At a Nov. 13 briefing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said she was not aware of reports that NVIDIA chips are in Shanghai data centers. Asked about U.S. lawmakers and the Commerce Department pushing measures to block Chinese firms from accessing U.S. compute via foreign channels, she said China opposes abuse of export controls that destabilize global production and supply chains, called such measures contrary to all parties’ interests, and urged both sides to implement leaders’ consensu

Microsoft (MSFT.O) said it is making progress restoring access to flagship software after an outage that disrupted global government agencies, traders and corporate customers. In a notice posted around 9:00 a.m. ET the company said service availability is improving and “mail queues have fallen significantly, nearing normal.” It warned users of more than 20 products and services may still encounter errors. The cause remains unclear; Microsoft said core processes on some servers became unresponsive under heavy load and initial remediation was hampered by subsequent server errors. The company said it will provide more details after the incident and that there is no evidence of malicious activity.

Westpac chief economist Luci Ellis says a sharp downturn in Australia’s housing market will weigh on next year’s economy far more than expected, and the Reserve Bank of Australia may have already completed its rate-cutting cycle. A February rate rise is not impossible, she added, but policy is clearly restrictive and downside risks are emerging. Westpac has downgraded its 2027 forecasts for GDP, the labour market and the housing sector.