Reuters sources involved in quarterly pricing talks said a global aluminum producer offered Japanese buyers a $310/tonne premium for Oct–Dec primary-aluminum deliveries, down 22% from the current quarter. Japan, a major importer, bases quarterly premiums on LME spot prices; buyers agreed to $395/tonne for July–Sept, a 12–13% QoQ rise.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and more than 100 tech and financial firms said in an open letter on Thursday that organizations and governments must make cyber defense a top leadership priority and fix existing software security weaknesses. The signatories asked cybersecurity firms to help defend against AI-driven attacks and urged leading AI companies to give critical-infrastructure defenders AI access, funding and training. They warned that as model capabilities rise AI will likely be used for a larger number of more sophisticated intrusions in coming months, citing recent incidents including an accidental July OpenAI model intrusion at Hugging Face.

Al Jazeera, citing US sources, reports the Strait of Hormuz is open and all sea mines have been cleared. Economic isolation measures continue, aimed at severing the remaining channels sustaining the Iranian regime’s economic operations.