Live news: Chinese start-up beats US rivals with liquid methane rocket launch

North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Wednesday morning, days after threatening to shoot down US reconnaissance planes it accused of violating its airspace.

The missile was launched on a trajectory from near Pyongyang and travelled for about 600 miles before splashing down, according to South Korea’s military.

Japan’s defence ministry said the missile flew for about 74 minutes before falling outside the country’s exclusive economic zone, 155 miles west of Japan’s Okushiri island.

That would make it the longest flight time for any North Korean long-range missile. In March 2022, North Korea launched a Hwasong-15 ICBM that travelled for 71 minutes.

A China-based hacking group infiltrated the Microsoft email accounts of several western European government agencies, according to the software company.

In a blog post on Tuesday night, Microsoft said that in May, the China-based group known as Storm-0558 hacked email accounts of 25 organisations, including government agencies in Western Europe and their employees’ personal accounts.

Storm-0558 gained access through forged authentication tokens and remained undetected for a month. It said the group’s access has now been blocked.

The announcement comes as Western governments raise the alarm about the growing threat posed by Chinese cyber espionage groups. Last month, Jen Easterly, the US’s top cyber security official, said China’s capacity for sabotage constituted an “epoch-defining threat”.

Events: A UK parliamentary select committee grills water industry bosses as fears grow over the financial viability of the country’s privatised suppliers. The two-day Nato summit concludes in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the defence bloc’s main decision-making body. Leaders will also attend a Nato-Ukraine Council meeting. US president Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet to discuss bilateral matters. South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol visits Poland.

Economic data: The Bank of England publishes results of the annual stress test of the UK banking system alongside its Financial Stability Report. Russia and Spain announce June inflation figures.

Corporate news: Grafton, JD Wetherspoon, PageGroup, Ten Entertainment Group and Tullow Oil issue trading updates.

A Chinese company has achieved the world’s first successful launch of a liquid methane-fuelled rocket, beating US rivals SpaceX and Blue Origin.

LandSpace said its Zhuque-2 rocket took off from a launch site in the Gobi desert on Wednesday morning.

Liquid methane fuels are considered a cleaner and safer alternative to the kerosene mix now in use. SpaceX’s methane-fuelled Raptor engines suffered a catastrophic failure during a test in April.

LandSpace, a Beijing-based start-up, has received backing from the Chinese affiliates of US venture capital firms such as Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital.

“The launch mission was a complete success,” the company said.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand kept interest rates unchanged for the first time in nearly two years at its meeting on Wednesday, as one of the world’s most hawkish central banks slows its monetary tightening.

The official cash rate was held at 5.5 per cent, having been raised 12 times from 0.25 per cent since August 2021. The rate should “remain at a restrictive level for the foreseeable future”, the central bank added.

The RBNZ was one of the earliest among advanced economy central banks to begin raising rates as the world recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. It repeatedly warned that persistent inflation meant higher interest rates were required.

Asia-Pacific currencies rose on Wednesday, as traders awaited US inflation data that is expected to show price rises moderated in June.

The yen gained 0.6 per cent to trade at ¥139.46 per US dollar, close to its strongest level in nearly a month, while the renminbi strengthened 0.3 per cent to Rmb7.1853.

The Australian dollar rose 0.5 per cent to A$0.672.

The US consumer price index data scheduled for Wednesday is expected to show a rise of 3.1 per cent in June, according to a Reuters poll, in the slowest rate of inflation since March 2021.

That has bolstered expectations that the Federal Reserve will stick with a pause in its monetary tightening cycle.

Events: In South Korea, the trial begins of former Samsung executive Choi Jin-seok, accused of stealing sensitive information to help set up a chip factory in China. Tokyo District Court is due to hand down a ruling on Shinichi Ueno, former head of advertising agency ADK, over the 2020 Olympic Games bribery scandal. Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe delivers a speech on the economy, while the Reserve Bank of New Zealand holds a monetary policy review. 

Corporate results: India’s Tata Consultancy Services issues a first-quarter trading update. 

Economic data: Japan machinery orders data for May to be released by the cabinet office. The country’s producer price index reading is also expected. Malaysia issues industrial production and retail sales figures, while India releases the latest consumer price index and industrial production numbers. The Philippines releases May foreign investment data and New Zealand announces visitor arrivals for that month.

Markets: Futures contracts pointed higher in Hong Kong and Tokyo on Wednesday morning. The S&P 500 added 0.7 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.5 per cent on Tuesday, ahead of inflation data that traders will look to for clues about the future path of US interest rate rises.

US president Joe Biden discussed bilateral relations with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and praised his decision to support Sweden’s bid to join Nato, in a meeting at the military alliance’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The leaders discussed their defence and economic priorities, and shared interests such as their support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, and “preserving stability in the Aegean,” according to the White House.

The Turkish leader said the meeting with Biden was a “first step” in repairing strained relations between the countries. “Our meetings prior to this were mere warm-ups, but now we are initiating a new process.”

Salesforce notched its biggest one-day gain in four months after the software group announced price rises for some of its products, the first increase in seven years.

The San Francisco-based company said it would raise list prices of its products, which include Sales Cloud and Tableau, in August by an average of 9 per cent.

Shares closed 3.9 per cent higher on Tuesday, their biggest jump since mid-March. That extended a rally that has left them up about two-thirds since the start of the year.

Salesforce has taken steps to focus on profits in an effort to appease activist investors. The group called a truce with Elliott Investment Management in March.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a rally in Vilnius that “Ukraine will make the alliance stronger” after Nato leaders agreed in a summit communiqué to grant Kyiv an invitation to join.

Zelenskyy said that he arrived in Vilnius “with faith in the decision” for Ukraine to be offered to join the defence bloc, “with faith in our partners, with faith in a strong Nato that does not hesitate, does not waste time and does not look back at any aggressor”.

Speaking to a roaring crowd on Tuesday evening, Zelenskyy said that he believes Ukraine’s fight is in defence of all of Europe.

UK postal workers have backed a deal on pay and changes to working practices at Royal Mail, concluding a dispute that had deeply disrupted mailing services and led to one of the biggest crises in the 507-year-old organisation’s history.

The Communication Workers Union said on Tuesday that over three-quarters of the 67 per cent of members who voted had supported its deal agreed with Royal Mail in April.

The announcement follows 18 days of strike action during the final quarter of 2022, amid a dispute that centred on Royal Mail’s plans to adapt working practices in response to growing demand for online shopping deliveries and competition from the likes of Amazon.