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(Reuters) -Australian lender ANZ on Thursday announced three senior leadership appointments to its Group Executive Committee as part of efforts to strengthen its retail, risk management and technology operations. Pedro Rodeia will join as group executive for Australia Retail, Christine Palmer as group chief risk officer, and Donald Patra as group chief information officer, ANZ said in a statement. (Reporting by Roshan Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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(Reuters) -Liontown Resources said on Thursday it amended its loan and spodumene supply agreements with Ford Motor, aiming to bolster near-term liquidity and gain more flexibility in marketing output as production ramps up at its Kathleen Valley lithium project in Western Australia. Under the revised terms, Liontown said principal and interest payments due to Ford over fiscal 2026 would be deferred by 12 months; all other loan conditions remained unchanged. Shares of the battery minerals producer climbed 3.4% to A$1.065, their highest since mid-June 2024, outperforming the broader S&P/ASX 200 benchmark, which rose 0.3% as of 2318 GMT. The company also halved the remaining spodumene concentrate volume to be delivered to Ford from 2027 onwards to 256,250 dry metric tons and said no deliveries would occur in 2027 and 2028. Liontown added that Ford has the option to waive its take-or-pay commitments for those remaining volumes. Amendments would allow Liontown to sell more product on the spot market or pursue new strategic partnerships, it said. The amended deal comes a week after Perth-headquartered Liontown said it would revise pricing terms with Tesla in their long-term offtake agreement as the miner sought broader exposure to lithium pricing benchmarks. (Reporting by Roshan Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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(Reuters) -Liontown Resources said on Thursday it amended its loan and spodumene supply agreements with Ford Motor, aiming to bolster near-term liquidity and gain more flexibility in marketing output as production ramps up at its Kathleen Valley lithium project in Western Australia. Under the revised terms, Liontown said principal and interest payments due to Ford over fiscal 2026 would be deferred by 12 months; all other loan conditions remained unchanged. Shares of the battery minerals producer climbed 3.4% to A$1.065, their highest since mid-June 2024, outperforming the broader S&P/ASX 200 benchmark, which rose 0.3% as of 2318 GMT. The company also halved the remaining spodumene concentrate volume to be delivered to Ford from 2027 onwards to 256,250 dry metric tons and said no deliveries would occur in 2027 and 2028. Liontown added that Ford has the option to waive its take-or-pay commitments for those remaining volumes. Amendments would allow Liontown to sell more product on the spot market or pursue new strategic partnerships, it said. The amended deal comes a week after Perth-headquartered Liontown said it would revise pricing terms with Tesla in their long-term offtake agreement as the miner sought broader exposure to lithium pricing benchmarks. (Reporting by Roshan Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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(Reuters) -Microsoft is partnering with Harvard Medical School to enhance its Copilot AI assistant with health content, as part of a broader effort to reduce its dependence on ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. A major update of Copilot scheduled for release as soon as this month will be the first to reflect a new collaboration between Microsoft and Harvard Medical School, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Microsoft and Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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(Reuters) -Oil prices fell in early trade on Thursday after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a plan to end the war in Gaza, weighing on oil's war risk premium and pushing investors to sell. Brent crude futures were down 51 cents, or 0.77%, at $65.74 a barrel by 0002 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 55 cents, or 0.88%, to $62. U.S. President Donald Trump said that Israel and Hamas had reached a long-sought deal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release under a plan for ending the two-year-old war in the Palestinian enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would convene the government on Thursday to approve the ceasefire agreement. The war in Gaza has supported oil prices as investors have weighed the potential risk to global oil supply if the war were to develop into a wider regional conflict. Prices had gained around 1% on Wednesday to reach a one-week high after investors viewed stalled progress on a Ukraine peace deal as sustaining sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, total weekly U.S. petroleum products supplied, a proxy for U.S. oil consumption, rose last week to 21.990 million barrels per day, the most since December 2022, showed a report from the Energy Information Administration on Wednesday. (Reporting by Georgina McCartney in Houston; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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(Reuters) -Microsoft is partnering with Harvard Medical School to enhance its Copilot AI assistant with health content, as part of a broader effort to reduce its dependence on ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Copilot, following an update scheduled for release as soon as this month, is set to use Harvard Health Publishing information to respond to healthcare queries, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Microsoft will pay Harvard a licensing fee, the report added. In an interview with the Journal, Dominic King, vice president of health at Microsoft AI, said that the company's aim is for Copilot to serve answers that are more in line with the information users might get from a medical practitioner than what is currently available. Harvard did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, while Microsoft declined to comment on the report.  Copilot so far has been primarily using OpenAI's models across its suite of applications, such as Word and Outlook, and — in an effort to reduce its reliance on the startup — Microsoft has started using Anthropic's Claude and is curretly developing its own AI models. (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Alan Barona)

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By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by the National Retail Federation challenging a New York state law that requires retailers to tell customers when their personal data are used to set prices, known as surveillance pricing. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said the world's largest retail trade group did not plausibly allege that New York's Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act violated its members' free speech rights under the Constitution's First Amendment. Neither the NRF nor its lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment after business hours. Spokespeople for New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the law, did not immediately respond to similar requests. The first-in-the-nation law required retailers to disclose in capital letters when prices were set by algorithms using personal data, or face possible civil fines of $1,000 per violation. Governor Kathy Hochul said charging different prices depending on what people were willing to pay was "opaque," and prevented comparison-shopping. The trade group said the law reflected "speculative fear" of price gouging and forced retailers to convey that algorithms were "dangerous," though they could also be used to lower prices for promotions or to reward customer loyalty. JUDGE SAYS LAW INFORMS CONSUMERS ABOUT PRICES In a 28-page decision, Rakoff said the law was reasonably related to New York's legitimate interest in ensuring that customers understand their transactions. The disclosure "serves to ameliorate consumer confusion or deception by ensuring that consumers are better informed about how a merchant has set the displayed price," the judge wrote. New York's law was to take effect on July 8, but was put on hold because of the lawsuit. James agreed not to retroactively enforce the law for intervening violations. In January, a divided Federal Trade Commission issued a surveillance pricing study that said location data and online browsing histories could let retailers "target" individual consumers with different prices for the same products. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, then a commissioner, dissented from issuing the study, saying it was hurried out three days before President Donald Trump began his second White House term to meet a "nakedly political deadline." (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

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By David Shepardson BALTIMORE (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration delayed flights for a third straight day on Wednesday at airports including Reagan Washington National and Newark Liberty International Airport as the agency continued to face higher-than-normal staffing shortages. There were nearly 3,000 flight delays by 5:30 p.m. ET (2130 GMT) after 10,000 delays in total on Monday and Tuesday with thousands tied to the FAA slowing flights because of air traffic controller absences at facilities across the country as the government shutdown reached its eighth day. Some flights at Reagan were being forced to hold in the air due to a slowdown in air traffic, the FAA said. "Historically, there's about 5% of delays that is attributed to staffing issues in our towers. Last couple days it has been 53%," U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said on Fox News' "Will Cain Show." "My message to the air traffic controllers who work for DOT is show up for work — you have a job to do." Air traffic control staffing issues during this shutdown have emerged earlier than the last major halt to government funding in 2019, during U.S. President Donald Trump's first term, leading to unexpected shortages in cities around the country. "The bottom line is these controllers are stressed out, and they're rebelling on this shutdown because they may not get paid," Duffy said. Maryland Governor Wes Moore and congressional Democrats called for the shutdown to end at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Wednesday, noting that air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers are working without pay. Moore, a Democrat, said President Trump "could not close a deal" to keep the government open. Representative Kwiesi Mfume, a Democrat, called for supplemental legislation that would continue to pay air traffic controllers during a shutdown. "People are beginning to worry now about flying and we should as a nation never get to that point," he said. In 2019, during a 35-day shutdown, the number of absences by controllers and TSA officers rose as workers missed paychecks, extending checkpoint wait times at some airports. Authorities were forced to slow air traffic in New York, which put pressure on lawmakers to quickly end the standoff. Some 13,000 air traffic controllers and about 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers must still turn up for work during the government shutdown, but they are not being paid. Controllers are set to receive a partial paycheck on October 14 for work performed before the shutdown. "Our BWI workers are still here," Moore said. "They're doing it because they're patriots. They're doing it because they know that this work matters." Separately, Duffy said USDOT had secured $41 million to keep the Essential Air Service program funded into early November. Some carriers including Alaska Airlines had vowed to continue government-subsided flights to rural or remote areas even after USDOT warned they might not get reimbursed starting next week. The U.S. has faced air traffic control shortages for more than a decade, and many controllers had been working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks even before the shutdown. The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter and Diane Craft)

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(Reuters) -Microsoft is partnering with Harvard Medical School to enhance its Copilot AI assistant with health content, as part of a broader effort to reduce its dependence on ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. A major update of Copilot scheduled for release as soon as this month will be the first to reflect a new collaboration between Microsoft and Harvard Medical School, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Microsoft and Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The world economy has proven more resilient than expected despite acute strains from multiple shocks, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, forecasting only a slight slowing of global growth this year and in 2026. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said recent economic data showed a softening in the U.S. economy, but it had dodged a recession feared by many experts just six months ago. The U.S. economy and many others had held up, given better policies, a more adaptable private sector, less severe import tariffs than feared – at least for now – and supportive financial conditions, she told an event hosted by the Milken Institute in Washington. "We see global growth slowing only slightly this year and next. All signs point to a world economy that has generally withstood acute strains from multiple shocks," Georgieva said in a preview of the IMF's upcoming World Economic Outlook to be released next Tuesday during the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. In July, the IMF raised its global growth forecast by 0.2 percentage point to 3.0% for 2025 and by 0.1 percentage point to 3.1% for 2026. Georgieva told Reuters in an interview the fresh outlook would reflect a small downward revision from the 3.2% growth forecast last October, but gave no exact numbers. "What we are seeing is demonstrable resilience in the world," she said. "But we are also saying it is a time of exceptional uncertainty and downside risks are still dominating the forecast. So watch it, don't get too comfortable." Next week's gathering takes place at a time when President Donald Trump has upended global trade with steep tariffs and cracked down on immigration, and artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming technology and the outlook for labor. The world economy is doing "better than feared, but worse than needed," Georgieva said in her speech, noting the IMF was forecasting global growth of roughly 3% over the medium-term, well below the 3.7% forecast before the COVID-19 pandemic. She cited deep undercurrents of marginalization, discontent and hardship around the world, and said the global economy faced an array of risks, including a potential market bubble around artificial intelligence. Uncertainty is at exceptionally high levels and continuing to climb, while demand for gold – a traditional safe-haven asset – is surging, Georgieva said. Gold hit another record high on Wednesday, surging past $4,000 an ounce for the first time, as a U.S. government shutdown persisted and expectations for a Fed rate cut this month boosted demand. She said the IMF saw scope for further monetary easing this year. Georgieva said the U.S. tariff shock has been less severe than initially announced in April, with the U.S. trade-weighted tariff rate now around 17.5%, down from 23% in April, and countries largely skipping retaliatory tariffs. But U.S. tariff rates keep changing and U.S. inflation could rise if companies started to pass through more of the cost of tariffs, or if a flood of goods previously headed for the U.S. triggered a second round of tariff hikes elsewhere, she said. Financial market valuations are also heading toward levels last seen during the internet-related bullishness 25 years ago, she said. An abrupt shift in sentiment – such as what happened during the dot.com crash of March 2000 – could drag down world growth, making life especially tough for developing countries. "Buckle up," Georgieva said, adding, "Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay." GEORGIEVA WARNS ON DEBT LEVELS The IMF head urged countries to durably lift growth by boosting private-sector productivity, consolidating spending, reducing debt and tackling excessive current account imbalances, which would help rebuild their buffers for the next crisis. "As we have seen, these imbalances can trigger a protectionist backlash and – being mirrored by net capital flows – can fuel financial stability risks," she said. "We at the IMF are working hard to refine our external sector assessments and will keep pushing key players for policy correctives." Global public debt is expected to exceed 100% of GDP by 2029, Georgieva said. Competition is key, along with free-market-friendly property rights, rule of law, strong financial sector oversights and accountable institutions. In Asia, countries need to deepen trade and carry out reforms to strengthen the service sector, Georgieva said. A push to lower non-tariff barriers and boost regional integration could lift gross domestic product by 1.8% in the long run. In Sub-Saharan Africa, business-friendly reforms could boost the real GDP per capita of the median African country by more than 10%. Europe should finish building a single market, which could help it catch up with the dynamism of the U.S. private sector, she said, offering what she called "tough love" advice. The U.S., on track to see its debt-to-GDP ratio exceed record levels after World War Two, should take "sustained action" to lower its federal debt, Georgieva said. It should also work to boost household saving, such as through favorable treatment of retirement savings. China also had work to do, including boosting fiscal spending on social safety nets and property sector clean-up, while cutting spending on industrial policy initiatives, which accounts for 4.4% of annual GDP, she said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Paul Simao and Lincoln Feast.)

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