Trump says he has called off strikes against Iran, claiming Tehran and other Middle East countries asked him to "hold off" after the "perimeters" of a deal were agreed. Iran's Mehr news agency immediately denied asking for any pause, calling the claim "nothing but a new lie". The reversal comes hours after US media reported Washington and Israel were planning one of the harshest bombing campaigns yet against Iranian energy infrastructure β Trump was heard telling reporters "we'll be hitting them very hard". With ~60% of Americans now disapproving of the Iran war per Pew and midterms looming, Washington has also urged US citizens across the region to be ready to leave if it escalates.
A homemade device detonated at Balzi Rossi, an Italian restaurant on Kudrinskaya Square, after a woman carrying explosives was stopped by a security guard β killing the woman, the guard and a visitor at a private function. Moscow's mayor called it "a cruel act of terror". No target has been confirmed, but a string of senior Russian military figures have been assassinated in the capital in recent years, with Moscow blaming Kyiv.
A Danish pilot and a Greek fire-service liaison officer died when two helicopters collided at Psatha, west of Athens; a British pilot survived and is hospitalised. Greece is fighting large fires for a third day with "extremely difficult" conditions, while Spain and France also battle blazes. PM Mitsotakis warned of "extremely difficult" days ahead after a succession of European heatwaves.
The Old Trails Fire near Spokane is among blazes that have destroyed 600 structures and forced the evacuation of 5,000 homes, with Washington state's governor declaring an emergency. Crews are battling high winds and dry conditions as the fire season intensifies across the US West.
Overnight drone strikes killed at least five people in Russia and ignited a fire at a Wildberries logistics warehouse, as Ukraine keeps the war on Russian territory. The attacks underline the continued escalation even as the US presses both sides toward talks.
A ferry fire off Indonesia has left at least five people dead and 41 missing, with search-and-rescue teams scouring the waters. The incident adds to a grim stretch for maritime safety in the region as passenger vessels continue to operate through busy shipping lanes.
National property prices fell 0.7% in July β the largest single monthly decline since December 2022 β and the downturn is no longer confined to Sydney and Melbourne: Brisbane fell 0.6% and Adelaide 0.2%, with Cotality's Gerard Burg describing a "really rapid deterioration in conditions in Brisbane". Three RBA rate hikes this year plus negative gearing and CGT changes are blamed. Former NAB chief economist Alan Oster warns a 10-15% correction is possible if unemployment heads toward 5%.
The temporary 16c/L excise reduction lapsed at midnight, adding ~17.6c/L (excise + GST) to prices at the bowser, with unleaded forecast to hit about $2.20 and diesel $2.60 within ~10 days. Energy Minister Chris Bowen has ruled out an extension, warning against stockpiling, and says the ACCC is watching for gouging. The change lands as global oil jumped to ~US$90 a barrel on renewed Iran-war fears.
Gumatj elder Djawa YunupiΕu used the Garma stage to announce a new Dilak Land Council representing the 13 YolΕu clans of north-east Arnhem Land β one of the most significant changes to NT land governance since land rights laws were introduced almost 50 years ago. The declaration caught senior figures by surprise, including RirratjiΕu Aboriginal Corporation chairman Wanyubi Marika, who has expressed concern about the split from the Northern Land Council.
The team behind the beloved Bar Planet have launched Super 44, a new Enmore bar built around margaritas and free popcorn, with a stated promise of no-fuss good times. Myffy Rigby's write-up positions it as one of the inner west's most anticipated openings of the month.
The group behind some of Sydney's most flamboyant venues has opened Vespertine, a David Lynch-inspired bar serving Chartreuse slushies and leaning into a moody, cinematic vibe. A sign that the drinks side of the market is getting weirder and more theatrical β squarely in the drinking-culture beat.
A chef from the much-missed Baba's Place has landed their own 50-seater: Lo Presti's, pitched as the neighbourhood joint where everyone knows your name. It tops Good Food's August hit list as one of the season's most talked-about new openings β the kind of room that builds a regular crowd fast.
Broadsheet's winter roundup covers the inner-west Margarita bar (Super 44), a hotly anticipated Korean fried chicken joint, two new sanga spots and the Bar Copains trio's latest project β a useful map of where Sydney's opening pipeline is heading through to spring. Worth scanning for supplier and venue-intel purposes.
Submissions for Round 3 of Revive Live β the federal live-music venues and festivals program β open 9:00am AEST this morning via the federal arts grants portal. It follows Arts Minister Tony Burke's recent $12m top-up of the program and the shadow arts minister's questioning of whether venue grants work after MoshPit Bar's closure. Round 2 backed 59 festivals and 46 venues, so this round is the sector's next shot at operating and accessibility funding. (Grants portal can be flaky from overseas IPs β apply from an AU connection.)
With Census night on Tuesday 11 August, Creative Australia has released occupation guidance so artists and creative workers report their roles accurately β the single biggest lever on sector funding models and advocacy data for the next five years. If you or your network work in the arts, worth using the official wording when filling in the form.
Creative Australia has confirmed it contributed to the Royal Commission and will consider its findings and recommendations when delivered. A signal that arts funding and social cohesion policy are being formally linked at the federal level β relevant for anyone tracking how grant conditions and sector expectations may evolve.
Meta researchers propose pairing agents with a second "memory agent" that tracks what the action agent has learned, decided and failed at β then decides when to inject a targeted reminder rather than dumping the whole history. It fixed "behavioral state decay" failures: first-attempt solves on Terminal-Bench rose from 38% to 46%, with gains also on tool-use benchmarks. The module is plug-and-play with existing agents and open-sourced on GitHub (paper: arXiv 2607.08716). Directly relevant to how long-running agent loops are built.
No new Hermes release since the v0.19.1 patch tag on 30 July; the curated v0.20.0 notes (covering ~2,789 commits of bug-fix and platform work since v0.19.0) are still pending. Repo remains active β Buzz/Nostr channel, FLUX3 video delivery and Telegram media reliability were all in the last patch window. Nothing to upgrade for this morning.
No new frontier releases over the weekend. The newest tracked model is DeepSeek's V4 Flash "Latest" snapshot from 1 August (the line already covered in yesterday's briefing β still the value pick at ~$0.14/$0.27 per M tokens). Enterprise-agent news dominated instead: OpenAI's Presence push and Meta's memory-coach paper. Claude Opus 5 (Jul 24) remains Anthropic's newest. Nothing that changes model-selection maths today.