World Shares Mixed After Wall St. Gains09/03 05:56

   Oil prices advanced on Thursday, with Brent crude trading near $97 a barrel, 
while world shares were mixed.

   HONG KONG (AP) -- Oil prices advanced on Thursday, with Brent crude trading 
near $97 a barrel, while world shares were mixed.

   Renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran has pushed oil prices sharply 
higher, though U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he doesn't expect the 
U.S. bombing campaign to last "much longer."

   Brent crude, the international standard, rose 1.7% to $97.25 per barrel 
after falling early Thursday. Benchmark U.S. crude advanced 1.9% to $92.71 a 
barrel.

   In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.1% to 10,766.32. 
Germany's DAX fell 0.2% to 25,801.86, while France's CAC 40 dipped 0.4% to 
8,250.94.

   U.S. futures were little changed.

   In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 0.2% to 64,214.48. Among major gainers, 
OpenAI investor SoftBank Group rose 1.6%, memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings rose 
1.3%, and chip equipment manufacturer Tokyo Electron gained 0.4%.

   South Korea's Kospi rose 0.3% to 6,579.48. Samsung Electronics dipped 0.2%, 
while memory chipmaker SK Hynix was down 1.1%.

   In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng edged 0.4% lower, to 25,213.31. The Shanghai 
Composite index climbed less than 0.1% to 3,942.09.

   Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5% to 9,020.10.

   The Taiex in Taiwan fell 0.7%, while India's Sensex lost 0.6%.

   The regional advance followed gains for stocks on Wall Street, where the 
benchmark S&P 500 gained 0.5% on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average 
climbed 0.6%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 0.5%.

   Investors welcomed some encouraging signals about demand for artificial 
intelligence from two big tech companies, Dell and Palo Alto Networks. The AI 
boom has been the key driver behind the S&P 500's gains this year.

   Dell Technologies surged 15.8% following strong quarterly profits. Among 
some of the biggest names, Nvidia gained 3.2%, Meta Platforms climbed 2.5%, and 
Micron Technology rose 2.4%.

   In the bond market, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury fell to around 
4.78% from more than 4.81% early Wednesday after a global bond sell-off 
triggered growing concerns over inflation and the Iran war -caused energy 
shocks as well as rising U.S. government debt.

   The U.S. is set to release an employment report for August on Friday.

   In other dealings early Thursday, the Japanese yen strengthened sharply 
against the U.S. dollar, with the dollar trading at 156.40 yen early Thursday, 
down 1.5% from 158.71 yen late Wednesday. The dollar had surged to above 160 
yen earlier in the week, raising expectations that regulators might intervene 
to prevent the yen from falling further.

   The euro was trading at $1.1602, up from $1.1588.