According to RTHK, HKET and Sina Finance, Asian equities fell broadly at midday Wednesday as fresh US airstrikes on Iran drove oil higher and touched off a global bond selloff, with technology and chip names leading declines. Brent crude extended gains for a second day and the US 10-year Treasury yield hit an intraday 4.81%, near a three-year high. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 was among the hardest hit, trading at 64,304.44, down 2.89% or 1,910.90 points as of 12:34 CST, after a morning session that saw it shed 1,742 points. SoftBank slumped 6.08%, Tokyo Electron fell 3.78% and Advantest lost 2.70% as semiconductor shares sold off. Seoul's KOSPI led regional losses, down 3.87% or 264.88 points at 6,570.92 as of 12:34 CST, with Samsung Electronics off 4.21% and SK Hynix down 4.37%. South Korea's August consumer inflation rose to 3.1%, below expectations. Hong Kong stocks pared some losses by the lunch break, with the Hang Seng Index closing the morning down 0.96% at 25,087.22 and the Hang Seng Tech Index off 1.54%. Bilibili fell more than 3%, while Kuaishou, Baidu and NetEase dropped over 2%; Xiaomi bucked the trend, adding 1.09% to HK$27.86. NIO slid 5.22%, gold miner Zhufeng Gold lost more than 5%, and China International Capital Corp fell over 6%. Alibaba eased 1.81% to HK$108.40. Taiwan's TAIEX traded at 46,256.36, down 1.47% or 692.36 points as of 12:34 CST, as TSMC slipped 2.05% to NT$2,390 and the index fell more than 700 points intraday, with TSMC briefly breaking below NT$2,400. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite was down 0.82% at 3,947.26 at the midday close, the Shenzhen Component fell 1.71% and the ChiNext lost 2.18%, with the CSI 300 off 1.25%; more than 4,300 stocks declined.

OpenAI said in a late-night legal filing that Apple’s trade secret theft lawsuit is baseless and intended to hinder its hiring of new employees and delay its efforts to develop competing technology. According to ChainCatcher, OpenAI argued that many of the allegations stem from Apple’s poor internal offboarding process and described the case as chaos created by Apple itself. OpenAI also noted that CEO Sam Altman previously sat with Apple then-CEO Tim Cook at a White House tech leaders dinner.

A trader identified as 0x89d...e43 opened a 25x leveraged long position on 18,587 ETH after being inactive for seven months, with the position valued at $44.85 million. According to Odaily, the trade was monitored by Lookonchain.

MTR Corp's Tuen Mun Area 16 Station Phase 2 property development tender closed at 2:00 PM today with one bid submitted by an unidentified consortium, according to ETNet. The site, on Tuen Mun Town Lot No. 576 beside the Tuen Mun River channel and the under-construction MTR Tuen Mun South Extension Area 16 Station, is planned as a mixed-use project with retail space, community facilities and a public transport interchange. The residential gross floor area cap is 2.69 million square feet, with about 5,510 units expected, while the commercial gross floor area cap is 335,000 square feet. Market estimates put the project value at HK$9.682 billion to HK$12.102 billion, or about HK$3,200 to HK$4,000 per square foot.

The growing use of drones in warfare is making armored vehicles more important in battle, according to Bloomberg. Patria Oyj Chief Executive Officer said the company is seeing rapid growth in orders for such carriers.

Polymarket’s Balance of Power market now gives Democrats a 51% chance of sweeping both chambers of Congress in November, with 89% odds of taking the House and 51% for the Senate. The odds were 26% a year ago and 45% one month ago, according to BeInCrypto, as Trump’s approval ratings slide and gas prices hit a fresh record.

Thailand’s dividend-paying banks and developers tied to the data-center boom are attractive for investors looking to avoid selling pressure in other markets, according to Bloomberg.

A fresh selloff in U.S. Treasuries has pushed the yield gap between U.S. and Chinese 10-year bonds back toward an all-time high, according to Bloomberg. The widening spread raises the risk of capital outflow from China.

Meta Platforms is moving its internal communications from Google Chat to Slack, marking a significant shift in how one of the world's largest technology companies manages day-to-day workplace communication

A fake Claude desktop app is being used to spread RevStealer, malware that steals crypto wallets, passwords and browser data.

Anthropic, AI Agent, LLM, Claude, Token, Fable 5.1 is here. Claiming to be the world's strongest, Anthropic is also getting involved in "cached price" issues. According to Jinse Finance, cached prices have dropped by 75%.

Astra is the first OpenAI model formally classified as Critical under the company's Preparedness Framework — the highest cybersecurity capability designation

Singapore is reconsidering a key pillar of its stablecoin policy, opening the door for certain foreign-issued and jointly issued tokens to potentially qualify under its regulatory framework.

BTC has climbed back above and moved away from the 200-day moving average. The market is generally underweight and short positions are concentrated, which is characteristic of the early stages of a bull market. The current situation is more like the late stages of a bear market. A true bull market will require clear signals from dollar liquidity, fiscal policy, and the US Treasury market.

Systemic Risks and a Four-Layer Defense System for Artificial Intelligence, AI Agents, and AI Programming (Jinse Finance), Taming the Illusions in AI Programming: From Engineering Governance to System Determinism.

Perpetual Contracts, DeFi, Options, Perp DEX, Cryptocurrency, Crypto Options: Is Now the Window of Opportunity? Jinse Finance: What are the real changes right now? Is this truly a turning point for crypto options?

Prediction markets are no longer the domain of just two companies; crypto exchanges and on-chain protocols are all vying for a piece of the action.

By voluntarily giving up the freedom to sell cryptocurrency, they gained the freedom not to be forced to sell it.