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DC5m United States japan in english 10 articles, created at 2016-11-25 18:29 articles set mostly positive rate 3.3

1 2.2 Japan protests Russia missile deployment on disputed islands Japan has told Russia the deployment of missiles on disputed islands in the Pacific is "deplorable", Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday, ahead of talks aimed at resolving (1.13/2) a decades-old territorial spat. 2016-11-25 07:30 2KB www.digitaljournal.com

2 3.6 Drink soup, don't drive: Japan police tell elderly Japanese police are offering noodle discounts to elderly citizens who hand in their

(1.10/2) driving licences, promising them cheaper ramen soup in exchange for impro... 2016-11-25 07:15 2KB www.dailymail.co.uk

3 1.5 Japan aims to top tech charts again, looks to build world’s fastest supercomputer — RT News (1.02/2) In a bid to become the world leader in robotics, driverless cars and medical diagnostics technology, Japan plans to arm its manufacturers with a platform for research by building the planet’s fastest supercomputer. 2016-11-25 09:10 1KB www.rt.com

4 2.3 Hanyu dominates men’s short program at NHK Trophy SAPPORO, Japan (AP) — Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu recorded a season-best score to dominate the men’s short program at the NHK Trophy on Friday. Skating to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” the defending champion from Japan… 2016-11-25 08:46 2KB (1.02/2) wtop.com

5 4.5 What is Daniel Hannan demonstrably wrong about this week? Commons Confidential: Murray comes in from the cold (0.01/2) Hannan fodder. 2016-11-25 17:12 7KB www.newstatesman.com

6 2.1 What is Huawei's XLabs Wireless? During this year's, seventh Global Mobile Broadband Forum in Tokyo, deputy chairman of the board and Huawei Rotating CEO Ken Hu took to the stage to share his vision of the mobile future and presented the XLabs Wireless. This brand new initiation aims to be the... 2016-11-25 10:50 3KB feeds.betanews.com

7 3.8 Martin Scorsese’s Silence to premiere at the Vatican Director will be joined by 400 priests for screening of film based on story of 17th- century Jesuit missionaries in Japan 2016-11-25 10:29 5KB www.theguardian.com

8 5.9 Domino’s training reindeer to deliver pizzas in Japan Some parts of the country are expecting a very snowy winter. 2016-11-25 10:14 2KB www.foxnews.com 9 0.7 Gold hits 9-1/2-month low on firm dollar; set for third weekly loss Gold fell on expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike and as the dollar extended its bull run against the yen. 2016-11-25 08:11 3KB www.cnbc.com

10 0.0 Aluminium producers seek Q1 premium of $95- $110/T from Japanese buyers -sources By Yuka Obayashi TOKYO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Some big aluminium producers seek a premium of $95-$110 per tonne from Japanese buyers for primary metal shipments... 2016-11-25 07:37 2KB www.dailymail.co.uk Articles

DC5m United States japan in english 10 articles, created at 2016-11-25 18:29

1 /10 2.2 Japan protests Russia missile deployment on disputed islands (1.13/2) Japan has told Russia the deployment of missiles on disputed islands in the Pacific is "deplorable", Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday, ahead of talks aimed at resolving a decades-old territorial spat.

The positioning of coastal defence missiles on two of the four islands in contention was reported by Russian media this week and comes after concerted efforts by both countries to improve relations.

Japan-Russian ties have been hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the southernmost islands in the Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan, that lies off the northeast coast of Hokkaido.

The tensions have prevented the countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending wartime hostilities, and have hindered trade and investment.

"The Northern Territories are an inherent part of Japan's territory," Abe told parliament on Friday. Abe said Japan had told Russia the deployment "is deplorable" and "is contradictory to Japan's position" on the issue.

However, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the missile deployment was aimed at the "consistent strengthening of national security".

"Missile systems were deployed to the southern Kurils in line with that position," she said, calling them "an integral part of Russian territory".

The remarks came ahead of a December 15 meeting between Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yamaguchi city in western Japan, which is aimed at making progress on the territorial dispute.

The two leaders have met several times since Abe took office in December 2012, most recently last Sunday in Peru on the sidelines of a Pacific-rim summit.

Japan Finds Russia’s Japan PM Shinzo Abe says Deployment of Missiles on Russian missile deployment Kurils Unacceptable on disputed isles article.wn.com 'regrettable' article.wn.com 2016-11-25 07:30 www.digitaljournal.com

2 /10 3.6 Drink soup, don't drive: Japan police tell elderly

(1.10/2) Japanese police are offering noodle discounts to elderly citizens who hand in their driving licences, promising them cheaper ramen soup in exchange for improved road safety. The edible offer comes after a series of deadly accidents caused by cars driven by the elderly -- a growing problem in a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older hold a licence. In the hopes of appealing to seniors' stomachs, police in the central prefecture of Aichi on Friday started offering the discounts via a tie-up with a local restaurant chain. Elderly drivers who give up their permits will receive a certificate from police which they can present when ordering the noodles to see the price reduced from 590 ($5.20) yen to 500 yen, an Aichi police spokesman told AFP. Last month, a six-year-old boy died and 11 others were injured after an 87-year-old driver's pickup truck hit elementary school children walking to school on a street in Yokohama. The country is introducing a new rule in March under which drivers aged 75 or older must pass cognitive tests when renewing their licences. Aiming to set an example, a 97-year-old high-ranking Buddhist priest last week returned his driver's licence, calling on his elderly compatriots to do the same. "It's stupid to try to maintain your licences just out of pride," said Taa Shinen.

Japan bribes old people with ramen noodles to stop driving nypost.com

2016-11-25 07:15 Afp www.dailymail.co.uk

3 /10 1.5 Japan aims to top tech charts again, looks to build world’s fastest supercomputer — RT News (1.02/2) Currently China boasts several of the world’s fastest machines, but the ambitions of its Asian rival lie in building a processor that can make 130 quadrillion calculations per second – or 130 petaflops in scientific parlance – sources involved in the project told Reuters.

READ MORE: Robots could be the worst thing ever for humanity, warns Stephen Hawking This may happen as early as next year, with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry set to spend 19.5 billion yen (US$173 million) on the previously unreported project.

"As far as we know, there is nothing out there that is as fast," Satoshi Sekiguchi, director general at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, where the computer will be built, told Reuters.

China's Sunway TaihuLight is capable of 93 petaflops while Japan’s current fastest machine, the Oakforest-PACS, operates at 13.6 petaflops.

READ MORE: Tesla to equip all vehicles with full self-driving capabilities

Once the new computer, dubbed ABCI, is built, Japan will no longer have to outsource data crunching to foreign firms such as Google and Microsoft, Sekiguchi and others involved in the project said.

Japan Wants to Build the World's Fastest Supercomputer fortune.com

2016-11-25 09:10 www.rt.com

4 /10 2.3 Hanyu dominates men’s short program at NHK Trophy

(1.02/2) SAPPORO, Japan (AP) — Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu recorded a season-best score to dominate the men’s short program at the NHK Trophy on Friday.

Skating to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” the defending champion from Japan stumbled on the landing of his opening quad loop but was otherwise flawless, receiving 103.89 points.

“I regret not being able to land the first quad,” Hanyu said. “I feel like there was much more I could’ve done but I really enjoyed the short program and feel I will be able to carry the momentum over to tomorrow.”

After the quad loop, Hanyu added a quad salchow-triple toeloop combination and triple axel. Nathan Chen of the United States was second with 87.94 points, followed by Keiji Tanaka of Japan with 80.49.

Hanyu was second in Skate Canada and is looking to wrap up a berth in the Dec. 8-11 Grand Prix Final in Marseille, France, with a win in Sapporo.

“Compared to Skate Canada, I’m feeling better about my program,” Hanyu said. “I have to make sure I execute everything in the free program.”

World bronze medalist Anna Pogorilaya of Russia received 71.56 points to lead the women’s short program.

“I’m happy with performance today,” Pogorilaya said. “I don’t think I showed everything I could and made some small mistakes but it was very satisfying.”

Maria Sotskova, also from Russia, was second with 69.96 points, followed by Satoko Miyahara of Japan with 64.20.

Peng Cheng and Yang Jin of China were first after the pairs short program with 73.33 points, edging Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada, who had 72.95. Wang Xuehan and Wang Lei of China were third with 65.66 points.

The men’s, women’s and pairs events conclude Saturday with the free skate.

The NHK Trophy is the sixth and final event in the International Skating Union’s Grand Prix series. comments

This holiday season, visitors will have the chance to see dozens of National Parks, monuments and historic places re-imagined.

Hanyu dominates men's short program at NHK Trophy charlotteobserver.com

2016-11-25 08:46 The Associated wtop.com

5 /10 4.5 What is Daniel Hannan demonstrably wrong about this week? Commons Confidential: Murray comes in from the cold (0.01/2) Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy...

Five centuries before Christ there were Confucius and Socrates. Five centuries before the present, there were Erasmus and Da Vinci. Today for public intellectuals, we have Carswell and Hannan. Sometimes I’m not sure the Enlightenment was all it’s cracked up to be.

Daniel Hannan – Conservative MEP for the south east of England, the brains of the Leave campaign, the sort of man who would own a Magna Carta duvet cover – would be the worst man in Britain, were it not for the fact he’s often not in Britain, choosing instead to spend his time in Brussels, sponging off the European taxpayer even as he insults them, and banging on about sovereignty in the manner of a man to whom somebody said “Oh, that’s interesting” once, at some point in the late 1980s, and who hasn’t stopped talking since.

To his credit, Hannan is unfailing polite to his political enemies. To his shame, he has not let that stop him supporting some of the most unpleasant and reactionary forces in global politics, and then looking shocked and hurt whenever anyone has the nerve to call him on it. He also blocks me on Twitter. It’s a matter of great personal sadness to me.

Luckily, though, I have a spare Twitter account from which to monitor his output. So I didn’t have to miss this particular gem , written for the centre-right comment site CapX, whose tweet buttons double as a helpful summary of the article’s content:

Hannan’s argument is simple and predictable. Thomas Mair, the man who murdered Jo Cox MP, was a lone lunatic, whose actions could not have been influenced in any way by wider political forces:

In his Times column this morning, headlined “Dog-whistle politics can be a deadly game”, [Aaronovitch] suggested that Leave campaigners were indirectly responsible for Jo Cox’s death. He has also argued that mainstream Muslims are indirectly responsible for jihadi terrorism.

To see why both contentions are wrong, try extending his logic. All black people are responsible for Micah Johnson. All white people are responsible for Dylann Roof.

There’s a sleight of hand here, which gets to the heart of why I find Hannan to be quite so infuriating objectionable: he’s conflated skin colour with ideology. I don’t think collective guilt is helpful either, as it happens; but nonetheless, there’s a huge difference between placing blame on an ethnic group, and placing it on those who promote an idea. Ideas can be evil; racial groups cannot. That Hannan cannot spot this distinction is uncomfortable, to say the least.

He goes on to fetishise the individual over the group, like a man who’s been bitten by a radioactive copy of The Fountainhead:

The elevation of the individual over the collective is the basis of Western civilisation. The story of human progress is the story of how we came to be treated as autonomous citizens, rather than having our status defined by birth, caste or tradition.

...which, impressively, manages to be self-serving in at least two different ways. Firstly, it allows Hannan to imagine himself to be successful because he is an exceptional human being – and not, say, because he’s a privileged white man. His success is a matter of talent, not of class.

More destructively, this Great Man theory of history means that the movement he is associated with – or any other political campaign, come to that – cannot possibly be held responsible for any effect it’s actually had on the world. Hannan believes that his own personal genius is capable of persuading sane people to amend their views on Europe; but that a campaign which warned that 70m Turks were about to pop over and nick people’s homes can’t possibly have created a climate in which unstable, racist ones to take things further than the ballot box. It’s a very specific sort of myopia.

But that’s our Dan: considered, polite, imbued with a sense of manifest destiny, and constitutionally incapable of even glimpsing the possibility he’s spent 20 years of his life fanatically dedicated to sparking a culture war and blowing up the British economy.

Also, I suspect, wearing Magna Carta themed y-fronts.

Timing is everything in politics and the Tory grande dame Caroline Spelman is heading downhill fast. MPs accused the former environment secretary of taking the piste when her Alpine ski junket invitation pinged on mobile phones moments before a Commons division on the Tories’ £30-a-week grab of a disability benefit.

The insensitivity provoked the shadow communities secretary, Teresa Pearce, who never swears, to utter “Flip!” as Labour’s bid to save the vulnerable was buried by an avalanche of Tory votes, including that of the Two-Nation snow queen Dame Caroline. Meriden’s answer to Eddie the Eagle informed colleagues that Switzerland’s UK ambassador, Dominik Furgler, would brief them on this winter’s 61st parliamentary ski jaunt.

Jeremy Corbyn ’s Labour Party continues to attract prominent figures on the far left, with Unite’s chief of staff, Andrew Murray, the latest to join. The Marxist and co-founder of Stop the War voted Labour at every election while a member of the Communist Party, but his new party card is likely to trigger a backlash from Corbyn’s critics, who will smear him as a cold-blooded Stalinist.

The Murray I’ve known for nearly 30 years since he was a press officer in the Transport and General Workers’ Union is smart, shrewd, pragmatic and witty: all qualities that help to explain why enemies elsewhere in Labour will go spare. Tin hats on.

The Lib Dems are fighting back in the Richmond Park by-election triggered by the Tory trustafundian Zac Goldsmith’s flounce. Christian Wolmar, the Labour hopeful, was abused by a fist-waving lettuce-muncher objecting to his candidacy. If only Nick Clegg had been as firm with David Cameron.

Israel’s Labor Party leader, Isaac Herzog, has no plans to see Corbyn on his imminent visit to Britain, I hear. Heads of partner parties (both are in the Socialist International) ordinarily at least brush by, but the UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism row rumbles on. Tom Watson was informed in Tel Aviv that the country’s politicians await Corbyn’s visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. It’s a messy stand-off.

The hardline Democratic Unionist Jeffrey “No Surrender” Donaldson has exchanged Christmas cards with Brian Warfield, the singer of the Irish rebel group the Wolfe Tones, since this column revealed that the pair met in Central Lobby. I trust that the MP who opposed the Good Friday Agreement sings in Lagan Valley about his new friendship.

Philip “Spreadsheet” Hammond ’s Welsh terrier, Rex, faces an obstacle in relocating to Downing Street. “Chancellor’s dog savages Gladstone, the Treasury cat” sounds like a career-ending headline.

The right must stop explaining away the crimes of Thomas Mair Commons Confidential: Murray comes in from the cold newstatesman.com

2016-11-25 17:12 Jason Cowley www.newstatesman.com

6 /10 2.1 What is Huawei's XLabs Wireless? During this year's, seventh Global Mobile Broadband Forum in Tokyo, deputy chairman of the board and Huawei Rotating CEO Ken Hu took to the stage to share his vision of the mobile future and presented the XLabs Wireless. This brand new initiation aims to be the platform which will unite carriers, developers and companies from different verticals.

Together, they must build an open ecosystem of mobile apps which will reshape the future of business, entertainment, and everyday living. XLabs Wireless consists of three elements -- the mLab, with the focus on people, vLab, with the focus on verticals, and hLab, focusing on households.

Discussing the future of mobile, Hu says there has been an explosion of mobile applications. Currently, more than seven million of them can be found, just in Apple’s and Google’s app stores.

Out of this, Hu draws the conclusion that soon enough, all services will be delivered through mobile applications. Being such an omnipresent force, it’s hard to estimate exactly how many apps there will be. Their key enablers, and drivers, however, are mobile networks, sensors, man-to-machine interfaces, cloud computing, AI and big data.

Expanding mobile networks are getting everything online -- permanently, and this transformation, from an offline world into the digital one which never sleeps, has created huge opportunities and disruptions.

At the same time sensors, a key player in the digitization of all things, are getting smaller, cheaper and better. With 20 of them in a smartphone, 700 in an elevator and more than 120,000 in a smart factory, they are our gateway from the physical into the digital world.

Another important sector is the man-to-machine interface. This one has yet to be fully explored and tapped into, Hu believes. "We estimate that with the breakthrough of AI, we will see lots of amazing technologies that will help us make future man-machine interaction more natural, more immersive, and more intelligent".

Looking at the new opportunities for the future, Hu places emphasis on three things: video, broadband in households, and the vertical industries. Video is seen as a crucial element to future communications, sharing and education.

Currently, it accounts for almost two thirds (60 per cent) of all online traffic, and almost a quarter (23 per cent) of all time spent online. These numbers are putting the market at a value of a whopping $700 billion. China is leading the way, a country where video accounted for 325 million subscribers in just the last two years.

Talking about households, the biggest opportunity for growth lies in the people with no access to the internet, whatsoever, as well as in those whose internet speeds are yet not good enough to support high-quality video streaming. Currently, there are around two billion households in the world, with roughly 1.3 billion having no access to fast internet, and approximately 300 million have access to internet with speeds less than 10 Mbps.

And finally, the third major opportunity is in the vertical industries, who are going digital, all over the globe. "I believe that mobile networks can be a key enabler of this digital transformation, and will open the door to lots of new opportunities", Hu concludes.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Future plc Publication. All rights reserved.

2016-11-25 10:50 Desire Athow feeds.betanews.com

7 /10 3.8 Martin Scorsese’s Silence to premiere at the Vatican There will be no red carpet, and almost certainly none of the usual glamour. But when Martin Scorsese’s new film, Silence, has its world premiere at the Vatican on Tuesday, it will be the culmination of a 27-year project that the director has described as “an obsession”.

Pope Francis is not expected to attend the screening at the Pontifical Oriental Institute for the Jesuits, but Scorsese will join about 400 priests and other guests to watch the 159-minute movie. The director may meet the pontiff separately.

A two-minute trailer released this week suggested a film of much anguish and violence. It has already been tipped as an Oscar contender, an accolade for which Scorsese has been nominated a dozen times and won once, in 2007 for The Departed. Silence is based on the acclaimed 1966 novel of the same name by the Japanese author Shusaku Endo. It is the 17th-century story of two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, Rodrigues and Garrpe – played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver – who travel to Japan to track down their mentor, Father Ferreira.

At the time, Christianity was banned in Japan, and those who practiced the faith were tortured and executed. Faced with this, Ferreira (played by Liam Neeson) apparently renounced his religion through a ritual known as fumie – in which Christians were forced to trample over a religious icon such as a crucifix in order to prove repudiation of their faith.

Tens of thousands of Japanese Christians were persecuted, tortured and killed over the 250 years that the religion was outlawed. The ban was lifted in 1873, but Christians are still a tiny minority – less than 1% – in a country dominated by Shinto and Buddhism.

In Silence, the two priests end up in the same situation as Ferreira. Rodrigues is forced to choose between apostasy and death – not just his own, but the execution of converts. He prays for guidance but God is silent, until at last he hears a single word: “trample”.

Scorsese read Endo’s novel in 1989, a year after his film The Last Temptation of Christ triggered a storm of controversy over a dream sequence in which Jesus has sex with Mary Magdalene. Religious themes and subtexts have run through other movies made by Scorsese, who considered the priesthood as a youngster.

The director was determined to turn the novel into a movie (a Japanese film version appeared in 1971, which Endo apparently considered a travesty of his book), but the project ran into repeated difficulties and delays. Finally, filming began last year in Taiwan.

Three years ago, Scorsese told the online movie magazine Deadline that his quest to make the film had been an obsession. Saying he had been “steeped in the Roman Catholic religion” as a young man, he added: “As you get older, ideas come and go. Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me…

“Silence is just something I’m drawn to in that way. It’s been an obsession, it has to be done and now is the time to do it. It’s a strong, wonderful true story, a thriller in a way, but it deals with those questions.”

Scorsese hired the Rev James Martin, a Jesuit priest and writer, as a consultant, and his stars prepared themselves for their roles by undertaking a seven-day silent retreat at St Beuno’s, a Jesuit spiritual centre with spectacular views of Snowdonia in north Wales.

“Andrew [Garfield] got to the point where he could out-Jesuit a Jesuit,” Martin told the New York Times . “There were places in the script where he would stop and say, ‘A Jesuit wouldn’t say that’, and we would come up with something else.”

Mark Williams, professor of Japanese studies at Leeds University and an expert on Endo’s novels, said the main theme of Silence was the unique nature of each individual’s spiritual journey. “It’s difficult to get this across in a film, but if anyone can do it, it’s Scorsese,” he said.

A key test would be how the director handled the final section of the book, following the climactic scene in which Rodrigues “betrays everything his life has stood for”. In the novel, the priest is overtaken by guilt and does not abandon his faith but spends the rest of his life in and out of prison.

The book had sold well in Japan, although the “hardcore Catholic community view it as heretical and blasphemous”, said Williams.

“Endo was persona non grata among Japanese Catholics. You can’t find the book in any Christian bookshops, but it’s widely talked about in Japan - and I’m sure the film will be popular.” Silence opens in the US on 23 December, in the UK on 1 January and in Japan later that month. It is not the first film to have a Vatican premiere. The Pope Francis biopic Call Me Francesco was first shown there last December to an audience of refugees and homeless, and in 2006 Catherine Hardwicke’s The Nativity Story had its world premiere at the Vatican.

The Vatican has also screened films of special interest to the church, including Angelina Jolie’s prisoner of war movie, Unbroken , and Tom McCarthy’s film about sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Spotlight.

2016-11-25 10:29 Harriet Sherwood www.theguardian.com

8 /10 5.9 Domino’s training reindeer to deliver pizzas in Japan Domino's is taking a page out of Santa's book on efficient winter transportation.

The global pizza chain, which has already invested in high-tech delivery methods like autonomous robots, drones, “zero-click” ordering apps and satellite tracking to deliver food, is now training reindeer to transport pies.

Yes, reindeer.

Reindeer delivery may be part of a contingency plan for Domino’s Japan ahead of what is expected to be a particularly cold and snowy winter, RocketNews24 reports.

DOMINO'S CUSTOMER GETS FREE PIZZA AFTER RETURNING BOX OF WINGS WITH $5,000 CASH The chain is attempting a trial period for performing training exercises in the city of Ishikari-- a particularly ice-prone area in Hokkaido-- to figure out if its reindeer delivery initiative is feasible. The technique will involve insulated pizza containers strapped to the animals’ backs.

Delivery tests, Domino’s says, are monitored by animal trainers. The trials are taking place on the grounds of a driving school.

Domino’s is training reindeer to deliver pizza in Japan https://t.co/1EOClpKdoc pic.twitter.com/X3c7Z4rL6q

— Eater (@Eater) November 22, 2016

This unusual method for transporting pizzas is just one of several delivery methods being tested by the chain. In March, Domino’s unveiled the world’s first autonomous pizza delivery drone.

DOMINO'S FANS ARE SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE CHAIN'S NEW SALADS

The Domino’s Robotic Unit (DRU) utilizes pop-up storage compartments for hot foods and cold drinks. Humans just need to load the bot and then set a destination. Obstacle avoidance technology keeps it from running into anything en route to the consumer. The first unit was tested in the Queensland, Australia in a semi-autonomous mode that allowed humans to set it back on track if anything went wrong.

Dealing with live animals, however, could prove more difficult than pre-programmed drones, the chain acknowledged. Domino’s says additional details about the initiative will be announced Thursday.

2016-11-25 10:14 FoxNews.com www.foxnews.com

9 /10 0.7 Gold hits 9-1/2-month low on firm dollar; set for third weekly loss Gold fell 1 percent to its lowest in 9-1/2 months in Asian trade on Friday, heading for a third consecutive weekly decline, on expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike and as the dollar extended its bull run against the yen.

Spot gold rose 0.4 percent at $1,188.86 an ounce by 7:10 a.m. EDT. Earlier in the session, the metal dropped 1 percent to mark its lowest since Feb. 8 at $1,171.21 per ounce.

U. S. gold futures fell about 0.5 percent to $1,188.80 per ounce, after dipping earlier to its lowest since Feb. 5 at $1,170.30 per ounce. The dollar rose to an eight-month high against the yen on Friday as U. S. bond yields resumed their rise in Asia after the Thanksgiving break shut markets in the United States.

The 10-year U. S. Treasury note yield rose about 5 basis points to 2.405 percent from the previous close on Wednesday.

"The dollar has been really strong this morning and is pushing high. The Shanghai arbitrage is trading $25 dollar premium, which seems to be suggesting that there is selling from Asia rather than buying," an investment bank trader said.

Bullion shed over 8 percent so far this month and has lost over $160 an ounce since the peak after the U. S. election on Nov. 9, hurt by a strong dollar and surging Treasury yields as investors bet on higher growth and inflation under U. S. president-elect Trump .

The metal has also been pressured by talks of an almost certain U. S. interest rate hike in December.

Gold is highly sensitive to rising rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion, while boosting the dollar, in which it is priced.

"The dollar is firm and triggering some selling (in gold). There were some stops around $1,180 and they were all taken," said Ronald Leung, chief dealer at Lee Cheong Gold Dealers in Hong Kong.

"There has been some physical buying, but that is not so strong and is not helping gold," Leung added.

Spot gold is expected to drop to $1,172 per ounce, as the support at $1,184 does not look to hold, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.

Silver rose 0.55 percent to $16.34 an ounce. Platinum slid 0.45 percent to $909.40, after having earlier hit its lowest since Feb. 8 at $901.00.

Both metals were on track to post a third straight weekly decline.

Palladium dropped 0.5 percent to $725.45.

2016-11-25 08:11 CNBC www.cnbc.com

10 /10 0.0 Aluminium producers seek Q1 premium of $95-$110/T from Japanese buyers -sources By Yuka Obayashi TOKYO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Some big aluminium producers seek a premium of $95-$110 per tonne from Japanese buyers for primary metal shipments in the January to March period, up 27-47 percent from the previous quarter, five sources involved in pricing talks said on Friday. Japan is Asia's biggest importer of the metal and the premiums for primary metal shipments it agrees to pay each quarter over the London Metal Exchange (LME) cash price set the benchmark for the region. Any increase in the quarterly premiums would mark the first rise in three quarters, and reflect tightening supply, although buyers said the initial offers were too high, the sources said. For the October-December quarter, Japanese aluminium buyers agreed to pay a premium of $75 a tonne for the metal , down 17 percent to 19 percent from the prior quarter, on softer spot premiums amid a supply glut. Rio Tinto Ltd has offered Japanese buyers a premium of $95 per tonne following a drop in local inventories and higher demand for imported aluminium in China, while Rusal has sought a premium of $110 per tonne to reflect higher U. S. premiums, the sources said. Aluminium stocks at three major Japanese ports fell 2.9 percent in October from the previous month to 278,200 tonnes, trading house Marubeni Corp said on Monday. Buyers are not ready to accept the offers, the sources said. "The $110 proposal is way too high and the $95 offer is still above the levels that we think are appropriate," said a source at a trading house who declined to be named. "We will need to accept a hike from the current quarter amid tighter supply in Asia, but only if premiums come in the low $80 a tonne," a source at a fabricator said. The quarterly pricing negotiations are held between Japanese buyers and global miners including Rio, Alcoa Inc and South32 Ltd. Rusal has not been involved in the quarterly pricing talks over the past couple of years, but the Russian company sent an email to its customers in Japan this week in an apparent bid to have an influence in the negotiations, the sources said. Some talks started this week and are expected to continue until next month. Rio and Rusal declined to comment. (Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Susan Fenton)

2016-11-25 07:37 Reuters www.dailymail.co.uk

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Created at 2016-11-25 18:29