U.S. House Speaker Johnson said Alaska Democrats are trying to cheat.

Oracle (ORCL.N) fell 2.2% in pre-market trading.

At the midday close, the HSI rose 0.05% while the Hang Seng Tech Index fell 1.98%; turnover was HKD 98.2 bln. Sector winners included oil, mainland banks, insurers and power; decliners included online education, memory/storage and tea-beverage stocks. Notable movers: CGN Power (01816.HK) up ~4%; PetroChina (00857.HK) and Ping An Insurance (02318.HK) up >3%; ICBC (01398.HK) and China Construction Bank (00939.HK) up >2%. Weakness in New Oriental (09901.HK) down >11%; Hua Hong Semiconductor (01347.HK), Lenovo Group (00992.HK) and SMIC (00981.HK) down >6%; WuXi Biologics (02269.HK) and Alibaba (09988.HK) down >2%.