| Hong Kong shuts down ahead of super typhoon. Xi Jinping plans to skip G-20 meeting. China announces new mortgage, down payment rules. Here's what you need to know today. Hong Kong is closing down its $5 trillion stock market, schools are shut and transport routes suspended ahead of the arrival of Super Typhoon Saola, which could be the strongest storm to hit the city in at least five years. The city issued a No. 8 storm warning at 2:40 a.m. on Friday, with the local observatory saying it will consider the need to raise the tropical cyclone warning to higher signals later on. Saola will be closest to Hong Kong tonight and Saturday morning, skirting within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the city, the observatory said. Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to skip next week's G-20 summit in New Delhi — a snub that's likely to aggravate strains with India. Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend in his place. Tensions between the Asian giants already threaten to prevent G-20 leaders from issuing a joint communique for the first time since the forum was created in 1999, according to sources. It would be the first time Xi has skipped a G-20 summit since taking power, raising more questions about China's global clout as its economy slows. China announced it would allow its largest cities to cut down payments for homebuyers and encouraged lenders to lower rates on existing mortgages in its latest attempt to halt a slide in the country's residential property market. The nationwide minimum down payment will be uniformly set at 20% for first-time buyers and 30% for second-time purchasers. Mortgage-rate cuts will be negotiated between banks and customers. Both policies go into effect Sept. 25. Beijing is betting that lower mortgage rates and down payments will revive demand for homes. But not everyone is convinced enough is being done to revive the flagging economy. Hot on the heels of its lunar landing success, India is preparing to blast a probe even deeper into space to study the sun. The country's first solar observation mission, named Aditya-L1, will launch on Saturday morning, beginning a 125-day, 1.5 million-kilometer trip to a a point in space where objects can stay put and conserve fuel. From there it will have an uninterrupted view of our closest star and study in real time its effect on environmental conditions in the vicinity of Earth and other planets. India has more ambitious projects in the works. A human spaceflight program aims to put astronauts into orbit, possibly by 2025. Stocks in Asia were set for a mixed start to September after a muted session on Wall Street, as traders await Friday's jobs reading to gauge the outlook for Federal Reserve policy. Futures for equity benchmarks in Japan and Australia pointed to declines, while those for Hong Kong showed a slight increase. The S&P 500 closed lower on Thursday to notch its first monthly slide since February. Treasury 10-year yields extended their retreat after recently hitting levels last seen in 2007. Bond investors remain braced for the possibility of more short-term pain even after key US data out Thursday showed cooler inflation. For one thing, the PCE measures also revealed a revival in consumer spending. That raises hopes for a soft landing, something that would hurt those who have piled in to longer-dated Treasuries on expectations of a recession. It is also likely to make the Federal Reserve more willing to lean toward further increases in interest rates to ensure that inflation comes down in a sustainable fashion. Underscoring the potential for fresh Fed hawkishness was the way that the so-called "supercore" services inflation measure — a gauge excluding housing and energy that's closely watched by Chairman Jerome Powell and other policymakers — jumped by the most on a monthly basis since the start of this year. Treasuries are heading for their best week since mid-July, but that may just make traders all the more edgy going into Friday's payrolls report. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney. - In yesterday's newsletter we stated that Hong Kong was considering raising its second-highest typhoon warning on Friday, instead of the third-highest. Apologies for the mistake.
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