Daily Buzz: 19 October 2026

Trump Waives New Sanctions on Russia, Triggering Backlash

US President Donald Trump waived additional sanctions on Russia, due to come in effect over the weekend, after signing the legislation into law last month. The sanctions largely relate to Russian sales of fossil fuels. Among other things, they would have imposed tariffs of up to 100 percent on imports from the five biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas, in an effort to squeeze Russia's financing of its war against Ukraine. Ukraine and bipartisan members of the US Congress condemned Trump's action. The president has blown hot and cold on support for Ukraine, recently flaying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes that importing Russia's diesel surplus will bring down American fuel prices ahead of November 3 midterm elections. Zelensky told NBC News that the US siding with Russia is a "historic mistake."

Separately, Ukraine attacked a major oil terminal near St Petersburg as part of one of its biggest drone strikes on Russia this year. The facility, which reportedly caught fire, has an annual capacity of 12.5 million tons. The attacks also targeted logistics sites and a data center. Kiev said they were retaliatory attacks as Russia continues striking its infrastructure. Russia's defense ministry said it shot down 1,015 Ukrainian drone during the attack. Trump has told Kiev to stop attacks on Russian oil facilities, which he blames for record-high diesel prices, though data show the Iran war has a bigger impact.

Iran Claims Oil Tanker in Strait of Hormuz Caught Fire

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard said an oil tanker "violating" Iran's regulations for transiting the Strait of Hormuz caught fire after hitting an underwater mine in the waterway as Tehran's efforts to cripple shipping continue. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran's proposal to the US to reopen the strait within seven days, if certain conditions are met, remains on the table, though negotiations with Washington have stalled. Global benchmark Brent crude futures resumed trading Sunday night priced at US$108.97 a barrel, after hitting US$110 in intraday trading on Friday.

Israeli Settlers Attack EU Diplomats Amid West Bank Olive Harvest

Militant Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank assaulted EU diplomats, a French mayor and a French archbishop who were there to show solidarity with Palestinians whose olive harvests have been the target of settler attacks. The Europeans included the French consul general in Jerusalem, his wife and diplomats from Belgian and Polish consulates. On Friday, a Washington Post reporter covering the violence was hospitalized after she was attacked and severely injured. Since the start of the annual olive harvest in late September, settlers have staged 170 attacks, trying to stop Palestinians from bringing in a crop vital to their community's livelihoods. "This violence cannot be separated from Israel's illegal settlement policy," said Maxime Prévot, Belgium's deputy prime minister. "The occupation of the Palestinian territory must end."

Top Business

DeepSeek Releases New Flash Model

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released its next-generation AI model DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, claiming it surpasses Anthropic's flagship Claude Opus 5 across multiple agent-task benchmarks with just 16 billion active parameters, while per-task running costs come in at less than a 10th of comparable US products. The launch comes as the global large-model industry is pivoting from a "capability race" to a "profit race." The new DeepSeek model is a fine-tuned upgrade of DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash released in September. The startup burst on the international scene in early 2025 with a chatbot that was much cheaper to develop and run than those of US tech giants.

Tencent Tightens Controls After AI Agents on Its Cloud Service Go Rogue

Tencent said it is tightening network access controls and monitoring of AI agents after researchers found that agents running on its cloud infrastructure repeatedly tried to bypass restrictions on Alibaba's Amap mapping service. Tencent said the activity occurred during evaluations of third-party AI models but didn't involve its own Hunyuan models. "We take these findings seriously," the company said. The response came after a report by independent AI safety research group Swarmchasers, which documented more than 2,600 attempts between September 28 and October 8 to extract information from Amap, with agents reverting to third-party web services when access was blocked.

Temu Agrees to Restrict Use of Shopper Data to Settle Texas Legal Case

Chinese online global retailer Temu agreed to restrict how it handles personal data from shoppers in Texas to settle allegations over data-privacy breaches raised by the US state. Temu, which had 82 million active users in the US as of September 2023, will pay US$3 million to the state as part of the settlement. The company still faces several lawsuits from other US states that allege it unlawfully harvests user data. In May, Temu, a unit of China's PDD Holdings, was fined 200 million (US$232 million) by the EU in May for violations of the bloc's Digital Services Act related to illegal or unsafe products sold on its platform.

Economy & Markets

China Tech Firms Step Up Buybacks Amid Market Volatility

Chinese technology companies are turning to share buybacks to shore up stock prices mid volatile market trading. Five companies announced buyback plans over the weekend. Hygon Information Technology said it plans to repurchase up to 800 million yuan (US$120 million) in shares, while Dawning Information Industry unveiled a buyback of up to 500 million yuan. Shengyi Technology said it will repurchase as much as 300 million yuan, Montage Technology plans to spend up to 500 million yuan, and GalaxyCore, as much as 300 million yuan. The latest announcements follow a broader wave of repurchase plans on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style STAR Market, where companies disclosed buyback plans totaling as much as 3.2 billion yuan from October 8-17, according to Chinese media. In September, 54 companies announced repurchase plans with a combined maximum value of 9.1 billion yuan. Most of the plans set a buyback period of six to 12 months.

South Korea Finance Chief, China Asset Manager Say Tech Selloff Temporary

The global boom in semiconductors will last at least through 2027, South Korean Finance Minister Lee Hyoung-Il said while attending the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Bangkok. "The gap between demand and supply for semiconductors is still very wide, and supply is still being expanded," he said. His comments came after a week of selloffs in AI-related chip stocks around the world. Last week, South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. the world's two biggest memory chip makers, suffered their worst stock-price plunges since 2008. An opinion column in South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper last week urged the government to prepare for a slowdown in the AI chip boom, citing experts predicting a "flood of new supply" that will turn the memory market "into a sea of red" by 2029, CNBC reported.

Separately, Hong Hao, chief investment officer at China's Lianhua Asset Management, said the global selloff in AI-related stocks has been panic selling, leaving shares in "oversold territory" and providing a good buying opportunity. He is predicting a major rebound before year's end.

Chinese Banks Urged to Focus More on Wealth Management

Zhou Wanfu, vice president of Bank of Communications, told a Shanghai conference that deposits in China, where bank rates are low, are migrating to wealth management, funds and insurance products, and Chinese banks should shift their strategy from chasing deposits to managing assets. He proposed that commercial banks systematically rebuild their wealth management capabilities, focusing on deepening investment research and advisory services, seizing cross-border wealth opportunities and strengthening technology enablement.

Separately, foreign-funded banks in China are closing unprofitable branches and turning their attention to wealth management, the South China Morning Post reported. It noted Citibank has shuttered its retail operations, and Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered have closed branches this year. Among 27 locally incorporated foreign banks, the median return on equity was only 1.6 per cent last year, compared with the 10 percent or higher generally considered "healthy."

Two More Major Chinese Cities Adopt Home Sales Reforms

Shenzhen and Hangzhou became the sixth and seventh major Chinese cities to tighten requirements on developers and strengthen safeguards for homebuyers as part of national efforts to revive the residential property market. Shenzhen's new rules related to presales and completed home sales, financial support and land supply, and capped deposits at 3 percent of the home price. Hangzhou set its deposit cap at 5 percent. The reforms laid down by all seven cities – which also Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Tianjin -- generally raise presale thresholds, strengthen oversight of developers' funds and provide transition arrangements for projects already underway.

Corporate

Konka, Once a Giant in China TVs, to Be Delisted

Konka Group, which once marketed China's top TV brand, is being delisted from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange after posting cumulative losses exceeding 18.5 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion) from 2022-25 that left it insolvent. Konka led TV brand sales for five consecutive years ending in 2007, with revenue peaking at 55.1 billion yuan in 2019 before a prolonged decline. Its expansion into semiconductors and industrial parks failed to become a profit driver, instead draining cash flow.

Hikvision Posts Profit, Revenue Increases After Restructuring

Hangzhou-based Hikvision Digital Technology, a leading global manufacturer of video-surveillance equipment said third-quarter revenue rose 14 percent from a year earlier to 27.2 billion yuan (US$4.1 billion), with adjusted net profit rising 43 percent to 5 billion yuan. The results were the highest since the company underwent an operational restructuring in 2024. For the first nine months, revenue rose 13 percent to 74 billion yuan, with profit rising 39 percent to 12.9 billion yuan.

Hengli Petrochemical Projects Doubled Profit

Hengli Petrochemical signaled nine-month profit will double from a year earlier to about 10.26 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion), up 104 percent, benefitting from high global prices. Separately, Reuters reported that market traders are predicting that PetroChina, Asia's largest oil and gas producer, is poised for a record profit year as its refineries enjoy robust margins amid tight global oil supplies triggered by the Iran war. Profit at the state company's trading vehicle PetroChina International is expected to top 20 billion yuan in 2026.

AI Startup Targets Robotic Shoe Manufacturing

Gewu Tongzhi, a Hangzhou-based embodied AI startup, has secured nearly 100 million yuan (US$14.7 million) in a fundraising round to develop footwear manufacturing using robots. Peak Sport Products is among the investors, already signing an agreement with Gewu to co-develop the application. Founded in August, Gewu is developing AI systems that help robots learn physical tasks through visual and tactile data. While robots have made progress in recognizing objects and executing movements, handling soft or flexible materials like those used in shoes, remains difficult because vision alone cannot fully capture friction, force and contact conditions. The company is expected to deliver its first proof-of-concept project by the end of this year.

Shenghe Resources to Sell Stakes in Four Rare-Earth Companies

China's rare-earth producer Shenghe Resources announced it plans to transfer 51 percent stakes in four rare earth smelting subsidiaries to China Rare Earth Group Industrial Development, with the transactions expected to total up to 1.8 billion yuan (US$270.8 million). The four companies in the first half accounted for 20 percent of Shenghe's consolidated revenue and 37 percent of net profit. The transactions still require shareholder approval.