Global stocks sank Wednesday after US President Donald Trump said he was not satisfied with talks that are aimed at averting a trade war with China. Equities were also dented by poor eurozone economic data, and as Trump cast doubt on a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Trump (is) continuing to drive uncertainty over global trade,” said analyst Joshua Mahony at trading firm IG. “European markets are following their Asian counterparts lower, as a pessimistic tone from Trump is compounded by downbeat economic data,” he added. Markets had surged Monday after US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He said they had agreed to pull back from imposing threatened tariffs on billions of dollars of goods, and continue talks on a variety of trade issues. However, Trump has declared that he was “not satisfied” with the status of the talks, fuelling worries that the world’s top two economies could still slug out an economically pain...
South Korea's spy agency believes that North Korea is behind hacking attacks on a crypto-currency exchange in the South, sources say.
At least $7m (£5.25m) in digital money was stolen in the hacks - although the money is now said to have ballooned in value to $82.7m.
The thieves also stole the personal information of some 30,000 people.
They were trading the virtual currencies Bitcoin and Ethereum on the Bithumb crypto-currency exchange.
Based on recent trading volumes, Bithumb is South Korea's biggest and one of the five largest in the world.
Analysts say North Korean hackers may have targeted crypto-currencies in order to evade the financial sanctions imposed as punishment for the North's development of nuclear weapons.
The hackers also demanded a further $5.5m from Bithumb in exchange for deleting traders' personal information, said reports.
The sources in the spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, similarly suspect the North of being behind the hacking of another exchange, Coinis, in September, South Korean news agency Yonhap says.
But a further attempt in October was thwarted, reports said.
Evidence has now been passed to prosecutors.
At present, virtual currencies are not regulated by South Korea's financial authorities and efforts to address the matter have made little progress
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