The mood music in some of the world's biggest bond markets has shifted in October as concerns about hefty borrowing and sticky inflation ebb, prompting a rush back to the likes of British, German and Japanese debt.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met in their first summit Thursday, pledging to strengthen ties that have been frequently strained by their bitter wartime history.

Progress in energy and other areas has damped some of the pessimism around global warming. In 2015, the UN predicted temperatures would rise by 4° C compared to pre-industrial levels by 2100. It now projects a rise of 2.6° C, if climate policies are followed through.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has moved back into line with other major rate setters after it cut rates by a quarter point on Wednesday but pushed back against market bets that it would keep going as the Washington shutdown fogs up its forecasting lens.

President Donald Trump seemed to love his whirlwind Asia trip. He danced on the tarmac in Malaysia, and was given a gold medal and crown in South Korea.

The latest iPhones have seen "a tremendous response" across the globe, said Apple boss Tim Cook as the tech giant released its latest financial results. The firm unveiled its thinnest iPhone, the Air, in September, along with upgraded iPhone 17 models, proving a bumper crop for the firm.

Tetsu Fujimura’s keynote talk at the Tokyo market offered a convincing argument that Japanese IP is becoming one of the country’s core industries.

Despite this danger, superintelligence remains the explicit goal of leading AI companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, xAI, DeepSeek. And given the skyrocketing valuation of these companies, they are not about to stop by themselves.