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| - Wall Street stocks were up slightly early Wednesday as investors weighed heightened US-China tensions against progress towards a coronavirus vaccine. The United States ordered China to close its consulate in Houston, drawing an angry response from Beijing and dramatically escalating diplomatic tensions between the feuding superpowers. Meanwhile, German firm BioNTech said the US government had agreed to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine if regulatory approval is granted. The announcements comes as numerous southern and western states in the US continue to battle COVID-19 outbreaks. About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 26,885.68, up 0.2 percent. The broad-based S&P 500 also added 0.2 percent at 3,262.54, along with the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index, which was up the same amount at 10,697.70. Among individual companies, Best Buy surged 6.6 percent after it said that its second-quarter sales were on track to increase 2.5 percent compared with the year-ago period, and that it was raising starting pay for workers to $15 an hour. jmb/cs
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