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Stock markets struck fresh records Friday, driven by investor optimism over artificial intelligence and hopes of US interest rate cuts, which overshadowed concerns about an ongoing government shutdown.Wall Street’s main indices were mixed at the end of the day, although the Dow and S&P 500 notched fresh records.”That’s a stock market that continues to be pretty resilient to selling interest for any number of reasons, probably the most supportive of which is the expectation for multiple rate cuts before year-end,” said Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com.In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 set an all-time high, led by banks and mining stocks. In Paris, the CAC 40 also rose and was close to its March peak, while the DAX 40 dipped in Frankfurt but nevertheless remains close to its record level.The rally in tech stocks was given another lift on Friday by an agreement between Japan’s Hitachi and ChatGPT developer OpenAI to work on AI and energy.Shares in Hitachi jumped more than 10 percent, with other Japanese tech firms and investment giant SoftBank following suit. The advance helped push Tokyo’s Nikkei 1.9 percent higher.Hong Kong retreated, while Shanghai was closed for a holiday.A surge in AI investment this year has helped push the valuations of some of the sector’s biggest names to eye-watering levels — with US chip titan Nvidia topping $4 trillion — and several stock markets to record highs.Shares in Nvidia pulled back slightly on Friday.This week has seen extra momentum after South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK hynix said they had struck a preliminary deal with OpenAI to supply chips and other equipment for its Stargate project.Positive sentiment has also been supported by data in recent months pointing to a slowdown in the US labor market, which led the Federal Reserve to cut borrowing costs and indicate more easing could come.Traders brushed off a standoff in Washington that has seen the government partially shut down, leading to the closure of some services and the delay of key monthly jobs figures that would normally have been published on Friday.While the readings on non-farm payrolls is a major guide for the Fed when deciding monetary policy, analysts said the shutdown was unlikely to deter the Fed from an expected second rate cut this month.”Markets seem to have taken this political impasse in their stride, showing little sign of stress,” said Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at Scope Markets.”The lack of market reaction highlights how little investors believe the shutdown will matter for the medium-term outlook on growth or interest rates,” he added.But US senators voted Friday to reject a stopgap Republican funding fix to reopen the government, meaning the federal shutdown will extend into the next week.- Key figures at around 2020 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.5 percent at 46,758.28 points (close)New York – S&P 500: UP less than 0.1 percent at 6,715.79 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.3 percent at 22,780.51 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.7 percent at 9,491.25 (close) Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.3 percent at 8,081.54 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.2 percent at 24,378.80 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.9 percent at 45,769.50 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.5 percent at 27,140.92 (close)Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holidayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1742 from $1.1720 on ThursdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3482 from $1.3446Dollar/yen: UP at 147.45 yen from 147.19 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.09 pence from 87.17 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.7 percent at $60.88 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.7 percent at $64.53 per barrelburs-rl-tmc-bys/jgc

Stock markets mostly rose Friday driven by investor optimism over AI and US rate-cut hopes, which overshadowed concerns about a government shutdown dragging on. A rally in tech stocks was given another lift on Friday by an agreement between Japan’s Hitachi and ChatGPT developer OpenAI to work on AI and energy.  Shares in Hitachi jumped more than 10 percent, with other Japanese tech firms and investment giant SoftBank following suit. The advance helped push Tokyo’s Nikkei 1.9 percent higher.European markets also advanced, led by banks and mining stocks. Hong Kong retreated, while Shanghai was closed for a holiday.A surge in AI investment this year has helped push the valuations of some of the sector’s biggest names to eye-watering levels — with US chip titan Nvidia topping $4 trillion — and several stock markets to record highs.This week has seen extra momentum after South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK hynix said they had struck a preliminary deal with the OpenAI to supply chips and other equipment for its Stargate project.Wall Street stocks finished at fresh records again Thursday.Positive sentiment has also been supported by data in recent months pointing to a slowdown in the US labour market, which led the Federal Reserve to cut borrowing costs and indicate more to come.Traders brushed off a standoff in Washington that has seen the government partially shut down, leading to the closure of some services and the likely delay of the release of key jobs figures later in the day.While the readings on non-farm payrolls (NFPs) is a major guide for the Fed when deciding monetary policy, analysts said the shutdown was unlikely to deter the bank from an expected second rate cut this month.”Markets seem to have taken this political impasse in their stride, showing little sign of stress,” said Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at Scope Markets.”The lack of market reaction highlights how little investors believe the shutdown will matter for the medium-term outlook on growth or interest rates,” he added.A Senate vote is expected Friday on a House-passed resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21.In company news, Japanese beer titan Asahi fell more than one percent after a cyberattack that hit its ordering and delivery system this week forced it to stop production at some factories.Its shares have fallen around seven percent this week. Officials at the firm said they did not know when they would be back up and running.The positive mood on trading floors has also helped bitcoin regain some of its mojo, striking back above $120,000 for the first time since mid-August when it hit a record 124,515.- Key figures at around 1100 GMT -London – FTSE 100: UP 0.7 percent at 9,464.95 pointsParis – CAC 40: UP 0.3 percent at 8,079.64Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.1 percent at 24,431.87Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.9 percent at 45,769.50 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.5 percent at 27,140.92 (close)Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holidayNew York – Dow: UP 0.2 percent at 46,519.72 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1736 from $1.1720 on ThursdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3453 from $1.3446Dollar/yen: UP at 147.33 yen from 147.19 yenEuro/pound: UP at 87.25 pence from 87.17 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.5 percent at $60.76 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.5 percent at $64.37 per barrel

The Carrefour name has disappeared from storefronts in some Arab countries, with pro-Palestinian shoppers and activists hailing the shift as a victory for their boycott of brands perceived as being linked to Israel.The French multinational has long been in the crosshairs of Palestinian supporters, who accuse it of selling products from Israeli settlements and partnering with Israeli firms operating there.The group has denied operating in the settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.But in the past year Majid Al Futtaim, the group that operates the Carrefour franchise in the Middle East, has closed the brand’s supermarkets in Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.It has since reopened under the new name HyperMax, citing “growing demand for locally sourced products and services in a number of our markets”.It did not explicitly link the rebranding to the boycotts, and experts are divided over how much of a role they played in the closures.But pro-Palestinian shoppers have nonetheless claimed victoryHuda Ahmed, a 45-year-old mother of three, said she stepped into the Carrefour-turned-HyperMax store in Manama, Bahrain last week for the first time in almost two years.”I am glad they actually listened to their customers and disengaged from the Carrefour brand. Things can’t be business as usual with a genocide going on at our doorsteps,” Ahmed told AFP.”We still made sure not to buy the products that are on the boycott lists… but the company deserves credit for making the move,” she added.- ‘Broader scaling down’ -The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which began two decades ago, has accused Carrefour of “profiting from Israel’s illegal settlements” through its franchise partnership with Israeli retailer Electra Consumer Products and its subsidiary, supermarket chain Yenot Bitan.According to BDS, Yenot Bitan has stores in settlements and both firms are “directly involved in a number of projects fostering Israel’s illegal settlements enterprise”.It has accused Carrefour-Israel of supporting Israeli soldiers “partaking in the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza with gifts of personal packages”.It also demanded that Carrefour stop selling products from the settlements.Carrefour chief executive Alexandre Bompard has said previously that no Carrefour stores are operating in West Bank settlements and has denied having any “partisan or political ties”.The Israeli government accuses supporters of the BDS movement of being antisemitic.In Bahrain, which has ties to Israel, activists have held weekly protests and vigils for Gaza.According to a HyperMax employee in the country, foot traffic slowed noticeably after the start of the Gaza war, when the store was still operating under the Carrefour brand.”Almost all our customers stopped coming,” he said, requesting anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. Since the rebranding, “I am seeing more customers coming in, particularly Bahrainis and Arabs.”For M.R. Raghu, who heads the Marmore Mena Intelligence consulting firm, the Carrefour closures are part of a “broader scaling down of operations by the retailer, amid weakening financial health” as its stores also shut elsewhere in the world.And Majid Al Futtaim has maintained Carrefour franchises elsewhere in the Middle East, including in the Gulf’s two biggest economies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.- ‘Brand concerns’ -Ghassan Nasaif, a pro-Palestinian activist in Bahrain, called Majid Al Futtaim’s decision a “great victory” for the movement, saying “this is exactly what we were asking” from the group.Majid Al Futtaim saw its retail revenue, which includes Carrefour, drop 10 percent last year following a four percent decline in 2023, with the company citing “geopolitical tensions” affecting consumer sentiment, among other factors.In the first half of this year, retail revenues have softened one percent from the same period a year earlier.”Consumer demand is currently strong and growing across the Gulf, and the fact that the regional franchise holder, MAF, has been rebranding many Carrefour stores as HyperMax does seem to imply a link to boycott-related brand concerns,” according to Justin Alexander, director of Khalij Economics, a consulting firm.For Musab al-Otaibi, an activist in Kuwait, people have “no other weapon than boycotts” as the death toll climbs in Gaza. Bader al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University, called the Carrefour closures “a microcosm of a bigger story”. “It shows that the voices of people in the Gulf do matter… that there are ways to express yourself even if you’re in a restricted space,” he said.strs-aya/ds/smw/ser

A surge in tech firms helped Tokyo’s Nikkei lead most Asian equities higher on Friday as investors headed into the weekend on a broadly positive note, with US rate-cut hopes out-muscling concerns about a government shutdown.The rally across world markets this year has largely been fuelled by companies ploughing billions of dollars into all things artificial intelligence, and traders not wanting to miss out on the action.That has helped push the valuations of some of the biggest names to eye-watering levels — with US chip titan Nvidia topping $4 trillion — and several markets to record highs.This week has seen extra momentum after South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung and SK hynix said they had struck a preliminary deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI to supply chips and other equipment for its Stargate project.And on Friday, it was the turn of Japan’s Hitachi, which said it had joined into a strategic partnership with OpenAI to work on AI and energy, among other things.Hitachi jumped more than 10 percent, while other Japanese tech firms followed suit with Renesas up 7.3 percent, Sony gaining 2.3 percent and Advantest rising more than four percent. Tech investment giant SoftBank piled on more than three percent.The advance helped push Tokyo’s Nikkei 1.9 percent higher, while there were also gains in Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Wellington, Taipei, Jakarta and Manila.London, Paris and Frankfurt all rose in the morning.Hong Kong retreated after jumping more than four percent in the previous three trading days. Shanghai was closed for a holiday.The rally — which saw all three main Wall Street indexes to all-time peaks Thursday — has also been stoked by data in recent months pointing to a slowdown in the US labour market.That has led the Federal Reserve to cut borrowing costs and indicate more to come.The positive sentiment has overshadowed the standoff in Washington that has seen the government partially shut down, leading to the closure of some services and the likely delay of the release of key jobs figures later in the day.While the readings on non-farm payrolls (NFPs) is a major guide for the Fed when deciding monetary policy, analysts said the shutdown was unlikely to deter the bank from an expected second rate cut this month.”The general vibe is that the government shutdown could potentially shave $15–$20 billion off of US GDP, but it will largely be backfilled and therefore should have only a negligible lasting impact on economic activity,” said Pepperstone’s Chris Weston.”That said, there are reasons to think Trump’s threat to permanently furlough certain government workers could spill over into more of a market risk event.”Still, he added that the US government could still “reopen in time for the NFP and possibly even the (consumer price) reports to be released” before the next Fed policy meeting on October 29.A Senate vote is expected Friday on a House-passed resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21.In company news, Japanese beer titan Asahi fell more than one percent after a cyberattack that hit its ordering and delivery system this week forced it to stop production at some factories. Its shares have fallen around seven percent this week.Officials at the firm said they did not know when they would be back up and running.The positive mood on trading floors has also helped bitcoin regain some of its mojo, striking back above $120,000 for the first time since mid-August when it hit a record 124,515.- Key figures at around 0810 GMT -Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.9 percent at 45,769.50 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.5 percent at 27,140.92 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 9,464.95 Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holidayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1735 from $1.1720 on ThursdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3463 from $1.3446Dollar/yen: UP at 147.41 yen from 147.19 yenEuro/pound: UP at 87.19 pence from 87.17 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.9 percent at $61.01 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.8 percent at $64.61 per barrelNew York – Dow: UP 0.2 percent at 46,519.72 (close)

A damaging cyberattack on Japanese beer giant Asahi this week has halted shipments from its breweries and there is no resumption in sight, the company warned Friday, fuelling fears of shortages.Asahi Group, producer of Japan’s most popular beers, said Monday it had “experienced a system failure” owing to a cyberattack that forced the suspension of orders and shipments of various beverages — including its flagship Asahi Super Dry.”No immediate recovery of our system is in sight at the moment. Ordinary shipments remain halted,” a spokesperson, who declined to be named, told AFP on Friday.”Production is not directly affected (by the system dysfunction) but it has been halted because shipments are suspended.”The company said it was looking into the possibility of a ransomware attack after announcing in Monday’s statement that its local operations had been hit.The news is worrying for Japan’s ubiquitous convenience stores, who are major stockists of Asahi beer.A spokesperson for Seven & I Holdings, which operates the 7-11 convenience store chain, said it was preparing to put up notices to warn customers of the suspension, but added that the halt “had not yet caused major disruptions”.”We don’t expect (Asahi drinks) to disappear from all our stores at once, although it all depends on how sales will go at each of these outlets.”AFP visited several convenience stores and supermarkets in Tokyo Friday, all of which still had stock. Asahi Group’s shares are down almost seven percent from last Friday’s close. The attack comes after a cyberattack halted operations at Jaguar Land Rover’s British factories for almost a month.The Indian-owned automaker said on September 2 that it had been targeted by hackers, severely disrupting sales and production and forcing it to seek emergency funding.The firm announced on Monday that it would partially restart production.

Power-hungry data centres run hot, so one Chinese company is planning to submerge a pod of servers in the sea off Shanghai with hopes of solving computing’s energy woes.On a wharf near the city, workers were finishing off the large yellow capsule — a foray into alternative tech infrastructure that faces questions over its ecological impact and commercial viability.The world’s websites and apps rely on physical data centres to store information, with growing use of artificial intelligence contributing to skyrocketing demand for the facilities.”Underwater operations have inherent advantages,” said Yang Ye of maritime equipment firm Highlander, which is developing the Shanghai pod with state-owned construction companies.Undersea servers are kept at a low temperature by ocean currents, rather than the energy-intensive air cooling or water evaporation required by centres on land.The technology was trialled by Microsoft off the coast of Scotland in 2018, but the Chinese project, to be sunk in mid-October, is one of the world’s first commercial services of its kind.It will serve clients such as China Telecom and a state-owned AI computing company, and is part of a broader government push to lower data centres’ carbon footprint.”Underwater facilities can save approximately 90 percent of energy consumption for cooling,” Yang, vice president of Highlander, told AFP.Projects like this are currently focused on showing “technological feasibility”, said expert Shaolei Ren from the University of California, Riverside.Microsoft never built commercially on its trial, saying after retrieving its pod in 2020 that the project had been successfully completed.Significant construction challenges and environmental concerns have to be overcome before underwater data centres can be deployed on a mass scale, said Ren.In China, government subsidies are helping — Highlander received 40 million yuan ($5.62 million) for a similar 2022 project in Hainan province that is still running.- Technical challenges -“The actual completion of the underwater data centre involved greater construction challenges than initially expected,” said Zhou Jun, an engineer for Highlander’s Shanghai project.Built onshore in separate components before being installed in the sea, it will draw nearly all its power from nearby offshore wind farms.Highlander says that more than 95 percent of the energy used will come from renewable sources.The most obvious challenge in placing the structure under the waves is keeping its contents dry and safe from corrosion by salt water.The Chinese project addresses this by using a protective coating containing glass flakes on the steel capsule that holds the servers.To allow maintenance crews access, an elevator will connect the main pod structure to a segment that remains above the water.Ren from UC Riverside said laying the internet connection between an offshore data centre and the mainland was a more complex process than with traditional land servers.Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan have also found that sub-marine data centres can be vulnerable to attacks using sound waves conducted through water.- Ecological unknowns -Technical hurdles aside, the warming effect of underwater data centres on the surrounding water has raised questions about the impact on marine ecosystems.Andrew Want, a marine ecologist at the University of Hull, said the heat emitted could in some cases attract certain species while driving away others.”These are unknowns at this point — there’s not sufficient research being conducted yet,” he said.Highlander told AFP a 2020 independent assessment of the company’s test project near Zhuhai, in southern China, indicated that the surrounding water stayed well below acceptable temperature thresholds.However, Ren warned that scaling up centres would also scale up the heat given off.He stressed that “for megawatt-scale data centres underwater, the thermal pollution problem needs to be studied more carefully”.Offshore facilities can complement standard data centres, Ren suggested.”They’re probably not going to replace existing traditional data centres, but can provide service to some niche segments.”

Wall Street stocks finished at fresh records again Thursday as a US government shutdown dragged into a second day.President Donald Trump signaled he plans mass layoffs of US federal workers amid the stalemate in budget talks. A Senate vote is expected Friday on a House-passed resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21.Following an up day on leading bourses in Europe and Asia, US stocks dipped into negative territory during the session, but all three major US indices finished at records after ending the day in positive territory.Both the Dow and S&P 500 also finished at records on Wednesday, due in part to expectations the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates later this month.”Investors don’t really expect a shutdown to be concluded anytime soon, and as a result, the Fed will likely have to go to the more cautious approach, which means cut rates in October,” said Sam Stovall of CFRA Research.The shutdown is expected to delay the release of the September US jobs report, which was scheduled for Friday. Earlier, the trading day started off positively in Asia, with tech stocks surging as South Korea’s biggest chip firms agreed to supply chips and other equipment to OpenAI’s Stargate project for AI infrastructure. South Korea’s Kospi index climbed 2.7 percent to a record high, thanks to Samsung and SK hynix shares soaring to one-year highs after the firms signed a preliminary deal with the ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Tokyo rose, as did Hong Kong’s tech-heavy Hang Seng index. Shanghai was closed for a week-long holiday.The positive trend continued into European trading, with Europe’s tech companies also rising. Shares in ASML gained 4.5 percent, and STMicroelectronics and Schneider Electric adding more than two percent.Both Paris and Frankfurt stock markets finished the day up more than one percent, with automakers also rallying, while London dipped. Among individual companies, Tesla fell 5.1 percent despite reporting a seven percent jump in third-quarter auto deliveries, snapping a series of declines in recent quarters.Analysts attributed the uptick in sales to the September 30 expiration of a US electric vehicle tax credit, adding that they expect Tesla to struggle to maintain the sales momentum. Berkshire Hathaway fell 0.5 percent after announcing it will acquire Occidental’s chemical business, OxyChem, in an all-cash transaction for $9.7 billion. Occidental dropped 7.3 percent.- Key figures at around 2010 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.2 percent at 46,519.72 points (close)New York – S&P 500: UP less than 0.1 percent at 6,715.35 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 22,844.05 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.2 percent at 9,427.73 (close)Paris – CAC 40: UP 1.1 percent at 8,056.63 (close) Frankfurt – DAX: UP 1.3 percent at 24,422.56 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.9 percent at 44,936.73 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.6 percent at 27,287.12 (close)Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holidayEuro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1720 from $1.1732 on WednesdayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3446 from $1.3478Dollar/yen: UP at 147.19 yen from 147.07 yenEuro/pound: UP at 87.17 pence from 87.04 penceWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 2.1 percent at $60.48 per barrel2Brent North Sea Crude: DOWN 1.9 percent at $64.11 per barrelburs-jmb/jgc

G7 finance ministers pledged Wednesday to take aim at those who are continuing to step up purchases of Russian oil, since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.In a statement after a virtual meeting, officials from the Group of Seven advanced economies — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — agreed that it is time to “maximize pressure on Russia’s oil exports.”This would hit at revenue Moscow needs for the war.”We will target those who are continuing to increase their purchase of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine and those that are facilitating circumvention,” the ministers said in a joint statement.They added that they agreed on “the importance of trade measures, including tariffs” and import or export bans in efforts to cut off Russian revenues.The countries are also giving “serious consideration to trade measures and other restrictions on countries and entities that are helping finance Russia’s war efforts, including on refined products sourced from Russian oil.”The statement came after the United States indicated last month that it was ready to broaden tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil if the European Union takes similar moves.President Donald Trump, who dialed in to talks between the United States and EU officials, had raised the possibility of tariffs between 50 percent and 100 percent targeting oil buyers like China and India, according to an official.In September, the European Commission also said that it was working on potentially imposing tariffs on imports of Russian oil into the bloc, in the face of pressure from Trump.The US leader has demanded that Europe end energy imports from Moscow before agreeing to move forward with sanctions against Russia.The G7 ministers plan to meet again on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington this month.

Wall Street stocks rose again Wednesday, shrugging off the partial US government shutdown as major indices finished at records amid hopes for more Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.Both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at fresh records as investors focused on poor US employment data, which boosted expectations that the Fed could cut interest rates later this month.US government operations began grinding to a halt at 12:01 am (0401 GMT) Wednesday after Republicans and Democrats failed to break a budget impasse in Congress.The closure will see non-essential operations halted, leaving hundreds of thousands of civil servants temporarily unpaid, and many social safety net benefit payments potentially disrupted.But analysts note that shutdowns have not significantly weighed on markets due in part to the view that the negative impacts from closures can be reversed once the government reopens.”History reminds us that government shutdowns have typically been more headline-making than bottom-line impacting,” said CFRA Research’s Sam Stovall.Investors took note of a report from payroll firm ADP that showed the US private sector shed 32,000 jobs last month.”The market’s getting a little bit excited that this is something where the Fed can continue cutting interest rates,” said Tim Urbanowicz, chief investment strategist at Innovator Capital Management. “There’s this kind of middle ground where the data is not showing a lot of strength, but it’s not weak enough where people start getting concerned about recession.”Analysts said the weaker job market cements expectations that the Fed will cut interest rates twice more this year, after lowering borrowing costs last month for the first time since December.But investors are concerned the US government shutdown could prevent the release Friday of the key non-farm payrolls report — a crucial data point for the Fed on rate decisions.European markets were lifted by pharmaceutical shares after Pfizer was granted reprieve from Trump’s tariffs by agreeing to lower drug prices in the United States.Shares in British pharma giant AstraZeneca rose more than eight percent and GSK was up over six percent in London.Several US pharma names also rose, including Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, while Lithium Americas Corp. surged 23.3 percent after announcing it would grant the US government an equity stake as part of the restructuring of a loan from the Department of Energy.In Asia, Tokyo’s stock market sank, while Hong Kong and Shanghai were closed for holidays.- Key figures at around 2030 GMT -New York – Dow: UP 0.1 percent at 46,441.10 (close)New York – S&P 500: UP 0.3 percent at 6,711.20 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 22,755.16 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 1.0 percent at 9,446.43 (close)Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.9 percent at 7,966.95 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: UP 1.0 percent at 24,113.62 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.9 percent at 44,550.85 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: Closed for a holidayShanghai – Composite: Closed for a holidayEuro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1728 from $1.1734 on TuesdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.3476 from $1.3446Dollar/yen: DOWN at 147.14 yen from 147.90 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 87.04 pence from 87.27 penceWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.9 percent at $61.78 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 1.0 percent at $65.35 per barrelburs-jmb/ksb

President Donald Trump signaled Wednesday that he plans to push Chinese leader Xi Jinping on US soybean purchases when they meet, as American farmers grapple with fallout from his trade wars.”The Soybean Farmers of our Country are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.”I’ll be meeting with President Xi, of China, in four weeks, and Soybeans will be a major topic of discussion,” he added.Trump said last month that he would meet Xi on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea starting at the end of October. He also said that he would travel to China next year.The talks come after Washington and Beijing engaged in a tit-for-tat tariffs war earlier this year, imposing escalating duties on each other’s exports.While both sides have since agreed to de-escalate tensions, this has been a shaky truce with lingering effects.Trump on Wednesday reiterated plans to use some US tariff revenues to aid farmers, while taking aim at his predecessor Joe Biden for not enforcing an earlier trade pact with Beijing that involved a step up in farm purchases.Trump’s aggressive trade policies and resulting fallout have weighed on US farmers, including hitting export markets like China.The American Soybean Association (ASA) has urged Trump to prioritize soybeans in trade talks with Beijing.It warned in August that Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs are “shutting American farmers out of their largest export market going into the 2025 soybean harvest.”China is a top global buyer of soybeans, with the United States once being a major source for the world’s second biggest economy.But “the US has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20-percent retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to US tariffs,” ASA President Caleb Ragland said last week.”This has allowed other exporters, Brazil and now Argentina, to capture our market at the direct expense of US farmers,” he added in a statement.”The frustration is overwhelming,” he said.The first Trump administration provided aid to farmers too as his previous trade war gutted exports to what had been a massive market for US soybeans and pork, among other products.During Trump’s first presidency, retaliatory tariffs on the United States caused more than $27 billion in US agricultural export losses from mid-2018 to late-2019.