UK prime minister candidate Burnham says he will uphold the Labour Party's tax pledge.

Sources: Kuwait's crude production averaged 1.65 mln bpd in June, up from 578,000 bpd in May. Production briefly rose to 1.9 mln bpd during the final 10 days of June.

A-shares opened lower and slid through the morning session. At midday the Shanghai Composite was down 0.9%, the Shenzhen Composite Index down 2.09% and the ChiNext Index down 3.47%; combined turnover topped 2.2 trillion yuan and more than 2,000 stocks were lower. The STAR 50 Index fell over 4% intraday. Precious-metals names outperformed, with several miners — including Xianglu Tungsten, Chifeng Gold, Zhaojin Gold and Shanjin International — hitting daily limit-ups. Humanoid-robot concept stocks also rallied, with over ten constituents at limit-up. Advanced packaging warmed, while semiconductor equipment continued to weaken; compute-hardware plays, glass-substrate and memory-chip sectors posted the largest declines.