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China’s Ant highlights distinction between NFTs and cryptocurrencies By Reuters

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's Ant Group sought to draw a distinction on Wednesday between non-fungible tokens (NFTs) available on its platforms and cryptocurrencies currently subject to a crackdown by Beijing, after users expressed confusion. Ant, the Jack Ma-controlled fintech group, put on sale two NFT-backed app images via its payment platform Alipay and the items quickly sold out on Wednesday. Ant's adoption of non-fungible tokens caused confusion on social media where they were linked to virtual currencies such as bitcoin, which have the same underlying technology. "Alipay selling NFT products. Isn't that illegal transaction?"...

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Japan’s Kioxia, formerly Toshiba Memory, aims for Sept IPO – report By Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Kioxia Holdings Corp, the world's second largest maker of flash memory chips and formerly known as Toshiba Memory, plans an initial public offering as early as September, weekly financial magazine Diamond reported on Thursday. Kioxia, which is controlled by private equity firm Bain Capital, last year shelved a plan to offer up to 334.3 billion yen ($3 billion) in shares, which would have been Japan's largest IPO of 2020. That postponement came amid trade frictions between China and the United States that the Japanese chip maker worried would cut it off...

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Asian shares tread water, markets eye U.S. inflation signals By Reuters

By Swati Pandey SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares marked time on Thursday, with China nudging lower, while the U.S. dollar held below an 11-week high as investors reassessed U.S. Federal Reserve statements on inflation and looked to upcoming data for direction. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.1% to 695.2 points, off a one-month trough of 685.12 touched earlier this week. Japan's Nikkei rose slightly to 28,905.5, while Chinese shares were in the red with the blue-chip CSI300 index off 0.3%. On Wall Street, the Nasdaq closed at a record high on...

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Asian banks’ trials with ‘tokenised securities’ stuck in silos – industry body By Reuters

By Alun John HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian financial regulators should do more to support large-scale trials of "tokenised securities", an industry body said on Thursday, since banks and technology firms' current experiments are stuck in different silos, hindering the pace of change. Tokenised securities are products like shares and bonds whose proof of ownership is recorded on a distributed ledger, the technology that underpins other digital tokens such as bitcoin. Many banks are exploring the concept, hoping it will help them price and settle transactions more efficiently. But trials so far involve "three or four...

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Emotions run high as Hong Kong residents snap up final edition of Apple Daily By Reuters

By Sharon Abratique and Pak Yiu HONG KONG (Reuters) -Hong Kong residents rushed in the early hours of Thursday to snap up copies of the final edition of pro-democracy newspaper Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Daily, which was forced to end its 26-year run after it became embroiled in a national security crackdown. Emotions ran high as supporters of the popular newspaper, which has faced an unrelenting squeeze since its owner and staunch Beijing critic, Jimmy Lai, was arrested under the security law in August 2020, queued for their last copies just after midnight. "I couldn't sleep well for...

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U.S. to Block Some Solar Goods Made in Xinjiang Region By Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is poised to bar some solar products made in China’s Xinjiang region, according to several people familiar with the matter, marking one of the Biden administration’s biggest steps yet to counter alleged human rights abuses against China’s ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority. Factories in Xinjiang -- where advocacy groups and a panel of United Nations experts say Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been subjected to human-rights abuses and forced to work against their will -- produce roughly half of global supply of polysilicon, a material critical for solar panels and semiconductors. China...

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Around 30 trillion yen of Japan’s additional budget since 2020 unused -Nikkei By Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has still not spent around 30 trillion yen ($270.25 billion), or roughly 40% of its additional fiscal budget compiled since the coronavirus outbreak last year, the Nikkei financial daily reported on Thursday. Budgets allocated for public works and campaigns to help the tourism and restaurant industries went unused, the report said, highlighting the difficulty of carrying out pandemic relief programme. ($1 = 111.0100 yen) ...

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BHP looks to double base metals exploration budget, executive says By Reuters

By Jeff Lewis TORONTO (Reuters) - BHP Group plans to almost double exploration spending for base metals within five years, its Chief Technical Officer Laura Tyler said on Wednesday, after shifting its exploration headquarters to Canada. The world's biggest listed miner is expected to log bumper profits in August on booming prices for iron ore, but the pipeline for new projects is thin. BHP's board is expected to make a call on its Jansen potash project in Canada as the miner looks to raise its exposure to new economy minerals including copper and nickel, seen as...

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Rising inflation puts Bank of England on the spot By Reuters

By William Schomberg LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England will say on Thursday whether it is worried about a recent jump in inflation, which broke above the central bank's 2% target and looks set to climb higher as Britain reawakens its economy from its coronavirus slumber. With global policymakers grappling with economic overheating risks against the backdrop of huge stimulus programmes, Governor Andrew Bailey and other BoE officials have mostly said Britain's faster price growth is likely to prove transitory. But last week, the U.S. Federal Reserve began to move towards reducing its pandemic stimulus...

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Record inflation pressures keep FTSE 100 subdued By Reuters

By Shashank Nayar and Amal S (Reuters) -London's FTSE 100 ended lower on Wednesday as economic data showed inflation pressures hit record levels this month, while gains in travel and commodity-linked stocks were offset by a slide in consumer staples. The preliminary reading of the HIS Markit/CIPS UK Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) pointed to one of the strongest monthly improvements in business activity since 1998. The FTSE 100 index inched lower 0.2%, while the domestically focused mid-cap index shed 0.1% Dollar-earning consumer staples stocks, including Unilever (LON:ULVR), Reckitt Benckiser Group, British American...

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