging galaxies. They existed when the universe was just 3 billion years old.

Quasars are bright objects powered by voracious, supermassive black holes blasting out ferocious fountains of energy as they engorge themselves on gas, dust, and anything else within their gravitational grasp.

“We don’t see a lot of double quasars at this early time in the universe. And that’s why this discovery is so exciting,” said graduate student Yu-Ching Chen of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lead author of this study.

Finding close binary quasars is a relatively new area of research that has just developed in the past 10 to 15 years. Today’s powerful new observatories have allowed astronomers to identify instances where two quasars are active at the same time and are close enough that they will eventually merge. 

There is increasing evidence that large galaxies are built up through mergers. Smaller systems come together to form bigger systems and ever larger structures. During that process there should be pairs of supermassive black holes formed within the merging galaxies. “Knowing about the progenitor population of black holes will eventually tell us about the emergence of supermassive black holes in the early universe, and how frequent those mergers could be,” said Chen.

This compass image shows a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of a pair of quasars that existed when the universe was just 3 billion years old. They are embedded inside a pair of colliding galaxies. The quasars are separated by less than the size of a single galaxy. Quasars are powered by voracious, supermassive black holes blasting out ferocious fountains of energy as they engorge themselves on gas, dust, and anything else within their gravitational grasp. The black holes will eventually merge. Credit: NASA, ESA, Yu-Ching Chen (UIUC), Hsiang-Chih Hwang (IAS), Nadia Zakamska (JHU), Yue Shen (UIUC)

We’re starting to unveil this tip of the iceberg of the early binary quasar population,” said Xin Liu of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “This is the uniqueness of this study. It is actually telling us that this population exists, and now we have a method to identify double quasars that are separated by less than the size of a single galaxy.”

This was a needle-in-haystack search that required the combined power of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatories in Hawaii. Multi-wavelength observations from the International Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory also contributed to understanding the dynamic duo. And, ESA (European Space Agency)’s Gaia space observatory helped identify this double quasar in the first place. 

“Hubble’s sensitivity and resolution provided pictures that allow us to rule out other possibilities for what we are seeing,” said Chen. Hubble shows, unequivocally, that this is indeed a genuine pair of supermassive black holes, rather than two images of the same quasar created by a foreground gravitational lens. And, Hubble shows a tidal feature from the merging of two galaxies, where gravity distorts the shape of the galaxies forming two tails of stars.

However, Hubble’s sharp resolution alone isn’t good enough to go looking for these dual light beacons. The researchers enlisted Gaia, which launched in 2013, to pinpoint potential double-quasar candidates. Gaia measures the positions, distances, and motions of nearby celestial objects very precisely. But in a novel technique, it can be used to explore the distant universe. Gaia’s huge database can be used to search for quasars that mimic the apparent motion of nearby stars. The quasars appear as single objects in the Gaia data because they are so close together. However, Gaia can pick up a subtle, unexpected “jiggle” that mimics an apparent change in position of some of the quasars it observes. 

In reality, the quasars aren’t moving through space in any measurable way. Instead, their jiggle could be evidence of random fluctuations of light as each member of the quasar pair varies in brightness on timescales of days to months, depending on their black hole’s feeding schedule. This alternating brightness between the quasar pair is similar to seeing a railroad crossing signal from a distance. As the lights on both sides of the stationary signal alternately flash, the sign gives the illusion of “jiggling.”

Another challenge is that because gravity warps space like a funhouse mirror, a foreground galaxy could split the image of a distant quasar into two, creating the illusion it was really a binary pair. The Keck telescope was used to make sure there was no lensing galaxy in between us and the suspected double quasar.

Because Hubble peers into the distant past, this double quasar no longer exists. Over the intervening 10 billion years, their host galaxies have likely settled into a giant elliptical galaxy, like the ones seen in the local universe today. And, the quasars have merged to become a gargantuan, supermassive black hole at its center. The nearby giant elliptical galaxy, M87, has a monstrous black hole weighing 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun. Perhaps this black hole was grown from one or more galaxy mergers over the past billions of years.

The upcoming NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, having the same visual acuity as Hubble, is ideal for binary quasar hunting. Hubble has been used to painstakingly take data for individual targets. But Roman’s very wide-angle infrared view of the universe is 200 times larger than Hubble’s. “A lot of quasars out there could be binary systems. The Roman telescope can do huge improvements in this research area,” said Liu.

The results will be published in the April 5 journal Nature.

Reference: “A close quasar pair in a disk–disk galaxy merger at z = 2.17” by Yu-Ching Chen, Xin Liu, Adi Foord, Yue Shen, Masamune Oguri, Nianyi Chen, Tiziana Di Matteo, Miguel Holgado, Hsiang-Chih Hwang and Nadia Zakamska, 5 April 2023, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05766-6

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

Google Stadia and all of its associated projects are dead, which means it’s time for division head Bill Harrison to move on. Business Insider Harrison has reportedly left Google. The report says he left in January, but Harrison’s LinkedIn It was only updated in the last few days that he left Google in April. Harrison worked at Stadia for five years.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, not Google Gaming kicked Google’s gaming platform debuted by declaring to the crowd, “I’m not a big gamer.” As Stadia’s VP and general manager, Harrison should bring gaming credibility to Google. Harrison is an industry veteran, having previously worked for Microsoft and Sony’s game console releases, so his experience is setting up deals with game developers, uh, Exciting Sports community.

In the early days, Harrison was the face of Stadia. During the initial 2019 announcement, Harrison took the stage After Beg to announce Stadia to the world, describing the basic premise and how Stadia will be “the future of sports”. When things started to go south, Harrison stopped appearing in videos. He stopped tweeting, and generally disappeared. Harrison made news in 2021 when Google killed Stadia’s sole first-party game studio, the Games & Entertainment division, after 1.5 years. Harrison is reported He told the team they were “making great progress” a week before they were fired, which, according to Kotaku, was part of the leadership’s “not being honest and open with the company’s developers.” He also announced Stadia’s death in a blog post.

We can’t tell how effective executives are when we’re outside of a company, but Harrison joined Google with a bad reputation with gamers. His previous key executive roles oversaw the launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox One and Kinect. These two are the consensus worst console releases from each company and preside over the life and death of Stadia. Not helping Harrison’s formidable reputation.

With Harrison gone, Stadia dead, and Cloud Pivot reportedly killed with Stadia, there’s nothing left of Google’s once-ambitious gaming project.

Another round of thunderstorms headed toward the same region hit by severe weather that killed 32 people across the South and Midwest over the weekend.

Severe storms are possible Wednesday across the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, the National Weather Service said.

“Weather conditions in these areas may be life-threatening at times,” it said in a forecast discussion on Tuesday.

More than a dozen tornadoes were possible in Illinois and Iowa on Tuesday. According to the weather serviceHenry, Illinois, including a possible twister that reportedly tore off the roof of a gas station and blew into a brick building.

Storm surveys are usually conducted to determine if a tornado actually made landfall, and if so how many.

Weather Service Office in Lincoln, Illinois, A tornado warning A village 42 miles outside of Peoria, in an area north of Bryant. Reports of injuries and damage estimates were not available.

In Chicago, the fire department said It responded to at least three reports of roof damage after a “localized, but high wind storm” passed through the city. No injuries were reported, but trees were uprooted and power poles damaged.

Chicago O’Hare International Airport was under a severe thunderstorm warning on Tuesday, with 86 flights canceled and 404 delayed, according to the aviation watchdog. FlightAware.

In western Illinois, Moline, 165 miles west of Chicago, recorded gusts of 90 mph.

An estimated 42 million people were at risk of severe storms Tuesday, according to NBC News’ weather division. It grows to about 62 million people Wednesday as the storm system stretches from northern Michigan to northern Louisiana.

Weather service forecast Map Wednesday’s more intense weather moved eastward and extended into Monday. It now covers an area east of Dallas and extends northeast along a diagonal swath parallel to the Appalachian Mountains. It reaches Chicago and parts of New York state.

Cities likely to receive severe weather Wednesday include Chicago; Detroit; Indianapolis; Columbus, Ohio; and Memphis, Tennessee, according to the weather service.

“Possible storm risks include strong tornadoes, damaging winds, large hail and locally heavy rainfall and flooding,” the weather service said in an outlook statement Tuesday.

In Wyoming, the Dakotas and Minnesota, the same front was expected to produce blizzard conditions and snow in April — up to 2 feet in places — according to the weather service and NBC News Weather Division.

In the Dakotas, blizzard warnings covered much of both states late Tuesday. A semi trucking cattle near Sisseton, South Dakota, and the State Highway Patrol urged people to stay home unless travel is absolutely necessary.

Many state employees in South Dakota worked from home Tuesday, at the behest of Gov. Christie Noem, the weather forecaster said. Snow and wind make traveling to work sites difficult and dangerous. Some highways were closed at night as a precaution.

“Citizens should be prepared to stay at home if possible,” Nome said in a statement.

Parts of Custer County, South Dakota, reported 24 inches of snow in the past 36 hours, the weather service in Rapid City said. said Tuesday nightand Fall River County recorded 30 inches.

Forecasters saw snowfall rates of up to 2 inches per hour Tuesday night in the Red River Valley, which includes parts of North Dakota and Minnesota. Grand Forks, North Dakota said.

As the cold fronts of Canadian and Pacific storms move south and east and collide with tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico, experts say the weather misfortune that creates stormy weather every year is especially for the continental United States and the South.

But climate change will make extremes worse, resulting in colder cold fronts, stronger hurricanes and larger hail in the spring, and longer, hot streaks in the summer, they said.

In mid-March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s spring outlook called for moderate to major flooding from Minneapolis to St. Louis, despite continued drought in the northern and central Plains.

“Climate change is driving wetter and drier extremes,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in the outlook.

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) – Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc ( VORB.O ), founded by billionaire Richard Branson, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after the satellite launch business struggled to secure long-term financing following a failed launch in January. .

The filing comes two years after Virgin Orbit went public at a valuation of about $3 billion. But the crash in January forced the company to scramble for fresh funding and halt operations.

“We believe the Chapter 11 process represents the best path to identify and finalize an efficient and value-maximizing sale,” Virgin Orbit Chief Executive Dan Hart said in a statement.

The company, spun off from space tourism firm Virgin Galactic ( SPCE.N ) in 2017, sends satellites into orbit using rockets launched from modified Boeing ( BA.N ) 747 aircraft.

The Long Beach, California-based company filed to sell its assets in a Delaware court days after announcing it would lay off about 85% of its 750 employees.

Virgin Orbit listed assets of about $243 million and total debt of $153.5 million as of Sept. 30. The company went public in a blank-check merger in December 2021, raising $255 million less than expected.

The company was valued at $65 million at the close of trading on Monday. On Tuesday, its shares fell 23% to close at just 15 cents each.

The company’s sixth mission in January using its core LauncherOne rocket, the first rocket launched from Britain, failed to reach orbit, plunging commercial and defense-related research satellites into the ocean.

An accident involving England’s Cornwall Spaceport forced the company to halt operations and put all of its employees on bail in March.

Tony Kingis, Virgin Orbit’s chief operating officer until Monday, apologized in an email to employees, saying company leadership should have had more time to run the company.

“We apologize for not acting sooner and to avoid surprising you,” he wrote. “I regret that I was unable to convince our chairman and board to take a different route to give us more time to figure things out.”

Business model Virgin Orbit is set up to launch small rockets and provide short-notice launches from anywhere, including for tactical military purposes, to address a need highlighted by the conflict in Ukraine.

But over the past two years, demand for larger launch vehicles and more cost-effective shared payload space launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket have raised the competitive stakes.

Venture capital investments in space startups are set to decline 50% year-on-year to $21.9 billion in 2022 as capital spending rises alongside global interest rate hikes.

“The volatile capital markets and high interest rate environment made it difficult to obtain new capital,” Hart said in a court filing. He said the company was “experiencing heavy pricing pressure from well-capitalized competitors in the commercial publishing market.”

The two satellite makers that lost high-tech payloads in failed January launches, Britain’s Space Forge and Poland’s SatRev, which owns 4% of Virgin Orbit, said they had backup plans for replacement launches as needed.

Virgin Group Finance

Branson’s Virgin Group, which owns roughly 75% of the publishing company, said it has invested more than $1 billion in the unit since November, including $60 million in secured loans.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala is the second largest investor with a 17.9% stake.

Virgin Investments, a unit of Virgin Group, will pay $31.6 million for Virgin Orbit while it looks for a buyer, the companies said. According to a regulatory filing, the company is retaining about 100 employees to allow it to resume operations if a rescuer is found.

Despite the success of his travel and telecommunications businesses, Branson was associated with several high-profile business failures during his career in the 1970s.

Reuters reported last month that Texas-based Matthew Brown was in talks to invest $200 million in Virgin Orbit. Those talks collapsed, sources told Reuters last week.

Virgin Orbit’s biggest creditor is London-based Arkit Ltd., which owes it almost $10 million in services and customer deposits.

Arkith declined to comment.

The U.S. Space Force, part of the U.S. military, was Virgin Orbit’s second largest creditor, depositing nearly $6.8 million for future launches. There was no immediate comment.

Reporting by Joey Rowlett in Washington, Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bangalore, Kevin Krolicki in Singapore, Crystal Hu in New York, Joanna Plusinska in London and Tim Heber in Paris Editing by Jonathan Otis and Matthew Lewis.

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

US stocks were mixed on Tuesday morning, while oil prices rose ahead of two key data: the JOLTS jobs survey and factory orders data.

S&P 500 (^GSPC) Gained 0.1% And the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) ticked down near the flatline. Technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) 0.2% added.

Oil prices rose as WTI crude – the US benchmark – traded above $81 a barrel. Oil has now returned to its four-month trading range after OPEC+ announced a production cut of 1.16 million barrels per day.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% on Monday. The biggest loser was the Nasdaq 100, which fell 0.27%. Manufacturing activity fell to the lowest level since May 2020, indicating that further declines are likely as credit conditions tighten.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said Monday that continued strength in the labor market gives the central bank room to fight inflation. Bullard also commented on OPEC’s decision to cut production, suggesting it could make the central bank’s job of keeping inflation down as oil prices rise more challenging.

Separately, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook highlighted continued tightness in the labor market.

“We’re still going to see inflation come out of that, but we’ve seen wage gains slow down a little bit,” he said.

However, the Federal Reserve has stuck with inflation as its main concern, even amid recent banking turmoil that has shown signs of easing.

“The expected Fed rate next meeting is largely flat against this backdrop, rising a modest 1.6 basis-points to 4.973%, with a 63% chance of a 25 basis-point hike next month,” Jim Reid and colleagues at Deutsche wrote in a note to bank clients.

Still, the recent banking woes fueled by the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are “not over yet,” JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday.

The story continues

His closely observed year Letter to Shareholders, Dimon outlined the damages of financial system turmoil on all banks and urged lawmakers not to “overreact” with more regulations.

Elsewhere, Credit Suisse chairman Axel Lehmann apologized for the bank’s failure to save the company as it drained deposits for months.

Meanwhile, against the current backdrop, the bullishness of stocks may waver considering the recent bank failures. An oil surprise and a slowdown in growth could send stocks back to the lows seen in 2022, said JP Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic.

In single-stock moves, shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings ( AMC ) fell on Tuesday morning.

Disney’s feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis escalated. CEO Bob Iger called the governor’s response “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.” Shares of Disney ( DIS ) rose Tuesday morning.

Virgin Orbit Holdings, Inc. ( VORB ) shares fell after it filed for bankruptcy late Monday after roughly 85% of its employees were laid off in March.

—

Danny Romero is a Yahoo Finance reporter. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv

Click here for in-depth analysis including the latest stock market news and stock moving events

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

Download the Yahoo Finance app Apple Or Android

Follow Yahoo Finance Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedInAnd Network light

(CNN) The University of Connecticut won Fifth men’s basketball national title 76-59 victory over San Diego State University on Monday night at NRG Stadium in Houston.

Senior guard Tristan Newton led UConn (31-8) with 19 points and 10 rebounds, while Final Four best player Adama Sanoko, a junior forward, chipped in with 17 points and 10 rebounds.

“We were unranked going into the year, so we had a chip on our shoulder,” UConn head coach Don Hurley told game broadcaster CBS. “Even in those dark times we knew we could play.” He added referring to the team Six losses in eight games During the regular season.

He said that going into the tournament he had his team’s confidence going into the season.

“And when you have leaders like Andre Jackson (game-high six assists Monday) and Adama Sanoko, they put this team together and got us back on track and we knew we were the best team in the tournament. We had to play to our level,” he said. He added.

Keshad Johnson led San Diego State (32-7) with 14 points.

UConn trailed early, but San Diego State had an 11-minute, eight-second stretch in which they hit just five free throws and missed 12 consecutive shots from the field. The Huskies went on a 10-6 run at halftime to go up 36-24.

The Aztecs went on a run midway through the second half to cut the deficit to five at 60-55 with 5:19 left, but the Huskies scored the next nine goals to take a comfortable lead inside the final two minutes.

“I want to thank my teammates and my coaches for believing in me. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Sanoko told CBS.

UConn won each of its six tournament games by at least 10 points, with its closest game being a 13-point win over the University of Miami in the national semifinals.

UConn enters rarefied air as the sixth team to win five NCAA men’s basketball championships, joining UCLA (11), Kentucky (eight), North Carolina (six), Duke (five) and Indiana (five). All of UConn’s titles have come since 1999, with Monday’s previous occurring in 2014.

UConn’s women’s teams have won 11 basketball national titles.

CNN’s Steve Almasi and Issy Ronald contributed to this report.

Starbucks fired a longtime union organizer two days after billionaire former CEO Howard Schultz was grilled in a Senate committee hearing over the company’s illegal union-busting campaign.

Lexi Rizzo led the campaign at a Starbucks in Buffalo, one of the first to hold a successful union referendum, starting a movement that spread across the country and included thousands of Starbucks workers.

Rizzo—who worked for the company for seven years, A GoFundMe– The Friday shift supervisor was fired, according to Buffalo News.

Starbucks informed the store that Rizzo had been booked for repeatedly being late to work. The union, Starbucks Workers United, said Rizzo’s firing was “retaliation at its worst.” Two other pro-union employees were also fired, the union said.

“I’ve given every ounce that I have to this organization,” Rizzo said in an emotional video posted on TikTok, adding, “My heart is broken.”

Rizzo took aim at Schultz when he appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (AID) Committee last Wednesday.

“You’re a heartless monster, I don’t know how you sleep at night,” he said of Schultz, “you give hundreds of thousands of people everything they have so you can make another dollar. And then you treat us like dirt.

Democratic senators confronted Schultz last week over eight rulings by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative judges that Starbucks had committed 130 labor law violations since the union campaign began in Buffalo in December 2021. Schultz denied the company broke the law.

Last month, an NLRB administrative judge found that Starbucks committed “extremely widespread” violations of labor law when it fired six pro-union workers in Buffalo and Rochester. The company was ordered to hire and compensate the workers.

“Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in our nation’s modern history,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) opened the hearing. “That union busting campaign was led by Howard Schultz.”

Updated

April 3, 2023, 8:44 am ET

April 3, 2023, 8:44 am ET

NASA will introduce four astronauts to the moon on Monday. Four Americans and one Canadian will be part of the crew of Artemis II, a 10-day mission in late 2024 that will orbit the moon before returning to Earth.

The team will join a group of American astronauts who visited the moon from 1968 to 1972 during the Apollo era. Here’s what you need to know about Monday’s announcement.

Show more

SYDNEY, April 3 (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Monday after Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ producers announced a surprise round of output cuts, a riskier sign for global inflation days after sluggish U.S. price data boosted market confidence.

Brent oil futures were up $3.94 at $83.83 a barrel on the news release, which would cut about 1.16 million barrels a day. U.S. crude was up $3.84 at $79.51, off its earlier high of $81.69.

The change comes ahead of a virtual meeting of the OPEC+ ministerial group, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia.

“The engagement of major OPEC+ members suggests that adherence to production cuts may be stronger than in the past,” said Vivek Dhar, energy analyst at CBA.

“That means oil markets could see a cut of 1% or more of global oil supply starting in May.”

The latest cut could push oil prices up to $10 a barrel, the head of investment firm Pickering Energy Partners said on Sunday.

Goldman Sachs raised its forecast for Brent to $95 by the end of the year and $100 in 2024.

“Today’s surprise cut is consistent with the new OPEC+ theory, as they can operate without significant losses in market share,” Goldman said.

“Although surprising, this cut reflects important economic and potentially political considerations.”

A surge in energy costs overshadowed a slower reading for core U.S. inflation on Friday.

S&P 500 futures fell 0.3% on Monday, while Nasdaq futures lost 0.6%. EUROSTOXX 50 futures shed 0.1%, while FTSE futures added 0.1%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was down 0.4%.

Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) rose 0.7% after the Caixin/S&P survey of manufacturers showed a surprise drop to 50.0 in March and contrasted with strength seen in services surveys last week.

Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) edged up 0.5%, although it came in below expectations of manufacturers.

Better news came from the final Bank of Japan manufacturing survey, which improved to 49.2 in March from 47.7 in February, the slowest contraction since November.

Fewer food cuts

The shock to inflation expectations sent yields on US two-year Treasuries up 4 basis points to 4.11%, while Fed funds futures tempered expectations for rate cuts later in the year.

The market raised the probability of the Federal Reserve hiking rates by a quarter point to 61% in May, up from 48% on Friday, and a 38 basis point cut by the end of the year.

It was followed by a dollar gain of 0.5% to 133.44 against the Japanese yen, while the euro fell almost 0.5% to $1.0789. Rising oil prices are bad news for Japan’s trade balance, as it imports most of its energy.

Gold was down nearly 0.9% to $1,950 an ounce, boosting the dollar.

Although reaction to next Friday’s jobs report will be muted by the Easter holiday, the outlook for US tariffs could be affected by this week’s ISM manufacturing and wages data.

Central banks in Australia and New Zealand hold policy meetings this week, with the latter expected to raise rates another quarter point to 5.0%.

Markets are betting that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will pause its tightening campaign after 10 straight hikes. ,

Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Sri Navaratnam, Stephen Coates and Kenneth Maxwell

Our Standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.