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By Stella Qiu SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's unemployment rate spiked unexpectedly to a near four-year high in September as more people went looking for work, a weak result that revived hopes for more policy easing. Investors ramped up bets for a rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia in November to 72%, from just 40% before the data. Prospects for more easing had faded as policymakers fret about sticky inflation and a sharp revival in consumer spending. The Australian dollar slipped 0.2% to $0.6497, while three-year bond futures rallied 10 ticks to 96.62. The heightened expectations of a rate cut pushed the local stock benchmark to a record high. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics out on Thursday showed net employment rose 14,900 in September from August, when it fell a revised 11,800. That was under market forecasts for a 20,000 gain. Most crucially, the jobless rate jumped to 4.5%, the highest since November 2021 and against forecasts of 4.3%, which was the peak forecast by the RBA. The central bank has said the monthly jobs reports are volatile but employment growth has slowed sharply this year to just 1.3% in September, compared with 3.5% in January. "The RBA is increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place," said Harry Murphy Cruise, head of economic research for Oxford Economics Australia. "Inflation looks set to come in hotter than the Bank’s latest forecasts, while the labour market is weaker than expected … We maintain our view that a rate cut is warranted in November." The RBA held rates steady at 3.60% in September, having cut three times so far this year, awaiting more inflation data. Core inflation had fallen to 2.7% in the second quarter, back in the RBA's target range of 2% to 3%, but recent monthly data pointed to a risk it had not declined further in the third quarter. The central bank had judged the labour market to be nearly in balance, while demand in some industries was still running hot. However, the latest private data showed the number of job ads dropped 3.3% in September, the biggest monthly decline since early 2024. "The RBA have noted that some cooling within the labour force was expected. But nowhere within its most recent forecasts did they project the unemployment rate rising to anywhere near 4.5% – not this year, not next year and not in 2027," said Tony Sycamore, analyst at IG. "The RBA now finds itself in a very awkward position." Much focus is now on the third quarter inflation report due at the end of October where any downside surprises may pave the way for a rate cut in November. Earlier in the day, Governor Michele Bullock said a pickup in consumer spending and higher readings on some parts of inflation had given policymakers pause to consider whether further interest rate cuts were needed. Thursday's report showed the labour force grew a sizable 48,800 as more people went looking for work. Full-time jobs gained 8,700 after a steep drop the previous month, while part-time roles rose by 6,000. Hours worked rose 0.5%, reversing a drop in August. (Reporting by Stella Qiu and Wayne Cole; Editing by Kim Coghill, Sam Holmes and Sonali Paul)

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By David Lawder and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Top U.S. officials on Wednesday blasted China's major expansion of rare earth export controls as a threat to global supply chains, but said Beijing could still change course and avoid steps by Washington to decouple from the world's second-largest economy. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told a press conference that China's new export restrictions were a "global supply-chain power grab" and the U.S. and its allies would not accept the restrictions. However, Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also stressed that Washington did not want to escalate the conflict, which has roiled financial markets and sent U.S.-China relations into a tailspin. As of Tuesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump was still expecting to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month, Bessent said. Greer said China has not yet implemented the revised regulatory system for rare earths and could still back away, just as the U.S. had not implemented a retaliatory 100% increase in tariffs on Chinese imports. "These are drafted, or in draft, so it's quite real, but our expectation is that they won't implement this and that we'll be able to be back to where we were a week ago where we had the tariff levels we've agreed to and we have the flow of rare earths that we agreed to," Greer said. Neither official would discuss possible outcomes for negotiations aimed at averting the restrictions and U.S. retaliation, which includes a threat by Trump to increase tariffs on Chinese imports by an additional 100%. The two sides have maintained lower tariffs and continued Chinese rare earth flows under a delicate, six-month truce that has been repeatedly extended for 90 days at a time. Bessent suggested a longer extension was possible. "We are currently in a 90-day roll on the tariffs, so is it possible that we could go for a longer roll in return for a delay? Perhaps, but all that's going to be negotiated in the coming weeks before the leaders meet in Korea," he said. TRADE WAR CLOUDS OUTLOOK Their comments came hours after the U.S. and China rolled out tit-for-tat port fees on each other's ships, opening a new front in their bitter trade fight. Escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions overshadowed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington. In its World Economic Outlook released on Tuesday, the IMF had upgraded its global growth forecast in part due to the superpowers' recent detente. Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato said he expressed "strong concern" over China's expansion of rare earth export controls in a meeting with his G7 counterparts in Washington on Wednesday. "I told my counterparts the G7 must work together and respond strongly against China," Kato told reporters after the meeting. "I also said if our response leads to a spiral of retaliatory measures, that could have an adverse impact on global markets," he added. Kato said he was not aware of any G7 plan to issue a joint communique. He said the group did discuss China's export curbs and a possible response, but did not reveal details. Bessent said U.S. and Chinese officials were meeting on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank gathering to arrange the Trump-Xi meeting, adding that it was the level of trust between the two leaders that had prevented escalation of the tariffs in the past. Greer and Bessent, who have met personally with senior Chinese officials four times in four different European cities in recent months, called China's actions a "clear repudiation" of prior U.S.-China agreements. UNRELIABLE SUPPLIER? The U.S. does not want to economically decouple from China, but would have to take action if Beijing proved to be an unreliable supplier, Bessent said, noting that Chinese officials recently told U.S. auto companies that a slowdown in shipments of rare earth magnets was "probably something" to do with a holiday. "Not only is China fueling Russia's war (in Ukraine), but China's actions have once again demonstrated the risk of being dependent on them, on rare earths and for that matter, anything," Bessent said, adding, "If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple." He said Washington had further measures it could deploy, including export controls, if Beijing proceeded, and was also ready to tariff China over its purchases of Russian oil, as long as European partners joined in. The U.S. has slapped additional tariffs on India over its smaller purchases of Russian oil, but has refrained for now from taking action against China. "While there are substantial actions we can take, we'd rather not. I believe China's open to discussion and I am optimistic that this can be de-escalated," Bessent said. The U.S. would also produce photographs supplied by the Ukrainian government that showed Chinese parts were used in Russian drones operating in Ukraine, Bessent said through a spokesperson. Earlier on Wednesday, he told a CNBC event that China had clearly intended to take action "all along," rejecting Beijing's claim that the actions were a response to U.S. actions, including the new U.S. port fees. Bessent said a senior Chinese trade official had threatened as early as August to "unleash chaos on the global system" if the U.S. went ahead with the port fee increases. He named the official as Li Chenggang, China's chief trade negotiator and a subordinate of Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has participated in all the U.S.-China talks. (Reporting by David Lawder and Andrea Shalal; additional reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Andrea Ricci, Paul Simao and Lincoln Feast.)

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(Reuters) -Alphabet-owned YouTube said on Wednesday that it has resolved an issue impacting video streaming services for several thousand users globally. YouTube said in a post on X that users should now be able to play videos on YouTube Music, YouTube TV and its main platform — without specifying what caused the issue. At its peak, at 7:55 p.m. ET, 366,172 users in the U.S. had reported issues with YouTube, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources. Thousands of outages were also reported in the UK, Canada, and Australia, Downdetector showed. Downdetector's numbers are based on user-submitted reports. The actual number of affected users may vary. (Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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By Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate – a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace – by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models. AI DEMAND SOARS The revenue projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code‑generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said it crossed $13 billion in annualized revenue in August, and is on pace to achieve over $20 billion by end of the year, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code‑generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 — its second-largest market after the U.S.— and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand. (Reporting by Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel)

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