Australia's deaths to outnumber births by 2060s, report says Share Australia's deaths to outnumber births by 2060s, report says on social media Australia will see more deaths than births by the 2060s, hitting a milestone already surpassed by advanced economies including Japan, Germany and France, according to a government report. In its latest Intergenerational Report released on Monday, Australia's Treasury forecast that the country's population will hit 39.3 million by 2065-66, 1.8 million lower than projected in its last outlook in 2023. The number of Australians aged 85 or older is projected to triple by 2065-66, with immigration accounting for all population growth as the fertility rate falls to 1.34, the Treasury said. Despite plunging birthrates, the Treasury said it expects the economy to more than double in size by the mid-2060s, citing productivity gains due to artificial intelligence and greater workforce participation by women and older Australians. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that while Australia's economy faces serious risks due to the demographic shift, it also holds "substantial" advantages compared with its peers.

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks at the SoftBank World forum in Tokyo in July. SoftBank Group is seeking the equivalent of more than $11 billion in what would be one of the biggest junk bond deals ever, people familiar with the matter said Monday, as billionaire Masayoshi Son's conglomerate ramps up its investments in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. The company is looking to issue $10 billion of dollar securities across three tenors, and €1 billion ($1.1 billion) of euro notes across two maturities, according to the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private. The money will be used in part to fund a follow-on investment in OpenAI expected to close next month, the people said. The deal may price on Thursday, they added.

Bessent hails'very successful' China talks on AI and trade U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lauded "very successful" talks with his Chinese counterparts that spanned artificial intelligence, trade and investment ahead of this week's summit between leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Bessent, speaking to reporters after hours of talks in New York with China's Vice Premier He Lifeng and other officials, said the two sides agreed to set up a dialogue on AI aimed at reaching a common understanding on goals and threats. They plan to meet again, with top Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang saying the talks were held in a good atmosphere and a working group would continue discussions on Monday. "The U.S. has proposed that we have a notification mechanism between the two countries, and we want a shared vision of common goals and common threats," Bessent said, adding that it would be called the "U.S.-China AI dialogue." Later this week, Trump is scheduled to host Xi at the White House in the Chinese leader's first state visit to Washington in more than a decade.

'Russia to test Nato pact' and'Labour eye tax raid' Image caption, The Guardian reports that European intelligence officials are raising the possibility of an imminent Russian attack on Nato territory, with one telling the paper it could happen within months not years. The paper also carries comments from Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has said intelligence reports suggest it would be part of Moscow's efforts to test whether Article 5 - which holds that Nato members will come to the defence of an ally under attack - is more theoretical than practical. Image caption, The flames of war are pictured on the front page of the Financial Times following Ukraine's latest drone attack on Moscow, described by the city's mayor as the largest attack to date on the Russian capital. The FT also reports that big tech firms have issued up to $300bn in guarantees to back debt for AI data centres and chips in the past year, but are recording little of that exposure on their balance sheets. Image caption, The Daily Telegraph, like several of Monday's papers, leads with speculation Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey are eyeing up a tax raid in the upcoming Budget.

Russia's elections had few surprises - but how the Kremlin uses the results is far from clear Many things about Russia are hard to predict. In a political system tightly controlled by the Kremlin, the party of power - United Russia - had been widely expected to maintain its grip on parliament. No other party came close. Preliminary results suggest that United Russia is on course to retain its constitutional majority in the State Duma. And that's after more than four and a half years of war against Ukraine, which have resulted in huge battlefield losses for the Russian army, sparked economic hardship, as well as petrol shortages due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities.

Is the war entering a new phase? Polls have closed in Russia's first wartime parliamentary elections, with the ruling United Russia party on course to win the tightly controlled vote. The Kremlin wants the elections, the first parliamentary vote since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to showcase popular support for the war and legitimise its action. The drone strikes on Sunday killed at least three people in the Moscow region and two more in the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Kherson region, including an election official, according to the region's governor and the election commission. Russian authorities also reported attacks on the country's electronic voting systems and communication lines during the polls, but said the electoral process was mostly smooth.

AI's wobbly house of cards puts markets and U.S. economy at risk Protesters during a demonstration calling for a slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems outside city hall in San Francisco on Thursday. The heads of America's leading AI development labs have started a national conversation about tapping the brakes on a technology that's offering so much promise for society, while at the same time showing it can do a frightening amount of harm. It's a debate that needs to be had, and a real solution invariably will be hard to come by. But considering the trillions of dollars of investment gains and market value that have been built on the assumption that AI will keep growing at breakneck speed for years and years to come, what happens to Wall Street -- and more importantly Main Street -- if it doesn't? "People may not fully grasp just how wound up the market and the economy is in all of this," said Jim Morrow, chief executive officer of the Boston investment firm Callodine Capital Management.

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are set to meet at a summit in Washington as an expert warns the U.S. is in a "very dangerous period" with China over war, trade and AI.

Top economic officials from China and the United States have begun talks in New York City aimed at clearing the way for possible agreements on trade, artificial intelligence and critical minerals ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng began talks at JPMorgan Chase's Manhattan headquarters on Sunday morning, with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also taking part. "I'm looking forward to having focused, fulsome and constructive talks today that will set the stage for our leaders' meeting," Bessent told reporters as he arrived. At the top of the agenda is a fragile US-China trade truce due to expire on November 10. The agreement, reached in Busan, South Korea, last November, capped US tariffs on Chinese goods at about 20 percent after a tit-for-tat trade fight briefly pushed tariffs into the triple digits.

Did Iran capture a US submarine? Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari tells Bloomberg that mediators are shuttling between Tehran and Washington to revive talks, with several proposals being exchanged to bridge differences.