Rio Tinto says it ‍is no longer in talks with Glencore about a takeover that ​would have created the world’s largest mining company as it could ⁠not reach an agreement that would deliver value to its shareholders.

Glencore shares fell as much as 10.8 per cent to 456 pence.

Rio Tinto’s London-listed shares were down 2.6 per cent at 6,820 pence by 3.35pm in the United Kingdom (2.35am AEDT on Friday).

Rio Tinto told shareholders on Thursday that it “is no longer considering a possible merger or other business combination with Glencore”.

Attempts ‌to combine ​the companies have repeatedly fallen short.

The British-Australian company rejected a ‍merger approach from Glencore in 2014, saying it was not in the best interests of shareholders, and another round of discussions in 2024 also fizzled out without a deal.

“The key terms of the potential ​offer were Rio Tinto retaining both ‌the chairman and chief executive officer roles and delivering a proforma ownership of the ​combined company which, in our view, significantly undervalued Glencore’s underlying relative ‍value contribution to the combined group,” Glencore said in a statement.

Glencore said it concluded that the proposed acquisition on ​these ​terms were not in ​the best interests of its shareholders.

The ​abandoned talks echo other ambitious mining deals that have faltered, including BHP’s $US49  billion ($A70 billion) approach for Anglo American, which unravelled over concerns about the structure of the offer, even as the sector pushes to consolidate amid rising demand for metals.

with PA

Bunnings is within its rights to use facial recognition software on customers to curb theft and violence against staff, with a tribunal laying the foundation for a broader rollout.

The Administrative Review Tribunal has overturned a ruling from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner that the hardware giant breached privacy laws by trialling facial recognition in stores.

The retailer used CCTV to scan the faces of customers entering 63 stores in NSW and Victoria in the three years to November 2021.

In 2024, the commissioner’s office found Bunnings had taken customers’ private information without consent, failed to take steps to notify them and left gaps in its privacy policy. 

The hardware chain appealed the ruling to the independent tribunal, which on Wednesday found there were “serious” threats to safety and the risk-sensitive information misuse was “negligible”.

“Bunnings was entitled to use (the technology) for the limited purpose of combating very significant retail crime and protecting their staff and customers from violence, abuse and intimidation within its stores,” the tribunal said.

The extent of retail crime faced by Bunnings staff and customers was one of the “important factors” in its ruling.

A store manager at Box Hill in Melbourne’s east estimated his team was confronted with threatening or abusive behaviour every two to three days, leaving staff “visibly shaken and upset”.

Threatening situations were “the worst it has ever been”, Bunnings’ national investigations and security manager Alexander MacDonald told the tribunal.

Bunnings calculated at least 66 per cent of theft losses on average each financial year were attributable to the top 10 per cent of offenders.

The tribunal recognised the need for “practical, common-sense steps” to keep people safe and identified areas where the business didn’t get everything right, Bunnings managing director Mike Schneider said.

“The safety of our team, customers and suppliers has always been our highest priority,” he said.

“Our intent in trialling this technology was to help protect people from violence, abuse, serious criminal conduct and organised retail crime.

The commissioner’s office said it was carefully considering the ruling and noted it was open to appeal.

The decision confirmed that the Privacy Act contained strong protections for individual privacy related to emerging technologies, it said.

“The Australian community continues to care deeply about their privacy, and is increasingly worried about the challenges in protecting their personal information,” an office spokesperson said.

Facial recognition software could play an important role in protecting workers and customers from serious harm when used properly and transparently, the Australian Retail Council said.

The peak retail body was keen to work with governments to deliver a “balanced framework”.

“This is a positive step forward in combating retail crime,” council chief executive Chris Rodwell said.

Digital Rights Watch was less enthused at the prospect of wider use of facial surveillance technologies, calling for an outright ban in retail and other settings.

“(The finding) clearly goes against community expectations,” the group’s head of policy Tom Sulston said.

“Australians want and deserve clear and enforceable laws that meet our expectations. It is time for law makers to act.”

The alleged throwing of a homemade bomb into an Invasion Day rally crowd has been declared a terrorist act.

Thousands of people were evacuated on January 26  from Forrest Place in Perth’s city centre after police found an object containing volatile chemicals, nails and metal ball bearings.

The explosive device, which failed to detonate, was thrown by a 31-year-old man at the 2500-strong crowd of Indigenous people, families and supporters, police allege.

WA Premier Roger Cook said the alleged attack had now been determined to be act of terror. 

“We must condemn this incident in the strongest possible terms, and we must call it for what it is,” the premier said on Thursday. 

“The WA joint counterterrorism team comprising WA Police, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO have determined the incident last Monday in Perth should be charged as a terrorist act.” 

Charges against the 31-year-old, who remains in custody, have been upgraded to engaging in a terrorist act. 

“This charge, which has been laid by the Joint Task Force, alleges the attack on Aboriginal people and other peaceful protesters was motivated by hateful, racist ideology,” he said.

“This is the first time this charge has been laid in Western Australia.” 

A Perth magistrate granted a suppression order on the man’s identity because of fears for his safety.

The ill-fated attack rocked the community and the country in the wake of the Bondi attack on December 14. 

“I know this event has impacted people Australia wide, and it is deeply felt by our indigenous communities –  I know that there is anger, we have every right to be angry,” Mr Cook said. 

“Any attack on our First Nations people is an attack on all of us, and this is not what it means to be Australians, but we must allow police to complete their investigation so that justice process can take place.”

A teenager has appeared in court after allegedly threatening Israeli President Isaac Herzog ahead of his contentious visit to Australia.

Darcy Tinning, 19, was accused of threatening to shoot the head of state with a pistol and kill US President Donald Trump in a January 19 post on social media platform X.

His threat to Herzog included a violent remark referencing extinction, which federal prosecutors said constituted hate speech and risked inciting others with similar views.

The Newtown man was arrested on Wednesday and brought before a Sydney court on Thursday.

Given the Israeli president is set to arrive in Australia on Sunday, the prosecutor said the teen posed a risk to the community due to the violent nature of the threats.

She noted the threat to Herzog was made amid heightened tensions after the Bondi terror attack in December.

“The current heated climate, the unrest in the community, makes the threats very serious,” the prosecutor said.

“Unacceptable risks exist which cannot be mitigated if the defendant is released in this climate of political unrest.”

Tinning’s lawyer, Brendan Green, accepted his client’s comments were “completely inappropriate” and could result in significant jail time, but stressed they were not directed at any particular people or group.

There was no real suggestion the teen would follow through on the threats, he said.

Neither Tinning nor his family have any access to firearms and he does not have a history of violence, Green told the court.

Israel’s president was controversially invited to Australia by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people on December 14.

During the five-day trip, he will meet with survivors of the terror attack, senior Australian politicians and Jewish community leaders.

Thousands of Australians are expected to take to the streets in every capital city to protest his visit, citing his culpability in Israel’s bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

Among those planning to attend in Sydney is NSW Labor backbencher Sarah Kaine, who said she was concerned about Herzog’s visit.

“Given that he has signed bombs that have targeted civilians and have killed Gaza’s children, I don’t think it’s appropriate,” she told AAP on Thursday.

“I understand that the Jewish community is grieving but there is a large population of Palestinians in Australia who are also grieving and this is traumatic for this man to be in our country.”

Herzog has previously said Palestinians bore collective blame for Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, before later clarifying his remarks.

A United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry in September found the statement might reasonably have been interpreted as inciting genocide.

A genocide case against Israel has been brought to the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his alleged responsibility for war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare.

The Nationals are confident they will rejoin the Coalition well before the election, but members say they won’t be held on arbitrary deadlines.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told Nationals leader David Littleproud earlier this week a new Coalition could reform within days, under the condition three former Nationals shadow ministers who crossed the floor were sin-binned from the front bench for six months. 

Nationals members held a party room meeting on Wednesday to determine their response, but Mr Littleproud was scant on detail when pressed by reporters. 

“There is no decision today,” he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday. 

“My intention is that there will be a coalition at some point in the future, well before the election.”

Mr Littleproud dug in on his position that the joint party room process wasn’t followed during the debate of contentious hate speech laws, which resulted in senators Bridget McKenzie, Ross Cadell and Susan McDonald crossing the floor.

“We did nothing wrong, we stuck to the processes, the process fell down and it wasn’t afforded to us,” he said. 

“We made a decision that we couldn’t support a bill that was going to take away the freedom of speech of every Australian.” 

He declined to say whether he was meeting with Ley on Thursday for further discussions, and repeatedly criticised media reports, saying the Nationals had been vilified over the last two weeks. 

The Nationals have until Monday to reform the Coalition before Ms Ley makes permanent an all-Liberal shadow cabinet.

Nationals MP Kevin Hogan said the party may counter Ms Ley’s offer, but that “we don’t want an arbitrary deadline that cuts this off”.

Senator McKenzie denied being the reason the coalition hasn’t got back together yet.

“We’re all coalitionists in the National Party, and it’s up to our two leaders to bring that relationship together,” she told the Today Show.

Mr Littleproud refused to engage in “hypotheticals” about a three-way Coalition with One Nation, as leader of the far-right party Pauline Hanson suggested on Sky News on Wednesday night. 

“I would work with them to give them supply,” Senator Hanson said. 

“Would I join up to the rabble that they are at the moment? No way in the wide world, but I have my strong policies that we need.”

Recent polls have shown public support for One Nation surpassing the Coalition for the first time.

A Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll, published on Sunday, showed support for One Nation had jumped to 26 per cent, well above the former Coalition’s 19 per cent primary vote.

US President Donald Trump says he nominated Kevin Warsh for the position of US Federal Reserve chair due to the prospect of interest rate cuts.  

Trump said in an interview with the US broadcaster NBC News he would not have proposed the former Federal Reserve governor for the position if Warsh had wanted interest rate hikes.  

Trump said he believed Warsh understood he desired a looser monetary policy. 

There was “not much” ​doubt in his mind that ⁠benchmark US interest rates will be lowered by the Federal Reserve, the president said.

Asked if ​Warsh understood Trump wanted him to lower interest rates, ​Trump said: “I think he ‍does, but I think he wants to anyway”.

“I ​mean, ​if he ​came in and ​said, ‘I want to raise them’ … he would not have gotten the job. No,” Trump said in the interview on Wednesday, US time.

Trump had proposed Warsh as a successor to the current US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. 

The US Senate still needs to confirm Trump’s candidate as the future head of the Fed.  

Powell’s term as the world’s most important central banker is set to end in May.  

Critics fear the independence of the central bank could be compromised with Warsh at the helm.  

Trump wants lower interest rates, as he finds the current rate level of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent too high, despite the fact gradual reductions have been made. 

Contrary to Trump’s often simplified portrayal, the Fed chair does not decide the key interest rate alone. 

Instead, the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee meets at regular intervals and then votes on the future monetary policy course.  

In addition to the seven governors of the central bank, the committee includes five regional bank presidents. 

Among the five representatives of the regional Federal Reserve banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York president is a permanent member – the other four rotate annually. 

With Reuters

Google’s latest quarterly report provides further evidence its internet empire is withstanding an artificial intelligence shake-up that’s turning into another potential boon for the company.

The numbers released on Wednesday, US time, marked Google’s third consecutive quarter of digital ad growth of more than 10 per cent from the previous year, while also posting more than 30 per cent sales growth in its division that powers data centres for AI services.

Those increases during the October-December period propelled Google’s corporate parent Alphabet Inc well past the earnings forecasts of stock market analysts.

Alphabet’s fourth-quarter profit rose 30 per cent from the prior year to $US34.5 billion ($A49.4 billion), or $US2.82 ($A4.04) per share, while revenue climbed 18 per cent to $US113.8 billion ($A162.8 billion).

The collective momentum of Google’s main business in search and advertising and the still-nascent AI field indicates a company born during the late 1990s internet boom is becoming even stronger during another technology phenomenon almost 30 years later.

“Search saw more usage than ever before, with AI continuing to drive an expansionary moment,” Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said.

Google’s successful evolution has helped drive up Alphabet’s stock price nearly 60 per cent in the past five months, giving it a $US4 ($A5.7) trillion market value. 

That may have raised the bar for Alphabet to impress investors as the company’s shares dipped one per cent in extended trading following the report.

Apple, also currently worth $US4 ($A5.7) trillion, thinks so highly of Google’s AI that the iPhone maker recently struck a deal to use Google’s Gemini technology in a long-delayed upgrade to its virtual assistant, Siri.

Google is also embedding more of its Gemini AI into its long-dominant search engine, Gmail and Chrome browser as it tries to avoid complacency and being outmanoeuvred by up-and-coming companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity.

To meet the challenge, Alphabet has been on a spending spree to expand its AI capacity. 

After pouring $US91 billion ($A130 billion) into capital expenditures devoted mostly to AI in 2025, the California company is expected to spend even more in 2026. 

Its capital expenditure budget has ballooned from about $US30 billion ($A43 billion) annually since 2022 when OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot to much acclaim, prompting Google to pull out all the stops to catch up.

Alphabet’s projected budget for capital expenditures represents nearly half its 2025 revenue of $US403 billion ($A577 billion) — a “jarring” commitment, said Ethan Feller, a stock strategist for Zacks Investment Research.

But the past quarter “supports the view that Google is spending into strength and differentiation, not spending to stay relevant”, said Investing.com Thomas Monteiro.

Google’s thriving digital ad business is helping finance the spree. Its digital ad sales totalled $US82.3 billion ($A117.8 billion) in the fourth quarter, up 14 per cent from the previous year. 

Google Cloud, which oversees the data centres behind many AI services, posted revenue of $US17.7 billion ($A25.3 billion), a 48 per cent increase.

The nation’s third-largest oil and gas producer saw a big fall in first-half earnings after flooding in South Australia impacted production at its main field.

Beach Energy on Thursday posted a bottom-line net profit of $150 million, down 32 per cent on the previous corresponding period.

Its underlying result, which adjusts for one-off items, fell eight per cent to $219 million in the six months ended December.

Gas production dropped seven per cent after flooding last July in the Cooper Basin affected its wells and also left multiple communities cut off.

However, chief executive Brett Woods said the interim results were still solid.

“Onshore in the Cooper Basin, flood recovery efforts progressed strongly, with 97 per cent of affected production now back on line,” he said in a statement.

“With a solid first half performance, we are well placed to deliver on what will be an active second half of fiscal 2026 across our core east and west coast hubs.

“We are executing on our vision of becoming Australia’s leading domestic energy company.”

The Adelaide-based Beach Energy, which is 30 per cent owned by the Stokes family-controlled company SGH, produces domestic gas for eastern and western Australia and New Zealand.

It also supplies LNG, crude oil to local refineries and other energy-related products.

Beach Energy declared an interim dividend of one cent per share, down from three cents in 2025.

US Vice President JD Vance has unveiled plans to marshal allies into a preferential trade bloc for critical minerals as ‍Washington escalates efforts to loosen China’s grip on materials crucial to advanced manufacturing. 

China has wielded its chokehold on the processing of many minerals as geo-economic leverage, at times curbing exports, suppressing prices and undercutting other countries’ ability to diversify sources of the materials used ​to make semiconductors, electric vehicles and advanced weapons.

“We want to eliminate that problem of people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers,” Vance told a gathering of visiting ministers in Washington without mentioning China.

“We will establish reference prices for ⁠critical minerals at each stage of production … and for members of the preferential zone, these reference prices will operate as a floor maintained through adjustable tariffs to uphold pricing integrity,” Vance said.

President Donald Trump’s administration has stepped up efforts to secure US supplies of critical minerals after China rattled senior officials and global markets in 2025 by withholding rare earths required by American automakers and other industrial manufacturers. 

Trump on Monday launched a US strategic stockpile of critical minerals, called Project Vault, backed by $US10 billion ($A14 billion) in seed funding from the US Export-Import Bank and $US2 billion ($A2.9 billion) in private funding.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 55 countries attended the talks in Washington, among them South Korea, India, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all with ‌varying refining or mining capabilities.

The ​minerals are “heavily concentrated in the hands of one country,” Rubio said, without referencing China, adding that the situation had become a “tool of leverage in geopolitics”. 

At the meeting on Wednesday, local time, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced a bilateral ‍plan with Mexico and a trilateral agreement with the European Union and Japan to strengthen critical mineral supply chains and set the stage for a broader agreement with other allies.

The plans aim to explore specific measures such as price supports, market standards, subsidies, and guaranteed purchases to encourage production.

The US, EU, and Japan also said they would pursue other avenues, including discussions within the Group of 7 and the Minerals Security Partnership.

A multi-country effort to establish price floors of critical minerals is the Trump administration’s latest move to exert control over private business. 

The White House has taken stakes in several mineral companies as well as chipmaker Intel and has negotiated deals with drugmakers for lower prices.

By guaranteeing minimum prices through ‌co-ordinated trade rules, Washington hopes to unlock private investment in mining and processing projects that have struggled to compete with cheaper Chinese supply. 

The approach could reshape global ​supply chains for materials essential to electric vehicles, semiconductors and defense systems, while raising costs for manufacturers in the short term and escalating trade tensions with Beijing.

“China has long played an important and constructive role in keeping the global industrial ‍and supply chains of critical minerals safe and stable and is willing to continue to make active efforts in this regard,” China’s embassy in Washington told Reuters when asked about the meeting.

The Washington Post is laying off a third of its staff in the newsroom and other departments.

The troubled US newspaper began implementing large-scale cutbacks on Wednesday, including eliminating its sports department and shrinking the number of journalists it stations overseas. 

The changes were announced by executive editor Matt Murray in a Zoom meeting with staff.

The staff reduction is a significant blow at the Post, known for for its Watergate revelations and most recently for aggressive coverage of US President Donald Trump’s cutbacks to the federal workforce, and for journalism in general.

Staff members in the newsroom were told they would be getting emails with one of two subject lines, announcing that the person’s role has or has not been eliminated.

A Post representative confirmed that one-third of the staff would be cut, without saying how many total employees the newspaper has.

The newspaper’s books department will be closed and its Washington DC-area news department and editing staff will be restructured, Murray told staff members. 

Its Post Reports podcast will be suspended.

Murray acknowledged that the cuts will be a shock to the system but said the goal is to create a Post that can grow and thrive again.

“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” a Post spokesperson said in a statement.

“These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

A private company, the Post does not reveal how many subscribers it has, although the number is believed to be about two million.

The moves were expected for several weeks, since word leaked out that the Post had told its sports staffers who had arranged to cover the Winter Olympics in Italy that they would not be going.

After it became public, the Post reversed course and said it would be sending a limited staff.

The Post’s troubles stand in contrast to its longtime competitor The New York Times, which has been thriving in recent years, in large part due to investments in ancillary products like its Games site and Wirecutter product recommendations.

The Times has doubled its staff over the past decade.