• The dollar hit a four-month high on Wednesday after a rise in benchmark U.S. Treasury yields above 3 percent rattled some currency bears while a mixed picture from business surveys failed to help the euro before a European Central Bank meeting.
The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies rose 0.4 percent to 91.093. It had climbed overnight to 91.076, highest since Jan. 12, before a slide in Wall Street stocks tempered investor risk appetite.
Against the yen, the dollar neared a two-month high of 109.20 yen hit in the previous session. It was a notch below that at 109.18 yen, up 0.3 percent on the day.
• The Trump administration plans to nominate Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command already nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to Australia, to fill the long-vacant post of ambassador to South Korea instead, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had asked Harris to take the key post in Seoul, which has been vacant since Trump took office in January last year, a source with knowledge of the situation said.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook will meet President Donald Trump Wednesday, according to an official schedule released by the White House.
The meeting is scheduled for 1.45 p.m. Washington, D.C., time. It will be closed to the press.
There was no agenda for the meeting posted or hints towards what could be discussed.
• As North and South Korea gear up for their first summit in over a decade this Friday, many South Koreans have lowered their expectations since previous summits, hoping for peace rather than any swift reunification.
While often still couched in the rhetoric of eventual unification - especially by the North Koreans - this round of inter-Korean detente has seen South Korean President Moon Jae-in target peace and reconciliation as a more pragmatic goal.
Moon will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the border village of Panmunjom in Friday’s summit. Previous summits between the two sides were held in 2000and 2007.
• South Korea and the United States are likely to hold a summit in mid-May, a South Korean presidential official said on Wednesday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity, ahead of a separate proposed summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.
• Oil prices on Wednesday fell back from more than three-year highs reached the previous session, as rising U.S. fuel inventories and production weighed on an otherwise bullish market.
Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were at $73.71 per barrel at 0655 GMT, down 15 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their last close and almost $1.8 below the November-2014high of $75.47 a barrel reached the previous day.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were down 12 cents, or 0.2 percent, at $67.58 a barrel, also off the late-2014 highs of $69.56 a barrel marked earlier in April.
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