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A Swiss court has decided to hear a landmark climate case pitting residents of a tiny Indonesian island being swallowed by rising sea levels against cement giant Holcim, NGOs helping the islanders said Monday.”For the first time ever in Switzerland, a court has admitted climate litigation brought against a large corporation,” said a statement from NGOs including Swiss Church Aid (HEKS). The case is part of a wider international movement seeking to hold major companies responsible for climate damage that imperils millions, especially in developing countries.Oil companies have typically been the main target, but activists are hoping the Swiss case will highlight the role of the cement industry, which is responsible for around eight percent of annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by human activity.Four residents of Pari island filed the case in January 2023, demanding  compensation from the world’s largest cement firm and help to fund protection measures on the island.Two of the islanders travelled to Switzerland for a September hearing at the court in Zug, where Holcim is headquartered, to determine whether it would consider the complaint.- ‘Gives us strength’ -“The court has now made its ruling: the complaint must be admitted in its entirety,” the NGOs said.Both sides received the ruling in advance of Monday’s publication and they can still appeal against it.Holcim said in a statement it had “anticipated this as a potential outcome and intend to appeal”.Environmentalists have said 11 percent of the 42-hectare (104-acre) island of Pari has disappeared in recent years, and it could be completely under water by 2050.One of the plaintiffs, Asmania, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, hailed Monday’s decision.”We are very pleased. This decision gives us the strength to continue our fight,” she said in the NGO’s statement.- Mangroves needed -Holcim has repeatedly stressed it is committed to reaching net zero by 2050, but has argued that lawmakers should decide how those goals are met.”Holcim remains convinced that the courtroom is not the appropriate forum to address the global challenge of climate change,” it said.The NGOs said the Zug court had rejected that argument.Holcim has not owned any cement plants in Indonesia since 2019, but the islanders argue that the company shares the blame for rising temperatures and sea levels.Environmentalists say Holcim ranks among the world’s 100 biggest corporate CO2 emitters, and so bears significant responsibility for climate-related loss and damage.The four plaintiffs are seeking 3,600 Swiss francs ($4,500) each from Holcim for damages and for protection measures such as planting mangroves and constructing breakwater barriers.HEKS has said the amount is equivalent to 0.42 percent of the actual costs — in line with estimates that Holcim is responsible for 0.42 percent of global industrial CO2 emissions since 1750.In addition, the plaintiffs are demanding a 43 percent reduction in Holcim’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a 69 percent reduction by 2040.

Former Malaysian leader Najib Razak lost a bid Monday to have his jail term changed to house arrest, a setback ahead of a separate verdict this week tied to the country’s 1MDB scandal.Najib, 72, serving a six-year jail term for corruption linked to the plunder of Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, which sparked probes in several countries. His lawyers had argued that the purported existence of an order by Malaysia’s former king, called a “royal addendum”, granted him permission to serve the rest of his current sentence at home.But on Monday, Judge Alice Loke Yee Ching Loke disagreed, saying the royal addendum was not a valid order.Therefore “the court cannot issue an …order to direct a house arrest”, Loke told the Kuala Lumpur High Court. “There is no legal provision for house arrest in Malaysia,” the judge added. “The judicial review is dismissed.”Najib was tried and originally sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in July 2020, but the term was later halved by a pardons board. The 1MDB scandal led to investigations in more than eight countries, including the United States, Switzerland, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, resulting in billions paid back in settlements.On Friday, Najib faces yet another verdict in a separate trial linked to the financial scandal that led to his defeat in the 2018 elections.

From fleets of private trailers to personal chefs and sprawling entourages, Bollywood stars’ “obnoxious” demands are driving up production costs and putting a strain on the Indian film industry’s finances, insiders say.Bollywood has long been unpredictable at the box office and the pandemic compounded problems, but producers argue that today’s losses stem less from creative failure and more from top artists’ runaway expenses.”It is not so much about production cost — it is more about star fees,” says producer Ramesh Taurani, best known for the successful Race action franchise.Actors, filmmakers say, increasingly arrive on set with a dozen-strong entourage — including makeup artists, hairdressers, stylists, gym trainers and assistants — all billed to production.Stars are paid hefty fees of up to $22.18 million per film but additional requests for first-class travel, five-star hotels, multiple private trailers and work-shy hours have become routine.”Expansive support teams, premium travel and luxury accommodations often inflate budgets without proportionate creative impact,” said veteran producer Mukesh Bhatt. “The kind of demands stars make is obnoxious.”Distributor and trade analyst Raj Bansal added: “One actor usually comes with 10 to 15 staff members.”Earlier, actors wouldn’t mind sharing one vanity van. Then they decided to give one vanity van each to a big star — and demand went on increasing.”A single trailer hired for the duration of a film shoot can cost as much $18,000. For some actors, insiders say, demanding more has become a status symbol.- ‘Self-respect’ -Bollywood has always been considered high-risk, producing more flops than hits, but producers say the balance has tipped sharply as star-driven costs spiral beyond what box office returns can sustain.The fragile model was shaken after the pandemic, when streaming platforms bought films at inflated prices. When those deals dried up, producers faced a painful course correction as income plunged but actors’ demands stayed elevated. And that problem continues today.Competition has also intensified. “Audience behaviour has matured, streaming platforms have broadened horizons and regional cinema has elevated creative standards,” says Bhatt.”Yet, alongside this progress, rising production costs — particularly talent-driven budgets — have introduced a significant strain. It is not the films that falter, but the economics that lose balance.”Actor-filmmaker Aamir Khan slammed stars for burdening producers with these costs.”You earn in crores (tens of millions of rupees),” Khan said, in a September interview with the YouTube show Game Changers. “Where’s your self-respect?”- ‘Power of storytelling’ -Industry insiders say actors’ demands also have a cascading effect, as stars seek to exceed each other’s perks.”A measured approach will allow us to redirect resources toward what truly defines cinema — the power of storytelling,” said Bhatt.Producers have pushed for partnership-style compensation models.”When a film thrives, every contributor should benefit,” Bhatt said. “When it struggles, the weight should not rest solely on the producer, who shoulders risk from the very beginning.”The 2024 science fiction action film Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (“Big Mister, Little Mister”), starring Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff, reportedly cost about $42 million. After poor ticket sales, producers were reported to have mortgaged property to cover debts.There have been exceptions.Actor Kartik Aaryan waived his fee for the 2023 action-comedy Shehzada, which tanked at the box office.”If your star value and the entire project’s value gives profit to the entire team, I think then the math adds up,” Aaryan said. “If it doesn’t, then you should take a cut.”Some producers argue that the industry must confront its own excesses.”If the star fee and entourage is affecting your budget, then don’t take stars,” says actor-writer-producer Viveck Vaswani.”I have made 40 films with 40 newcomers and have prospered. I took SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) when nobody wanted him. I cast Raveena Tandon when nobody knew her.”Vaswani, a longtime friend of Khan, notes that “SRK has no entourage cost, he pays his own”, as does Akshay Kumar.”Lots of them do that, they don’t burden the producers,” he said. “If you think your star is stronger than your script, you are wrong.”

Even as the United States is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence, Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market.Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the United States.These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini – whose inner workings are fiercely protected.In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba to DeepSeek, allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their needs.Globally, use of Chinese-developed open models has surged from just 1.2 percent in late 2024 to nearly 30 percent in August, according to a report published this month by the developers’ platform OpenRouter and US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.China’s open-source models “are cheap — in some cases free — and they work well,” Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China told AFP.One American entrepreneur, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their business saves $400,000 annually by using Alibaba’s Qwen AI models instead of the proprietary models.”If you need cutting-edge capabilities, you go back to OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, but most applications don’t need that,” said the entrepreneur.US chip titan Nvidia, AI firm Perplexity and California’s Stanford University are also using Qwen models in some of their work.- DeepSeek shock -The January launch of DeepSeek’s high-performance, low-cost and open source “R1” large language model (LLM) defied the perception that the best AI tech had to be from US juggernauts like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.It was also a reckoning for the United States — locked in a battle for dominance in AI tech with China — on how far its archrival had come.AI models from China’s MiniMax and Z.ai are also popular overseas, and the country has entered the race to build AI agents — programs that use chatbots to complete online tasks like buying tickets or adding events to a calendar.Agent friendly — and open-source — models, like the latest version of the Kimi K2 model from the startup Moonshot AI, released in November, are widely considered the next frontier in the generative AI revolution.The US government is aware of open-source’s potential.In July, the Trump administration released an “AI Action Plan” that said America needed “leading open models founded on American values”.These could become global standards, it said.But so far US companies are taking the opposite track.Meta, which had led the country’s open-source efforts with its Llama models, is now concentrating on closed-source AI instead.However, this summer, OpenAI — under pressure to revive the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit — released two “open-weight” models (slightly less malleable than “open-source”).- ‘Build trust’ -Among major Western companies, only France’s Mistral is sticking with open-source, but it ranks far behind DeepSeek and Qwen in usage rankings.Western open-source offerings are “just not as interesting,” said the US entrepreneur who uses Alibaba’s Qwen.The Chinese government has encouraged open-source AI technology, despite questions over its profitability.Mark Barton, chief technology officer at OMNIUX, said he was considering using Qwen but some of his clients could be uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with Chinese-made AI, even for specific tasks.Given the current US administration’s stance on Chinese tech companies, risks remain, he told AFP.”We wouldn’t want to go all-in with one specific model provider, especially one that’s maybe not aligned with Western ideas,” said Barton.”If Alibaba were to get sanctioned or usage was effectively blacklisted, we don’t want to get caught in that trap.”But Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, said there were no “salient issues” surrounding data security.”Companies can choose to use the models and build on them…without any connection to China,” he explained.A recent Stanford study published posited that “the very nature of open-model releases enables better scrutiny” of the tech.Gao Fei, chief technology officer at Chinese AI wellness platform BOK Health, agrees.”The transparency and sharing nature of open source are themselves the best ways to build trust,” he said.

Buried in the reddish soil of southern China lies latent power: one of the largest clusters of crucial rare earths is mined around the clock by a secretive and heavily guarded industry.The hills of Jiangxi province are home to most of China’s rare earth mines, with the materials used in a wide range ofproducts including smartphones and missile guidance technology.The flourishing industry is closely protected by Chinese authorities and media access is seldom granted.In a rare visit to the region last month, AFP journalists were trailed and monitored by minders who declined to identify themselvesCompanies did not accept requests for interviews.Business has been booming: the number of rare earth processing points in China observed by the US Geological Survey jumped from 117 in 2010 to 2,057 by 2017. Most of the 3,085 nationwide recorded by the USGS today are clustered in the hills of Jiangxi.Locals there told AFP thatone rare earths mine was maintaining near-constant operations.”It’s busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” a resident in the town of Banshi said.Nearby, construction work was getting started for the day on a vast new industrial park housing facilities including rare earth processing sites.The bustling mining region is the result of a decades-long push by Beijing to build up its might in the strategic sector.Those efforts paid off this year, with a tentative truce in a trade war with the United States reached when China relaxed stringent export controls on rare earths.Washington is now racing to establish alternative supply chains, but experts warn such efforts will take years.In a sign of deepening concern among other Western governments, the European Union announced new measures this month to reduce the bloc’s dependence on China for securing the critical minerals.The bloc said it would earmark nearly three billion euros ($3.5 billion) to support projects in mining, refining and recycling vital materials, and proposed the creation of an EU supply hub — the European Centre for Critical Raw Materials.- Heavy metal -“The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths,” former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in a 1992 speech.Since then, China has taken advantage of its natural reserves — the largest of any country — to dominate processing and innovation in the field.The country’s rare earths industry is concentrated in two main hubs.One is the Inner Mongolia region’s Bayan Obo mining district on the edge of the Gobi Desert, which is rich in “light” rare earths used for magnets in everyday items.The other hub, around the city of Ganzhou in Jiangxi, specialises in “heavy” rare earths — harder to extract but more valuable because of their use in heat-resistant magnets, fighter jet engines, missile guidance systems and lasers.The rugged hills surrounding Ganzhou are home to the world’s largest mining and processing operations of the strategic “heavy” elements, including dysprosium, yttrium and terbium.And in the county-level district of Longnan alone, USGS counted 886 such locations, accounting for 31.5 percent of Jiangxi’s total.An AFP team in Longnan saw rows of large rare earths processing plants in an industrial district adjacent to that dense smattering of extraction sites.- ‘Moving mountains’ -Heavy rare earths are formed over millions of years, as rainfall weathers igneous rocks, breaking them down and leaving elements concentrated near the surface.Jiangxi’s gentle slopes, high rainfall and natural stone make it a prime location for such elements.Mining methods in the region have evolved throughout the decades.Authorities have criticised highly destructive approaches and cracked down on what they call “chaotic extraction” since the early 2010s.One method — termed “moving mountains” — was described in 2015 by China’s top industry and technology regulator as “first cutting down trees, then clearing weeds and finally stripping away the topsoil, causing irreparable damage”.Unlicensed mining has been drastically reduced over time.Large signs in rural areas now warn against illegal extraction of rare earth resources. Others offer cash rewards for reporting such actions.The industry has been largely consolidated into two huge state-owned companies.On a Ganzhou street dubbed “Rare Earth Avenue”, construction workers bustled to complete a sprawling new headquarters for one of those giants, China Rare Earth Group.But the province’s hills still bear the scars of bygone mining practices, with bare patches of red soil visible where vegetation has struggled to regrow.

Japan unveiled a five-year goal on Saturday for business projects totalling $19 billion in Central Asia as Tokyo vies for influence in the resource-rich region.The announcement came after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hosted an inaugural summit with the leaders of five Central Asia nations — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — in Tokyo.Japan “set a new target of business projects at a total amount of 3 trillion yen in 5 years in Central Asia”, a joint statement said after Takaichi wrapped up her meeting with the five leaders. Like the United States and the European Union, Japan is drawn by the region’s enormous, but still mostly unexploited, natural resources in a push to diversify rare earths supplies and reduce dependence on China.”It is important for Central Asia, blessed with abundant resources and energy sources, to expand its access to international markets,” the statement said.The leaders agreed to promote cooperation that can help the “strengthening of critical minerals supply chains”, while also pledging to achieve economic growth and decarbonisation.They also held separate summits with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen this year.The summit was seen as important for Japan to increase its presence in the region, said Tomohiko Uyama, a professor at Hokkaido University specialising in Central Asian politics. “Natural resources have become a strong focus, particularly in the past year, because of China’s moves involving rare earths,” Uyama told AFP on Friday, referring to tight export controls introduced by Beijing this year.The leaders agreed on Saturday to expand cooperation regarding “Trans-Caspian International Transport Route”, a logistics network connecting to Europe without passing through Russia.Efforts towards “safe, secure, and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” were also agreed.Tokyo has long encouraged Japanese businesses to invest in the region, although they remain cautious.Xi visited Astana in June, and China  — which shares borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — has presented itself as a main commercial partner, investing in huge infrastructure projects.The former Soviet republics still see Moscow as a strategic partner but have been spooked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Other than rare earths, Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer, Uzbekistan has giant gold reserves and Turkmenistan is rich in gas. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also opening up new mineral deposits.  However, exploiting those reserves remains complicated in the harsh and remote terrains of the impoverished states.

Resurgent artificial intelligence shares lifted the Nasdaq Friday for a second straight session while the yen retreated despite a Bank of Japan interest rate hike. The tech-forward Nasdaq piled on 1.3 percent after a similar gain Thursday following blowout earnings from chip company Micron Technology.But several leading AI names including Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Google parent Alphabet rose Friday with Micron, which soared for a second straight session.Large tech names are “kind of carrying the market in today’s session,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare. Those gains “helped stabilize a market that was kind of acting a little squirrely over the past week,” he added.Stocks have been choppy in recent weeks amid unease over the massive spending spree on AI infrastructure. But Micron’s results helped reignite the AI stock trade.The Dow and S&P 500 also advanced on a day in which most leading European and Asian bourses also rose.Also Friday, the Bank of Japan hiked interest rates to a 30-year high.The unanimous vote to lift the main borrowing rate to 0.75 percent from 0.5 percent came hours after official data showed the country’s core inflation rate held steady in November but was still well above policymakers’ two percent target.The bank began hiking rates from below zero in March last year as figures signaled an end to the country’s “lost decades” of stagnation, with inflation surging.However, the dollar jumped about 1.3 percent following comments from BoJ governor Kazuo Ueda that left some traders wondering about what comes next.”Cautious comments on the rate outlook from BoJ Governor Ueda at his press conference have undercut the yen.” said a note from Scotiabank.Russia’s central bank said it was cutting its benchmark interest rate to 16 percent as the country’s economy sags under the financial burden of the Ukraine offensive and Western sanctions.The Bank of England cut rates Thursday, when the European Central Bank left eurozone borrowing costs unchanged.Shares in Oracle jumped nearly seven percent after TikTok said it had signed a joint venture deal with investors that would allow the company to maintain operations in the United States.The deal will see Oracle take a 15-percent stake in the joint venture with private equity fund Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, an Emirati state-owned investment fund for artificial intelligence technologies.But Nike tumbled 10.5 percent after reporting lower quarterly earnings as the sports giant continues to be dogged by poor sales in China.- Key figures at around 2115 GMT – New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 48,134.89 (close)New York – S&P 500: UP 0.9 percent at 6,834.50 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 1.3 percent at 23,307.62 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 9,897.92 (close) Paris – CAC 40: FLAT at 8,151.38 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.4 percent at 24,288.40 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 49,507.21 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.8 percent at 25,690.53 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 3,890.45 (close)Dollar/yen: UP at 157.59 yen from 155.55 yen on ThursdayEuro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1719 from $1.1722Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3386 from $1.3381Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.55 pence from 87.60 penceBrent North Sea Crude: UP 1.1 percent at $60.47 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.9 percent at $56.66 per barrelburs-rl/sbk/jmb/sla

A French court on Friday rejected the state’s request to suspend Shein’s site in France as “disproportionate” after the Asian e-commerce giant removed illicit products sold on its platform.The French government said it would appeal the ruling.French authorities had requested the ultra-fast-fashion giant’s site be blocked for three months after weapons, banned medications and childlike sex dolls were found on the platform.The authorities asked that the platform only be reopened if it applied strict new measures to prevent a repeat of the offences.The Paris judicial court acknowledged a “serious harm to public order”, but found their sale of the items in question had been “sporadic” and noted that Shein had removed the products.The court nevertheless issued an “injunction” to Shein not to resume selling “sexual products that could constitute pornographic content, without implementing age-verification measures”. The state’s request that Shein “at a minimum” maintain the suspension of its marketplace, which hosts products sold by third-party vendors, was not granted. “Only certain products on the marketplace were identified, in these proceedings, as manifestly illegal and harmful, while the ‘fr.Shein.com’ platform offers several hundred thousand items for sale,” said the court ruling.Despite the court’s decision, Shein’s marketplace is not expected to fully reopen right away, but gradually, its lawyers said.The company has acknowledged difficulties in implementing an effective age filter for pornographic products.As a result, the adults-only sexual category would remain closed for the time being, as is the case worldwide since the uproar over the sale of childlike sex dolls on the platform broke out in France in November.In a statement to AFP, the French government said that it would appeal the court decision.”Convinced of the systemic risk of the model linked to Shein, and at the request of the prime minister, the government will appeal this decision in the coming days,” said the statement.A number of other e-commerce giants have also faced pressure on the European stage in recent months. Brussels in November requested formal information from Shein, which could lead to probes and even fines. But that does not in itself suggest the law has been broken, nor is it a move towards punishment.Earlier in December, EU finance ministers agreed to impose a three-euro ($3.5) duty on low-value imports into the bloc from July 2026 to help tackle a flood of small parcels ordered via sites such as Shein. European retailers argue they face unfair competition from overseas platforms, which they claim do not always comply with the European Union’s stringent rules on products.

Stock markets pushed higher on Friday as expectations for lower US interest rates continued to cheer investors.”Stock markets around the globe saw another day of strong gains on the back of Thursday’s post soft US inflation rally,” said IG analyst Axel Rudolph.US consumer inflation slowed unexpectedly in November, climbing 2.7 percent from a year ago, fuelling investor hopes that the US Federal Reserve will have room to cut rates further next year.”Equity traders were desperate for a trigger to ‘buy the dip’ and they got it from the latest CPI release,” said Trade Nation analyst David Morrison.The data “sparked the bounce-back as traders decided that the better data would give the Fed room to cut rates sooner and further than previously forecast”.Morrison called this reasoning “complete garbage” as the data was partial in November due to the US government shutdown and completely lacked October.New York Federal Reserve President John Williams told CNBC that Thursday’s reading showing lower inflation was likely “distorted” due to data-collection problems during the government shutdown.Equity markets, particularly on Wall Street, have come under pressure in recent weeks as concerns mount about stubborn US inflation even as the jobs market weakens.Moreover investors have also started worrying about when, if ever, investors will see returns on the colossal amounts of cash pumped into artificial intelligence.But blockbuster earnings from chip firm Micron Technology, released after the market closed on Wednesday, helped soothe nerves over a tech bubble and helped the tech-heavy Nasdaq close with a gain of 1.4 percent on Thursday.The Nasdaq gained another 1.1 percent on Friday. Shares in Micron Technology surged by 5.5  percent, after gaining more than 10 percent on Thursday.Shares in the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks, which includes AI chip maker Nvidia and Google parent company Alphabet, gained 0.6 percent overall.”Stocks in the tech sector have been boosted by yesterday’s bumper earnings from Micron,” noted Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at trading group Scope Markets.- Russia cuts key interest rate -The yen fell against the dollar on profit-taking after the Bank of Japan on Friday hiked, as expected, its own borrowing costs to a three-decade high, hours after data showed prices had held steady.Russia’s central bank said it was cutting its benchmark interest rate to 16 percent as the country’s economy sags under the financial burden of the Ukraine offensive and Western sanctions.The Bank of England cut rates Thursday, when the European Central Bank left eurozone borrowing costs unchanged.Germany’s central bank on Friday predicted a slower recovery for Europe’s biggest economy following three years of stagnation.Shares in Oracle jumped nearly seven percent after TikTok said it had signed a joint venture deal with investors that would allow the company to maintain operations in the United States.The deal will see Oracle take a 15-percent stake in the joint venture with private equity fund Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, an Emirati state-owned investment fund for artificial intelligence technologies.- Key figures at around 1630 GMT – New York – Dow: UP 0.7 percent at 48,264.98 pointsNew York – S&P 500: UP 0.9 percent at 6,832.26New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 1.1 percent at 23,254.82London – FTSE 100: UP 0.6 percent at 9,897.92 (close) Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.3 percent at 8,171.30 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.4 percent at 24,295.95 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 49,507.21 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.8 percent at 25,690.53 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 3,890.45 (close)Dollar/yen: UP at 157.48 yen from 155.63 yen on ThursdayEuro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1718 from $1.1721Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3374 from $1.3378Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.61 pence from 87.62 penceBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.5 percent at $60.10 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.6 percent at $56.32 per barrelburs-rl/sbk

Global stock markets mostly advanced on Friday as traders reacted to central bank activity and easing concerns over the technology sector.Equity markets, particularly on Wall Street, have come under pressure in recent weeks amid questions about when, if ever, investors will see returns on the colossal amounts of cash pumped into artificial intelligence.But blockbuster earnings from chip firm Micron Technology helped soothe nerves over a tech bubble and the tech-heavy Nasdaq close with a gain of 1.4 percent on Thursday.The Nasdaq added 0.5 percent as trading got underway Friday. Shares in Micron Technology rose by 4.3 percent.Shares in the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks, which includes AI chip maker Nvidia and Google parent company Alphabet, gained 0.3 percent overall.”Stocks in the tech sector have been boosted by yesterday’s bumper earnings from Micron,” noted Joshua Mahony, chief market analyst at trading group Scope Markets.”As we close out a week that has seen a huge amount of data and central bank announcements, there is an expectation that we start to see volumes and volatility ease off from here.”- Russia cuts key interest rate -However, Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare, said trading volume should be huge today driven by the expiration of options.”Today is a quadruple witching expiration day, which involves the expiration of stock index futures, single-stock futures, stock index options, and single-stock options,” he said.As traders make purchases or sales to cover options volatility could spike.”Participants are also waiting to see if yesterday’s AI-related bounce following Micron’s (MU) stellar report has legs,” added O’Hare.Below-forecast US inflation data Thursday also boosted hopes that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates next month.The yen fell against the dollar on profit-taking after the Bank of Japan on Friday hiked, as expected, its own borrowing costs to a three-decade high, hours after data showed prices had held steady.Russia’s central bank said it was cutting its benchmark interest rate to 16 percent as the country’s economy sags under the financial burden of the Ukraine offensive and Western sanctions.The Bank of England cut rates Thursday, when the European Central Bank left eurozone borrowing costs unchanged.Germany’s central bank on Friday predicted a slower recovery for Europe’s biggest economy following three years of stagnation.Shares in Oracle gained more than five percent as trading got underway in New York after TikTok said it has signed a joint venture deal with investors that would allow the company to maintain operations in the United States.The deal will see Oracle take a 15-percent stake in the joint venture, with private equity fund Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, an Emirati state-owned investment fund for artificial intelligence technologies.- Key figures at around 1330 GMT – New York – Dow: UP 0.3 percent at 48,099.15 pointsNew York – S&P 500: UP 0.4 percent at 6,800.44New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 0.5 percent at 23,124.16London – FTSE 100: UP less than 0.1 percent at 9,844.71 Paris – CAC 40: DOWN less than 0.1 percent at 8,145.04Frankfurt – DAX: UP percent at 24,239.34Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.0 percent at 49,507.21 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.8 percent at 25,690.53 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.4 percent at 3,890.45 (close)Dollar/yen: UP at 157.23 yen from 155.63 yen on ThursdayEuro/dollar: UP at $1.1733 from $1.1721Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3379 from $1.3378Euro/pound: UP at 87.70 pence from 87.62 penceBrent North Sea Crude: UP 0.7 percent at $60.21 per barrelWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.7 percent at $56.39 per barrelburs-rl/jj