Ukraine fired its most massive drone attack yet on the Moscow region, with mayor Sergei Sobyanin saying 450 drones were shot down and Moscow's main oil refinery — a site supplying more than a third of the region's fuel, some of it going to the Russian military — was hit. At least two people died and 20 were injured on the Russian side, while Moscow's Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports were temporarily disrupted. President Zelensky confirmed Kyiv struck a "key" oil facility and logistics site, calling it "billions of dollars that sustain the war machine." Kyiv and Sumy regions meanwhile suffered nine deaths in Russian strikes on Saturday, and Sobyanin framed the assault as "an attempt to disrupt" the Kremlin-controlled parliamentary vote — which completes its three-day run dismissed by critics as neither free nor fair.
Exit polls show damaging losses for Chancellor Merz's centre-right CDU in the Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state elections — a sharp rebuke heading into the closing stretch of the federal cycle. Merz acknowledged the result as a "disaster" for his party yet insisted he would remain at its head, leaving the conservative project's direction under close scrutiny in Berlin.
Facing fresh warnings about the technology's risks, Trump said his administration "will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth" of AI and will create an AI Force plus appoint a dedicated czar to oversee policy. The announcement — made by social media post on Saturday — marks a second AI-czar push and has Silicon Valley scratching its head over what the force would actually do.
The Houthis say they targeted Riyadh with ballistic missiles, extending a pattern of strikes that has repeatedly put the Saudi capital and Aramco facilities in the frame. A day after yesterday's claims of hits near King Khalid airport, the continued escalation keeps Gulf airspace and energy infrastructure a live flashpoint.
Cyclists stumbled upon three children under the age of five and a woman in her 40s, all suffering stab wounds, near Springwood on Sunday afternoon. One child has died and two are in critical condition, with police describing the scene — which closed out a violent weekend — in the most sombre terms. The investigation is ongoing as NSW authorities piece together the circumstances.
The Treasurer signalled a new round of tax cuts while cautioning the intergenerational report's 40-year forecast "will show we are dealing with serious risks to our economy and serious pressures on the budget." Coming off superannuation contribution changes in the same budget, the two-track message — relief today, structural warning for the decades ahead — frames the government's economic pitch.
Australia will formally state its case for a seat at the world's most powerful diplomatic table, with the PM using the platform to push global guardrails on artificial intelligence. The dual pitch — a Security Council campaign run alongside an AI-governance agenda — positions Australia as a middle power seeking a louder voice at the top table.
Australians will no longer be hit with card surcharges on purchases from 1 October, ending the fee that quietly added up on tap-and-go payments. Guardian breaks down how the ban works in practice, which businesses are affected, and what it means for merchants who currently pass the cost on.
Calamansi, just north of the bridge, is built around Sarah Tiong's Peranakan heritage — the aromatic chicken curry is already pulling people back multiple times a week. Positioned as a South-East Asian wine bar and restaurant, it's squarely the kind of venue Sydney's drinking scene keeps reaching for: bold regional food matched to a considered, well-travelled wine list.
Tenjo — Japanese for "up above" — takes the short-lived Lottie space on a Redfern rooftop, with a top chef leading the kitchen and a menu spanning sushi, yakitori and a dialled-in claypot rice. From the team behind the much-loved Apollo and Olympus, it's shaping as one of spring's biggest openings.
Wine Australia's roadshow took 63 exhibitors and more than 100 brands to mainland China — Wuhan, Chongqing, Xiamen and Shenzhen — from 16–26 September, pressing the market that reclaimed top spot for Australian exports after tariffs lifted in 2024. With China's demand for premium reds now past the $1bn rebound mark, this is the channel your importers and winery clients are watching hardest.
A fillet of Senku Pure Wagyu from Queensland's Paradigm Foods topped a blind tasting of more than 470 entries from 30 countries. It's a useful talking point for premium on-premise lists — Australian wagyu now carrying a genuine global "best steak" credential.
The latest round through Playing Australia and the Contemporary Music Touring Program invests more than $2 million in getting live work to audiences nationwide. $1.5m of it — via Playing Australia — supports theatre, dance, puppetry and spoken-word tours to 53 locations, with 70 per cent of performances reaching regional or remote communities; highlights include FORM Dance Projects' First Nations work Garrigarrang Badu and indelabilityarts' children's show Mystery Quest. A further 20 projects (The Belair Lip Bombs, Beddy Rays, Sly Withers, Melbourne Ska Orchestra and more) tour to 98 locations, boosted by extra Music Australia investment. Regional touring remains the sector's connective tissue — and this is a substantive injection into it.
Creative Australia has announced this year's award recipients — musician Stephen Pigram, director and playwright John Harvey, and artist Bronwyn Bancroft among the honourees — alongside the 2026 First Nations Arts Fellowships, awarded to Daen John-Sansbury-Smith and Maurial Spearim. The recognition program, with an award valued at $25,000, continues to platform First Nations leadership and practice across the sector.
The NSW Government's Local Audience Development Grants fund 28 live-music events and venues plus six digital projects across the state, adding new venue-upgrade and soundproofing grants so operators can get rooms gig-ready. It's another plank in the state's push to sustain live music and nightlife economics beyond the metro core.
Creative Australia's flagship fund for bold, new Australian work — designed to push projects toward "next-level scale, ambition and impact" — closes Stage 1 applications on Tuesday 29 September at 3pm AEST. A week out, it's the single most significant open grant window for artists and companies planning major new productions.
Released 10 Sep, DeepSeek's smallest new Causal Encoder-Decoder model (552B backbone, just 8B active per token) tops GPT-5.6 Sol on the hardest agentic benchmarks — DeepSWE 74.2 vs 73.0, AutomationBench 54.8 vs 45.8, Agent's Last Exam 31.8 vs 26.7, CyberGym 88.1 vs 84.5 — at DeepSeek's characteristically thin pricing ($0.22/M input, $0.66/M output, 1M context). Directly relevant to your stack: the V4 family is your default, and this is the strongest open, cost-per-token agentic option on the board right now.
Trump's weekend announcement of an AI Force and a new AI czar — swearing the administration "will not in any way hinder or stifle" growth — has Silicon Valley and policy wonks scratching their heads over the plan's scope and teeth. A second run at an AI-czar role, the move signals Washington tightening its grip on the sector even as it promises hands off.
Since v0.20.3 (mid-August) the v0.22 window has landed ~146 commits across ~265 files — ~74 merged PRs. Headline work: the desktop glass/translucency surface (matte glass, frost picker, macOS pre-select), a tabbed SESSIONS|BOTS sidebar with per-bot hide/unhide, Bot Mode group-chat fixes (long-running member turns, Markdown, cross-machine routing), NVIDIA SkillEvaluator Tier 1 advisory scanning on skill installs, and cron media-send hardening. Your current install runs v0.21.3 — the migration to v0.22 is coming.
Converse pulls "deeply upsetting" advert after backlash
An Instagram image compared by social-media users to a KKK hood and hanging forces the brand to pull the campaign.
UK PM hails Greenland deal ahead of expected first Trump meeting
Burnham praises the agreement while Ed Davey calls it a "pretend" victory for Trump — diplomacy's latest reading wars.
John Farnham missed his own tribute — but at the concert, he was everywhere
With Chris Martin beaming in from the UK and Celine Dion singing from Paris, 120 musicians honoured the Australian icon as his health declines.
Cultural treasures are being destroyed worldwide — so why is no one punished?
An enduring accountability gap in heritage protection, worth reading in context of the continued cultural-destruction reporting.