Seth Meyers on ICE: ‘An army of out-of-shape uncles’

Late-night hosts talked cratering public opinion on the Trump administration’s deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in US communities and the president’s apparent preference for whole milk.Seth Meyers opened Wednesday’s Late Night with a reminder to viewers about how Trump “sold his mass deportation program to voters during the campaign”.That would be by declaring some version of “We are going to start with violent criminals” again and again.“If you say you’re going to get violent criminals off the streets, of course people are going to be into that. But that was a lie,” Meyers noted

Ian McKellen to star as LS Lowry in documentary revealing trove of unheard tapes

Fifteen years ago, Sir Ian McKellen was among the leading arts figures who criticised the Tate for not showing its collection of paintings by LS Lowry in its London galleries and questioned whether the “matchstick men painter” had been sidelined as too northern and provincial.Now, 50 years after Lowry’s death, McKellen is to star in a BBC documentary that will reveal a trove of previously unheard audio tapes recorded with Lowry in the 1970s during his final four years of life.The interview is the longest the artist ever gave and was recorded in his living room, his “private sanctuary”. The tapes are said to reveal Lowry’s authentic voice, which McKellen will lip-sync on screen.The Lancashire-born actor described the role as a “unique privilege”

Has Joe Rogan fully soured on Trump’s presidency?

Joe Rogan’s comparison of US immigration raids to Gestapo operations, made during a podcast episode earlier this week, has sparked speculation about whether the wildly popular podcaster, who endorsed Donald Trump in 2024, has fully soured on Trump’s presidency – and what that might say of the millions of mainly young men who listen to Rogan’s show.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.Rogan’s views, as expressed in the podcast discussion, were more complicated than the Gestapo remark taken alone might make them seem

British indie band Pulp agree to play Adelaide festival after boycott U-turn

The British indie band Pulp will play at the Adelaide festival in February after initially pulling out of the event in protest at the cancellation of Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah.The band issued a statement on social media on Thursday night announcing that they would “honour our invitation to perform in Adelaide on 27 February” after the festival organisers performed a U-turn, apologised to Abdel-Fattah for her treatment and invited her to speak at next year’s event.Abdel-Fattah was barred from the Adelaide writers’ week last week because of “cultural sensitivity” in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, prompting dozens of other speakers to boycott the event.Pulp decided to boycott the related Adelaide festival but the organisers asked the band to delay making an announcement “while they sought to resolve this crisis for all sides”.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe board responsible for the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah, who has been criticised by Jewish groups for controversial comments about Israel, has mostly stood down and been replaced

Jewish American columnist Thomas Friedman says he was uninvited from 2024 Adelaide writers’ week over ‘timing’

A New York Times columnist at the centre of a second controversy engulfing Adelaide writers’ week has said he was uninvited from the event in 2024.Thomas Friedman, who is Jewish, confirmed to Nine newspapers on Thursday that after he agreed to appear in a video link session, he was subsequently notified “that the timing would not work out”.Earlier this week, former festival board member Tony Berg, who is of Jewish heritage, made an extraordinary accusation of “hypocrisy” against the director of Adelaide writers’ week, Louise Adler, saying she had lobbied for the removal of Friedman from the festival lineup.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailAt the time, a group of 10 academics had signed a petition demanding Friedman’s removal due to a controversial column he had written in the New York Times days earlier, which compared the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom. The Palestinian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was uninvited from this year’s writers’ week, was among the group

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy review – Holly Hunter is a transgressive thrill in this horny high-school spinoff

This hormone-fuelled tale of the training college for space voyagers is like Grange Hill, with phasers – and it has a female lead unlike any captain beforeThe original Star Trek TV series debuted in 1966, so trying to get your head round all the sequels, prequels and timeline-splitting spin-offs can often feel like homework. It was only a matter of time before the venerable sci-fi franchise used a school as a setting. But Starfleet Academy, the latest streaming series, is not some random cosmic polytechnic for aliens to study humanities or vice versa. This is the oft-referenced San Francisco space campus sited right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. With James T Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard on the alumni list, it is basically Hogwarts for wannabe starship captains