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| - Tokyo stocks closed lower Friday on news US President Donald Trump and his wife have tested positive for Covid-19, a day after trading was halted by a hardware failure. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index was down 0.67 percent or 155.22 points to end at 23,029.90 for a weekly loss of 0.75 percent. The broader Topix index fell 1.00 percent or 16.27 points to 1,609.22. It slipped 1.53 percent over the week. Trump and First Lady Melania were tested after a close White House aide Hope Hicks had tested positive, in a shock development that threatened to disrupt his public appearances in the final weeks of the election campaign. "Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately," Trump tweeted. The White House doctor said both were well and that Trump would continue his presidential "duties without disruption". "The quarantine will mean he misses three swing state rallies -- with critical Florida among them," Stephen Innes, Chief Global Markets Strategist at AXI, wrote in a note. "It also means the next debate will need to be shifted." Okasan Online Securities senior strategist Rikiya Takebe said in a commentary that the "Tokyo market was stunned" by the news. It came after all transactions were suspended for all of Thursday on Tokyo's two leading indexes, the first all-day stoppage since its current operating system was installed in 1999. Trading was halted also at smaller exchanges in Nagoya, Fukuoka and Sapporo. Officials said there was no indication of a cyberattack, and the problem had been traced to a memory breakdown that failed to properly trigger a switch to a back-up system. In Tokyo trading, Sony dropped 3.47 percent to 7,753 yen while Panasonic fell 2.17 percent to 869.5 yen. Canon lost 2.74 percent to 1,698 yen. Rakuten jumped 3.88 percent to 1,176 yen in the second trading session after it announced a 5G wireless service priced much cheaper than those of its domestic rivals. Toyota slid 0.59 percent to 6,891 yen while Honda climbed 0.95 percent to 2,497 yen and Nissan edged up 0.18 percent to 372.5 yen. The dollar fetched 105.03 yen in Asian trade, against 105.50 yen in New York late Thursday. nf/sah/rma
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