Australia and Solomon Islands appear to be on the brink of a new security treaty after promises of almost $1 billion worth of additional aid from Canberra.

The promised spending includes free education – a signature promise of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale – security improvements and small grants tied to every electorate.

The pledges were revealed in a leaked WhatsApp message sent by Solomon Islands Deputy Prime Minister Francis Sade, who was forwarding an update from the Australian high commission to the Pacific nation.

The revelations come after a week of high drama in Solomon Islands politics – and a sliding doors moment for Canberra-Honiara relations – when a no-confidence motion in Mr Wale’s leadership was tabled and withdrawn.

In the message, the commission, led by High Commissioner Jeffrey Roach, wrote it hoped “both countries can hold steady to seize this opportunity and lock this in ahead of the November budget session”.

At the time of the message, Mr Wale still faced the motion of no confidence, which was made by one of his own ministers.

Mr Wale had travelled to Palau to participate in the Pacific Islands Forum only to swiftly travel home to ensure his coalition held strong.

In his own message, which appeared aimed at any wavering MPs in his coalition, Mr Sade asked them to “look at the bigger picture and weight the situation against the positive momentum we have built”.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is attempting to upgrade relations – and most importantly, security co-operation – in the region as Canberra vies with Beijing for influence in the Pacific.

Australia has already landed defence treaties with Papua New Guinea and Fiji in recent months.

Australia has also signed treaties with Tuvalu and Nauru under Mr Albanese, and, alongside Solomon Islands, is currently negotiating a fresh pact with Tonga.

Progress on enhancing ties with Honiara had been slow under previous leaders but fast-tracked since Mr Wale took power in May.

Those treaty talks have proved fruitful, according to the leaked messages, which were verified by Mr Sade.

Australia’s pledges – totalling $985 million – include $142 million to fund free education, $48 million towards “visa improvements and security requests” and $95 million in grants.

Those grants are cleaved off per electorate as part of a “community partnerships” fund, which allows locals to apply for Australian aid to build small-scale infrastructure like halls, toilet blocks, water tanks and schools.

Aid distribution in this way ties Australia to on-the-ground outcomes in every part of Solomon Islands, and, Canberra hopes, compels support for the security treaty from each MP.

Some in Solomon Islands argue this is Australia effectively buying support for its security treaty, a characterisation Mr Sade rejects.

In a statement provided to AAP, the deputy prime minister said the messages were “a routine update” and “never intended for political expediency”.

“If there is good progress that benefits our country, why should petty politics be used to disadvantage or undermine such welcoming news?” he said.

Pacific Minister Pat Conroy would not be drawn on the length or substance of the Australia-Solomon Islands talks.

“Negotiations are under way – consistent with all of Australia’s bilateral treaty negotiations, we will not comment on the details of the negotiations until the treaty is signed,” he said.

Australian internet users will be given the choice to opt out of algorithms under reforms to social media.

Draft laws setting up a digital duty of care were introduced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday.

As part of the measures, social media companies will need to provide tools for people to choose what they see in their online feeds, under a government initiative called My Feed, My Way.

“This is not about giving government control. It’s about giving people control. It’s about putting choice back into the hands of Australians online,” Mr Albanese told reporters in Canberra.

Social media companies will be also required to protect people from harmful content online.

Harmful content will conclude the promotion of eating disorders, misogynistic content, pornography or things that glorify crime.

Companies could face fines of $100 million if they don’t enact the duty of care.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the duty of care would build on the world-leading ban on social media for under-16s.

“The digital duty of care is not about controlling adults online. It is about giving adults a choice,” she said.

“Tech companies can still move fast, but they will no longer be allowed to break things because online harms have real-world consequences.

“There is a global reckoning coming for big tech.”

It follows the government looking to pursue stronger penalties for social media companies as part of measures to bolster the under-16s ban.

The Australian share market has fallen as surging oil prices continue to weigh on both investor and consumer confidence, after a public holiday in the US.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index fell 33.2 points by midday on Tuesday to be down 0.37 per cent to 8,977.7, as the broader All Ordinaries lost 30.4 points, or 0.33 per cent, to 9,170.2.

“While US Labor Day (on Monday) made for a somewhat quieter start to the week for trading volumes, the weekend’s tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran continued to put upward pressure on oil prices, acting as a drag on risk sentiment more broadly,” Westpac economist Ryan Wells said.

“Yields also continued to rise globally, following moves from the US as concerns over inflation and debt levels persist.”

Brent crude topped $US98 a barrel for the first time since July 24, supporting the local energy sector.

Refinery operators Ampol and Viva advanced, along with select coal miners and Santos, which gained 0.6 per cent after upping its stake in the Papua LNG project to more than one-fifth.

Financials weighed heavily, dropping 0.9 per cent in a broad-based sell-off.

All big four banks were in the red as housing market concerns continued to mount, with HSBC researchers expecting a 13 per cent decline, which would make it Australia’s biggest housing price correction in modern history.

Raw materials inched 0.2 per cent higher, but record-high copper prices weren’t enough to bolster BHP and Rio Tinto.

Copper futures hit $US14,533 ($A20,141) per tonne on the London Metal Exchange overnight, resetting the commodity’s January record as demand for the base metal continues to surge.

Gold stocks were mostly higher, as the precious metal firmed to $US4,432 ($A6,142) an ounce.

Consumer-facing stocks were under pressure, with staples shedding 0.8 per cent and discretionaries down 0.5 per cent, as the Westpac/Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index retreated.

Higher fuel costs, interest rates, the housing downturn and uncertainty about jobs – particularly in construction and hospitality – were weighing on confidence, Westpac economists said.

In company news, Bluescope Steel, News Corporation, Regis Healthcare, AUB Group and Mineral Resources all dipped after trading ex-dividend, with CSL, Evolution, Northern Star and Brambles to lock in their shareholder payouts on Wednesday.

Westpac has appointed Sarah Donnelly as its company secretary, to take over from Timothy Hartin on September 21.

Investors will be closely watching Reserve Bank assistant governor Sarah Hunter, who’s due to take part in a fireside chat at 1.30pm (AEST) during a summit in Sydney, for signals on the central bank’s path ahead.

Deputy governor Andrew Hauser is due to be interviewed on ABC’s 7.30 program tonight.

The Australian dollar was buying 72.16 US cents, up slightly from 72.15 US cents on Monday at 5pm.

Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer will pay hundreds of millions to increase its stake in a long-delayed $19.5 billion gas project in Papua New Guinea.

Santos is buying the additional 3.3 per cent stake in the Papua LNG project from French energy giant TotalEnergies for $262 million ($US189 million), taking its total interest to 21 per cent. 

This will make it the second-biggest overseas partner in the project, behind ExxonMobil, which is assuming operatorship of the joint venture from TotalEnergies.

“Papua LNG is a world-class project and this is the right time to increase our position,” Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher said on Tuesday.

Papua LNG was strategically positioned to supply premium Asian markets and offered multiple value streams for Santos, Mr Gallagher said.

A final investment decision on whether to proceed with the project is likely to be made in the fourth quarter of this year.

Changes in the scope of the project had shaved $US4 billion ($5.6 billion) from its cost, TotalEnergies said, bringing it down to about $US14 billion ($19.5 billion) in capital expenditure.

Papua LNG would be the country’s second operational LNG project.

It involves the development of two onshore gas fields 360km northwest of the capital, Port Moresby, containing estimated natural gas resources of more than one billion barrels of oil equivalent. 

The gas would be transported via 320km of pipeline for liquefaction at Caution Bay, at a site adjacent to the existing PNG LNG facility.

ExxonMobil operates that facility and says it has contributed 4.5 billion PNG kina ($1.4 billion) in tax revenue to PNG’s economy since becoming operational in 2014.

Papua LNG is designed to produce 5.6 million tonnes of LNG a year, about enough to load one LNG carrier every four to five days. 

In late morning trade, Santos shares were changing hands at $8.39, up 0.5 per cent.

Flights to and from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta have resumed after ash from a volcanic eruption forced a two-day closure that halted nearly 3000 flights.

Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport serving Jakarta, Husein Sastranegara Airport in West Java’s Bandung city and two smaller airports in Banten province reopened just after midnight, Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said on Tuesday.

Three other airports remained closed until 10am, including Radin Inten II Airport in Lampung on the southern tip of Sumatra island, despite improving conditions at some facilities. Atung Bungsu Airport in Pagar Alam in South Sumatra province had resumed normal operations on Monday morning.

“We are taking a conservative approach because wind direction is highly dynamic,” Purwagandhi said in a statement. 

“We want to ensure that volcanic ash has moved away from airports around Anak Krakatau.”

Although tests at several airports showed no traces of volcanic ash, the extended closures would allow time for inspecting and cleaning surfaces and equipment like runways, taxiways and aircraft that may have been exposed to volcanic ash, Purwagandhi said.

The continuous eruption of Anak Krakatau with lava fountains and loud booms ended on Sunday but the volcanic island remained active on Tuesday morning.

The airport closures on Sunday and Monday disrupted nearly 2961 flights, including 622 international services, and affected about 341,000 passengers.

The government also authorised schools in areas affected by volcanic ash to shift temporarily to online learning to reduce students’ exposure to ash.

Anak Krakatau is a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Indonesia’s main islands of Java and Sumatra. Its name means “child of Krakatau,” and the volcano is the offspring of the infamous Krakatau, whose monumental 1883 eruption triggered a period of global cooling.

Indonesia has more than 120 active volcanoes and frequently experiences eruptions due to its location along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the ring of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most global seismic activity occurs.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has doubled down on pushing through unpopular reforms to Europe’s largest economy after a far-right party surged to a landslide victory in a regional election.

The anti-migration and Russia-friendly Alternative for Germany, or AfD, now has a very good chance of forming the first far-right state government since the Nazi era.

Merz said his centre-right Christian Democratic Union was “deeply shocked” by what he called “the most serious election defeat that the CDU has had for years, for decades”. 

But he indicated that he’s determined to stay at the helm and said that “giving up is not an option for me”. 

The AfD, fell just short of a majority in Sunday’s vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a small eastern state that gained outsized prominence as AfD eyed power there. 

Its regional branch is one of several considered a proven right-wing extremist group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.

AfD’s victory is a major distraction for Germany and Merz at a time when Europe faces several challenges, including Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, a suspected sabotage campaign targeting NATO countries, and difficult dealings with US President Donald Trump. 

Merz said he wanted to assure Germany’s allies that “our institutions are resilient and stable” and the country will stick to its values and constitution after the AfD win. 

“We know that Germany carries special responsibility because of its history,” he said.

He vowed that he won’t “budge one millimetre from my fundamental conviction that we must defend our freedom against Russia now”.

Germany is one of Ukraine’s biggest supporters in its war against Russia.

Because of Germany’s Nazi past, far-right movements have always come under intense scrutiny. 

Other major parties have refused to co-operate with AfD in a so-called “firewall”.

Unlike many countries in Europe, modern Germany hasn’t yet had a far-right or right-wing populist party leading a national, state or major-city government.

Merz insisted “we need fundamental reforms in Germany”. 

He said it’s a question of “nothing less than the future of our country and the opportunities of our children and grandchildren, and we must not squander those. That is why my determination to continue the reform course is unbroken.”

While Merz continues to push back against resistance to reforms, AfD – whose victory was cheered by far-right parties across Europe – faces potentially tricky manoeuvring to put its candidate for governor in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, in power.

Siegmund had pushed for an absolute majority in the state legislature that would allow AfD to sidestep mainstream parties’ shunning of it. 

After the vote, he signalled that AfD still isn’t willing to make compromises, insisting that “we don’t want to become like the parties that were punished” by breaking pre-election promises. 

He also rejected the idea of a minority government.

– with Reuters

North Korea and Russia have opened their first road bridge in a carefully choreographed display of friendship.

The structure spans the Tumen River and has been cast by both sides as an important ‌milestone in their deepening strategic partnership.

The first flag-adorned trucks trundled across the 1km long two-lane bridge as Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and North Korea’s Premier Pak Thae-song tuned in by video link to address workers and government officials.

Construction of the bridge, which had been under discussion for years, began in April last year after the project was agreed during a visit by ‌Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to ‌North Korea in 2024. ⁠

There are already direct air and rail links between Moscow and Pyongyang, but until Monday ​there had not been a proper road link.

Instead, since 1959 and by special arrangement, planks had been placed on the nearby rail bridge – for decades the sole border crossing point – in order to move vehicles across the border.

“I am convinced that the expansion of cross-border transport infrastructure will provide a powerful impetus for the further development of trade, economic, scientific, technological and cultural cooperation,” said Mishustin, who ⁠said ties between Moscow and Pyongyang were “at an unprecedented high level”.

The construction of the bridge was not merely an engineering project, he said, but “a new symbol of ​friendship”.

Mishustin said up ‌to 300 vehicles would be able to cross every day and that the bridge would be linked to Russia’s federal road ​network and have easy access to the transport corridor which runs from the far eastern city of Vladivostok to St Petersburg.

Trucks would begin to use the bridge immediately to transport cargo, the Russian government said.

By the end of this year, ​the ​bridge is expected to be fully operational and could also be used ​for passenger traffic.

The bridge was built near an existing ‘Friendship Bridge’, ‌a rail link which was commissioned in 1959 after the Korean War.

Symbolically, the new bridge is named after Yakov Novichenko, a Red Army soldier who Pyongyang credits with protecting the life of North Korea’s first leader Kim Il Sung in 1946 by intercepting a grenade thrown at him.

Ties between the two countries have grown stronger since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, with ​Pyongyang sending thousands of troops to Russia’s Kursk region to help repel a 2024 Ukrainian incursion there.

Mishustin made a reference to that ​in his speech on Monday, referring to “the ⁠Korean heroes who, only recently, fought shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers and defended Russian soil”.

An Australian father is demanding answers as the search for his wife, who vanished in flash floods along the Nepal-Tibet border, nears its second week. 

Newcastle father-of-two Bhavin Patel has tirelessly searched Nepal’s disaster zone for his missing wife, Reshma. 

He has chartered a helicopter, tracked his wife’s phone signal and pleaded with governments of three countries for help, and is yet to find any trace. 

“She is my life,” the father-of-two told AAP. 

“I am not going without her.”

Mr Patel made the journey to Kathmandu in the days after a glacier collapse brought catastrophic flash flooding to towns and villages in the Himalayas. 

His wife, a Sydney council worker, was returning from a two-week walking tour to a sacred mountain in Tibet when disaster struck on August 26.

She was one of several Australians travelling back to Kathmandu with the Isha Foundation when an immigration building was hit by the deluge. 

On August 31, Mr Patel chartered a helicopter to fly to the site of the building, after surrounding roads were destroyed or else obscured.

From the air, Mr Patel saw exposed earth where the imposing civic structure had stood just days before, near the location of his wife’s last phone signal. 

Though the floodwaters had receded, the pilot would not allow him to land, citing dangerous terrain. 

“I felt like… if they give me permission to land, I might rescue her,” Mr Patel said.

Since returning to Kathmandu, Mr Patel has made daily visits to local authorities, sharing images and information he thinks may help with their searches. 

The greatest obstacle to his own investigations, he said, is the lack of information from authorities, particularly across the Chinese-controlled Tibet border.

He wants Australia to press Beijing for greater co-operation. 

“I can feel she’s alive, that she’s safe somewhere,” he said. 

“Our government is trying, but it’s not enough.”

Almost 1400 people have died since the floods began, while almost 5000 remain missing, including 36 Australians. 

A group of Australian families with missing loved ones released a statement on Sunday, calling for greater transparency from tour groups and authorities.

They expressed gratitude to the AFP and search teams working to find missing Australians, but criticised the Australian government for what they said was its failure to provide answers. 

The federal government has sent a disaster assistance response team and other specialist resources to Kathmandu to assist with the search.

It has also committed $11 million to support the disaster response, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday was of national importance.

“This is now very much a race against time,” Mr Albanese told parliament.

The adoption of artificial intelligence is rocketing in Australia, creating massive demand for infrastructure that will deliver jobs and economic benefits.

The nation was at the “cusp of a data centre boom”, Oxford Economics head of economics Harry Murphy Cruise told a conference in Sydney on Monday.

AI adoption is being led by the US, where about 30 per cent of firms have a paid subscription to market leaders OpenAI or Anthropic to use ChatGPT or Claude.

“We expect AI adoption in Australia to increase, jumping to around 50 per cent over the next decade and then topping out at around 80 per cent by 2025,” Mr Murphy Cruise said.

Other countries in the region, such as Japan, China and India, are also chasing AI, albeit at a slightly slower rate than the outlook for Australia.

That’s because their economies have more manual labour or blue-collar type work, which means adoption is a little harder, given AI is less useful for some tasks than others.

Oxford Economics has looked at occupations in Australia and crunched the likely outcomes for job automation by AI.

The hardest hit are graphic design, web design and illustration, followed by data entry and other keyboard-type jobs and telemarketing.

“AI does that particularly well,” Mr Murphy Cruise said.

Occupations such as concreters and surgeons, and even electricians, are less exposed.

“AI, at least at the moment, isn’t going to be doing your heart surgery,” Mr Murphy Cruise said.

Oxford Economics expects that by 2060, AI will be able to replace about 15 per cent of current tasks and occupations.

“That said, it doesn’t mean that aggregate employment is going to be lower, because AI delivers benefits as well,” Mr Murphy Cruise said.

“We’re forecasting AI to deliver some pretty substantial productivity benefits around the world.”

For Australia, that means increasing productivity by about 2.5 per cent by 2035 and 4.5 per cent by 2060.

“And those productivity gains then translate into, hopefully, employment gains,” Mr Murphy Cruise said.

This is because increased productivity means companies can pay workers more or cut prices, which lifts household spending power.

Companies could also bank the profits, but that would expose them to increased competition from firms that take the first two options.

Australia’s investment in data centres to power AI was expected to reach $60 billion by 2030, from $20 billion in 2026, Oxford Economics’ head of impact Michael Brennan said.

“Whenever you build a data centre, you’re going to involve a whole supply chain of telecommunications, maintenance professional services, and engineering,” he said.

That means jobs – from the construction phase all the way through to ongoing management and maintenance.

Data centres could contribute $78 billion to the economy in terms of investment by 2030, and about 80,000 to 100,000 jobs a year on average.

“So this infrastructure build-out is going to have a pretty sizeable impact on the economy,” Mr Brennan said.

Electricity usage by the centres is projected to reach between five per cent and 12 per cent within 10 years.

Oxford Economics head of energy Alex Hooper said data centre builders were increasingly being asked to cut the construction timeline from six years to one.

However, building energy infrastructure could easily take much longer.

“So there’s a little bit of a mismatch” that governments need to respond to, Ms Hooper said.

UN rights chief Volker ‌Turk has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to humanity, and pledged to press AI firms to reduce risks that his office said included disruptions ‌to services, communications and democratic systems.

He called for “cast-iron guarantees” to secure AI in a speech ahead of the start of his second term in office as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Turk also demanded ‌accountability over deaths in US immigration custody and condemned Russia’s reported use of autonomous drones.

The wide-ranging address was his first to the 47-member council since he won the four-year term in July in the face of opposition from Moscow and Washington.

“I share the concerns of industry insiders that advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity,” Turk said in Geneva.

“I am calling here, today, for an all-out effort to put cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety ‌and security of AI, before ‌it is too late.”

Turk ⁠did not elaborate on the nature of the risks but a spokeswoman for his office said failures ​involving powerful AI systems could disrupt critical infrastructure and democratic institutions.

She referred to the “dangerous agent-training behaviours” in July’s so-called Hugging Face incident – in which a swarm of OpenAI agents hacked an open-source platform – saying it suggested frontier AI capabilities are advancing faster than the safeguards.

Turk warned that just a handful of men held “almost unlimited power over AI” without naming any. Top AI companies include Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

“At a minimum, we need countries hosting AI, and those involved in its supply chains, to come together around ⁠agreed red lines,” he said.

The council is meeting until October 7 to discuss the war in ‌Iran, Sudan’s civil ​conflict and a string of other crises. 

The US administration disengaged from the council last year, accusing it of anti-Israeli bias.

Turk called for accountability for around ​23 deaths he ‌said had taken place in US immigration custody so far this year and added he was concerned about plans to equip agents with electric-shock gloves.

The ​Department of Homeland Security has previously said it was committed to ensuring a “safe, secure and humane” environment in detention. Its inspector general is examining deaths in custody since October 2021.

Turk condemned Russia for ​its ​intensified attacks on Ukraine, and Iran for its rising number of executions.

He ​also voiced “horror” at reports Russia had used fully autonomous drones in Ukraine, ‌allegedly killing three people in August.

“I join calls for the urgent prohibition of weapons that can take lives without human involvement,” he said, referring to talks in Geneva. 

With more than 60 wars around the world involving at least one state – the highest number since World War II – Turk set out ideas for ways to promote peace, pledging greater scrutiny of the businesses and economic interests that ​are fuelling conflicts.

“We will not shy away from exposing the shadow players and calling for accountability,” he said.