Spot gold has risen more than $50 intraday, trading at $4,076.73/oz, up 1.24%.

South Korea's Defense Ministry says it will train 500,000 drone operators.

Hong Kong stocks at the midday close: HSI fell 1.87% and the Hang Seng Tech Index dropped 3.21%. Storage, semiconductors, optical communications and lithium battery names led declines; pork and game-software sectors were among few gainers. Large-cap moves: Sunny Optical (02382.HK) down over 12%, Zhipu (02513.HK) down over 10%, SMIC (00981.HK) down over 6%, CATL (03750.HK) and Lenovo Group (00992.HK) down over 5%, BYD (01211.HK) and Alibaba (09988.HK) down over 4%, Baidu (09888.HK) down over 3%; NetEase-S (09999.HK) up over 1%. Newly listed stocks: 02272.HK up 195%, 01956.HK up 87%, 09630.HK up 76%.