Artists plan nationwide US protests against Trump and ‘authoritarian forces’
Artists and artistic organisations around the US are set to take part in a series of protests and events to speak out against Donald Trump and his administration.According to the New York Times, the acts of “creative resistance” will be known as the Fall of Freedom and will take place on 21 and 22 November.“Our democracy is under attack,” organisers state. “Threats to free expression are rising. Dissent is being criminalized
Stephen Colbert on Ice: ‘Terrorizing communities in the Windy City’
Late-night hosts addressed Trump’s role in the ceasefire in Gaza as his administration sends troops to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Chicago.Stephen Colbert returned to the Late Show with a quick rundown of everything he missed on just one week of holiday. The news last week was “a doozy”, he said. “It’s less ‘we didn’t start the fire’ and more ‘everything’s on fire.’”Colbert provided a partial list of what he missed in a single week: the government shutdown headed into its third week; Trump fired more than 4,000 federal workers; the Department of Justice, under pressure from Trump, charged the New York attorney general, Letitia James, with fraud; Trump sent national guard troops to Chicago and Portland and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act; Trump imposed a stunning 100% tariff on all goods from China, which caused the stock market to have its worst day in six months; and Taylor Swift released her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, to “merely mixed reviews”
French woman in mother of all trademark battles with DC Comics over parenting app Wondermum
A French woman is involved in the mother of all battles with DC Comics for naming her family advice app Wondermum.Lise Sobéron received a letter from the superhero comic book company’s French lawyers on 1 April this year demanding she stop using the name because of its alleged similarity to Wonder Woman.“When I got the letter, I rang my close friends and said: ‘Very funny, guys,’ thinking it was an April fool,” she said. “Then I contacted the lawyers’ office and realised it was no joke. They told me DC Comics objected to the name Wondermum
Louder than Bombs: Joachim Trier’s thorniest film might be his best
Long before Joachim Trier made the Oscar-winning The Worst Person in the World and this year’s festival megahit Sentimental Value, there was 2015’s Louder than Bombs: a far stranger, slipperier film worth watching for Isabelle Huppert’s spectral turn alone. She plays a character also called Isabelle, a renowned war photographer whose secrets haunt her family three years after her sudden death.Her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) still daydreams in class about the car crash that claimed her life, imagining her final, panicked moments. His brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and father Gene (Gabriel Byrne) know (and conceal) the truth: that her fateful, split-second swerve was an act of suicide.The film’s cacophony of grief and anxious romance erupt within upstate New York, 6,000km away from the Nordic, millennial anomie of Joachim’s informal Oslo trilogy
Creative Australia awards Khaled Sabsabi $100,000 grant months after dumping from Venice Biennale
Creative Australia has awarded a $100,000 grant to artist Khaled Sabsabi, months after he was controversially dumped and then reinstated by the federal arts body as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale.The grant – one of 16 made under Creative Australia’s Visual Arts, Craft and Design Framework – will fund the creation of a new body of work for a solo exhibition opening in March 2027 at Adelaide’s Samstag Museum of Art, which will also include Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale work.In August, Sabsabi was also awarded a grant by Create NSW for a major new work in western Sydney.The two commissions represent a silver lining in a tumultuous year for Sabsabi, a Lebanese-Australian artist from western Sydney. In February, he and curator Michael Dagostino were announced as Australia’s representatives for the prestigious Venice Biennale; less than a week later they were sacked, after criticism by the Australian and the then shadow arts minister, Claire Chandler, over Sabsabi’s use of imagery in previous artworks of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
Gaucho chain to slash waiters’ share of service charge and boost head office pay
Global markets fall and gold hits record high amid jitters over US banks
‘Finances are getting tighter’: US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans
Ferrari cuts number of cars it sends to UK after non-dom tax status scrapped
The ‘messy’ trend behind Australia’s rising unemployment is worrying economists
Australia Post incorrectly charged tariffs on items ordered online being returned to the US
