Chinese leader pledges $280m in aid to members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at summit in Tianjin.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged regional leaders to oppose “Cold War mentality” at a gathering of a security bloc that Beijing has touted as an alternative to the Western-led international order.

In a speech to attendees of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit on Monday, Xi said that member states are facing increasingly complicated security and development challenges as the world becomes “chaotic and intertwined”.

“Looking back, despite tumultuous times, we have achieved success by practising the Shanghai spirit,” Xi said.

“Looking to the future, with the world undergoing turbulence and transformation, we must continue to follow the Shanghai spirit, keep our feet on the ground, forge ahead, and better perform the functions of the organisation.”

Calling for an “equal and orderly multipolarisation” of the world, Xi said the bloc should work towards the creation of a “more just and equitable global governance system”.

The Chinese leader said Beijing would provide 2 billion yuan ($280m) in aid to member states this year and a further 10 billion yuan ($1.4bn) of loans to an SCO banking consortium.

“We must take advantage of the mega-scale market… to improve the level of trade and investment facilitation,” Xi said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are among the more than 20 world readers attending the two-day SCO summit, which opened on Sunday in China’s northern city of Tianjin.

Established in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation began as a grouping of six Eurasian nations – China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – but has since expanded to comprise 10 permanent members and 16 dialogue and observer countries.

Analysts say that China intends to use the gathering to promote an alternative to the United States-led global order and repair ties with India amid a shifting geopolitical environment under US President Donald Trump.

Australia could use a range of technologies to implement its social media ban for under-16s but all have risks or shortcomings, a report has found.

The government says its ban, which comes into effect in December, is designed to limit the harmful impacts of social media. The policy has been touted as a world-first and is being watched closely by leaders globally.

Under the new laws, platforms must take “reasonable steps” to prevent Australian children from creating accounts on their sites, and deactivate existing ones.

Though the move is popular with many parents, experts have raised concerns over data privacy and the accuracy of age verification technology.

The federal government commissioned the UK-based Age Check Certification Scheme to test the ways Australia could enforce the ban, and its final report was published on Sunday.

It looked at a variety of methods – including formal verification using government documents, parental approval, or technologies to determine age based on facial structure, gestures, or behaviours – and found all were technically possible.

“But we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments,” it said.

Verification using identity documents was cited as the most accurate method, but the report identified concerns that platforms may keep this data longer than required and was anticipating sharing it with regulators, both of which would leave users’ privacy at risk.

Australia – like much of the world – has in recent years seen a series of high-profile data breaches, including several where sensitive personal information was stolen and sold or published.

Facial assessment technology was 92% accurate for people aged 18 or over, but there is a “buffer zone” – about two to three years either side of 16 – in which is it is less accurate. The report said this would lead to false positives, clearing children for accounts, and false negatives, barring users who should be allowed.

There are also privacy and accuracy concerns with parental approval methods, it said.

It recommended that the methods should be “layered” to create the most robust system, and highlighted that many of the technology providers were looking at ways to address circumvention, through things like document forgeries and VPNs (virtual private networks) which obscure the user’s country.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said there was “no one-size-fits-all solution”, that the report showed age checks could be “private, efficient and effective”.

“These are some of the world’s richest companies. They are at the forefront of AI. They use the data that we give them for a bevy of commercial purposes. I think it is reasonable to ask them to use that same data and tech to keep kids safe online,” she told reporters on Monday.

“There is no excuse for social media platforms not to have a combination of age assurance methods in their platforms ready for 10 December.”

Under the ban, tech companies can fined up to A$50m ($32.5m; £25.7m) if they do not take “reasonable steps” to bar those aged under 16 from holding accounts. These steps are still to be defined.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube are among the platforms affected.

Polling indicates most Australian adults support banning social media for children under 16.

However some mental health advocates say the policy has the potential to cut kids off from connection, and others say it could push children under 16 to even-less-regulated corners of the internet.

They suggest the government should instead focus on better policing of harmful content on social media platforms and preparing children for the reality of life on the web.

Here are the key events on day 1,285 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Monday, September 1:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five people on Monday, including two in Kherson, one in Zaporizhia, and two in Donetsk, according to regional governors. The attacks wounded dozens more.
• In the Zaporizhia region alone, Russian forces launched 286 drone attacks, 10 missile attacks and five air strikes on 16 settlements in one day, Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
• A Russian drone attack overnight damaged a power facility near the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, leaving more than 29,000 customers without electricity on Sunday morning, the region’s governor said. The hardest hit city was the seaport of Chornomorsk.
• The Reuters news agency also reported that a civilian bulk carrier flying the flag of Belize sustained minor damage after hitting an unknown explosive device near Chornomorsk.
• Russian drones also targeted Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region early on Sunday, damaging energy infrastructure and leaving 30,000 households without electricity, including part of the city of Nizhyn, said Governor Viacheslav Chaus.
• The Ukrainian military said Russia had attacked Ukraine with 142 drones overnight, and, while its air defence forces managed to shoot down most of them, the drones struck 10 locations.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised to retaliate to Russian attacks on his country’s power facilities with strikes deep inside Russia.

• Ukraine’s armed forces dismissed Russia’s claims of a successful summer offensive, saying Russian forces failed to gain full control of any major Ukrainian city and “grossly exaggerated” figures regarding captured territories.
• In Russia, four people were wounded injured in Ukrainian drone attacks on the Kursk region, including two Ministry of Internal Affairs employees, Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein said in a post on Telegram.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 112 Ukrainian drones, two aerial bombs and three rocket launchers in a 24-hour period, according to TASS.
• The capacity of Russia’s Kursk nuclear power plant’s third reactor was completely restored after it had been halved following a drone attack, TASS reported on Sunday, citing the plant.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin accused European powers of hindering United States President Donald Trump’s peace efforts and said that Russia would continue its operation in Ukraine until Moscow saw real signs that Kyiv was ready for peace.
• “The European warring party is maintaining its fundamental course; it is not giving in,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said from the sidelines of the SCO summit in China.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was bracing himself for the Russia-Ukraine war “to last a long time”. He told German public broadcaster ZDF that diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to an end could not come “at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation”.
• Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced additional funding for European Union member states bordering Russia and Belarus during a visit to Poland’s border, near Belarus, where she called Putin a “predator” who could only be kept in check through “strong deterrence”.
• Von der Leyen also told the Financial Times that Europe is drawing up “pretty precise plans” for a multinational troop deployment to Ukraine as part of proposed post-conflict security guarantees.
• She said Trump had assured Europe that “there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop”.
• In an article published in the People’s Daily, China’s state newspaper, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote that his country will “continue to pursue” its “peace diplomacy” between Russia and Ukraine “with patience”.
• Pope Leo called for a ceasefire and dialogue in the Ukraine war. “It is time for those responsible to renounce the logic of arms and to take the path of negotiation and peace with the support of the international community,” he said in his Sunday prayer with pilgrims in St Peter’s Square.

Weapons

• • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected a new missile production line and missile-manufacturing automation process, state media KCNA said on Monday. North Korea has sent missiles, as well as soldiers and artillery ammunition, to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine.
  • Norway, which shares a border with Russia, said it will buy new frigates worth some 10 billion pounds ($13.51bn) from the United Kingdom, in its biggest ever military investment.