VIDEO SHOWS: HIGHLIGHTS FROM DAY ONE OF THE VIENNA OPEN, AN ATP 500 EVENT COMPLETE SCRIPT TO FOLLOW SHOWS: VIENNA, AUSTRIA (OCTOBER 20, 2025) (ATP MEDIA / IMG – See restrictions before use)
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(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese agreed on Monday to ensure a steady supply of critical minerals and rare earths, as the United States moves to reduce its reliance on Chinese supply. The U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) issued seven letters of interest (LOIs) on Monday for more than $2.2 billion of financing, unlocking up to $5 billion of total investment, to advance critical minerals and supply chain security projects between the two countries. These are the Australian mining companies that have announced details about their receipt of LOIs from EXIM: AGREEMENTS ANNOUNCED ON MONDAY VHM VHM received an updated letter of interest from EXIM for up to $200 million in funding, with an improved term of up to 15 years in potential financing, to support development of its Goschen rare earths and mineral sands project in Australia. LATROBE MAGNESIUM Latrobe Magnesium said EXIM was prepared to finance up to $122 million for the firm's stage 2 commercial magnesium plant in Victoria, Australia. ARAFURA RARE EARTHS EXIM provided a non-binding LOI in support of Arafura's Nolans project in the Northern Territory, with preliminary discussions of EXIM considering up to $300 million of financing support. NORTHERN MINERALS EXIM outlined it would be able to consider financing up to $230 million of potential debt funding to support the development of Northern Minerals' Browns Range heavy rare earths project in Western Australia. AGREEMENTS ANNOUNCED PREVIOUSLY FOR PROJECTS IN AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC MATERIALS Australian Strategic Materials received a LOI from EXIM in March 2024 for a debt funding package of up to $600 million to support construction of its Dubbo rare earths project northwest of Sydney. EQ RESOURCES EQ Resources received a LOI from EXIM in June 2025 for a debt facility of up to $34 million to support the Mt Carbine tungsten expansion project in Australia. VICTORY METALS Victory Metals in April 2025 secured a $190 million LOI from EXIM for the development of its North Stanmore heavy rare earths, scandium and hafnium project in Western Australia. SUNRISE ENERGY METALS Sunrise Energy Metals in September 2025 received a LOI from EXIM for up to $67 million in financing for its Syerston scandium project in New South Wales, Australia. AGREEMENTS ANNOUNCED PREVIOUSLY FOR PROJECTS OUTSIDE AUSTRALIA AMERICAN RARE EARTHS American Rare Earths received a LOI from EXIM in September 2024 for a debt funding package of up to $456 million to support construction of the Cowboy State Mine area at its Halleck Creek project in Wyoming. ANSON RESOURCES EXIM offered $330 million in September 2024 to finance the construction of Anson Resources' lithium production plant in the Paradox Basin, Utah. METEORIC RESOURCES U.S. EXIM, in March 2024, offered up to $250 million in preliminary support for Australian-listed Meteoric Resources, to develop its Caldeira rare earths project in Brazil. IPERIONX IperionX said in April 2025 that the EXIM had approved an equipment finance loan of $11 million to support significant expansion of IperionX’s advanced titanium manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. QUANTUM GRAPHITE Australian miner Quantum Graphite said in July 2024 that it had received a term sheet from EXIM for a loan of up to $300 million to fund the Utile project near the North Atlantic Ocean. AMAERO INTERNATIONAL At the beginning of 2025, Amaero International secured a loan of $22.8 million from EXIM as part of the bank's "Make More in America" initiative to strengthen local supply chains. (Reporting by Shivangi Lahiri and Shruti Agarwal in Bengaluru and Melanie Burton in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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(Reuters) -Apple shares surged to an all-time high on Monday, with the iPhone maker close to becoming the third company to hit a $4 trillion market valuation as data showed strong momentum for the latest iPhone. Data from research firm Counterpoint showed the iPhone 17 series outperformed its predecessor in early sales in China and the United States, with the newer models out-selling the iPhone 16 series by 14% during their first 10 days of availability in the two countries. Apple shares jumped 4.2% to $262.9, giving it a market capitalization of about $3.9 trillion and making it the second most valuable company in the world after AI-chip giant Nvidia. Over the weekend, Evercore ISI added the stock to its Tactical Outperform List as the brokerage expects Apple to beat market expectations for the current three-month period and issue upbeat forecasts for the December quarter. "The recent launch of online orders in China may be a positive tailwind for the Dec-qtr, as initial delivery time data reflects stronger initial demand relative to other regions at launch," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note. Apple unveiled in September an upgraded line of new iPhones, including a slimmer iPhone Air, and held prices steady amid U.S. tariff concerns. "They rolled out the latest version of their iPhone and it's doing much better than anticipated … the demand trends for the company's iPhones are now on the front foot," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth. Apple shares had struggled earlier this year on concerns over tough competition in China and uncertainties around how the company would navigate high U.S. tariffs on Asian economies such as China and India, its major manufacturing hubs. However, the stock has risen modestly since early August after the company pledged $100 billion in additional U.S. investment, a move that could help it sidestep potential tariffs. The stock is set for its biggest one-day jump in four weeks if gains hold and will be up more than 5% for the year. Apple will report quarterly earnings after the bell on October 30. (Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Arun Koyyur)
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VIDEO SHOWS: HIGHLIGHTS FROM DAY ONE OF THE VIENNA OPEN, AN ATP 500 EVENT COMPLETE SCRIPT TO FOLLOW SHOWS: VIENNA, AUSTRIA (OCTOBER 20, 2025) (ATP MEDIA / IMG – See restrictions before use)
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By Greg Bensinger, Shubham Kalia and Deborah Mary Sophia SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Amazon.com cloud service returned to normal operations on Monday afternoon, the company said, after an internet outage that caused global turmoil among thousands of sites, including some of the web's most popular apps like Snapchat and Reddit. Still, Amazon said some AWS services had a backlog of messages that would take a few hours to process. AWS hosts applications and computer processes for companies around the world, and the disruption knocked workers from London to Tokyo offline and halted others from conducting normal everyday tasks like paying hairdressers or changing their airline tickets. Users on Monday afternoon had complained of lingering difficulties using services such as digital wallet Venmo and video calling site Zoom. It was the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, highlighting the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. It was at least the third time in five years that AWS's northern Virginia cluster, known as US-EAST-1, contributed to a major internet meltdown. Amazon did not address a request for more clarity about why that particular data center keeps being impacted. The problems stemmed from what is known as the Domain Name System, or DNS, which prevented applications from finding the correct address for AWS's DynamoDB API, a cloud database relied upon to store user information and other critical data. ROOT CAUSE IS NETWORK HEALTH MONITOR Earlier, AWS said the root cause of the outage was an underlying subsystem that monitors the health of its network load balancers used to distribute traffic across several servers. The issue, AWS said, originated from within the "EC2 internal network", Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Shortly after 3 p.m. PT (2200 GMT), Amazon said, "all AWS services returned to normal operations. Some services such as AWS Config, Redshift, and Connect continue to have a backlog of messages that they will finish processing over the next few hours." Ken Birman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said software developers need to build better fault tolerance. He said AWS provides tools developers can use to protect themselves in the event of a problem at one of any of its sprawling network of data centers, and developers can also create backups with other cloud providers. "When people cut costs and cut corners to try to get an application up, and then forget that they skipped that last step and didn't really protect against an outage, those companies are the ones who really ought to be scrutinized later," Birman told Reuters. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms – ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems – that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020. According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services. "FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURES" The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures," said Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at European cybersecurity firm ESET. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue," said Ryan Griffin, U.S. cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners. Wall Street was largely unfazed, sending Amazon shares 1.6% higher to $216.48. FROM SNAPCHAT TO VENMO: OUTAGE TAKES DOWN APPS Ookla said at least a thousand companies were affected by the outage. Apps like Reddit, Roblox, Snapchat and Duolingo had all been affected. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS. Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work. (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson, Jaspreet Singh and Arsheeya Bajwa; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier, Richard Chang and David Gregorio)
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VIDEO SHOWS: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ATP SWISS INDOORS BASEL COMPLETE SCRIPT TO FOLLOW SHOWS: BASEL, SWITZERLAND (OCTOBER 20, 2025) (ATP MEDIA / IMG – See restrictions before use)
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By Manya Saini and Pritam Biswas (Reuters) -After a turbulent week in which some regional U.S. banks flagged bad loan and fraud issues, investors scrutinized lenders' earnings reports for signs of wider strain across the sector. Zions Bancorporation posted a third-quarter profit increase on Monday, helped by stronger interest income, despite the $50 million fraud-related charge-off it announced last week. Private credit carries the highest risk of losses, given the high growth rate and light regulation, Zions CEO Harris Simmons told analysts on Monday evening, although he does not expect big bank losses from private credit exposure. Since the 2023 banking crisis, investors have had little patience for uncertainty, analysts said. Even isolated loan or fraud troubles now trigger broad-based selloffs as traders rush to reduce exposure. "Years of easy credit and low transparency have left investors uncertain about where risks truly lie; even small negative surprises can spark outsized repricing," said Tim Hynes, global head of Credit Research at Debtwire. The KBW Regional Banking Index has dropped 4.8% this year, lagging the KBW Bank Index, which tracks large-cap banks and is up 15.9% so far in 2025. Last week, bank stocks seesawed sharply after Zions disclosed $50 million in losses tied to commercial and industrial loans and Western Alliance initiated a lawsuit alleging fraud by Cantor Group V, LLC. Cantor has denied the allegations. Zions' higher third-quarter profit, despite the loan losses by its California division, lifted the bank's shares 2.9% in after-market trading. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF rose 2.49% on Monday. HBT Financial reported $19.8 million of net income, slightly higher than in the year-ago quarter, with nonperforming assets at 0.17% of total assets, the same percentage a year earlier. Its shares rose 4.15% after it agreed to merge with CNB Bank in a deal valued at $170.2 million. Jefferies shares rose 4.25% after sharp drops last week. The bank was caught up in the First Brands collapse, though executives have said the investment bank was "defrauded" and any losses are absorbable. Among regional lenders, Washington Trust Bancorp's net income was stable at $10.8 million compared to the year-ago period. The bank had warned that its third-quarter profit would be hit by $11.3 million in loan losses. 'ADDITIONAL COCKROACHES' Even before problems surfaced at Zions and Western Alliance, investor confidence had taken a hit from the twin bankruptcies of auto parts maker First Brands and subprime lender Tricolor. Fifth Third booked a $178 million loss last week tied to the bankruptcy of Tricolor, while JPMorgan Chase wrote off $170 million. "Asset quality metrics across banks have been deteriorating but have held up better than we expected. Losses have been low, so these recent numerous larger loan problems have raised fears of a broader deterioration," said Michael Driscoll, credit rating officer, Global Financial Institutions Ratings at Morningstar DBRS. "But one of the lessons from 2023 regional bank failures was that banks' funding can unravel faster than in the past if sizable issues emerge." But many, including Fifth Third CEO Tim Spence, have downplayed comparisons to the 2023 regional banking crisis, when Silicon Valley Bank's failure sparked a broader turmoil. "We view recent weakness in the bank group as being driven by three key reasons," Deutsche Bank analysts said. "These include a number of idiosyncratic credit events occurring over a short period of time, less near-term focus over credit overall and mixed messaging from the banks." Large Wall Street banks last week also described the recent stress as idiosyncratic, but investors worry that problems emerging in quick succession point to deeper cracks in credit quality. "A wave of additional 'cockroaches' could reset risk tolerance across markets, pressuring valuations and tightening financial conditions further," Hynes said. Analysts said markets have taken note of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's recent comment about the potential for more cases like First Brands, amplifying investor anxiety about weaknesses in the industry's more opaque corners. "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, and so everyone should be forewarned of this one," Dimon said last week. (Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Joel Jose; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Richard Chang)
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VIDEO SHOWS: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ATP SWISS INDOORS BASEL COMPLETE SCRIPT TO FOLLOW SHOWS: BASEL, SWITZERLAND (OCTOBER 20, 2025) (ATP MEDIA / IMG – See restrictions before use)
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SYDNEY (Reuters) -The United States and Australia have extended financial support to several Australian companies as part of a wide-ranging critical minerals agreement signed on Monday with an aim of countering China's hold over the industry. Under the agreement signed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the two countries pledged to invest at least $1 billion each over the next six months in mining and processing projects and to set a price floor for critical minerals, a step long sought by Western miners. The governments would also help advance a plan by U.S. aluminium producer Alcoa to build a gallium plant alongside its alumina refinery in Western Australia that could provide up to 10% of global gallium supply. Gallium, a raw material used in the production of alumina, is a critical mineral essential to technology, especially the semiconductor industry and defence sectors. Australia said in a statement that it would provide up to $200 million in concessional equity financing for the project, which includes offtake rights for the Australian government, while the U.S. would also make an equity investment with offtake rights. Alcoa in August signed a joint development agreement with Japan Australia Gallium Associates (JAGA), a venture between the Japanese government and Sojitz Corp, for the project. The company said that once it finishes feasibility work, a special purpose vehicle owned by the U.S. and Australian governments and Alcoa is expected to enter a joint venture with JAGA to construct the plant, which Alcoa would operate. Separately, the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) announced it sent seven Letters of Interest (LOIs) totalling more than $2.2 billion to advance U.S.-aligned critical minerals projects in Australia. The LOIs were issued to Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals, Graphinex, Latrobe Magnesium, VHM, RZ Resources and Sunrise Energy Metals. They represent the next phase in securing the minerals that power American manufacturing, national security, and other strategic industries, EXIM said in a statement. Shares of Northern Minerals rose 15%, Latrobe Magnesium jumped 27% and VHM were 29% higher in opening trade in Australia on Tuesday, compared to a broader market gain of 0.4%. (Reporting by Melanie Burton in Sydney; Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA said on Monday it was opening the marquee U.S. moon landing contract to other bidders because Elon Musk's SpaceX has experienced mounting delays with its Starship lunar lander. The move paves the way for rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to snatch a high-profile mission to land the first astronauts on the moon in half a century. "I'm in the process of opening that contract up. I think we'll see companies like Blue get involved, and maybe others," the U.S. space agency's acting chief Sean Duffy, who also serves as U.S. Transportation Secretary, told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. Duffy's comments follow months of mounting pressure within NASA to speed up its Artemis lunar program and push SpaceX to make greater progress on its Starship lunar lander, while China progresses toward its own goal of sending humans to the moon by 2030. They also present a major shift in NASA's lunar strategy, starting a new competitive juncture in the program for a human-rated moon lander just two years before the scheduled landing date. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete for the mission, while Lockheed Martin has indicated it would convene an industry team to heed NASA's call. Starship, picked by NASA in 2021 under a contract now worth $4.4 billion, faces a 2027 moon landing deadline that agency advisers estimate could slip years behind schedule, citing competing priorities. Musk sees Starship as crucial to launching larger batches of Starlink satellites to space and eventually ferrying humans to Mars, among other missions. "They do remarkable things, but they're behind schedule," Duffy said of SpaceX's lunar lander work, adding President Donald Trump wants to see the mission take place before his White House term ends in January 2029. Musk appeared to brush off the specter of more competition. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the SpaceX CEO wrote on X, replying to a user on Monday. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words." The mission involving SpaceX, Artemis 3, would be the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Bezos' space company Blue Origin, with its Blue Moon lander in development, has a similar lunar landing contract awarded by NASA in 2023 but for later Artemis moon missions. The company had protested NASA's initial decision to only pick SpaceX in 2021 and fought for years to convince the agency and lawmakers to select another proposal as a redundancy. Duffy's reference to Blue Origin on Monday suggests Bezos' space company could contend for Artemis 3. NASA has not returned requests for comment and specifics on Duffy's remarks. Blue Origin has been developing its Blue Moon lander in Florida with relatively little public attention under a contract worth roughly $3 billion. SpaceX has been developing Starship in Texas in a whirlwind campaign of test-to-failure demonstration missions, but NASA has grown uneasy with a lack of progress on lunar lander-specific development milestones. In a statement to Reuters, Bob Behnken, vice president of Exploration and Technology Strategy at Lockheed Martin's space unit, said the company this year has been conducting "significant technical and programmatic analysis for human lunar landers." "We have been working with a cross-industry team of companies and together we are looking forward to addressing Secretary Duffy's request to meet our country’s lunar objectives," said Behnken, a retired NASA astronaut. NASA's multibillion-dollar Artemis program is a series of missions involving multiple contractors aimed at returning humans to the moon for a long-term presence there. Artemis 3 has been planned for 2027 with SpaceX's Starship. Artemis 2, a 10-day flight around the moon and back involving systems built by Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, is on track for April and could get moved up to February, he added. Bezos and Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp reportedly spoke with Trump over the summer when the Republican president was feuding with Musk, a supporter in the 2024 election who was tapped to lead efforts to cut the federal government known as DOGE. Representatives for SpaceX and Blue Origin could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Deborah Sophia and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Nick Zieminski and David Gregorio)
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