us markets hit new record highs, extending friday's rally. we find out why, and why now? and the british high street shop that has found a new lease of life after covid. hello and welcome to asia business report. our top story this hour begins in the us, where the stock market has continued its rally on monday. the s&p 500 and the dowjones industrial average both notched new record highs, building off friday's massive gains. from new york, erin delmore has the latest. for the dow, a new benchmark — the index traded above 38,000. that's a first. the tech heavy nasdaq, for its part, ended the day up

more than 3/10 of a percent. this is what they call a bull run. the market's been on the upswing since october 2022, and it's thanks to a few tailwinds. among them, an outperforming tech sector and a resilient labour market. the federal reserve has a role too. so far it's been able to cool inflation without tipping the economy into a recession. that's called a soft landing and it's buoying wall street. stocks are rallying in anticipation of interest rate cuts that the fed has signalled this year, which would let interest rates fall from a 22—year high. when interest rates go down, it makes it cheaper for businesses and individuals to borrow money. so spending increases and usually that makes stock prices go up. meanwhile, it's a different story for the chinese stock markets, which have been struggling in the new year. chinese premier li qiang pledged to take forceful and effective action to support market confidence. shares in mainland china and in hong kong have been hovering at their lowest points in as many years. this comes despite somewhat upbeat signals at the end of last year. for more on what we can expect from china, let's speak to moody's analytics economist, harry murphy cruise.

2023, it wasn't the year that officials had hoped for. it's been shaky. it's been uneven, that recovery. and so really, we're now seeing that flow through into equity markets. we've seen those big sell offs across china stocks. ultimately, investors are hoping to see the economic recovery pick up through this year, with officials still reluctant to put that stimulus in, we're seeing them pull out from those markets. and harry, what's expected to happen going forward? i mean, the leadership says that they'll do what they can to prop up the market. yeah, definitely. i think officials are kind of being pulled in two directions here. so on the one hand, you've got this economy that, as i say, is pretty desperate for some extra support and some stimulus. but then on the other hand, you've got officials who are very conscious and, you know, very keen to avoid the mistakes that they've made in the past.

so, you know, if you look at previous downturns in china — officials, they've spent massively to support the economy — you know, the global financial crisis, a great example. they spent massively on infrastructure and through the real estate market. china was very successful in that. china really pulled the rest of the global economy up through that crisis. but it comes with those consequences, you know, very, very costly. we've seen that in the blow out in local government debt. it can inflate markets, particularly in real estate, which obviously we're living with the consequences of that. it can also lead to this big investment in quite unproductive assets and overcapacity, which ultimately pulls down growth in the future, and it's just unsustainable. so those are the two dynamics that officials are having to navigate. ultimately, we think it'll probably land somewhere in between. it's not going to be the big bazooka spending of the global financial crisis. but ultimately we will need to see officials step in to try to support the economy this year, and we'll likely see that coming out of the two sessions in march.

turning to another large asian economy, japan. checks are being carried out on a second boeing aircraft model following the midair blow out of a door panel on one of its planes earlier this month. us regulators grounded more than 170 of the plane model in question following the incident. on sunday, the agency said airlines should inspect older boeing models with the same door design. alaska and united airlines say inspections have already started. united airlines says it expects to lose money in the first quarter of the year due to the grounding of the boeing fleets. a planned merger between sony and one of india's biggest entertainment group zee entertainment has been scrapped. the $10 billion dollar merger, which was first announced two years ago, would have combined combine more than 75 television channels, film assets and two streaming platforms. sony says conditions of the merger had not been met, but there have been reports of a disagreement over leadership. zee entertainment says it could

take legal action against sony. in the coming hours, its central bank will move to decide on whether or not to raise interest rates something it hasn't done for two decades. the easy monetary policy has led to a weak yen, which is great for exports but bad for consumers, especially as inflation is going up. kelvin wong, a senior market analyst at 0anda has been watching this closely. he told me whyjapan he told me why japan expects to keep rates on hold. if you look at the current situation right now injapan in the last two decades, we are facing this persistent deflationary spiral. but however, if you look at the couple of months of inflation, especially demand fresh food and energy, started to stabilise in the last 1a

months with the december cpi, ex energy holding close to a a1—year high at 3.7%. so actually, we think fundamentally that the bank ofjapan to keep on maintaining its short term interest rate. but however, they are very likely that they will still maintain the status quo, given the fact that to start, turning to cryptocurrencies, the company behind the crashed terra and luna tokens has filed for bankruptcy in the us. terraform labs�* tokens collapsed in may, losing a0 billion of their value and contributing to the so called "cryptocrash" of 2022. our business reporter katie silver has more on the story. terraform labs is based in singapore in its collapse has been a long time coming. the company had the terra stable

coin called stable because it was maintaining a constant $1 price but it along with its sister token luna collapsed almost two years ago when it failed to maintain that $1 pic. those two crypto currencies lost around a0 billion dollars and the fallout hit the wider crypto market. some investors lost their life savings. it is found that the originally from south korean man was arrested in montenegrin after interval issued a warrant for his arrest and a report in the us has recently delayed the trial against him while it waits for him to be extradited. in the latest twist in turn according to these court filings from the company has between 100 and 500 million assets and liabilities and terraform labs says it will make all financial to employees and vendors but despite filing for the bankruptcy protection it says it is not over yet. terraform labs wants to continue to expand its offerings and web three. something being dubbed the future of the internet. h&m has dropped a campaign

for school uniforms following accusations of sexualising young children. it had shown two primary school aged girls under the slogan that said, "make those head turn in h&m's back to school fashion." the clothing retailer has apologised and has pulled the advertisement in australia where it went live. shops on the uk's high streets, which have struggled with fewer vistors since the pandemic, have shuttered their doors. now, many empty units are being filled by businesses which started online known as pop up shops. dougal shaw reports. a morning pep talk before they meet the customers. these entrepreneurs all run successful online businesses. now they're getting their first taste of high street retail on london's world famous carnaby street. for clothes it's so important to try things on and see them in real life. so being in store is an amazing experience to give to our loyal customers.

i work with discarded balloons, turning them into fashion, accessories and homeware. meeting customers in a space like this has been great. the feedback is amazing. totally boosting my confidence. more and more pop up shops like these are filling retail spaces that fell vacant during covid as lockdowns accelerated the trend towards online shopping. this shop was empty six weeks ago. it's now full of brilliant creatives from across london who are learning how to do their own shops, re—energizing our high streets and making them better for everyone. this project is supported by the mayor of london's office, but some entrepreneurs have seen a business opportunity in satisfying this demand for a pop—up spaces. pop—up club has run more than 25 shops like this one across the uk since 2017. this latest one in victoria, central london, took over a space left vacant by a chain of tea retailers. we go into empty spaces, we share out collaboratively, and they have 30 to 40 different artists or makers in one space and make it affordable and accessible for them.

we call this trend online to offline or 020. and what we're finding is that a lot of these retailers that started their lives purely online are now actually benefitting the high street by opening physical shops. such as the demand for pop up spaces. there is even a kind of airbnb platform for them run by another business called appear here. it offers space in all kinds of places, from shopping centres and outdoor markets to warehouses. the hope with all of these pop—ups is that online entrepreneurs will get a taste for face to face retail and so become the next generation of high street shop owners. from seeing the way a pop—up works, i definitely think i'll have my own shop in the future. dougal shaw, bbc news. and that's it for this edition of asia business report. thanks for watching. this is sophia fileen. and so is this. and this is her, too.

all three sculptures are based on sophia, an 11—year—old slave girl baptised at lancaster priory in 1799. people come in and they do ask the question, you know, why? and the minute that you say these are part of ourjourney in addressing the history that we have in connection with transatlantic slavery, people go, "oh, well, lancaster was once the fourth—biggest slave port in the country. in 2020, the priory was targeted with graffiti about its links to the trade. they've deliberately kept it visible today. i think it is really important that we are telling stories about the past. it's something that we want to acknowledge. we don't want to hide it. we want to be honest about it. staff from the facing the past arts project have been involved with the sophias and other initiatives across lancaster. we've been looking at improving the education of our primary- and secondary school pupils.

we've looked at improving the slavery walk. - we've been looking at - whether or not there should be permanent new monuments. hey, i'm zoph with the catch up. tonight — storm isha causes chaos, reese witherspoon gets icy and a rough landing. we start with storm isha, which is causing chaos across the uk. thousands of people are still without power after heavy rain and winds of up to 99 miles per hour. scotland, northern ireland, north—west england and wales have been hit and some in remote areas have been warned they might not have power until tuesday. it's also caused travel disruption for lots of people,

including toby, who was in scotland for his stag—do. i'm in edinburgh waverley station outside the caledonian sleeper, which was supposed to be taken back down. so we're ready for an extended stag—do on the sleeper itself tonight. you can keep up with the latest on this on the bbc news website or app. and reese witherspoon has defended her choice to eat snow. yeah, you did hear that, right. she tried to make what she called a choco—ccino. no idea either. fans warned her it isn't safe to eat, but she insisted it was fine. i'm going to be honest, though, i have it in snow before and i do find it crunchy and fresh, i think it's fine, butjust don't eat it if it's yellow. time now to leave you with 10 seconds of relieved passengers landing at gatwick. as they had to land in crazy winds on the way

back from ibiza. and yet i fully would have clapped when that plane landed. let's just normalise it now. i don't think it's that cringe. i think it's fine. you're all caught up now. see you later. hello and welcome to sportsday —

liverpool extend their lead at the top of the english premier league. the fee for president calls for harsher punishments in the fight to tackle racism. ten shots off the lead going into the weekend rory mcilroy pulls off a remarkable comeback in the dubai desert classic. starting with the english premier league with liverpool extending their lead to five points league with liverpool extending their lead to five points after a four know when away at bournemouth after a goalless first half of the missed high wings on the english south courtjurgen klopp pushed on with two goals from darwin nunez and a couple from giotto.

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