China
China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Ministry of Natural Resources and National Financial Regulatory Administration have jointly issued a notice reforming the sale of commercial housing, with the principal provisions published on 28 August. Projects that continue to use pre-sales will be permitted to sell an individual building only after its main structure has been topped out. Homebuyers' deposits, mortgage proceeds and other purchase funds must be paid into regulated accounts opened by the designated housing-funds authority.
The notice applies different arrangements to existing and new projects. Projects that had obtained a construction planning permit before the notice took effect may continue to apply the previous pre-sale and funds-supervision rules. Land newly released after commencement, and previously released projects that have not yet obtained a construction planning permit, are to give priority to sales of completed homes. Projects that already hold a permit are encouraged to use completed-home sales. Completed-home transactions will be subject to a filing system and may use deposits. In an official question-and-answer document, the three authorities said new projects may still use pre-sales, but must then comply with the new topping-out threshold and funds-supervision requirements.
Related measures include a lead-bank system under which each development company and bank choose each other and one bank is designated for each project. That bank may provide the development loan itself or lead a lending syndicate. Local authorities are also directed to coordinate land supply, development, sales and property-registration procedures, including arrangements for homebuyers to receive their ownership certificate when the home is delivered. The notice does not move every existing project to a new sales model at once; the applicable rules depend on whether a construction planning permit had already been obtained.
Australia
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority released the results of its 2026 annual superannuation performance test on 28 August. APRA assessed 547 products representing 61 per cent of member benefits in APRA-regulated superannuation. Twelve products offered by six trustees did not pass.
Of 50 MySuper products, 49 passed and one product offered by BUSS (Queensland) Pty Ltd failed. It was the first MySuper failure since 2023. Eleven of 141 platform trustee-directed products failed, including five products that had failed for at least two consecutive years. All 356 non-platform trustee-directed products assessed in 2026 passed.
APRA said the failures were driven mainly by weaker investment performance rather than higher administration fees and costs. Its accompanying Comprehensive Product Performance Package found that administration fees continued to fall across product types, although platform trustee-directed products remained materially more expensive before personal-advice costs and had a higher rate of ten-year underperformance than other product types. APRA conducts the annual test under legislation enacted by Parliament to make long-term performance transparent and hold trustees accountable. The Australian Government is separately considering options to strengthen the test.
United States
Judge Rita F. Lin of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued a 59-page written ruling on 27 August blocking the Department of Defense from enforcing measures that designated artificial intelligence company Anthropic as a national security supply-chain risk. Reuters and the Associated Press reported on 28 August that the court found the measures constituted retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and that Anthropic had not received the pre-deprivation process required by the Fifth Amendment. The court also found that the Defense Secretary's supply-chain determination violated the governing statutory framework and was arbitrary and capricious.
The dispute followed the breakdown of negotiations over military use of Anthropic's Claude models. Anthropic sought restrictions against use in mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, while the Pentagon maintained that a private supplier should not impose those limits on military operations. In court, the government said the designation arose from disputed contractual terms and operational uncertainty, not retaliation for Anthropic's public views about AI safety. The ruling does not require the Pentagon to buy or continue using Anthropic products, but prevents the broader restrictions from being enforced through the challenged supply-chain designation.
Anthropic welcomed the decision and said it remained willing to work with the government on the use of AI for national security. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment reported by Reuters and AP. A separate Anthropic case in Washington, DC, involving a different statutory basis for a supply-chain designation remains pending, so the ruling does not resolve all litigation between the parties.
Editorial framework: This briefing uses Sustenesis as an editorial framework for selecting facts, organising relationships and structuring information, with attention to differences and constraints in rules, responsibilities, resources, risks and social relations. Sustenesis functions here as a method of organisation rather than a position or commentary; the body remains limited to verifiable facts.
Sources
Xinhua, Three authorities answer questions on the Notice on Improving the Commercial Housing Sales System
https://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/20260828/ce3eb65e9e92410f8f9e4e81a6a92da3/c.html
China News Service, Three authorities jointly issue the Notice on Improving the Commercial Housing Sales System
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2026/08-28/10686002.shtml
Reuters, China to reform home sales system to curb delivery risks
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-reform-home-sales-system-curb-delivery-risks-2026-08-28/
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, APRA releases 2026 superannuation performance test and product insights
https://www.apra.gov.au/news-and-publications/apra-releases-2026-superannuation-performance-test-and-product-insights
Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Annual superannuation performance test
https://www.apra.gov.au/superannuation/performance-and-transparency/annual-superannuation-performance-test
Reuters, US judge blocks Pentagon's Anthropic blacklisting
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-blocks-pentagons-anthropic-blacklisting-2026-08-28/
Associated Press, Judge says Pentagon's measures against Anthropic were 'illegal and baseless'
https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-pentagon-lawsuit-supply-chain-risk-f15e3c30186385e73e72bee82d85b05c
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