Share prices on Bursa Malaysia retreated to open marginally lower today to lack of buying interest, dealers said.
At 9.02am, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) was 4.23 points or 0.23 per cent lower at 1,773.27, after opening 2.79 points easier at 1,774.71.
A dealer said the weak sentiment will likely remain throughout the day, weighing on investors' risk appetite.
HwangDBS Vickers Research expects the overnight losses on Wall Street, due to lingering concerns over lawmakers in Washington which have yet to come to an agreement, to influence local sentiment.
"We think the benchmark FBM KLCI may continue its sideways movement. Immediate support remains at 1,750-points level," it said in a note.
On the scoreboard, the Finance Index fell 43.05 points to 16,524.06, the Industrial Index slipped 1.26 points to 3,040.93 and the Plantation Index lost 31.95 points to 8,316.83.
The FBM Emas Index decreased 19.92 points to 12,345.58, the FBM100 Index erased 21.55 points to 12,081.41 and the FBM Ace eased 1.26 points to 5,372.53.
However, the FBM 70 rose 4.73 points to 14,119.53.
Losers led gainers 81 to 50, with 112 counters were unchanged, 1,368 untraded and 15 others were suspended.
Volume was very thin at 35.7 million shares worth RM13.682 million.
Among actives, Sumatec Resources gained 2.5 sen to 62 sen, Sersol added one sen to 46.5 sen while The Media Shoppe was flat at 10 sen.
Heavyweights, Petronas Chemicals perked one sen to RM6.87 while both Axiata Group and Sime Darby were flat at RM6.92 and RM9.45, respectively.
Meanwhile, both Maybank and CIMB slipped three sen each to RM9.84 and RM7.43, respectively.-- Bernama
David Jackson, USA TODAY 12:03 p.m. EDT October 8, 2013
President Obama called House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday, again telling the Ohio Republican he will not negotiate on budget items until the GOP-run House ends the shutdown and raises the debt ceiling.
Obama also scheduled a White House statement on the budget shutdown for 2 p.m.; he will also take questions from reporters.
"The president is willing to negotiate with Republicans -- after the threat of government shutdown and default have been removed -- over policies that Republicans think would strengthen the country," said a White House readout of the 10:45 a.m. phone call to the House speaker.
The readout noted that Obama "repeated what he told (Boehner) when they met at the White House last week."
Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck confirmed the conversation, saying that "the president called the speaker again today to reiterate that he won't negotiate on a government funding bill or debt limit increase."
The government shutdown is now in its eighth day, as the White House and Congress continue to dispute a new spending plan.
The parties also face an Oct. 17 deadline for increasing the nation's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling; failure to do so could lead to a government default on its debts.
During an appearance Monday at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Obama pointed out that some House Republicans are seeking a delay of parts of the health care law as part of a new spending plan.
Obama said he is willing to discuss budget issues, but "I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don't get 100% of their way, they're going to either shut down the government or they are going to default on America's debt so that America for the first time in history does not pay its bills."
In its readout of the Boehner phone call, the White House said Obama "also repeated his willingness to negotiate on priorities that he has identified including policies that expand economic opportunity, support private sector job creation, enhance the competitiveness of American businesses, strengthen the Affordable Care Act and continue to reduce the nation's deficit."
Boehner, in a news conference, said the nation's leaders should sit down and discuss the budget impasse without conditions.
"All we're asking for is to sit down and have this conversation," he said
The Nobel committee decided Englert and Higgs should jointly take the accolade for the boson, discovered at Cern in 2012
Two scientists have won the Nobel prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson.
Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, shared the prize.
In the 1960s they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.
The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, in Switzerland.
"This year's prize is about something small that makes all the difference," said Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
'On holiday'
Professor Higgs is renowned for shying away from the limelight, and he could not be located for interview in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.
"He's gone on holiday without a phone," his Edinburgh University physics colleague Alan Walker told the BBC, adding that Higgs had also been unwell.
"He is taking a break from all of this, taking some time to relax, because he knows when he comes back he'll have to face up to a media storm."
But the university released a prepared statement from Higgs, 84, who is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics:
"I am overwhelmed to receive this award and thank the Royal Swedish Academy," he said.
The BBC's David Shukman explains exactly what the Higgs boson is
"I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle and to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support.
"I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."
Francois Englert, 80, said he was "very happy" to win the award, speaking at the ceremony via phone link.
"At first I thought I didn't have it [the prize] because I didn't see the announcement," he told the committee, after their news conference was delayed by more than an hour.
Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, but it was in Edinburgh in 1964 that he had his big idea - an explanation of why the matter in the Universe has substance, or mass.
His theory involved a missing particle in the Standard Model of physics, which has come to be known as the Higgs boson.
Within weeks, Francois Englert independently published his own, similar theory, alongside his now deceased colleague Robert Brout.
Three other physicists - Gerald Guralnik, Tom Kibble and Carl Hagen - also made key contributions to the theory, and spoke at the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
And Higgs, too, has expressed his discomfort with the attention he has received, preferring to call the particle "the scalar boson".
Cern director general Rolf Heuer joined physicists celebrating the announcement
In a statement on Tuesday, Kibble, of Imperial College London, said he was "glad" the Nobel Prize had gone to the work of Higgs and Englert.
"My two collaborators, Gerald Guralnik and Carl Hagen, and I contributed to that discovery, but our paper was unquestionably the last of the three to be published.
"It is therefore no surprise that the Swedish Academy felt unable to include us, constrained as they are by a self-imposed rule that the prize cannot be shared by more than three people.
"My sincere congratulations go to the two Prize winners, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs."
The man behind the boson - Peter Higgs talks to BBC Scotland
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern lies in a circular tunnel almost 17 miles round. It's so big it's partly in Switzerland, partly in France. It took 10 years and thousands of scientists and engineers to build it.
Cern director general Rolf Heuer said he was "thrilled" that this year's prize had gone to particle physics.
"The discovery of the Higgs boson at Cern... marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world," he said.
The Nobel Prizes - which also cover chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics - are valued at 8m Swedish kronor (£750,000; $1.2m). Laureates also receive a medal and a diploma.
The official citation for Englert and Higgs read: "For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider".
David Willetts, UK minister for universities and science, said the award was "an incredible endorsement of the quality of UK science".
Prime Minister David Cameron said: "This brilliant achievement is richly deserved recognition of Peter Higgs' lifetime of dedicated research and his passion for science.
"It is also a credit to the world-leading British universities in which this research was carried out.
"It took nearly 50 years and thousands of great minds to discover the Higgs boson after Professor Higgs proposed it, and he and all those people should be extremely proud."
Best explanation of Higgs boson?
Scientists' best theory for why different things have mass is the "Higgs field" - where mass can be seen as a measure of the resistance to movement. The "Higgs field" is shown here as a room of physicists chatting among themselves.
A well-known scientist walks into the room and causes a bit of a stir - attracting admirers with each step and interacting strongly with them - signing autographs and stopping to chat.
As she becomes surrounded by admiring fans, she finds it harder to move across the room - in this analogy, she acquires mass due to the "field" of fans, with each fan acting like a single Higgs boson.
If a less popular scientist enters the room, only a small crowd gathers, with no-one clamouring for attention. He finds it easier to move across the room - by analogy, his interaction with the bosons is lower, and so he has a lower mass.
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