SINGAPORE — Leylah Fernandez pulled off a major upset Friday night, defeating Russian top seed Mirra Andreeva 6-2, 7-5 to reach the semifinals of the Singapore Open, crediting the crowd’s support for helping carry her through the match’s tougher stretches.

The Canadian world No. 31, who has Filipino roots through her mother’s side of the family, advanced to her first tour-level semifinal of the season with the win. She will next face French Open runner-up Maja Chwalinska on Saturday. Fernandez entered the WTA 500 event as a wild card and now holds a 3-2 head-to-head advantage over Andreeva, having also eliminated the Russian in the third round of last month’s Canadian Open in Toronto.

Despite the early exit of Filipino star Alex Eala earlier in the tournament, Center Court remained packed for Fernandez’s match, with fans continuing to rally behind her throughout the evening. Fernandez, whose maternal grandfather is from Ilocos Norte and whose maternal grandmother hails from Leyte, said the crowd’s energy played a direct role in helping her get through difficult moments during the match. “Of course, that helped me tremendously during those tough moments, those moments where I was making mistakes,” Fernandez said. “I just kept hearing everyone cheering me on and screaming my name, and it just gives me that enjoyment, that motivation to keep going, and of course my motivation, my goal is to always put on a good show for all the fans here.”

The match itself was not without late drama. The 24-year-old Fernandez had built a 5-3 lead in the second set before Andreeva mounted a late fightback, narrowing the gap before Fernandez ultimately closed out the 7-5 set to seal the win. Andreeva, the reigning French Open champion and world No. 5, showed her frustration during the match, throwing her racket at one point as Fernandez continued to press her advantage.

Andreeva’s elimination came just a day after third-seeded Eala was upset in the round of 16 by unseeded Russian player Tatiana Prozorova on Thursday night. Prozorova, ranked 180th, advanced to the semifinals after ousting China’s Wang Xinyu in three sets, continuing a tournament that has already produced multiple significant upsets among the higher-seeded players in the draw.

With Andreeva’s exit, Maja Chwalinska, Fernandez’s semifinal opponent, is now the highest-ranked player remaining in the tournament. Chwalinska reached the semifinals by sweeping fourth-seeded and defending champion Elise Mertens 6-2, 6-2 earlier in the day, a dominant performance that positions her as a significant test for Fernandez heading into Saturday’s match.

The tournament’s other semifinal spot remains undecided, with seventh-seeded Greek player and former world No. 3 Maria Sakkari set to face Australian Talia Gibson for the final berth in the draw.

Fernandez’s run in Singapore continues a season in which the 2021 US Open finalist has looked to rebuild momentum on tour, with Friday’s win over a top-five player marking one of her most significant results of the year. Her connection to the Philippines, through her maternal grandparents, has continued to generate strong local support during her appearances in the region, a dynamic reflected clearly in the crowd reaction that greeted her performance against Andreeva on Friday night.

Fernandez’s semifinal matchup against Chwalinska on Saturday will pit two players in strong current form against one another, with Chwalinska carrying momentum from her decisive win over the tournament’s defending champion into the match. For Fernandez, advancing past a Saturday semifinal would put her into her first tour-level final of the season, continuing what has already become one of her more notable tournament runs in recent months.

The Singapore Open has produced a series of unexpected results throughout the week, with the elimination of both Eala in the third round and Andreeva in the quarterfinals reshaping what had initially appeared to be a more predictable path toward the tournament’s final rounds. With Chwalinska now standing as the highest remaining seed in the draw, and Fernandez continuing to draw strong crowd support behind her, the tournament’s final weekend is shaping up to feature a field considerably different from what may have been anticipated when the draw was first announced.

With her semifinal against Chwalinska set for Saturday, Fernandez will look to build on Friday’s victory and the sustained crowd support that helped carry her through a tightly contested second set against one of the tour’s top-ranked players.

The S&P 500 gained 37.96 points, or 0.49%, to end at 7,742.09 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 125.51 points, or 0.47%, to 27,064.88. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 469.07 points, or 0.91%, to 51,819.05.

Gains in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq capped a volatile week driven by uncertainty about what industries will win and lose from artificial intelligence, and by concerns about the US war with Iran and a surge in US Treasury yields.

Microsoft rallied after the software giant unveiled several new capabilities in its Copilot app, including a coding tool and an always-on AI agent.

Akamai Technologies surged after an $11.6 billion cloud services deal with AI leader Anthropic. The deal includes a warrant that could give Anthropic up to 5% of Akamai.

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“That’s a positive from the standpoint that people are still investing, deals are still being done,” said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta. “It’s another circular deal, so OK … but Akamai stock is up.”
Chip maker Qualcomm gained and Dell also advanced.Meta Platforms dipped. The social media company’s stock has soared about 13% this week amid a strong reception to its Muse AI agent, which analysts say could benefit tech infrastructure stocks, while challenging banks, online shopping platforms and other consumer businesses.

The S&P 500 this week has traded just under 19 times expected earnings, its lowest valuation since 2023, according to LSEG data. AI-related heavyweights are responsible for much of the recent increase in earnings expectations.

A report that US and Iranian negotiators continued to explore a phased path out of the war, which would involve Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and Washington lifting its economic blockade, helped market sentiment.

Data also showed strong AI-related capital expenditures boosted demand for key manufactured capital goods, outpacing expectations in August.

Brent crude eased but remained above $100 a barrel. The yield on the benchmark US 10-year Treasury note hit a fresh 19-year high and was last up 3.4 basis points at 5.196%.

Traders see a 66% chance of the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates by at least 25 basis points in October, up from around 50% earlier this week, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed.

US President Donald Trump said he had a “very productive meeting” with President Xi Jinping, following a three-day summit that showcased personal diplomacy rather than big breakthroughs in economic relations.

Magazine publisher People Inc jumped after a report said MGM Resorts International was discussing a bid for the company.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Akamai Technologies shares jumped Friday after the company said Anthropic committed $11.6 billion over seven years for cloud computing, with an option to add as much as $9 billion more.

The stock traded around $126.54 in early New York dealing on Sept. 25, up $16.13, or 14.6 percent, from Thursday’s close of $110.41. After-hours and premarket prints had been even higher, with Barron’s citing a rise of more than 21 percent to $133.84 before the open.

Akamai said the contract will “support Anthropic’s accelerating CPU workload demands by leveraging Akamai Cloud’s distributed AI infrastructure and software.” It adds to more than $2.8 billion in multi-year cloud infrastructure commitments the company has already disclosed this year.

Chief Executive Tom Leighton said: “Anthropic is advancing the AI revolution and we are thrilled they chose Akamai’s capabilities for building and operating AI infrastructure at scale.”

Anthropic did not immediately comment to Barron’s.

As part of the pact, Akamai issued a warrant covering about 7.7 million shares on an as-converted basis, or up to about 5 percent of common stock outstanding. The exercise price is $111.33 a share. About 2 percent of the equity is tied to the initial $11.6 billion commitment; another 3 percent could vest if the companies expand the deal by up to $9 billion, according to summaries of the announcement. That would take the potential commitment near $20 billion.

Building the capacity is expensive. Barron’s reported Akamai expects $5.5 billion in new capital spending, including memory purchases, with $1.6 billion of that in 2026. Benzinga cited about $1.7 billion of extra 2026 capital expenditure to lock in supply-chain parts and said the company sees no change to 2026 revenue guidance. An investor-update recap said revenue from the Anthropic work is expected to ramp toward $1.7 billion a year by 2028.

Akamai is best known as a content-delivery network that later pushed into cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure. Delivery revenue has been under pressure. Security is the largest profit engine. Cloud Infrastructure Services is smaller but growing fast. In the second quarter ended June 30, total revenue was $1.1 billion, up 5 percent. Security was $604 million, up 10 percent. Cloud Infrastructure Services was $99 million, up 39 percent. Delivery and other cloud applications fell 6 percent to $396 million.

GAAP diluted earnings were $0.52, down 27 percent. Non-GAAP diluted earnings were $1.59. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $4.616 billion. The company had guided full-year 2026 revenue to $4.445 billion–$4.530 billion before this announcement and said the new deal does not alter that 2026 top-line range — meaning most of the $11.6 billion sits in later years.

Anthropic, maker of the Claude models, is privately held and filed confidential IPO paperwork in June, Barron’s noted. AI labs have been signing multiyear compute contracts with Nvidia-heavy clouds such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and CoreWeave. A large CPU-focused deal with Akamai is a different flavor of capacity: inference and supporting workloads spread across Akamai’s edge footprint rather than a single training campus.

Investors repriced Akamai as more than a CDN with a security wrap. The share count implied by the warrant is dilution if Anthropic exercises. The capex is cash out the door before the revenue curve steepens. Those are the offsets. The bid on Friday treated the contract size as the headline.

Akamai’s next scheduled earnings date in market calendars was around Nov. 5. Until then, the tape is trading a seven-year number, a warrant at $111.33, and a stock that closed Thursday at $110.41 after a 6.8 percent drop and opened Friday in the mid-$120s.

The company still has to buy memory, stand up servers and keep Anthropic’s usage on the committed path. Anthropic still has to need that CPU layer for seven years. Friday’s move is the market assigning a higher probability that both happen.

A women’s apparel company that caters to price-conscious consumers announced the closure of 120 retail stores by the end of the fiscal year.

The Cato Corporation, parent company of Cato Fashions, operates more than 1,000 women’s apparel and accessories stores across 31 states. 

The slated closures account for more than 10% of its stores, Fast Company reported.

Cato, which was founded in 1946, focuses on budget-wary consumers, much like TJ Maxx or Ross Dress for Less.

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Cato Fashions, an American retailer of women’s fashions and accessories, will close 120 locations by the end of the fiscal year, the company has announced.  (Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Cato Corporation also operates two other retailers — Versona, an upscale apparel, jewelry, and accessories brand with 90 locations in the U.S., and its It’s Fashion and It’s Fashion Metro brands, which have 119 locations in the U.S.

Last week, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based corporation announced it would close 120 stores, an increase from the initial 50 the company originally announced.

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Bright-colored tops hanging on a rack. (iStock / iStock)

“Annually, we review approximately one-third of our stores to exercise available lease options or negotiate an extension based on each store’s performance, including store sales trends and current and projected store profitability,” John Cato, the company chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement.

“In light of the current economic environment, especially with the negative pressure on our customers’ discretionary income, we do not expect these marginal stores to improve appreciably,” he added. “As a result, we are closing more stores than expected this year. We believe that closing these additional stores will have a positive impact on our operating results in fiscal 2027 and beyond.”

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In August, the company reported a net income of just $1.1 million for the second quarter, down from $6.8 million the company brought in during the same period a year earlier, the news report states. 

Tesla on Thursday announced that the electric vehicle maker was beginning deliveries of its Semi trucks to customers this week.

Executives at Tesla’s plant in Sparks, Nevada, made the announcement that the first customers will take delivery of the electric big rigs about nine years after CEO Elon Musk first announced the company’s plans to develop the long-haul freight trucks.

The Semi aims to open a new market for Tesla, which has long been known for its EV sedans and SUVs, by creating an electric option for commercial freight haulers.

The announcement comes at a time when diesel prices have surged to record highs, raising costs on firms in the trucking industry.

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Tesla semi trucks recharge at a charging station at the Frito-Lay production facility in Modesto. (Andy Alfaro/Modesto Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Tesla didn’t disclose its plans for production volumes of the Semi or its pricing at a webcast event held late Thursday at the plant, though it reiterated plans to build 50,000 Semis a year at the Nevada facility.

Elon Musk wasn’t in attendance at the event but said in a recorded video message that, “I’d recommend placing more orders if you haven’t already, but the waiting list is already pretty significant.

Several companies that have purchased the Semi – including PepsiCo, DHL and U.S. Foods – were in attendance at the Tesla event and were invited on stage, while trucks with their logos were shown outside.

The long-range variant of the Semi has a range of 500 miles with a single charge, as Tesla director of Semi truck engineering Dan Priestly said, those are “500 real-world miles. Our customers have validated it.” The standard version of the Semi has a shorter range of 325 miles on a single charge.

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An attendee gets into a Tesla Semi during the 2026 ACT Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nev. (Ian Maule / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Tesla and Musk first unveiled the Semi in 2017 and planned to start production in 2019, though it faced delays due to supply chain disruptions.

The first Semi was delivered to U.S. customers, including PepsiCo, in late 2022 – though those trucks were made on Tesla’s lower-volume pilot production lines.

The EV maker’s first truck rolled off the high-volume production line in April. While volume production was expected to start this year, Tesla has since adjusted that guidance to not explicitly state that it will reach high-volume production this year.

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Despite delays, competition and shifts in EV policy in the U.S., Tesla received a new order for 2,500 Semis from a coalition of major cargo-owning shipping companies – including Microsoft and PepsiCo, according to the nonprofit Catalyst Mobility. The group noted that figure is nearly double the existing fleet of electric Class 8 trucks.

Additionally, Swedish freight technology company Einride announced a deal last week to add 500 Semi trucks to its fleet.

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Reuters contributed to this report.

This article was written by

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KANSAS CITY — Foodservice operators are continuing to utilize limited-time menu innovations to drive consumer traffic.

For instance, P.F. Chang’s unveiled a menu collection inspired by autumn traditions in Kyoto, Japan, ranging from two duck offerings to Wagyu egg rolls. The duck items include duck wings, which are tossed in teriyaki sauce then topped with toasted sesame seeds, Fresno peppers and scallions, and duck fried rice, which combines shredded duck, a fried egg, edamame, fried shallots, kimchi, julienned vegetables, chili jam and chili-spiced butter. The egg rolls are formulated with Wagyu beef, julienned vegetables, black pepper, garlic, ginger and black garlic aioli.

“Autumn gives us the opportunity to work with deeper, richer flavors and ingredients that feel especially craveable this time of year,” said Steve Solis, vice president of culinary at P.F. Chang’s. “We challenged ourselves to reimagine familiar P.F. Chang’s favorites through unexpected seasonal pairings. The result is a menu that feels comforting and approachable but still delivers the bold flavor and sense of discovery our guests come to us for.”

CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. subsidiary Carl’s Jr. debuted the first product under its Burger Revolution platform, a systemwide cooked-to-order initiative, with the Angus Maximus burger. The LTO features two Angus beef patties, American cheese, sliced onions, dill pickles and special sauce.

“Carl’s Jr. has never been in the business of serving burgers that are just good enough,” said Iwona Alter, brand president for Carl’s Jr. “The Burger Revolution and our shift to a cooked-to-order process represent our commitment to raising the standard across the entire Carl’s Jr. experience. The Angus Maximus is the perfect burger to lead that charge, bringing two charbroiled 100% Angus beef patties, bold flavor and the quality and value our guests deserve.”

Paris Baguette is tapping into the sweet heat trend with two Halloween menu items. The ghost pepper chocolate marble mochi donut blends Paris Baguette’s mochi donut format with chocolate marble frosting and spice from a ghost pepper, and ghost pepper iced hot chocolate features an iced hot chocolate beverage with an infusion of heat from ghost peppers.

“This Halloween, we wanted to surprise and delight with something unexpected, the fiery kick of ghost pepper paired with rich, indulgent chocolate, while still embracing the nostalgia that makes Halloween so special,” said Cathy Chavenet, chief marketing officer of Paris Baguette North America.