澳洲新闻 (ABC新闻快递) 2015-12-16（在线收听）

Good morning. The US Federal Reserve has kicked off its two-day meeting where they’ll decide whether to raise US interest rates for the first time in seven years. Now, as this meeting gets underway, the US Labor Department released its call Consumer Price Index numbers, basically inflation numbers which showed an increase of 2%. Now, it’s a third month of the call inflation increased by that much. Most analysts are expecting the US Fed will raise interest rates at the end of the 2-day meeting. Australia’s National Carrier Qantas has said it expects to report better than expected profits for the six months to December, boosted by lower oil prices and continued focused on its revival plans. Now, the airline has forecast underlining free tax profit between 835 million and 925 million dollars. Qantas has been aggressively reducing jobs and cutting capacity in recent months. The airlines shares have risen by almost 50% this year. Earlier this year, Qantas reported a returned annual profit for the 12 months to June and also announced plans to buy new planes. It’ll report its half-year results on the 23rd of February. Let’s go to the global markets and a couple of hours to put the close, the Dow and Nasdaq are both up 1.3%. The S&P 500 is up nearly 1.5% while in London, the FTSE gained 2.5% at the close. Checking commodity prices, West Texas Crude is at 37 US dollars a barrel. Tapis Crude is at 40 US dollars a barrel, and gold is trading at 1063 US dollars an ounce. The Australian dollar is currently buying 72 US cents, 66 euro cents and 48 pence sterling.