at the impact on gas prices. hello and welcome to asia business report. i'm mariko oi. us commerce secretary gina raimondo has arrived in china late last night, making her the latest senior american official to visit the country. she'll be there for four days, meeting chinese officials and american business leaders in beijing and shanghai. but tensions have been high between the world's two largest economies with secretary raimondo saying she wont "pull any punches" on her trip but intends to be practical. for example, as the us and its allies blocked china's access to advanced chips, beijing has restricted shipments from american chip company micron, and fined us firm minz for doing what china called

"uapproved statistical work". eric zheng is the president of the american chamber of commerce in shanghai. he'll be meeting secretary raimondo during her visit. certainly, i think the us—china bilateral relationship is probably the number one concern for us companies operating in china right now. a lot of uncertainties. so we are very happy that secretary raimondo is visiting china as we speak. what issues will you be asking to raise when you meet her, especially given when she says she won't be pulling her punches, but she intends to be practical? certainly, i think us—china are the two largest economies in the world

and the two countries need to figure out a way to work together on mutually beneficial opportunities. we still believe that china is a very strategic market for us companies and many of our companies are here for the long—term and they try to find a way to grow here. at the same time, the two countries are dealing with issues as well and i think certainly the us side has recently issued an executive order on export controls on a few sectors such as semiconductors and ai and quantum computing. so i think secretary raimondo probably will be discussing with the chinese side how to deal with these sensitive sectors. so the populist saying is having this small yard and tall fences just to understand the boundaries. so these are the areas that off limits to us businesses.

china has halved the stamp duty on stock trading as of today, from its current rate of 0.1%. it's the first such cut since 2008, and it's expected to generate large transactions when trading resumes later this morning. the country's stock market performance has been quite weak this year especially as the economic recovery from the pandemic is weaker than expected. china's property sector's debt crisis also continues to weigh on the stock market sentiment. gas prices in europe have been volatile in recent weeks because of worries that workers at liquefied natural gas or lng plants in australia could go on strike. the lng plants are operated by two companies, woodside energy and chevron. together they supply about 10 percent of the world's lng. woodside says it has reached an agreement with its unions... but things are still uncertain at chevron. prices eased after the woodside agreement, how worried

well, i think it's important to have some context here. we've seen a few hundred workers in a very remote part off the coast of western australia, essentially bring gas traders to their knees in europe, causing tens of billions of dollars in gains and losses over the last week. and as you say, traders are very much on edge because after the withdrawal of russian supply last year, there's very little redundancy left in the system to absorb another shock. but as you say, the woodside situation is now resolved, so 10% of world supply is no longer at risk. it's now moved down to just 7% and it's important to understand this is a very local australian issue and this is actually a kind of normal way that union negotiations play out. so what we are likely to see now is we've seen the chevron workers vote last friday. there'll be another vote coming up today and that'll kick off a 30 day window in which they are allowed to start striking. now, in the woodside

scenario, they never got to actually strike woodside ultimately and the unions came to an agreement before that happened. the risk of this evolving into strikes here is more likely. that's because chevron is likely to take a different, perhaps tougher approach. these can also become very emotive negotiations. and so it's more likely we do actually see some industrial action take place here. but again, it's not something to actually be too concerned about in europe and asia if you're a gas buyer, because initial industrial action is very low level, it's small disruptions, it's workers refusing to load helicopters or work for half an hour a day, give or take, and that's unlikely to impact production in a material way. and we do think it's ultimately likely to see a resolution before it gets to the point where you actually have severe, prolonged outages, which will impact energy security in both asia and europe.

the speech by us federal chairmanjerome the speech by us federal chairman jerome powell. the speech by us federal chairmanjerome powell. ihe the speech by us federal chairmanjerome powell. he told chairman jerome powell. he told central bankers _ chairman jerome powell. he told central bankers around _ chairman jerome powell. he told central bankers around the - central bankers around the world that the us will continue to raise interest rates at quote, if appropriate, as inflation remains too high. is currently just over 3% which inflation remains too high. is currentlyjust over 3% which is higher than the first 2% target. mr powell set interest rates could rise a further and stay higher for longer which will disappoint many investors who were hoping his speech might signal the end to the us having its highest interest rate in more than two decades. he cited the effects of russia's ongoing invasion of ukraine as one of the factors keeping prices elevated globally. a few things we're paying attention to this week. country garden is one of china's largest property developers and on tuesday, it'll report earnings for the first six months of the year. the company is under scrutiny because of a severe downturn in china's property market

and it warned earlier this month it expects a 7.6 billion dollar loss. also on tuesday, we will get earnings from chinese electric vehicle maker, neo. nio is viewed as a competitor to tesla in the growing e v market, but it's seen a slowdown in sales recently. on thursday, the focus shifts to manufacturing in china, with data for august due. india will also release gdp data for the april to june quarter. which might give clues to how asia's third largest economy is recovering from the pandemic. artificial intelligence is changing many aspects of our lives, including the way we work. social media network linkedin says workers should expect theirjob responsibilities to change by at least 65% by 2030, because of new technologies like ai. linkedin�*s chief economist told us, in the asia pacific region,

change is happening faster than in the rest of the world. globally, we've seen a nine time increase in members adopting ai skills. but if i look at, say, singapore, it's a 20 time increase, or if i look at india, it's 14 time increase, australia is 11 time increase. so there's something going on in the asia—pacific region where we see a faster adoption of ai skills and i suspect that it probably has a lot to do with the workforce embracing a little bit more directly the potential of ai. we know that executives in the asia—pacific region can really kind of anticipate where it might bring benefits. but for those of us who aren't coders, day in and day out, ai

skills could also be understanding how to maybe use something like chatgpt to help us make our tasks a little bit quicker, become more productive. so i might say i need to draught a letter, an email to somebody. what should i include in that if i want to ask them this and organise that? and so you may have the case where you're actually using ai technology to help you get over that blank page hurdle of starting fresh. and ai is something that could help you make decisions faster. it can make you achieve better decisions because you might be pulling in more information. so ai is not simplyjust coding, it's also thinking about, �*how do i use this as a tool to achieve my own productivity in my own outcomes at work?�* there's so many ways that one can upskill. i would say start, of course, with like thinking about updating your skill sets in your profile to make sure they reflect the skills that you do have. there are a lot of courses available. we've just actually added a free course on generative ai skills and that's free for anyone through 2025.

so there's a lot of ways for you to kind of get started. and just getting familiar with al skills or generative ai skills right away, just by taking courses online. and then of course, there's always the opportunity of engaging your employer and asking them to help invest in you as a worker. let's go now to china's property sector because in the last half an hour after grant announced that his last four and a half billion dollars in the first six months of this year. that is about half of what it lost during the same period last year of course it lost more than $80 billion of last two years. that's it for the show thinks watching. bbc news bringing you different

stories from across the uk. for english heritage the last four years have been a labour of love in this part of derbyshire. a team of specialist workers has been busy. it's meant to have a roof on it, and without the roof on it, you get a lot more deterioration of the stone and of the historic plasterwork. so we're very keen to keep as much of the original plaster work and to repair the stonework and make the site accessible for people to come and find out the whole story of their hard work. what really stands out when you walk around is the restoration of the decorative white plaster walls. they show ornate pictures and date back 400 years. around 500 people a day have been visiting the building since it reopened. but like the fourth road bridge, the work never really stops. well, the place will continue to deteriorate. you know, it's an old building and it's not getting any younger like the rest of us. so there will be conservation work to be done in in the future.

but if we'd done anything, if we hadn't done anything, it would have deteriorated much more quickly and we wouldn't have been able to allow the public in because itjust wasn't safe. for more stories from across the uk, head to the bbc news website. bbc news bringing you different

stories from across the uk. with these, these and these — there are more options than ever to pedal around the capital. london's original bike hire scheme was launched by former mayor borisjohnson in 2010, but the numbers using so called boris bikes are not what they were. figures suggestjourneys made between january and july were down by a third on the same period last year and are at their lowest for a decade. and some believe it's the price. last september, tfl changed the annual subscription and the fee for single journeys. i would usually have fourjourneys for the cost of £2.50 per a journey. i went to hire a bike and found it was 1.65 perjourney. 0thers point to the rise of rival hire bikes. reducing usage of the santander scheme is the competition from all the doctors hire bikes. there are now four main doctors hire bikes. among these riders, though ease and comfort is key. i actually don't i have my own bike any more because it got stolen so many times. i

i've used the boris bikes. those bikes are heavy. in response, tfl said it's working to make cycling more accessible and is increasing the number of e—bikes in the scheme. for more stories from across the uk, head to the bbc news website. hello and welcome to sportsday — i'm 0lly foster. timed to perfection, ingebrigtsen storms to gold on the final day of the world championships. there's no catching max verstappen as he equals the formula one record for race winsin a row. and darwins double delight, 10 man liverpool come from behind to beat newcastle.

hello and welcome along to the programme. after nine days of competition the world athletics championships have drawn to a close in budapest. sebastian coe, the president of world atheltics, says he can't remember a better atmosphere at any previous championships and he said the city would make a good 0lympic host one day. here are some of the winners on the final day, norway's jakob ingebrigtsen made up for his silver in the 1,500 metres as he successfully defended his 5,000 metres title. on a stifling evening in budapest with temperatures around 30 degrees celsius, ingebrigsten timed his finish brilliantly to overtake spain's mohammed katir at the line. the kenyanjacob krop took the bronze medal. it's a great honour and a big achievement to win a world championship. and i have a great team around me. help me mentally and physically to

prepare myself for this race. but for