Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Players of the long-running fantasy MMORPG “RuneScape” began reporting widespread connectivity problems in the early hours of Tuesday, with outage-tracking service Downdetector logging a spike in user complaints starting at 2:21 a.m. Eastern time and the hashtag #RunescapeDown trending on social platform X as affected players compared notes on the disruption.

Downdetector’s official account posted an alert shortly after the spike began, asking users how the outage was affecting them and directing them to submit detailed reports through the platform. According to the latest tracking of the incident, 74% of reported problems were related to server connection issues, making it the most widespread category of complaint by a wide margin. Login problems accounted for another 12% of reports, while gameplay-related issues made up roughly 8% of the total.

Affected players described a range of specific symptoms tied to the outage. Some reported being unable to retrieve the game’s available world list, the selection screen RuneScape players use to choose which game server to log into before playing. Others said they were being disconnected while actively playing, interrupting sessions already in progress. A smaller number of players also reported experiencing lag affecting in-game interactions on servers that did remain accessible, suggesting the disruption was degrading performance even for some players who were able to connect, rather than uniformly blocking access altogether.

“RuneScape,” developed and published by British game studio Jagex, first launched in January 2001 and has remained one of the longest continuously operating massively multiplayer online role-playing games still active today. The game is set in the fantasy world of Gielinor, where players create customizable avatars and pursue an open-ended mix of quests, skill training, combat and social activities. Jagex also operates “Old School RuneScape,” a separate version of the game based on an earlier iteration of Gielinor that the studio has continued to update in parallel with the modern version, commonly referred to as RS3. As of the most recent outage reports, independent monitoring of Old School RuneScape’s status had not flagged the same level of disruption affecting the main RuneScape service, suggesting Tuesday’s issues may have been concentrated specifically on RS3’s infrastructure rather than affecting both versions of the game equally, though this could not be independently confirmed.

Jagex maintains an official support account on X, JagexSupport, which the company has used during past service disruptions to acknowledge issues and post updates as its engineering team investigates. The studio also operates a dedicated Game Status Information Centre page where it publishes technical updates, including changes to system requirements and platform support, though that page’s most recent update at the time of the outage concerned an unrelated change to minimum specifications for the Jagex Launcher on Mac computers rather than any acknowledgment of Tuesday’s connectivity problems specifically.

Not every reported connectivity issue necessarily traces back to a problem on Jagex’s own servers. Independent outage-tracking services that monitor RuneScape’s status have noted that the game’s server connection, login authentication and in-game performance can each be affected by separate, unrelated factors, meaning a disruption reported by one player is not always indicative of a broader, platform-wide outage affecting all users simultaneously. Common troubleshooting advice offered by such services includes restarting the game client, restarting a home router, and verifying that graphics drivers and other software are fully up to date, since outdated drivers have separately been cited by some players as a source of error messages unrelated to any active outage.

RuneScape has built a substantial and enduring player base over its more than two-decade history. By January of this year, RuneScape and Old School RuneScape had together generated more than $3 billion in lifetime revenue, according to figures reported at the time, reflecting the franchise’s sustained commercial success even as the broader MMORPG genre has evolved considerably since the game’s original launch. The franchise has also faced periodic criticism from its player community over the years regarding changes to trading systems, player-versus-player combat mechanics and microtransactions, with Jagex removing its Treasure Hunter microtransaction system in January following a community vote on the matter.

As of the most recent available information, neither Jagex nor RuneScape’s official channels had issued a detailed public statement specifying the root cause of Tuesday’s early morning disruption, and it remained unclear whether the issue was affecting all regions and platforms equally or was concentrated among specific groups of players. Players seeking the most current and authoritative updates on the situation were directed to Jagex’s official support channels and in-game status announcements rather than relying solely on crowdsourced outage trackers, which can occasionally lag behind or imprecisely characterize the true scope of a still-developing technical issue.

Downdetector, the platform that first flagged Tuesday’s disruption, aggregates user-submitted problem reports alongside automated monitoring signals to identify spikes in complaints for a given online service, generating alerts when reports exceed typical baseline levels for that platform and time of day. With reports of server connection, login and gameplay issues continuing to circulate in the early morning hours, affected players are likely to continue monitoring both Downdetector and Jagex’s own official channels for confirmation of the outage’s cause and any updates on when full service is expected to be restored.

SYDNEY — Shares in Sunrise Energy Metals Ltd. surged 12.71% to $20.48, adding $2.31, pushing the Australian scandium developer’s stock back toward the upper end of its 52-week trading range as investors continue piling into a company that has become one of the most closely watched turnaround stories on the ASX over the past year.

Tuesday’s rally recovers ground the stock had given up earlier this month, when shares fell sharply amid broader market volatility. It also extends what has already been an extraordinary run for the company: Sunrise Energy Metals shares have climbed more than 2,500% over the trailing twelve months, according to recent market analysis, rocketing from roughly 21 cents to well above $6 earlier in the year before continuing to climb into the $20 range in recent weeks, as the company has transitioned from a speculative exploration stock into what investors increasingly view as a credible developer racing to become the Western world’s first major primary scandium producer.

Sunrise’s rise has been driven by a series of major financing and strategic milestones tied to its Syerston Scandium Project in New South Wales. In August, the company secured a conditional commitment for a $400 million loan from the U.S. Department of Defense, delivered through the Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, alongside plans to begin preparations for a listing on a U.S. securities exchange. The loan is structured as a 25-year conditional debt facility and will be released in phases as the project hits specific construction milestones, with the funding also expanding the project’s scope to include construction of scandium metal refining capacity within the United States itself.

Sunrise chairman Robert Friedland described the U.S. government backing as a defining moment for both the company and the broader Australian mining sector. “This is a landmark moment for Sunrise and Australia’s mining industry, and the financing aligns with the goals of the US-Australia Partnership on critical minerals,” Friedland said at the time. He also thanked the U.S. administration directly for its support of the project. “We thank President Donald J. Trump and the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital for its support as we aim to establish Syerston as a cornerstone of Western scandium supply,” Friedland said.

An official from the Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, Michael Lorch, a senior adviser to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, said the arrangement was designed to help the United States reduce its reliance on foreign sources for a metal considered critical to national security and advanced manufacturing. Lorch said the deal would “help address foreign dependencies in scandium supply.”

Scandium, the rare metal at the center of Sunrise’s Syerston project, is used to strengthen aluminum alloys for aerospace and defense applications and has increasingly found demand in powering artificial intelligence data center infrastructure. China currently controls nearly 70% of global rare earth mining and roughly 90% of global processing capacity, a concentration that has driven sustained U.S. government interest in developing alternative, Western-aligned supply chains for critical minerals like scandium.

Sunrise Chief Executive Officer Sam Riggall has described the scale of the Syerston project’s potential in similarly ambitious terms. Speaking to CNBC in June, Riggall said the project would have “the capacity to replace everything that China supplies today from this one mining operation,” underscoring the scale of ambition behind the company’s plans even as the project continues working toward a final investment decision.

Beyond the U.S. government financing, Sunrise’s rally has also been fueled by a strategic offtake arrangement with Lockheed Martin, giving the defense contractor a pathway to secure scandium supply directly from the Syerston project once it reaches production. That combination of government-backed financing support and a credible offtake agreement with a major U.S. defense contractor has been cited by analysts as offering a meaningful vote of confidence in the project’s commercial viability, distinguishing Sunrise from many other speculative ASX-listed mining developers still working to secure comparable customer and financing commitments.

The Syerston project itself is expected to have a 32-year operating life, with the current phase targeting production of approximately 60 tonnes per annum of high-purity scandium oxide. Sunrise is also evaluating a second development phase that could add a further 120 tonnes of annual production capacity. The company has revised its total capital cost estimate for the project to between $450 million and $475 million following an expansion in scope, with power generation costs now incorporated directly into that capital expenditure figure. Sunrise continues working toward a final investment decision, targeted for the second half of 2026, ahead of a first production target set for the second half of 2028.

Sunrise’s balance sheet has remained a point of relative strength throughout the company’s rapid transition from explorer to developer. The company executed three separate equity placements during its most recent financial year, and as of August held a substantial cash position with zero debt on its balance sheet, giving it a comfortable liquidity buffer to continue funding pre-construction work, long-lead equipment procurement and engineering studies without near-term cash-burn pressure.

With the stock’s dramatic year-long trajectory continuing to draw close attention from both institutional and retail investors, and with Sunrise still working toward its targeted final investment decision later this year, market participants are likely to continue watching closely for further updates on project financing, offtake agreements and construction milestones as the next set of catalysts likely to shape the stock’s path in the months ahead.

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the ACG Metals Limited Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] And I would now like to hand you over to the management team of ACG Metals Limited. Artem, good afternoon.

Artem Volynets
Founder, Chairman & CEO

Hello. Thank you very much for joining. I’m Artem. I’m Chair and CEO of ACG. We’ll walk you through some slides reasonably quickly. Essentially, we published an updated technical report on Thursday of last week and also our results for the first 6 months of this year, financial results. And this presentation is designed to show what we have done over the last 2 years. So just to remind everyone what ACG is. Today, we’re about $600 million market cap company, another $200 million in bonds outstanding. We’ve done reasonably well for our shareholders over the last 2 years since we acquired an asset in Turkey called Gediktepe.

Our updated technical report shows a massively increased NPV, which leads to the NAV net asset value per share of around GBP 34. And that technical report is done at consensus pricing, which are lower than the current spot. So if you put spot prices in the model, you will see GBP 43 per share. So certainly, there is a way to go from where we are. This is all driven by a very significant increase in the value of our project. Essentially, we acquired Gediktepe for $120 million in September 2024. We invested another $200 million, $146 million of that is already invested and the flotation plant built.

Another $60 million is being invested to build another plant called SART. As a result

Now all the headlines from President Trump’s United Nations speech are focused on his prior statements warning Iran that the Tehran regime has to either make a deal or face annihilation.

I believe annihilation refers to the regime. And he warned them not to focus on the midterm elections because he’s going to be president for another two and a half years. So, in effect, Mr. Trump discounted the midterm elections, and took them off the table. A bad day for Iran.

As Mr. Trump said: “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don’t realize is that I’m not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide, and I’ll be here for two and a half years.” He added that “I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election. When it comes to Iran. It doesn’t even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The cowards and traitors —” here applause interrupted the president.

Please note carefully that big applause when he said Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The UN is not usually, the member’s not usually applauding Mr. Trump, but they did actually on several occasions as we will discuss. Again, another bad day for Iran. 

The point is, even the UN hates Iran. So we’ll see about all of that and how it works out after the election. Before he got to the Iran warning, he talked about America having the hottest economy in the world. Creating a million new jobs, record-low poverty, and high real incomes in the 2025 Census, of course cutting taxes, getting rid of regulations, record stock market, by the way the Nasdaq tech rallied again to a new record high.

Then there was the issue of AI — which is now super intelligence now — is here to stay. And there will be no radical climate change type hoax or doomsday scenarios with our super intelligence. Nor will there be any global regulation of our super intelligence. By the way, no global regulation of anything. Including the International Criminal Court, UN agencies who won’t protect our children from transgenderism, or the persecution of Christians. Or promoting mass migration.

He emphatically said no to any global carbon tax, and in fact generalized “there will be no global taxes.” End quote. Full stop. Good for him. How about that? In front of the UN, Mr. Trump makes a no new tax pledge. Phenomenal. And the Nasdaq index hits another record high. 

Yet on all these points, Mr. Trump struck a positive, constructive, optimistic tone. This was a different kind of speech. This was a speech that had praise and applause that was unusual for his UN meetings. Yes, even the UN hates Iran and wants to stop them from having a nuclear weapon. For sure. 

Yet several times, Mr. Trump praised the UN, and its Security Council. For, say, helping on Iran, and for endorsing his 20 point Gaza peace plan, and approving the Board of Peace. And permitting the first lady, Melania Trump, to preside over a meeting of the Security Council, which has never been done before by a president’s wife.

Yet there’s more. Mr. Trump praised the leaders of Pakistan, Rwanda, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, for helping him in making peace deals.

To be sure, he mentioned the successful regime change and world oil implications of Venezuela. And he issued a very tough warning to Cuba — where Secretary of State Marco Rubio is working hard for some kind of regime change.

And of course, the new security arrangement in Greenland, which will protect the Western hemisphere and Europe from Chinese and Russian threats. But Mr. Trump had good things to say about NATO, which has come around toward his view on the need for 5 percent of GDP spending on defense.

We really haven’t heard him praise NATO much before. He talked about stopping the drug cartels throughout Latin and South America.

Yet importantly, he had very positive things to say about Mexican cooperation. Again, optimistic, positive, constructive. And then finally, well, no one seems to want to report on this toward the back end of the speech. I believe the president spoke movingly to all of the UN members about “the enemies of humanity.” 

He declared: “That is the challenge for every nation in this room. If we go forward strong and united against the enemies of all humanity, if we reject the voices who would have us give in to fear and doubt, if we refuse to shrink from our duties to our people, then together, through bold action, we will make this world far safer and a far better place.”

And he concluded again by reaching out to all those UN nations who really are not our best friends, but he exhorted them to “leave our nations far stronger.”

He said: “We will grow our economies far bigger, and we will not just speak of peace, prosperity, and justice. Here at the United Nations. We will stand for them all over the world. Together, we will build a future for our people that is brighter, more hopeful, and more magnificent than ever before. Thank you. God bless the nations of the world and God bless America”

This is why I’m calling this a historic speech.

This is an optimistic vision of freedom, peace, and prosperity, where this 47th President of the United States is asking all the nations to join him in this great crusade. Mr. Trump’s optimism was Reaganesque. I’d say this was pretty great stuff.