BREAKING NEWS

Most Asian stocks up on big US-French drug merger

TOKYO  — Most Asian stock  markets were higher on Thursday as investors took heart from a major U.S.-French pharmaceutical merger and a raft of strong U.S. corporate earnings.
The Nikkei 225 stock average rose 41.28 points, 0.4 percent, to 10,849.57. Hong Kong's Hang Seng edged up 0.1 percent to 23,184.95 and the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.4 percent to 2,936.74.