Asia shares rise on vaccine hopes, tech rally on Wall Street

Asian shares were mostly higher Tuesday on rising hopes for an effective vaccine to fight coronavirus pandemic. Scientists at Oxford University reported that ir experimental coronavirus vaccine prompted a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got shot in an early trial.

Or projects are under way. A vaccine under development by colleagues of Dr. Anthony Fauci, nation's top infectious diseases expert at National Institutes of Health, and Moderna Inc., will start its final testing around July 27. 30,000-person study is intended to prove if shots are strong eugh to protect against coronavirus.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.7% to finish at 22,884.22. South Korea's Kospi jumped 1.3% to 2,227.28. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 ded 2.6% to 6,156.30. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.8% to 25,499.26, while Shanghai Composite was little changed, edging up less than 0.1% higher, to 3,316.28.

Shares also rose in Taiwan and most of Souast Asia. Asian ecomies have been carrying out a “new-rmal” balancing act of opening ecomies, with people going shopping and eating out, while doing social distancing and wearing masks. That's h mixed results, with cases shooting up recently in Tokyo to triple-digit figures for daily newly confirmed cases. Japan h so far avoided massive cases and deaths seen in harder hit nations like U.S., India, Brazil and parts of Europe.

Overnight, U.S. techlogy and communication stocks and companies that rely on consumer spending led mixed gains on Wall Street, outweighing losses elsewhere in market. Amazon led way higher in S&P 500 with a 7.9% gain. Microsoft also helped lift market, rising 4.3%. ble Energy climbed 5.4% after company agreed to be acquired by Chevron for $5 billion.

Techlogy and communications stocks and big e-commerce retailers like Amazon have benefited this year as pandemic has forced people to largely stay home and rely increasingly on internet for shopping, work and entertainment. Banks, airlines and cruise lines have suffered.

S&P 500 gained 0.8% to 3,251.84. Dow Jones Industrial Aver, which was down for most of day, inched just 0.1% higher, to 26,680.87. Nasdaq h its best day since end of April, climbing 2.5% to 10,767.09. Russell 2000 index of small company stocks gave up 0.4% to 1,467.95.

Wall Street is coming off its third straight weekly gain following improvements in hiring, retail sales and or parts of ecomy, along with rising hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine. Still, worries remain that rise of coronavirus counts will derail efforts to reopen businesses shut down due to pandemic.

This week will bring earnings reports from major U.S. companies such as Coca-Cola and Microsoft. Expectations are low for companies’ performance in April-June quarter due to pandemic, given ecomic fallout from bro business shutdowns and higher unemployment.

price of benchmark U.S oil ded 11 cents to $40.92 a barrel in electronic tring on New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained 22 cents to $40.81 a barrel Monday. Brent crude oil, international standard, rose 17 cents to $43.45 a barrel. U.S. dollar rose to 107.33 Japanese yen from 107.20 yen. euro fell to $1.1443 from $1.1444.