The Fed hiked its benchmark rate a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00% on Wednesday, a unanimous 12-0 decision driven by stubborn inflation still above the 2% target, oil above US$100 a barrel, and Chair Kevin Warsh's longstanding commitment to price stability. It lands days after Trump demanded the world's "lowest interest rates" — a direct rebuke of the White House. Policymakers acknowledge they can't control the biggest inflation drivers: tariffs, the Iran war, and the AI buildout.
Republican Thomas Massie filed eight privileged articles of impeachment against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war, forcing a full House vote — a long shot but one that puts GOP members on the record. It comes as the House voted a third time to restrict President Trump's ability to strike Iran. The effort has split the party as the tanker war in the Strait of Hormuz drags on.
Saudi Arabia launched strikes into Yemen in response to renewed Houthi attacks, opening another front alongside the ongoing tanker conflict in the Strait of Hormuz. The escalation raises fresh questions about the stability of Red Sea shipping lanes and Gulf energy infrastructure as the war spreads well beyond Iran's borders.
Sweden's centre-left bloc has won the general election, ending a period of centre-right government with a narrow parliamentary margin. The result reshapes Nordic politics and sets up drawn-out coalition talks in Stockholm.
A war-damaged building collapsed in Gaza, killing at least 21 people including eight children, rescue workers say. The incident highlights the hidden toll of structural damage left across the strip and the fragility of civilian infrastructure after months of conflict.
Rodrigo Duterte has appeared in person before the International Criminal Court at The Hague for the first time, facing charges over the deadly anti-drugs campaign that defined his presidency. The case marks a landmark moment for the court's jurisdiction in Asia.
Washington has accused Moscow of plotting assassinations of Ukrainian allies on foreign soil, escalating a covert war beyond Ukraine's borders. Separately, Ukraine says it has been targeting Russian logistics infrastructure, including the Wildberries operation and key gas plants, to choke Moscow's economic base.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will outline a long-awaited immigration overhaul at the National Press Club, intended to slash net overseas migration from ~300,000 to 225,000 a year by 2028. Central to the plan: international students would effectively be banned from bringing family members with them. It's a significant curb on the university sector and one of the biggest migration policy shifts in years.
COVID vaccines will stop being free for a significant swathe of Australians from next month as the federal government winds back subsidised access. The move shifts cost onto at-risk individuals and GPs, and marks a step in normalising COVID vaccination as a routine, primarily user-funded service.
Petrol prices are climbing at the bowser as the Strait of Hormuz conflict keeps crude above US$100 a barrel — a direct cost-of-living hit for Australian households and a headache for the RBA as it mulls rate policy against the Fed's unexpected hike.
Seven former Australian Test captains have written to Foreign Minister Penny Wong asking the government to raise concerns with Islamabad over the treatment of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan. The appeal draws Australia's cricketing establishment into the diplomatic row.
Friends of Australian man Damien John Shaw describe shock and horror after he apparently took his own life and his two children's at their home in Bali on Sunday. The case has prompted a DFAT consular response and heavy media coverage of the circumstances.
Wine Australia's 2026 National Vintage Report puts the crush at just 1.27 million tonnes — its smallest since 2000 — with reds down 29% to 596,226 tonnes, the lowest in 25 years. Yet the reduced crop did not translate into stronger grape prices, underscoring a soft wine market reeled in by excess inventory and sluggish demand. Directly relevant to anyone positioning glassware and wine programs into a cautious trade.
The $8 million Vito's is scheduled to open on Bridge Street in the CBD in the final days of September or early October. Also imminent: Cronulla's Homer Rogue Taverna adding a 60-seat wine bar and ouzeri, Volta, and the hatted Nour/Aalia team opening Ame in Darlinghurst.
The 60-seat Rasa House — "rasa" meaning flavour, aroma and taste in Indonesian — has opened as a vibrant South and Southeast Asian wine bar and restaurant, bringing fire, spice and a complementary wine program to the waterfront dining scene.
The Heritage Room by Rovollo is slated to open at the MLC Centre on Martin Place this month — an addition to the CBD's evolving dining floor, joining a slate of spring openings across the city tracked by Broadsheet's coming-soon series.
Creative Australia announced close to $15 million through its Arts Projects and International Engagement Fund programs. That includes $13.9M across 280 individual/group projects — expected to seed more than 2,000 new works — plus a further tranche supporting 31 international projects in 26 countries. Highlights span emerging First Nations recording artists (Singing Our Futures, with Dobby, Emma Donovan and Bumpy), a tactile gallery experience for blind and vision-impaired children, and a First Nations–Arctic Circle exchange linking Wiradjuri artists with Sweden's Arctic Light Choir.
Creative Australia honoured the achievements behind the 2026 First Nations Arts and Culture Awards, with musician Stephen Pigram, director and playwright John Harvey, and artist Bronwyn Bancroft among this year's honourees. Alongside them, the 2026 First Nations Arts Fellowships were awarded to Daen John-Sansbury-Smith and Maurial Spearim, cementing the First Nations First industry-development pipeline.
Approximately $1.4 million is available to Australian galleries, museums and cultural institutions for touring exhibitions and development of exhibitions for touring, for projects starting after 1 July 2026. The latest round under the Visions of Australia program — which has supported touring for over a decade — is now open to applications.
Anthropic has signed its first Australian infrastructure deal, leasing part of the proposed $32 billion Western Downs Digital Park near Dalby, built by Singaporean developer Zerra DC. Set to be the nation's largest data centre, it would draw power equivalent to ~1.5 million households and run Claude inference workloads from next year. The deal is subject to FIRB and council approval — and lands as the regional infrastructure buildout collides with data-centre backlash and grid concerns.
DeepSeek's V4.1 Flash (released 10 Sept) heads a new Causal Encoder-Decoder family — 552B backbone with 8B active during prefill / 16B during decode, native image-and-text input and a 1M-token context. Benchmarks show it ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol on DeepSWE, AutomationBench and Agent's Last Exam, at sharp pricing ($0.22/M input, $0.66/M output). Notably this is DeepSeek's own stack family — worth watching for cost-per-token selection.
A Microsoft document reportedly argues AI rival Anthropic could have a "disastrous impact" on humanity, while the "Godfather of AI" has publicly backed Anthropic's chief's call to slow development. The episode highlights intensifying adversarial positioning between the frontier labs — and who gets to set the pace of the race.
Hermes Agent is running on v0.21.3 (v2026.9.14), a patch rolling up the reliability wave. Nous has flagged v0.22.0 as the next curated milestone — full release notes from v0.21 onward, feature areas and contributor credits, shipping via `hermes update` or the installer one-liner. Nothing dramatic landed overnight; watch for the v0.22.0 notes tag.