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By Leika Kihara and Makiko Yamazaki TOKYO (Reuters) -The possible appointment of Satsuki Katayama as Japan's next finance minister could give markets cause to rethink pushing the yen too low but might also help the country's new leader find fresh ways to fund bold economic stimulus plans. Japan's next likely prime minister Sanae Takaichi has finalised a plan to appoint Katayama as finance minister, local media reported on Tuesday, which would make her the first woman to hold the role. The report briefly pushed the dollar to around 150.50 yen, before recouping some losses. In an interview with Reuters in March, Katayama, a 66-year-old veteran upper house lawmaker and former finance minister bureaucrat, said Japan's economic fundamentals suggest the yen's real value is closer to 120-130 per dollar. Those comments were made when the yen's slide to multi-decade lows around 150 to the dollar on market expectations that the Bank of Japan will go slow on monetary tightening. The yen is currently trading around 151 per dollar. "Given her past remarks, it seems Katayama favours reversing a weak yen. Markets may have seen that as similar to the views of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent," said Akira Moroga, chief market strategist at Aozora Bank. Katayama declined to comment on Tuesday. Takaichi is set to be voted in as Japan's first female prime minister on Tuesday, marking a symbolic shattering of the glass ceiling in a country where men still wield most power. OUTSPOKEN, DECISIVE, MINISTRY INSIDER A former finance ministry bureaucrat well-versed in fiscal affairs, Katayama has a knack for currency diplomacy, and befriends former and incumbent executives at the ministry overseeing exchange-rate policy. She is known for being outspoken and her punchy decision-making, which contrasts with incumbent finance minister Katsunobu Kato, who rarely goes off script and keeps a low profile. In the March interview, Katayama had said U.S. President Donald Trump's administration did not want excessive yen weakness versus the dollar. Indeed, Bessent said last week the yen would find its own level if the central bank follows "proper monetary policy" in his latest swipe at the slow pace of BOJ rate hikes. The appointment of Katayama would come at a time of rising living costs, blamed in part on higher import prices caused by a weak yen. Those factors have hurt households and the ruling party's approval ratings. As a former bureaucrat, Katayama knows well the inner workings of the finance ministry's budget drafting. While her background at the finance ministry could prod her to call for fiscal discipline, some analysts say she could use her expertise to help Takaichi find ways to fund her bold spending plans. "I'm not sure whether Katayama is an advocate of expansionary fiscal policy, but her views deep down probably align with those of Takaichi," said Hiroyuki Machida, director of Japan FX and commodities sales at ANZ. "She'll know how to find sources of revenue if Takaichi wants to expand fiscal spending," he said. "Personally, I think this appointment will accelerate 'Takaichi-trade'." The challenge for Takaichi would be to pursue expansionary fiscal policy without causing an unwelcome slide in the yen. It is unknown whether she will nod to the BOJ's plan to gradually raise interest rates from current levels at 0.5%. In the March interview, Katayama said there were limits to what monetary policy or currency intervention could do to tame yen falls, calling instead for steps to boost fundamental growth. Markets will be focused on Katayama's views on whether the BOJ should proceed with raising still-low interest rates, which could increase Japan's debt-servicing costs but help keep sharp yen falls in check. "Katayama is a former finance minister bureaucrat and so well informed on the ministry's affairs," said Eiji Douke, chief fixed income strategist of SBI Securities. "She's likely neutral on fiscal and monetary policy." (Reporting by Leika Kihara and Makiko Yamazaki; Additional reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Editing by Sam Holmes)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Leika Kihara and Makiko Yamazaki TOKYO (Reuters) -The possible appointment of Satsuki Katayama as Japan's next finance minister could give markets cause to rethink pushing the yen too low but might also help the country's new leader find fresh ways to fund bold economic stimulus plans. Japan's next likely prime minister Sanae Takaichi has finalised a plan to appoint Katayama as finance minister, local media reported on Tuesday, which would make her the first woman to hold the role. The report briefly pushed the dollar to around 150.50 yen, before recouping some losses. In an interview with Reuters in March, Katayama, a 66-year-old veteran upper house lawmaker and former finance minister bureaucrat, said Japan's economic fundamentals suggest the yen's real value is closer to 120-130 per dollar. Those comments were made when the yen's slide to multi-decade lows around 150 to the dollar on market expectations that the Bank of Japan will go slow on monetary tightening. The yen is currently trading around 151 per dollar. "Given her past remarks, it seems Katayama favours reversing a weak yen. Markets may have seen that as similar to the views of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent," said Akira Moroga, chief market strategist at Aozora Bank. Katayama declined to comment on Tuesday. Takaichi is set to be voted in as Japan's first female prime minister on Tuesday, marking a symbolic shattering of the glass ceiling in a country where men still wield most power. OUTSPOKEN, DECISIVE, MINISTRY INSIDER A former finance ministry bureaucrat well-versed in fiscal affairs, Katayama has a knack for currency diplomacy, and befriends former and incumbent executives at the ministry overseeing exchange-rate policy. She is known for being outspoken and her punchy decision-making, which contrasts with incumbent finance minister Katsunobu Kato, who rarely goes off script and keeps a low profile. In the March interview, Katayama had said U.S. President Donald Trump's administration did not want excessive yen weakness versus the dollar. Indeed, Bessent said last week the yen would find its own level if the central bank follows "proper monetary policy" in his latest swipe at the slow pace of BOJ rate hikes. The appointment of Katayama would come at a time of rising living costs, blamed in part on higher import prices caused by a weak yen. Those factors have hurt households and the ruling party's approval ratings. As a former bureaucrat, Katayama knows well the inner workings of the finance ministry's budget drafting. While her background at the finance ministry could prod her to call for fiscal discipline, some analysts say she could use her expertise to help Takaichi find ways to fund her bold spending plans. "I'm not sure whether Katayama is an advocate of expansionary fiscal policy, but her views deep down probably align with those of Takaichi," said Hiroyuki Machida, director of Japan FX and commodities sales at ANZ. "She'll know how to find sources of revenue if Takaichi wants to expand fiscal spending," he said. "Personally, I think this appointment will accelerate 'Takaichi-trade'." The challenge for Takaichi would be to pursue expansionary fiscal policy without causing an unwelcome slide in the yen. It is unknown whether she will nod to the BOJ's plan to gradually raise interest rates from current levels at 0.5%. In the March interview, Katayama said there were limits to what monetary policy or currency intervention could do to tame yen falls, calling instead for steps to boost fundamental growth. Markets will be focused on Katayama's views on whether the BOJ should proceed with raising still-low interest rates, which could increase Japan's debt-servicing costs but help keep sharp yen falls in check. "Katayama is a former finance minister bureaucrat and so well informed on the ministry's affairs," said Eiji Douke, chief fixed income strategist of SBI Securities. "She's likely neutral on fiscal and monetary policy." (Reporting by Leika Kihara and Makiko Yamazaki; Additional reporting by Yoshifumi Takemoto; Editing by Sam Holmes)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Pritam Biswas (Reuters) -Zions Bancorp reported a rise in third-quarter profit on Monday, helped by stronger interest income and despite taking a hefty loss on two loans, sending shares of the bank up 2% in after-market trading. Zions disclosed last week that it would take a $50 million loss in the third quarter on two commercial and industrial loans from its California division.  The statement from the bank, combined with separate disclosures from Western Alliance and Jefferies about a fraud lawsuit involving Cantor Group V and exposure to bankrupt auto parts maker First Brands, respectively, led to a decline in banks' shares on Thursday as investor concerns over lending intensified. LOAN LOSSES AN ISOLATED INCIDENT "We are confident this was an isolated incident in our portfolio," Zions Chief Credit Officer Derek Steward said in an analyst call. CEO Harris Simmons said in a statement that excluding the loss "remaining net charge-offs were very benign at $6 million, or 4 basis points of average loans on an annualized basis." U.S. bank shares rebounded on Friday, recovering some of the sharp losses from the previous day and easing jitters around the sector. "Third-quarter earnings results for several U.S. regional banks did not show outsized or unexpected credit losses, and management teams are providing a reassuring outlook for the fourth quarter," Terry McEvoy, analyst at Stephens, said. "Such trends support the idea that the stress at a handful of companies is more of a one-off than an emerging trend." Broader loan growth has helped banks rake in more from interest income. Net interest income – the difference between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits – rose to $672 million from $620 million in the year-ago quarter. Net income applicable to the bank's shareholders was $221 million, or $1.48 per share, in the three months ended September 30, compared with $204 million, or $1.37 per share, a year earlier.    (Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Lincoln Feast.)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Global investment firm KKR and Portuguese private equity firm Quadrantis Capital will acquire a minority stake in Fosun International majority-owned Peak Reinsurance Company, the parties said on Tuesday. KKR will acquire approximately 11.3% of Peak Reinsurance from Prudential Financial, while Quadrantis will take a 1.8% stake. Fosun International, a Hong Kong-listed Chinese conglomerate, will retain its majority ownership of 86.71% in the reinsurance company. The deal comes on the heels of KKR's acquisition of Japanese insurance distributor Hoken Minaoshi Hompo Group last month, as the firm continues to strengthen its footprint in Asia's insurance sector. "As Asia emerges as a global growth engine for insurance and reinsurance, Peak Re is well-positioned to meet the needs of global clients with its established regional platform, disciplined underwriting approach, and strong governance," said Bing Gu, managing director at KKR. The investments are expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025. (Reporting by Nichiket Sunil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

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)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

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)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Pritam Biswas (Reuters) -Zions Bancorp reported a rise in third-quarter profit on Monday, helped by stronger interest income and despite taking a hefty loss on two loans, sending shares of the bank up 2% in after-market trading. Zions disclosed last week that it would take a $50 million loss in the third quarter on two commercial and industrial loans from its California division.  The statement from the bank, combined with separate disclosures from Western Alliance and Jefferies about a fraud lawsuit involving Cantor Group V and exposure to bankrupt auto parts maker First Brands, respectively, led to a decline in banks' shares on Thursday as investor concerns over lending intensified. LOAN LOSSES AN ISOLATED INCIDENT "We are confident this was an isolated incident in our portfolio," Zions Chief Credit Officer Derek Steward said in an analyst call. CEO Harris Simmons said in a statement that excluding the loss "remaining net charge-offs were very benign at $6 million, or 4 basis points of average loans on an annualized basis." U.S. bank shares rebounded on Friday, recovering some of the sharp losses from the previous day and easing jitters around the sector. "Third-quarter earnings results for several U.S. regional banks did not show outsized or unexpected credit losses, and management teams are providing a reassuring outlook for the fourth quarter," Terry McEvoy, analyst at Stephens, said. "Such trends support the idea that the stress at a handful of companies is more of a one-off than an emerging trend." Broader loan growth has helped banks rake in more from interest income. Net interest income – the difference between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits – rose to $672 million from $620 million in the year-ago quarter. Net income applicable to the bank's shareholders was $221 million, or $1.48 per share, in the three months ended September 30, compared with $204 million, or $1.37 per share, a year earlier.    (Reporting by Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Lincoln Feast.)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about excess supply and risks to demand stemming from tensions between the U.S. and China, the world's top two oil consumers, even as President Donald Trump said he expected to reach a trade deal. Brent crude futures fell 14 cents, or 0.2%, at $60.87 a barrel at 0005 GMT. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) contract for November delivery, set to expire on Tuesday, eased 0.1% to $57.45. The more-active December contract was down 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $56.89. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Disputes over tariffs, technology and market access remain unresolved ahead of their planned meeting in South Korea next week. "I think we'll end up with a very strong trade deal. Both of us will be happy," Trump said. Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note that the near-term trading stance on crude remains bearish, favoring selling into price advances rather than buying pullbacks. "But, we also feel that enough geopolitical uncertainty remains to occasionally offset oil balances that are becoming more negative with each passing week," they added. U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday showed, ahead of weekly reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Information Administration. [EIA/S] In Russia, Rosneft-controlled Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Volga region halted primary crude processing on Sunday following a drone attack. Separately, a strike on the Orenburg gas plant forced neighboring Kazakhstan to cut output at its Karachaganak oil and gas condensate field by 25% to 30%. Ambiguity around Russian oil supply persists, as Trump reiterated that India could face “massive” tariffs unless it halts purchases of Russian crude. India has become the leading buyer of discounted Russian oil following Western sanctions on Moscow. Oil prices have been falling partly due to a bearish outlook last week from the International Energy Agency, which projected the global oil market could face a surplus of nearly 4 million barrels per day in 2026, as OPEC+ producers and rivals ramp up output while demand remains sluggish. (Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about excess supply and risks to demand stemming from tensions between the U.S. and China, the world's top two oil consumers, even as President Donald Trump said he expected to reach a trade deal. Brent crude futures fell 14 cents, or 0.2%, at $60.87 a barrel at 0005 GMT. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) contract for November delivery, set to expire on Tuesday, eased 0.1% to $57.45. The more-active December contract was down 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $56.89. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Disputes over tariffs, technology and market access remain unresolved ahead of their planned meeting in South Korea next week. "I think we'll end up with a very strong trade deal. Both of us will be happy," Trump said. Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note that the near-term trading stance on crude remains bearish, favoring selling into price advances rather than buying pullbacks. "But, we also feel that enough geopolitical uncertainty remains to occasionally offset oil balances that are becoming more negative with each passing week," they added. U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday showed, ahead of weekly reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Information Administration. [EIA/S] In Russia, Rosneft-controlled Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Volga region halted primary crude processing on Sunday following a drone attack. Separately, a strike on the Orenburg gas plant forced neighboring Kazakhstan to cut output at its Karachaganak oil and gas condensate field by 25% to 30%. Ambiguity around Russian oil supply persists, as Trump reiterated that India could face “massive” tariffs unless it halts purchases of Russian crude. India has become the leading buyer of discounted Russian oil following Western sanctions on Moscow. Oil prices have been falling partly due to a bearish outlook last week from the International Energy Agency, which projected the global oil market could face a surplus of nearly 4 million barrels per day in 2026, as OPEC+ producers and rivals ramp up output while demand remains sluggish. (Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Oil prices fell on Tuesday on concerns about excess supply and risks to demand stemming from tensions between the U.S. and China, the world's top two oil consumers, even as President Donald Trump said he expected to reach a trade deal. Brent crude futures fell 14 cents, or 0.2%, at $60.87 a barrel at 0005 GMT. The U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) contract for November delivery, set to expire on Tuesday, eased 0.1% to $57.45. The more-active December contract was down 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $56.89. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects to reach a fair trade deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Disputes over tariffs, technology and market access remain unresolved ahead of their planned meeting in South Korea next week. "I think we'll end up with a very strong trade deal. Both of us will be happy," Trump said. Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note that the near-term trading stance on crude remains bearish, favoring selling into price advances rather than buying pullbacks. "But, we also feel that enough geopolitical uncertainty remains to occasionally offset oil balances that are becoming more negative with each passing week," they added. U.S. crude oil stockpiles likely rose last week, a preliminary Reuters poll on Monday showed, ahead of weekly reports from the American Petroleum Institute and the Energy Information Administration. [EIA/S] In Russia, Rosneft-controlled Novokuibyshevsk refinery in the Volga region halted primary crude processing on Sunday following a drone attack. Separately, a strike on the Orenburg gas plant forced neighboring Kazakhstan to cut output at its Karachaganak oil and gas condensate field by 25% to 30%. Ambiguity around Russian oil supply persists, as Trump reiterated that India could face “massive” tariffs unless it halts purchases of Russian crude. India has become the leading buyer of discounted Russian oil following Western sanctions on Moscow. Oil prices have been falling partly due to a bearish outlook last week from the International Energy Agency, which projected the global oil market could face a surplus of nearly 4 million barrels per day in 2026, as OPEC+ producers and rivals ramp up output while demand remains sluggish. (Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)