Apple’s hardware chief officially takes the helm today, ending Tim Cook’s 15-year run during which the company’s value swelled to US$4.6 trillion on the back of the iPhone. The handover lands at a pivotal moment — AI has unleashed the biggest industry upheaval since the first iPhone, and Apple has stumbled catching up after missing promised AI features for nearly two years. Ternus must now push Apple’s AI catch-up, navigate supply-chain and tariff questions, and manage the relationship with President Trump — on whom Cook lavished public praise as he leaves. Cook stays on as executive chairman to help steer that diplomacy. Ternus, who oversaw the Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro, will headline next week’s launch of the latest iPhone at Apple Park in Cupertino.
Fresh off its historic Saxony-Anhalt victory, the far-right AfD says “democracy demands” other parties work with it as it tries to form a state government, having fallen three seats short of a majority. The BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler sees the result as an alarm bell for the EU and the traditional parties scrambling over how to respond without normalising the far right — a stepping stone toward the party’s 2029 federal ambitions.
Tehran says it will announce a restricted zone running from the line of the US naval blockade, through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf — a direct challenge to the US Navy and a fresh threat to tanker traffic after a weekend of renewed exchanges. The move casts fresh doubt on any path to ending the six-month conflict, with a senior Iranian official saying the zone targets vessels Tehran believes are attempting to transit the waterway.
Five people died and five others were injured when the Amazon aircraft overshot the runway after landing at Miami International Airport on Sunday, bursting into flames. Investigators have begun examining the cause of the deadly incident, which is under scrutiny alongside the airline’s safety record.
Schools, businesses and public transport across the Ukrainian capital are struggling under a surge in Russian air attacks that has pushed air-raid alerts to record levels. The bombardment has become an around-the-clock feature of daily life, deepening strain on civilians and infrastructure as the conflict grinds on.
A Centre for Public Integrity investigation of the invite-only Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program found 73% of funds went to notionally Labor-held seats — $3.20 spent in ALP seats for every $1 in Coalition seats — while 45 electorates were never invited and received nothing. About $493 million of the $560 million went to safe, fairly safe or competitive Labor seats, with no link found to wealth or infrastructure need. Former High Court justice and centre chair Anthony Whealy told ABC’s 7.30 the pattern “prima facie looks like serious pork-barrelling,” putting a heavy onus on the government to justify the closed process. Infrastructure Minister Catherine King defends the program as longstanding practice.
The exposure draft of the long-awaited Digital Duty of Care, to be released this week, would require social media companies to give users a choice to turn off their algorithm via pop-ups, and impose a duty to identify and mitigate harm with fines above $100 million for breaches. For under-18s it names roughly six extra areas of “psycho-social harm” such as body image and bullying. The eSafety commissioner and approved independent researchers would get “sock puppet” powers to monitor what children are served online.
Canberra and Honiara have struck an in-principle agreement on a new treaty, with a leaked text message from a high-ranking official reportedly revealing the lengths the Australian government is prepared to go to in order to close the deal. The development is set to feature prominently at this week’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting.
Pauline Hanson is pushing to let workers divert up to 3% of their superannuation into take-home pay for up to three years — a plan the government has branded “a recipe to make Australian workers worse off.” Economists warn it would erode retirement balances and increase cost-of-living pressures in the long term, adding to a week of One Nation economic proposals already drawing fire across the political spectrum.
Australia’s recognition of its leading sommeliers and wine lists reaches its annual climax with the 2026 awards ceremony in the Strangers Room at NSW Parliament House on Monday 28 September. For anyone tracking the sommelier circuit — squarely in RSN territory — the shortlists reward the lists and wine professionals shaping where Australia drinks well, from fine dining to neighbourhood cellars.
Broadsheet’s “coming soon” radar flags major movement in Sydney’s drinking scene: Bar Suze is set to be reborn as BS Pasta Palace, and the same group behind it is readying its first Asian restaurant, serving Chinese, Japanese and Korean flavours in a fit-out pitched as “industrial yet warm.” A slate of fresh openings is filling the September calendar as the city’s hospitality keeps its momentum into spring.
Chef Alex Prichard, who trained at two-hatted Icebergs, finally launches his long-planned Shoalhaven project in Berry this week. Guests can expect pavlova, local steak and premium fish — and a few kangaroo-shaped wine gummies — in a distinctly regional-Southern-Highlands register worth a drive for Sydney diners and weekenders.
With Austria’s ÖTW Single Vineyard Summit running 7–10 September in Grafenegg’s historic castle park, Sommeliers Australia has secured the chance to nominate a member to attend — a reminder of the value of flagship wine-trade gatherings for industry professionals. It also keeps a spotlight on Austrian single-vineyard classification, a benchmark reference for serious wine lists.
A lighter funding-news morning — no major new dollar-figure announcement broke overnight (the flagship Creative Futures Fund and Creative Australia’s $13.72M / 278-project round landed in July–August and were already flagged). Here is what is genuinely live this week and next.
ArtsHub’s opportunities guide for 7–13 September (published 5 Sept) maps the rounds closing imminently. The $30,000 Dobell Drawing Prize (National Art School) closes 14 Sept; Creative Australia international residencies — Acme London (6 months, $30,000) and ISCP New York (4 months, $35,000) — plus the Helsinki International Artist Program ($15,000, Suomenlinna) all close 15 Sept; the Oceania Photo Contest ($6,000 main prize) closes 18 Sept; and WA’s PICA Studio Program closes 21 Sept. All live now for applicants to prepare.
Create NSW’s 2026 Regional Arts Touring fund helps NSW-based artists and organisations get work on the road to regional audiences — live shows, exhibitions and arts programs across all artforms. Individual artists and collectives can apply for up to $75,000 and organisations up to $120,000. Round 2 applications close 13 October; past support includes Zeeko and Jo Turner’s The Girl Who Glows, touring NSW in 2027.
Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation CEO (and former ACMI director) Katrina Sedgwick has been appointed Chair of CAIAF — the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals — the body behind the Major Festivals Initiative that commissions, develops and showcases new Australian works of scale. It is a significant governance appointment for how major Australian works get made and toured, noted among this week’s arts-sector moves.
Creative Australia and Berlin publisher Spector Books have released the official catalogue for Khaled Sabsabi’s presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Edited by José Da Silva and designed by Suzanne Boccalatte, the publication gathers writing from Michael Dagostino, Claire Dillon, Kon Gouriotis OAM, Tahmina Maskinyar, Hammad Nasar, Dr Nur Shkembi OAM and Dr Mikala Tai — documentation of one of Australia’s flagship First Nations-led international presentations.
No new Nous release since the 31 August Pantheon drop — still the current build Rowan runs. Worth noting this week’s operational angle: v0.21.0’s “cron jobs that remember” (persistent memory + continuity=true across runs + monitor-mode that skips the LLM when nothing changed) is precisely the machinery this daily briefing runs on. Nous Portal also now surfaces 400+ models through a single endpoint — useful context given the cost-model tuning in play.
OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra (3 Sept, US$10/$50 per 1M tokens, 1.05M context) holds as the most recent tracked frontier model, having been the first to clear OpenAI’s “critical cybersecurity” threshold. Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 went GA on 1 Sept at matching $10/$50 pricing, keeping the frontier pricing tier effectively locked. Both remain the benchmarks Rowan’s cost-per-token decisions get measured against.
Following the July DeepSeek V4-Flash update (Intelligence Index ~40→52 at unchanged price), attention in the local/open camp turns to Qwen 3.8 — strong on Arena’s vision board (#2, behind Fable 5) but ranked #5 on text, with the promised open weights yet to land. For local-LLM users the wait for actual GGUF-able weights continues, keeping the practical options largely where they were.