Australia’s share market has overcome an early drop to end the first session of the week higher, buoyed by dip-buying in mining stocks and a lull in resurgent oil prices.

The S&P/ASX200 rose 14.7 points on Monday, up 0.17 per cent, to 8809.9, while the broader All Ordinaries rose 20.8 points, or 0.23 per cent, to 8926.6.

Basic materials stocks rebounded 1.7 per cent higher, breaking a four-session losing streak as investors picked up beaten down gold, copper and critical minerals producers.

Energy stocks also rallied, despite oil prices easing from multi-month highs as Omani negotiators returned to Iran in coordination with the US, rekindling some hope of de-escalating the regional conflict that has intensified in recent weeks.

The Australian dollar is buying 70.30 US cents, up from 70.12 US cents on Friday at 5pm, inching higher against the greenback as bets narrow on a Reserve Bank interest rate hike next week.

Funding for renewable energy projects, electric vehicle subsidies and social housing will be slashed under a future coalition government to pay for income tax cuts.

The proposed savings would add $31 billion to the federal budget bottom line, more than paying for the proposal to index income tax brackets to inflation, coalition leader Angus Taylor said.

In his sights are the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which hands out grants to renewable energy projects, the Housing Australia Future Fund, which gives money to social and affordable housing, and the National Reconstruction Fund, responsible for industry funding. 

All three would be scrapped, along with the Net Zero Economy Agency and subsidies for home batteries and electric vehicles.

Mr Taylor said the savings would more than pay for the tax indexation plan, leaving the budget an extra $22 billion better off over the four years from 2028/29 to 2031/32.

“We’ve been very clear about axing Labor’s toxic taxes, but also bringing down income taxes over time with our tax back guarantee,” he said in Canberra on Monday.

“But we know, we know, that it is absolutely critical at this time to control spending, ensure the economy grows faster than spending, in order to bring down inflation and interest rates.”

Labor’s “climate bureaucracy” was failing to lower emissions and its “housing bureaucracy” was not delivering houses, Mr Taylor said.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency directly adds to the underlying deficit through non-repayable grants. 

But the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Reconstruction Fund are self-sustaining, meaning axing them will only reduce the headline cash balance, not the underlying deficit.

The coalition’s costings also did not take into account additional spending and tax cut promises, such as a pledge to automatically lower the fuel excise when oil prices rise above a certain level or its vow to reverse Labor’s budget tax changes.

It also assumes that slashing the tobacco excise will improve the budget by an extra $7.9 billion by breaking the back of the black market and encouraging smokers to return to over-the-counter cigarettes. 

Banning non-citizens from accessing welfare and NDIS payments would boost the budget by another $2 billion, said Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson.

The coalition would also refresh the Charter of Budget Honesty, binding governments to a cap on taxes and spending.

Scope 3 reporting requirements for businesses would also be scrapped, as well as Labor’s Help-to-Buy and Build-to-Rent housing schemes.

“Now more than ever, with rising costs, households and particularly Australia’s small businesses, need economic hope,” Mr Wilson said.

“They need confidence to look to the horizon and believe that they can have a better economic future than they have today.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers earlier accused the opposition of failing to say how it would pay for $110 billion in unfunded commitments.

“And so for people who think we should cut much harder, they should nominate, I think, those areas that should be cut more substantially,” he told the Nine newspapers’ Inside Politics podcast.

“But we have been finding savings, many more savings than our predecessors, and that’s because we take the hard yards of budget sustainability seriously.”

The coalition has opposed several savings measures proposed by the government, including bringing the private health insurance rebate for over-65s in line with the rest of the population and selling off under-utilised defence land.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, has been re-elected in a result that provides relief to critics of widening US influence in Latin America.

With 100 per cent of the vote counted, Brazil’s electoral court announced on Sunday the soon to be 81-year-old Lula had a lead of nearly 4.4 million votes — 51.8 per cent of the total vote – over his right-wing opponent Flávio Bolsonaro. 

The announcement capped an evening of chaos at polling places across Brazil, following a last-minute decision to extend voting by two hours. 

Late on Sunday, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat, calling the move to extend voting hours unprecedented – though both he and Lula made the request – and asked for the election results to be annulled, saying they were impossible to accept. 

Lula’s triumph bucks a trend in Latin America where increasing numbers of right-of-centre presidential candidates allied with Trump have been winning. 

Lula’s victory leaves Mexico and Brazil, Latin America’s two most populous nations, with left-of-centre leaders. 

It also positions Latin America’s largest economy, with a GDP of $US2.6 ($A3.7) trillion per year, to remain independent of the US, despite the pressure of increased tariffs imposed by Trump.

A video published by Lula’s campaign shows the veteran leader celebrating with First Lady Rosângela da Silva and allies after his runoff victory was confirmed by Brazil’s electoral court. 

Wearing star-shaped red glasses, he kissed his wife. Hundreds of his supporters began gathering on São Paulo’s main artery to celebrate the victory.

In Rio de Janeiro, cars beeped their horns and a woman dressed in red – the colour of Lula supporters – shouted “You lost! Cry harder!” to four men in yellow and green sipping beers, Bolsonaro’s signature colours. A huge roar echoed in the street as the result was confirmed.

Lula’s victory, which, if confirmed by electoral authorities, will give him his non-consecutive fourth term as president. The next term begins on January 5, 2027.

The electoral court’s announcement ended an evening of confusion at polling places after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ruled three minutes before the scheduled end of voting to keep polls open for two more hours, following requests by both candidates.

Lula’s request came after issues with buses that provide transportation to polls in Sao Paulo and Salvador, two cities that tend to favour the incumbent. Bolsonaro’s request was due to heavy rains in Brazil’s south, where he is favoured.

Bolsonaro bested Lula by more than 2.2 million votes in the first round of the election earlier in October.

Sunday night’s victory by Lula marked the first time since Brazil’s military dictatorship ended in 1985 that the second-highest vote-getter in the first-round elections won the presidency. 

Lula faced a tough re-election battle because of concerns about the cost of living and security. 

Bolsonaro made a tough-on-crime approach the cornerstone of his campaign and pledged to bring down food costs while Lula, trying to lure undecided voters, has invested in costly incentives.

Both have been hit by corruption suspicions involving family members and allies, with Bolsonaro implicated in a sprawling scandal rocking Brazil. 

Lula previously spent more than a year in prison on corruption convictions that were eventually annulled. 

with reuters

An Australian hearing implant pioneer continues to tell investors there are better times ahead, despite its share price falling by more than 50 per cent from around $300 a year ago.

Cochlear struggled through the 2025/26 financial year, culminating in a 62 per cent fall in annual net profit to $147.3 million.

“We know financial year 2026 was challenging. We also know what we need to do,” chief executive Dig Howitt told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting on Monday.

“Our strategy is clear. The opportunity is significant. Our focus is execution: to grow the market, improve performance and deliver stronger long-term value.”

A year ago, shares in the Sydney-based Cochlear, which was set up 45 years ago to commercialise its pioneering technology, were trading around $296.50.

The stock plunged to a three-year low of $199.22 in February when it missed its first-half earnings guidance.

Two months later, the stock fell again to a new low of $88.74, after it foreshadowed a drop in 2025/26 earnings of more than $100 million due to softer sales and demand linked to the war in the Middle East and higher costs.

That warning came to pass in August, when it reported a 22 per cent fall in 2025/26 underlying profit to $322.4 billion and a 62 per cent fall in bottom line net profit to $147.3 million.

Sales revenue was flat at $2.3 billion, even though sales of its implant devices rose five per cent to almost 57,000 units.

Cochlear on Monday maintained its forecast for a modest rise in underlying net profit of between $330 million and $350 million in the 2026/27 year.

Its shares were down 2.6 per cent to $142.90 around noon AEDT.

The boss of a major data centre operator is giving up bonuses worth millions amid a botched facility rollout that has cost investors billions.

NextDC chief executive Craig Scroggie has agreed to forgo annual short-term and long-term bonuses valued at up to $7.5 million, while the group’s board directors will now take a pay cut after earlier planning to ask shareholders for a raise.

Company chairman Douglas Flynn has also reaffirmed his intention to retire from the board once a new chairman is in place, and another board member will also step down once a replacement is found. 

“The board recognises and shares investors’ disappointment arising from the M3 Melbourne power delay and revised guidance for the financial year,” it told the stock exchange on Monday.

NextDC has withdrawn a resolution to be put to its annual general meeting in November to increase directors’ maximum pay to $2.5 million, from $2.2 million.

Instead, they will wear a “voluntary” 10 per cent fee cut.

Shares in NextDC plunged last week, wiping $3 billion off its market value, after it slashed earnings guidance by $140 million because of delays to expand its M3 data centre in West Footscray.

Following a community backlash, power company Jemena paused the installation of 22-metre concrete power poles needed to supply the mammoth data centre with more electricity to expand its capabilities.

NextDC had already sold that unbuilt capacity and the delay seemed to put it on an uncertain financial footing, with the company declaring it was cutting its capital expenditure program by $750 million and considering selling off future development sites to conserve liquidity. 

NextDC shares were changing hands on Monday morning at $5.44, down three per cent, and remain close to their lowest level since 2018.

The stock is also down nearly two-thirds over the past 12 months.

NextDC also said on Monday that it had asked a global board advisory firm to find its new chairman and new independent non-executive director, ideally persons with data centre, energy or infrastructure development experience.

Another board member, international banker Stuart Davis, will stand for re-election at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Sydney on November 20 but intends to step down once the new directors are in place.

US President Donald Trump has ‌escalated his invective against Norway, calling it a “shit house country”, ‌saying Norwegian immigrants are not welcome in the United States because the Nobel ‌committee, based in the capital Oslo, has not awarded him a Peace Prize.

Trump made the comments at a political rally in Port Huron, Michigan on Sunday, ahead of the November 3 mid-term elections.

Attributing ‌recent unrest in ‌France ⁠to immigration, Trump said he would welcome immigrants ​from some countries but not from Norway “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize … So I don’t want anybody from Norway”.

However, there was no indication that the Trump administration was adopting new official policy on Norwegian ⁠immigrants.

“Norway has become a shit ‌house ​country, actually,” Trump said, using a term that he has previously ​applied to ‌Haiti, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Norway is among the highest-income countries ​as measured by GDP per capita, according to International Monetary Fund data.  

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund posted a record profit of 1.75 ​trillion ​Norwegian crowns ($A264.2 billion) for ​the first half of 2026.

Norway’s ‌Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a representative for the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not immediately return requests for comment outside regular office hours.

Earlier in October Trump called the failure to give ​him a Nobel Peace Prize an “indelible stain” on Norway.

Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic has conceded defeat to a student-led protest movement in a historic election that ends his ‌long grip on power and heralds a new political era in the Balkan country.

Vucic, a populist and nationalist, has dominated Serbian politics as prime minister or president since 2014.

But he called snap elections in September after almost two years of ‌student-led demonstrations against perceived corruption and creeping authoritarianism triggered by the deaths of 16 people when a train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad in 2024.

“It is clear that we have lost these elections, the Student List has won,” Vucic said ‌in a televised speech on Sunday.

Within moments of his announcement, the streets of Belgrade erupted in celebration. Tens of thousands of people thronged along the city’s main boulevards, with cars honking, people dancing and students shouting “victory” and “he’s done”.

The students’ win marks a profound political shift in the country of some six million people and is reminiscent of the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orban in April. 

It may also offer a blueprint for other student movements across Europe, which have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest, in some cases violently, against poor education standards and a lack of prospects.

Vucic said the students would have between 135 and 140 seats in the 250-seat parliament and that his Serbian Progressive Party would have 105, based on preliminary ‌results.

“Dear Serbia, tonight the ‌voice of the people is being heard,” said ⁠Radomir Sajcic, a professor at Belgrade University, speaking on behalf of the students at their headquarters.

“Tonight we celebrate victory, tomorrow we build the future.”

European leaders ​and officials congratulated the Student List on its victory, among them President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos.

“We stand ready to … work together to advance Serbia’s future in the European Union,” von der Leyen wrote on X.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar assured the students of his country’s support.

Lines snaked from polling stations in cities and towns across the country earlier in the day, and even Vucic waited for nearly two hours to vote in Belgrade.

Pollsters and the election commission put turnout close to 70 per cent, the highest since the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992.

Vucic, who resigned from his second term as president to run again for prime minister, was a strong ‌incumbent and few in the student ​protest movement dared believe he would concede so fast.

Much remains unclear about how the student-backed candidates will fare.

Their list of 250 largely unknown candidates includes university professors, actors and farmers, and is led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanovic, ​who was in tears after Vucic’s announcement.

However, it is unclear who will be prime minister and enact the students’ domestic agenda, which aims to root out graft and improve schooling. 

Political analysts predict some kind of purge of Vucic allies in the police, security services and ministries. 

The student-led street protests sparked by the station disaster started small but quickly became the biggest in a generation, calling for Vucic to step down. 

Vucic and the SNS repeatedly denied accusations of repression, corruption and spying on their opponents. He has said the students are funded by foreign agents in Croatia and Montenegro, a charge the students dismiss.

with AP

US President Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed with rhetoric that questioned the Muslim candidate’s loyalties to the US and repeatedly tried to tie him to extremism.

“Over the past three weeks, I’ve travelled all over the country. But I’m here today in Michigan for a very important reason,” Trump told the crowd in Port Huron on Sunday.

“I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator.”

The Republican president has been attacking El-Sayed’s faith throughout the campaign and claiming his past statements and background show a sympathy for extremists.

El-Sayed, a former public health official, has repeatedly said he is loyal to the US and disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement with branches that the US government has designated as terrorist organisations.

The claims by Republicans have been denounced by Democrats as attacks on El-Sayed’s faith and his Egyptian heritage. El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator if elected.

Trump’s return to Michigan reflects the importance of the race.

Republicans see an opening to flip a Senate seat as they try to hold onto the majority in the chamber.

El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman backed by Trump, in the November 3 race to succeed retiring Democrat Gary Peters.

The race has taken on significance beyond Michigan, with Republicans casting El-Sayed as a symbol of a Democratic Party moving further to the left.

Progressives, meanwhile, see his candidacy as a test of whether their agenda can win in a battleground state ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Trump on Sunday invoked the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, drawing a comparison between stopping El-Sayed from entering the Senate and the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93.

“Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight, just like Todd did, to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” Trump said, referring to Todd Beamer, a Michigan native who died aboard the flight.

Trump’s visit to Port Huron follows former Democratic president Barack Obama’s appearances on Saturday in Michigan and Ohio for his party’s candidates.

It is Trump’s latest stop on a packed campaign schedule to bolster Republicans on the mid-term ballot as the GOP is weighed down by voters’ frustration with the economy and the war with Iran.

Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has vowed to allow France to prospect for oil again on its territory if she is elected in May, a proposal reminiscent of US President Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill ” policy to speed up fossil fuel development.

In a speech to her National Rally party, at a meeting that it billed as the launch of her presidential campaign, Le Pen said she would abolish a 2017 law that banned the issuing of new exploration permits for hydrocarbons, in favour of renewable energies.

It also banned exploration and extraction of shale gas. The law was named after Nicolas Hulot, a former environment minister.

Le Pen called it “the stupid Hulot law.”

Le Pen’s nearly hour-long address to supporters gathered in the city of Orleans went back over her familiar nationalist, anti-immigration themes, centred around her view that France has been ruined by its leaders but that she can give it a brighter future.

“The fires are going out of the old great parties, my friends, and they’re stirring on a pile of ashes,” she said.

“We’re living not the end of the world but the end of a world, of their world. It’s up to us to reinvent the one that is coming,” she added.

The 58-year-old Le Pen is making her fourth campaign for the French presidency.

She is seen as the current favourite to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

Her supportive crowd shouted “We’re going to win” and “Marine, president” as she spoke.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has returned to the South American nation after nearly a year ‌outside the country.

“I’m here. With you all,” the Nobel ‌Peace Prize-winning Machado wrote on social media early Sunday.

Her return risks straining ties with the ‌US Trump administration, which she has sought to cultivate as an ally since before it removed President Nicolas Maduro from power in January.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed support for interim President Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s former deputy, and hailed deals on oil production and other business ventures by US ‌companies in the ‌South American ⁠country.

Trump said in September it is too soon to ​consider democratic elections in Venezuela.

International energy firms committed last month to expanding projects in the country in a signing ceremony overseen by Rodriguez and US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Machado has said only a “serious, democratic government” can provide the stability needed by investors.

In June, she said she would do ⁠whatever it took to come home and help ‌the ​survivors of devastating twin earthquakes that month, which killed at least 6500 people and left thousands ​missing.

Machado was ‌barred by Maduro’s government from exiting Venezuela but secretly left in late 2025 to ​receive the Nobel Peace Prize, after spending more than a year living mostly in hiding.

Her desire to return had caused friction in Washington, with US officials asking her ​to ​delay her trip, Reuters reported in June.

Machado ​did not disclose more details about her ‌current location, or how she returned.

A faction of the opposition and the interim government held their latest session of talks this month, which aim to remake the top court and electoral council, among other goals, ahead of eventual elections.

They do not include Machado’s political movement.

Edmundo Gonzalez, a ​former presidential candidate for Machado’s movement who has been living in Spain, confirmed her return ​in his own post ⁠and said he would soon join her.