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The yen remained under pressure in Friday’s Asian session after being pushed lower by Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda who appeared before the Japanese “Diet Committee” to talk about monetary policy. He reiterated the Bank of Japan’s commitment to undertake necessary policies to fight deflation. Such policies tend to have a weakening effect on the yen. The yen fell to a four-year low against the euro in early Asian session trading, and touched a four-month low versus the US dollar. EURJPY hit a session high of 136.54 yen before ending the session at 136.19 while USDJPY peaked at 101.34. The dollar is expected to remain firm against the yen due to expectations of Fed tapering early next year, and maybe even sooner. Helping boost dollar against yen was Thursday’s US jobless claims data which surprisingly fell by 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 323,000, beating expectations for a decline of 9,000. EURUSD traded in a range in Asia between $1.3462 and $1.3488, held steady after comments by ECB Chief Mario Draghi’s who dampened prospects of negative interest rates when he spoke yesterday. Draghi will be speaking again today so markets will be watching closely. GBPUSD hit a high of 1.6204 in Asia, supported by Thursday’s strong UK factory orders data. The Aussie extended lower today to $0.9166 after yesterday’s sell-off was initiated by comments from RBA Governor Glenn Stevens. He said yesterday that he was open to currency intervention to weaken what he believes is a high Australian dollar exchange rate.