Monday evening's Ukraine talks at the White House seem to have had a moderate impact on the Asian stock exchanges. At lunchtime in Tuesday's trading, several of the leading indexes were around zero.
The stock exchanges in China were on the plus side in the middle of the trading day. Shenzhen and Shanghai's composite index were both up 0.3 percent. The Hong Kong-based Hang Seng had risen by 0.1 percent.
In Japan, Nikkei 225 fell by 0.3 percent while the South Korean Kospi was down by 0.2 percent.
