australian mining workers make moves towards a strike. we look at the impact on gas prices. hi there. welcome to asia business report with me, mariko oi. the us commerce secretary has arrived in china late last night, making her the latest senior american to visit the country. she will be there for four days, meeting chinese officials and business leaders in beijing and shanghai. secretary raimondo says that she intends to be practical. tensions have been high between the world's two biggest economies. eric erithung is the president of the chamber of commerce and he

will meet secretary raimondo. he told me what it is local businesses at the moment. the us—china bilateral relationship is probably the number one concern for us companies operating in china right now. a lot of uncertainty. 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 will not be pulling her punches but she intends to be practical? certainly, i think us and 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 popular saying is having the small yard and tall fences just to understand the boundaries. so, these are the areas that are off—limits to us businesses. we wa nt we want to bring you some breaking news because china's property china evergrande — its shares have started trading in hong kong and they are down by

about 83, 84%. they were suspended in march 2022 after becoming basically the poster child of china's property sector's debt crisis and recently the company told us that it lost more than $80 billion over the last two years. the company also announced earlier this morning that it lost $4.5 billion in the first six months of this year alone. the first six months of this yearalone. but the first six months of this year alone. but that is actually half of what it lost during the same period last year. so, things are getting — i guess — slightly better, but still, it is the worlds most property developer. it is believed that it had at one point a debt worth about $300 billion, and china's property sector still remains in a huge crisis, and it now includes others, of course, like the country's largest private developer country garden which will be reporting its latest result tomorrow. so, we will be watching that as well, but breaking news this allah —

shares in evergrande, after being suspended for about 18 months, they have started trading this morning but down by about 83— 84% at the open. and this news comes as china's csi and this news comes as china's c51 300 is and this news comes as china's csi 300 is up at the open because the government announced it would halve the stamp duty on stock trading today from its current rate of 0.1%. it was expected to generate large transactions when trading starts and that is what we are seeing at the moment. of course, the country stock market performance has been quite weak this year, especially as the economic recovery from the pandemic has been a lot weaker than what economists had expected. gas prices in europe have been really volatile in the recent week 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% of the world lng. woodside said it has reached an agreement with unions but things are still uncertain at chevron. the head of research at credit suisse put the situation in context. i think it is important to have some context here. we have seen a few hundred workers in a very remote part of the coast of western australia essentially bring gas traders to their knees in europe, causing tens of tens of billions of dollars in gains and losses over the last week. as you say, traders are very much on edge because after the withdrawal of russian supply last year there is 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 the longer at risk.

it has now moved down to just 7%. local australian issue, and this is actually the kind of normal way that union negotiations play out. so, what we are likely to see now is we have seen the chevron workers vote last friday. they will be another vote coming up today, and that will kick off a 30—day window in which they are allowed to start striking. 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 is because chevron is likely to take a different, perhaps tougher, approach. this can also become very emotive negotiations, and so, it is more likely we do actually see some industrial action take place here, but, again, it is not something to actually be too concerned about in europe and asia if you are a gas buyer because initial industrial action is very low level. it is small disruptions.

it is workers refusing to load helicopters or work for half—an—hour in the day, give or take, and that is unlikely to impact production in a material way, and we think it is ultimately likely to see a resolution before it gets to the point of severe, prolonged outages which will impact energy security in both asia and europe. artificial intelligence is changing many aspects of our lives, including the way we work, and social media network linkedin, workers should expect theirjobs to change by 65% by 2030 because of the new tech by ai. the linkedin chief economist told us in the asia—pacific region change is happening faster than the rest of the world. globally, we have seen a 9x increase in members adopting ai skills, but if i look at, say, singapore, it is a 20x increase, or if i look at india it is a i4x increase.

australia is a iix increase. there is something going on in the asia—pacific region where we see a faster adoption of ai skills. and i suspect this has a lot to do with the workplace embracing a little bit more directly the potential of ai. we know that executives in the asia—pacific region can really kind of anticipate the way it might bring benefits. 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 draft a letter, an e—mail to somebody. what should i include in that if i want to ask them this and organise that? so, you may have a case where you are actually using ai technology to help you get over that blank page hurdle of starting fresh, and ai is something that can help you make decisions faster.

it can make you achieve better decisions because you might be pulling in more information. so, ai is not simply just coding. it is also thinking about how do i use this as a tool to achieve my own productivity and my own outcomes at work? there are so many ways that one can up skill. i would say start with 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 have just actually added a free course on generative ai skills, and that is free for anyone through 2025. so, there is a lot of ways for you to kind of get started in just getting familiar with al skills or generative ai skills right away, just by taking courses online. then, of course, there is always the opportunity of engaging your employer and asking them to help invest

in you as a worker. before we go — let's remind you of breaking news this allah because shares in evergrande, china's property giant which has become a poster child of the country's property sector debt crisis, its shares have started trading this morning. they are currently down by 83 — 84%. shares were suspended last march after it was revealed they had a debt of around $300 billion. that was the estimate that a lot of analysts were talking about and recently we found out that it lost more than 80 billion over the last two years and just lost $4.5 billion in the first six months of this year. that is it for the show. thank you so much for 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. the team of specialist workers has been busy. it is 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 were very keen to keep as much of the original plasterwork and to repair the stonework and make the site accessible for people to come and find out the whole story of hardwick. what really stands out when you walk around is the decoration of the decorative white walls. they show ornate pictures and date back 400 years. around 500 people a day have visited it since it reopened, but like the forth road bridge the work never really stops. well, the place will continue to deteriorate. you know, it is an old building and it is not getting not getting any younger, like the rest of us, so there is conservation work to do in the future,

but if we had not done anything it would have deteriorated more quickly and we would not have been allowed to let the public in because itjust was not safe. for more stories from across the uk, head to the bbc news website. with fees, fees and of these, there are more options than

ever to peddle around the country. london's original bike hire scheme was launched by 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 one third and are at their lowest in a decade and some believe it is the price. last september, tfl change the subscription and fee for single journeys. i usually had fourjourneys for a cost of £2, 50p a journey. i went to hire a bike and it was 165 perjourney. 0thers argue to the rise of rival hire bikes. reducing usage of the scheme is the competition from the higher bikes. there are now form hire bikes. and among these riders ease and comfort is key. i actually don't have my own

bike anymore because it got sold so many times. those bikes are heavy. in response, tfl said it is working to make cycling more accessible and is increasing the number of either bikes in the scheme. for more stories across the uk, head to the bbc website. hello and welcome to sportsday. i'm 0lly foster. timed to perfection, ingebrigtsen storms to gold on the final day of the world athletics championships. there's no catching max verstappen as he equals the formula i record for race wins in a row. and darwin's double delight, ten—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 athletics, says he can't remember a better atmosphere at any previous championships and he said the city would make a good 0lympic host. here are some of the winners on the final day, norway's jakob ingebrigtsen made up for his silver in the 1500 metres as he successfully defended his 5000m title. on a stifling evening in budapest with temperatures around 30 degrees celsius, ingebrigsten timed his finish brilliantly to overtake spain's mohamed katir at the line. it's a great honour and a big achievement to win a world championship and i have a great team around me helping me both mentally and physically to prepare myself for this race. but for me a big motivation is to do my best.