On a day of high-stakes diplomacy on the global stage, President Donald Trump began his United Nations visit by telling a prominent US journalist, “You should not be here”.

“It’s an honour to be here,” Trump said as he entered UN doors on Tuesday ahead of his speech to the General Assembly and faced Kaitlan Collins of CNN, a frequent target of his ire.

“I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me.”

As Collins noted later on air, CNN said nothing of the kind. The administration had banned CNN from White House grounds days earlier – along with MS NOW and Politico – and removed the network from pool duty. But CNN had been admitted into the UN as regularly credentialed media.

In any case, the tense moment was a stark reminder of how dramatically the bitter conflict between Trump and news outlets whose coverage he objects to as “fake news” has escalated in just a few days.

The current ban was the subject of a joint lawsuit filed on Monday by the three outlets, asking a judge to find the administration’s move unconstitutional. The White House had until Tuesday to respond, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

Later on Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his remarks and said negative coverage was dangerous for the country.

Asked whether he would allow the outlets back in if the court rules against the White House, he said, “Well, it probably will, because this is a judge who’s not a particularly fair judge”.

He was referring to US District Judge Timothy Kelly, whom he appointed in 2017 and who ordered a CNN journalist’s access restored in a similar case in 2018.

“So you never know,” Trump added.

“I think we have a right to clean out fake news.”

The ban and lawsuit are part of a long-running conflict between the president and media outlets he finds unfavourable.

Trump has responded in the courtroom, or with regulatory action.

He’s also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms – as he has with CNN’s Collins, most recently in a speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

On air, after her exchange with Trump on Tuesday, Collins said: “We never said we were not going to cover the president. We will do our best to cover him each and every day.”

Tuesday began with an item missing from the daily press schedule issued by the White House: It did not list the US network pool, a departure from the norm.

CNN had been the designated pool network for the president’s trip to New York, according to a schedule that divides coverage of certain events between the five major networks. But Trump’s ban removed it from pool duties.

The other pool members agreed, in solidarity, not to replace CNN with another network on the coverage, and further to suspend all pool coverage until further notice.

Other news outlets also took steps in solidarity. The Associated Press joined a number of news organisations, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, in a decision not to publish photographs of presidential events on Monday.

Australian food and beverage icon SPC is on the road to recovery after years in the financial doldrums, but it’s powder rather than peaches driving its comeback.

Functional milk powder – powdered milk with added vitamins and other nutritional supplements – was now its core product for markets in Asia, SPC Global chief financial officer Brant Clutterbuck said.

“That’s the baseline business throughout Asia at the moment,” he told AAP.

SPC Global’s foray into powdered milk follows its 2024 merger with Nature One, along with The Original Juice Co and Natural Ingredients, after years of supply constraints, cost pressures, debt issues and a tanking share price.

The combined entity sells in 15 markets, mostly in Asia, and has strong footholds in Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, while seeing signs of growth in China.

Functional milk powder is now a springboard to launching SPC’s other products into those markets.

“Because of the merger, we’re seeing the ability now to cross-sell the broader portfolio,” Mr Clutterbuck said.

“We are far more resilient and diversified now than what we were 18 months ago, and that’s why we’re seeing some significant contributions coming out of the international part of the business.”

Aussie products also attract a high price-tag offshore.

“The Australian-made, Australian premium has really got some traction over in those (Asian) markets,” Mr Clutterbuck said.

The company is also looking to expand sales into the Middle East after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Shahin family office to potentially distribute in markets including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.

On the home front, SPC has pivoted away from low-margin, low-contribution arrangements such as co-pack and private label deals, towards higher-margin products and brands.

“That has contributed to our overall net sales revenue decline year on year,” Mr Clutterbuck said.

“But, most importantly, what we’ve seen is that strategy has allowed us to improve our gross margin profitability.”

The group’s operating income jumped by $8.2 million to $38.5 million, despite total sales falling almost 12 per cent to $331.8 million.

Despite improving earnings, SPC has a long way to go before it’s back in the black after delivering a $11.6 million net loss in the 2026 financial year, while holding a net debt position of $85.8 million.

Shifting from a supply-led to a demand-led strategy has also helped streamline the business.

“The facility would procure what the growers grew and turn it into finished goods, and then we would go to the market and seek to sell that,” Mr Clutterbuck said.

The company, which has a stock market value of $87 million, instead now looks to demand to help inform its raw material purchases.

Shares in SPC were trading around 7.4 cents on Tuesday.

Australia’s share market has scraped together a meagre improvement after green shoots of optimism on Iran and AI amounted to little for stock prices.

The S&P/ASX200 advanced 25.9 points on Tuesday, up 0.3 per cent, to 8,757.8, as the broader All Ordinaries gained 31.9 points, or 0.36 per cent, to 8,951.

Energy stocks were heavy as oil prices eased on reports the US and Iran could be looking to revive peace talks and end their nearly seven-month conflict, while miners improved on the back of continued copper price strength and improving risk sentiment. 

The Australian dollar is buying 71.22 US cents, down from 71.28 US cents on Monday at 5pm AEST.

Australia’s unemployment rate probably needs to edge a little higher to help get inflation back under control, Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock says.

Prefacing her remarks by saying the RBA does not want to see high unemployment, Ms Bullock told a business event on Tuesday that the labour market was still a bit tight and inflation was too high.

The 4.5 per cent jobless rate is at the lower limit of what the RBA thinks will bring down inflation to an acceptable level, Ms Bullock said.

“There is certain levels of unemployment that if you go below that level of unemployment, it introduces a lot of pressure in the labour market, and that can put upward pressure on wages and prices,” she said.

“It puts pressure on costs for businesses, that finds its way into prices.

“Between 4.5 and 5 (per cent) will probably take enough heat out of the labour market that it’ll ease pressure on inflation.”

Money markets and economists at all four big banks already expect the central bank to hike interest rates in September for a fourth time in 2026, following hawkish comments in recent weeks by Ms Bullock and other top RBA officials.

Labour force figures for August, due to be released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday, are expected to show the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.5 per cent.

Ms Bullock’s comments at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia event show the unemployment data likely won’t deter the RBA from raising rates.

As she told a parliamentary committee on Friday, Australia’s productivity malaise means even relatively subdued economic growth is pushing inflation up above the bank’s 2-3 per cent target band.

Governments can help to boost productivity by removing red tape or boosting competition, for example, but businesses had to step up to the plate as well, she said on Tuesday.

“Australian businesses just seem to have become less dynamic, and even those businesses that are sort of at the frontier, or were at the frontier, are not quite as close to the frontier as they used to be,” Ms Bullock said.

Productivity has only grown at an average of 0.3 per cent per year over the past decade but the three-yearly Intergenerational Report, released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Monday, assumed that productivity growth would return to 1.2 per cent within five years.

While some economists viewed the assumption as overly optimistic, Ms Bullock said she saw it as a call to action to revive productivity growth.

“That’s what we’ve got to aim at if we want to maintain good outcomes for the Australian economy,” she said.

Dr Chalmers denied that the government was putting all its eggs in the AI basket.

“AI will be an important part of (boosting productivity), but not the only part of that,” he told Nine’s Today Show on Tuesday.

“The budget actually had the biggest and broadest productivity package of any budget in decades to try and get approvals faster, to try and attract more investment, to work with the states more effectively.”

Making it easier for nurses, electricians and other workers to work across state borders by harmonising licensing requirements would be a big help for productivity, Ms Bullock said.

But AI was the “great white hope”, although it was yet to show any evidence that it was helping.

“When I talk to colleagues around the world about this, I think everyone thinks that. But I think everyone also agrees that there are very few signs yet that AI is actually influencing the supply side of the economy,” Ms Bullock said.

“There’s lots of evidence that it’s influencing the demand side of the economy.

“So we’ve got this sort of awkward sequencing event at the moment, where in Australia at least we are in a situation of excess demand, and the AI boom is adding to that demand ahead of any potential supply impacts that it might have going forward.”

Alibaba Group plans to train a ‌new artificial intelligence model with between five trillion and 10 trillion parameters.

Chief Executive Eddie Wu announced the plan on Tuesday, as the Chinese technology giant ‌outlined a sweeping strategy encompassing AI models, chips and data centres.

Speaking at Alibaba Cloud’s annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Wu said the company’s Qwen team ‌was continuing research into model architecture and data optimisation, with the goal of completing “more complex, longer-horizon tasks” and advancing toward artificial superintelligence, or ASI.

In a separate statement, Alibaba said its next-generation model, Qwen 4, was currently in training, adding that the upcoming Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 series were projected to scale up to five trillion to 10 trillion parameters.

Parameters are the variables a model learns during training and are a rough ‌gauge of its ‌size.

Alibaba’s current flagship model, ⁠Qwen 3.8 Max, has 2.4 trillion parameters, meaning the planned model would be roughly two to ​four times larger.

Wu said Alibaba’s proprietary M890 AI supernode already handles inference for models above two trillion parameters, a capability he said only “a handful of companies globally” possess.

The Qwen team has made “meaningful progress” on recursive self-improvement, in which models identify their own limitations, design experiments and synthesise data to drive a cycle of self-evolution, he said.

Alibaba also introduced the Zhenwu V900, a next-generation AI chip from its T-Head semiconductor unit, which Wu called ⁠the most powerful AI chip in China.

It delivers three times the performance ‌of its predecessor, the ​M890, and a single cluster built on it can support up to 500,000 cards for frontier model training and inference, he said.

The chip ​is scheduled ‌for mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of 2027, the company said in the statement. The M890 was released ​in May.

The company expects “significant growth” in annual AI chip shipments, Wu said.

The launch comes as Chinese firms race to build domestic alternatives to Nvidia’s processors amid US export restrictions.

Wu set a target for Alibaba Cloud’s global data centre capacity to surpass 20 gigawatts ​by ​2032. 

He said customer demand for AI remained “exceptionally robust” ​and was accelerating Alibaba Cloud’s revenue growth, but acknowledged that global shortages across ‌the AI data centre supply chain were limiting how fast the company could expand.

“The industry’s mid-to-long-term demand far outpaces our supply capabilities,” he said, adding that Alibaba Cloud would begin bringing its AI supernodes online at commercial scale this quarter.

Wu framed the moment as the dawn of an era of “Machine Intelligence” comparable to the Industrial Revolution, predicting machines would eventually produce more than 1000 times the “thinking” of all humanity, up from ​less than three per cent today.

He likened AI coding to the light bulb of the electrical age – an early application rather than the ​breakthrough product.

“The truly groundbreaking products of ⁠the Machine Intelligence era have not yet arrived,” he said.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico are suing President Donald Trump’s administration days after they were barred from White House grounds, calling the selective ban – based on the content of their coverage – a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment.

Trump said on social media that he “cherished” a free press but not “FAKE NEWS”.

“White House access is a privilege – not a right,” the administration posted on X.

The extraordinary ban of the three news outlets’ reporters, which began over the weekend, represented a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts – in the courts and through administrative action – to restrict news coverage he finds objectionable.

They were also the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States, where the government is constitutionally forbidden from restricting the press.

The Constitution, the banned news outlets said in their lawsuit, “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”

The three outlets filed the joint lawsuit two days after their reporters were blocked from the White House and prevented from doing their jobs.

The reporters’ entry badges were disabled on Saturday, a day after Trump had suddenly announced he was barring the outlets because of reporting he considered “fake news”.

CNN is removed from pool duties, and other outlets take a stand in solidarity

On Monday morning, the banned TV networks were reporting from an intersection just outside the White House complex.

CNN, meanwhile, was removed from its pool duties, which are shared by the five major networks.

It had been scheduled to cover the president’s trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In an email to members, the TV pool said there would be no replacement coverage – and other networks would suspend their own pool coverage indefinitely.

“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” said the email from the current chair of the pool, Fox’s Washington bureau chief, Bryan Boughton.

“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties.”

Other news outlets also took steps in solidarity.

The AP joined a number of news organisations, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, in a decision not to publish photographs of presidential events on Monday.

The White House said on X: “The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool.”

On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that he was not attacking the First Amendment.

“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish,” the president said.

“It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

In his second term, Trump has upped the ante and punished certain media outlets and often lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms – insulting them in briefings or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the banned outlets said in a joint statement posted early Monday on X.

“Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

with AP

Anthony Albanese is confident other countries will add their voices to growing calls to rein in the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

Australia was one of more than 20 countries that signed a joint statement urging additional safeguards for AI and to keep it under human control.

The statement was issued ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where AI measures are set to be on the agenda.

“AI must remain under human direction, oversight and control. It must be developed and used in line with international law,” the statement, released on Tuesday, Australian time, said.

“Leading scientists and executives are warning that the pace of development could outpace our ability to manage emerging risks.”

Alongside Australia, leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen signed the statement.

The joint statement also remained open for endorsement for other countries to add to its list of signatories, something Mr Albanese hoped would happen.

“Other nations are putting forward their national interests,” he told reporters in New York on Tuesday, Australian time.

“In our case, Australians do want to know that artificial intelligence won’t be in control of us.

“We need to shape how it rolls out, rather than have artificial intelligence shape the way that our society functions.”

The statement comes just days before US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Washington on Thursday, US time.

Mr Trump has labelled concerns about the rise of AI as a hoax, saying he did not want to cede ground in the technological race to China.

Mr Albanese said Australia played a central role in putting the statement together, with the prime minister having direct discussions with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who issued the joint position on behalf of other nations.

“We continue to engage with our neighbours, this has been something that is discussed between leaders, just as it’s been discussed around lounge rooms,” he said.

“Artificial intelligence will have a massive impact on the way that our lives and our work is conducted.”

The statement said risks with AI needed to be addressed, without widening the gap between countries for access to some of the benefits of the technology.

The signatories called for AI companies to develop transparent safety protocols and for governments to develop common standards for the technology.

It also urged the UN to explore options to create an international institution that could set out AI standards.

Mr Albanese met with Ms von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa on the sidelines of the UN, where technology was also a focus.

The European Commission said Australia had been a trailblazer in implementing a ban on under 16s using social media, noting the EU was looking at similar laws.

A free-trade agreement with the EU was signed earlier in 2026, which coincided with a visit by Ms von der Leyen to Australia.

She also said she was pleased Australian researchers would soon be ale able to join Horizon Europe, the EU’s funding program for innovation.

Mr Albanese said Australia joining the program represented a significant advancement.

“Australia’s always been good at innovation and research and scientific advancement. We often have missed out on a bit of the commercialisation,” he said.

Ahead of the UN General Assembly, Mr Albanese also gave an address to the Partners for Multilateralism, International Law, Peace and Prosperity summit.

It was attended by the European Commission president and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Mr Albanese said countries could not afford to be isolated in turbulent periods.

“Global challenges cannot be solved by countries acting alone, especially right now, when we are facing one of the toughest periods in modern history,” he said.

Australians hunting bargains on comparison websites risk being duped by sites that only offer a selection of preferred providers.

The corporate watchdog has issued a warning after launching multiple court actions against websites for allegedly misleading consumers about the range of financial services and products on offer and, in some cases, promoting multiple leads from a single brand.

While comparison websites are a good place to start for prices and services information, consumers should conduct deeper research, Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) commissioner Alan Kirkland said.

“The products that are listed by many comparison sites are selected and ordered based on what the product providers pay to the comparison sites, and they may not give you a full view of the market,” Mr Kirkland told AAP.

“It’s important to actually use a range of comparison sites in order to get a fuller view of the market.”

The Federal Court recently found comparison site Choosi – which offers life, funeral, income protection and health insurance products – misled consumers over four years from mid-2019 after claiming to compare a slew of funeral and life insurance policies, when Hanover Life Re issued all but one of the policies offered.

Every single policy in question was distributed by Greenstone Financial Services, a company linked with Choosi.

The court has not set a date to hand down Choosi’s penalty, but an administrative hearing will be held later on Tuesday.

The watchdog launched a case on Friday against lead-generating business Clark Family Pty Ltd, which offers free online assessments for loans and insurance products.

The commission alleges up to 70 of its websites misled consumers by claiming to compare rates and options from multiple providers and providing consumers “tailored” recommendations.

“In reality, consumers’ inquiries were (allegedly) sold to the highest-bidding broker,” Mr Kirkland said.

With Australians already struggling with cost-of-living pressures and stubborn inflation, the court actions are a warning shot across the bow to the price comparison platform market.

“We’ve got very strong laws in Australia against making false or misleading representations about the products that you provide to consumers,” Mr Kirkland said.

“And where we find comparison sites misleading consumers, we will take action.”

Consumers must also be alert to service agreements to ensure they don’t sign away their private data with a click.

“Your information may not be used solely for the purpose of the comparison that you’re seeking,” Mr Kirkland said.

“Your personal details may be sold to another business, and you may then find yourself the subject of telemarketing calls or marketing emails as a result of your information being sold on.”

* Find information on how to navigate comparison sites at https://moneysmart.gov.au.

Boosting access to childcare, reintroducing the baby bonus or increasing migration have been floated to arrest Australia’s population slowdown.

The latest Intergenerational Report – the seventh since the triennial document was introduced by Peter Costello and the second under Treasurer Jim Chalmers – projected for the first time that deaths will outnumber births by 2066.

At 1.44 births per woman, Australia’s fertility rate is already below replacement and will slide to 1.34 in 40 years’ time, the report revealed on Monday.

Alongside an assumed net migrant intake of 235,000 per year, the population growth rate will eventually ease to 0.6 per cent, meaning a shrinking share of working-age Australians will be relied on to pay for a climbing cohort of retirees.

Greater access to contraception, higher education attainment, greater workforce participation, longer periods living with parents, and delays in forming partnerships have caused birth rates to fall across the developed world, the report said.

Almost every developed economy has watched its fertility rate fall below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman.

None have managed to turn around the structural decline.

Many have birth rates far below Australia’s.

But while a return to the Howard government-era baby bonus is not on the cards, the government still aspires to make it easier for people to start a family, Dr Chalmers said.

“The early childhood education reforms are key to that. Expanding paid parental leave is key to that. Paying super on paid parental leave is a really important part of that as well,” he told reporters.

Australia has experienced a temporary increase in fertility once in recent decades: when Mr Costello, the then-treasurer, offered parents a lump sum payment for every newborn.

Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie was “open-minded” about reviving the baby bonus.

“Peter Costello’s baby bonus of 20-odd years ago seemed to work at the time, although economists and people who know are mixed about their views on whether that actually worked,” he told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Treasury and a trained economist, said the biggest impact to get people to have more kids is to increase access to childcare.

“You don’t want women in particular to be choosing between career and family,” he told the ABC.

Dr Leigh said Labor’s tweaks to force net overseas migration to 225,000 by 2028 were needed to “right-size” the intake for the economy.

But Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally said reducing migration would result in higher income taxes for workers to pay for the ageing population.

“We’re far better off than the picture that was painted in that first Intergenerational Report in 2002, and a large part of the reason that we are far better off is because of migration, which has increased our working-age population,” she said.

If net migration was to fall even further to 185,000 and fertility to decline to 1.24, Australia’s population would be 1.9 million people lower at 37.4 million and the economy would be 7.4 per cent smaller by 2066, the report projected.

But on a per capita basis, living standards would be little changed, with the average Australian’s real gross income only $400 lower at $149,100.

Residents in communities affected by floods and fires are set to experience repeated trauma from repeated natural disasters unless greater action is taken on climate change, the prime minister has warned.

In a keynote speech to the New York Climate Week summit on the sidelines of the United Nations, Anthony Albanese said it was not a matter of if, but when, the next large-scale natural disaster will take place.

Opening the summit on Tuesday, Australian time, the prime minister said the resilience of communities and emergency responders to natural disasters should no longer be the status quo.

“As leaders, we must match their bravery. Unfortunately, without strong action, the science tells us these events will get worse and more intense,” he told the summit in New York.

“We can’t rely in the fortitude of our people alone, as tough as they are. We need to come together to meet the problem head on.”

The prime minister said while weather patterns have always been unpredictable, large-scale natural disasters would become even more common.

He warned record-breaking temperatures in Europe, as well as a potential summer of extreme heat and bushfires linked to El Nino would exacerbate the situation.

“The global community cannot afford to be frozen in time while the world warms around us,” he said.

“There’s no avoiding the scale of our responsibility or the cost of inaction, because there’s no denying what it also represents.”

Australia was using its credentials on climate efforts at home as well as in the broader Pacific region as part of its pitch for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2029 and 2030.

Mr Albanese said in the keynote speech nations could not afford to forget Pacific allies on the climate front.

“(It’s) a region where those who’ve contributed the least to the climate crisis are among the most vulnerable to its consequences,” he said.

“We are backing Pacific action and innovation. Turning up, following through and creating a more connected and unified region.”

But the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group said Mr Albanese could not claim credibility on the international stage for climate leadership when coal and gas projects were being expanded back home.

Former Australian Defence Force chief and group member Chris Barrie said climate change needed to be the biggest security concern for the country.

“If the prime minister is going to New York to say climate security is national security, Australians are entitled to ask a very simple question: where is the plan?” he said in a statement.

“The government has yet to set out a clear, climate security framework showing how escalating climate risks are being incorporated.”

Also speaking at the Climate Week summit, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said governments across the world also needed to link climate security to national security.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which impacted gas markets, as well oil price surges stemming from the war in Iran, highlighted the need for the approach, he told the forum.

“Countries need to pool information because a shock beginning in one country can rapidly travel through supply chains, financial markers and migration patterns to other countries,” he said.

“We have to become better at managing shocks.”