Category Archives: Culture

‘We’re frenemies’: George Osborne and Ed Balls to launch economics podcast

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Former chancellor and ex-shadow chancellor will discuss and analyse the state of the British economy

George Osborne is launching an economics podcast with his “frenemy” Ed Balls in an attempt to capitalise on the success of shows such as The Rest is Politics.

Osborne, the architect of the Conservatives’ austerity policies which imposed deep cuts on British public services, spent four years opposite Balls in the House of Commons. But since leaving frontline politics the pair have become a marketable media double act, appearing together on political shows to debate the state of the economy.

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Taylor Swift: extra tickets added with two more shows in Sydney and Melbourne announced

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After an estimated 4 million people queued online for tickets on Wednesday the US pop star has announced two more Australian concert dates

Taylor Swift has announced two more shows in her Australian tour next February after record-setting ticket sales on Wednesday.

Presale tickets to three Sydney concerts and two in Melbourne sold out in hours after more than 4 million users joined the online queue for under half a million tickets – though some of the numbers may have been fans opening multiple browsers to maximise their chances.

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Madonna postpones tour after suffering ‘serious’ bacterial infection

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Pop singer’s 35-city Celebration tour was scheduled to kick off in Vancouver on 15 July

Madonna’s upcoming Celebration tour has been postponed after the singer was hospitalized with a “serious bacterial infection”, according to an Instagram post from her longtime manager Guy Oseary. The tour was scheduled to kick off in Vancouver on 15 July.

“On Saturday, June 24, Madonna developed a serious bacterial infection which led to a several-day stay in the ICU,” he wrote. “Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care. A full recovery is expected.

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Idris Elba: racist backlash made speculation over James Bond ‘disgusting’

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Star of The Wire and Luther says playing 007 would be the pinnacle of an actor’s career, but the discussion became ‘off-putting’

Idris Elba has said that the racist backlash to the prospect of him being cast as James Bond “made the whole thing disgusting and off-putting”.

Elba was speaking on the SmartLess podcast about the continued speculation linking him to the role, saying: “I was super complimented for a long time about this. We’re all actors and we understand that role is one of those coveted [roles] … Being asked to be James Bond [would be] like: ‘OK, you’ve sort of reached the pinnacle’. That’s one of those things the whole world has a vote in.”

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Rights to Jorge Luis Borges’s work go to his wife’s nephews

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Widow of great Argentinian writer did not leave a will, which put the rights in limbo

A court has granted the rights to the works of the late Jorge Luis Borges, considered Argentina’s most internationally significant author of the 20th century, to five nephews of the author’s widow, who died in March.

Borges’s wife, María Kodama, had devoted much of her life to fiercely protecting his legacy and it surprised many in Argentina’s literary circle that she did not leave a will, even though she had breast cancer.

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Taylor Swift Sydney and Melbourne presale tickets sold out after record 4m users join Ticketek queue

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Australian fans faced hours-long virtual queues and tried a range of strategies as second tranche of Eras tour presale tickets went on sale

Taylor Swift has broken a national record with more than 4 million users vying to gain access on Wednesday to highly coveted presale tickets to her Sydney and Melbourne shows.

The second round of tickets went live for Swift’s three Sydney shows at 10am, amid unprecedented demand. By 1.43pm, all general Frontier presale tickets for Sydney had sold out, Ticketek Australia said in a tweet.

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Outcry after tourist carves name on wall at the Colosseum in Rome

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Italy’s culture minister has called for the man who defaced the site with ‘Ivan+Hayley 23’ to be identified and prosecuted

Italian police are on the hunt for a young tourist who carved his and his girlfriend’s names into a wall of the Colosseum, sparking widespread condemnation.

The English-speaking tourist was filmed by an onlooker using keys to engrave “Ivan+Hayley 23” into the wall of the 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheatre on Friday afternoon.

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Pompeii fresco find possibly depicts 2,000-year-old form of pizza

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Ancient painting includes fruit that looks like a pineapple – although it is almost certainly something else

A striking still life fresco resembling a pizza has been found among the ruins of ancient Pompeii, although the dish seems to lack two essential ingredients – tomato and mozzarella – and includes an item that looks suspiciously like a pineapple.

The fresco, which dates back 2,000 years, emerged during excavations in the Regio IX area of Pompeii’s archaeological park, which is close to Naples, the birthplace of pizza. The painting was on a wall in what is believed to have been the hallway of a home that had a bakery in its annexe.

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Camera brings ‘unprecedented clarity’ to restoration of historic artworks

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Technology will allow conservators to use fluorescence to identify and remove ageing varnish with total accuracy

Scientists have developed technology that will revolutionise the restoration of historic works of art by allowing conservators to identify and remove ageing varnish with total accuracy.

A team at King’s College London’s department of physics has harnessed the power of fluorescence to bring “unprecedented clarity” to the conservation process, said Prof Klaus Suhling.

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Capaldi’s crowd and Del Rey cut short: memorable Glastonbury 2023 moments

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Audience comes to Scottish singer’s aid at Pyramid stage, while late-arriving US star performs a cappella after midnight curfew

As this year’s Glastonbury festival comes to a close, here is a look back at some of the weekend’s most memorable moments.

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Julian Sands: body found in California mountains where actor disappeared

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Human remains discovered near Mount Baldy and transported to coroner’s office for identification

Hikers have found human remains in a southern California mountain area where the British actor Julian Sands disappeared five months ago, authorities said.

The body was discovered at about 10am on Saturday in wilderness near Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel mountains and was transported to the coroner’s office for identification next week, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said in a statement.

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‘I’ve had enough’: pop star Rina Sawayama criticises comments by labelmate Matty Healy

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On stage at Glastonbury, Sawayama criticised the 1975 frontman over podcast appearance in which he joined in with mockery of rapper Ice Spice and referred to racially charged pornography

Pop singer Rina Sawayama has spoken out against her labelmate, the 1975’s lead singer Matty Healy, for widely criticised comments he made on an American podcast in February.

Introducing the song STFU!, she said: “I wrote this next song because I was sick and tired of microaggressions. So, tonight, this song goes out to a white man who watches [pornography series] Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”

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‘Highly unusual’: lost 17th-century portrait of black and white women as equals saved for UK

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Exclusive: Unknown artwork was barred from leaving the UK after surfacing at an auction in 2021

A painting has been saved for the UK in recognition of its “outstanding significance” for the study of race and gender in 17th-century Britain, it will be announced on Friday.

The anonymous artist’s portrait of two women – one black and one white, depicted as companions and equals with similar dress, hair and jewellery – has been bought by Compton Verney, an award-winning gallery in Warwickshire.

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Phil Spencer, Xbox chief, on AI: ‘I’m protective of the creative process’

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Spencer played down concerns about AI being used to streamline the video game production process and said it had a role in moderation

Artificial Intelligence is very much on the news agenda right now. The unstoppable rise of ChatGPT and the seemingly imminent prospect of generalised AI able to re-create broad human thinking processes has seen concerns raised by everyone from major business CEOs to Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI research. AI has been an element of video game design and production for at least two decades, but now with AI art programs and the rise of procedurally generated game dialogue, there are growing questions over how AI is going to effect not just the content of games, but the teams that make them.

Talking at the Xbox games showcase in Los Angeles recently, Xbox chief Phil Spencer played down concerns that AI could be used to streamline the game production process and therefore lead to smaller teams.

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Dozens injured as apple-sized hailstones hit Colorado concertgoers

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Onslaught at Louis Tomlinson concert at Red Rocks amphitheater near Denver described as ‘straight out of a horror movie’

Dozens of people were injured by hailstones the size of apples that pelted concertgoers in Colorado on Wednesday night, with at least seven needing hospital treatment following the powerful storm.

Witnesses described the onslaught, at a concert by former One Direction singer Louis Tomlinson at the Red Rocks amphitheater in Morrison, west of Denver, as “straight out of a horror movie”.

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Australian Ballet dancers to take first industrial action in more than four decades

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Dancers will ‘hold the curtain’ at a Melbourne performance on Friday after negotiations to ensure appropriate pay rises failed

Dancers of the Australian Ballet will take industrial action for the first time in more than four decades, after negotiations with management over a new workplace agreement reached an impasse on Monday.

Dancers will “hold the curtain” at this Friday’s performance in Melbourne, meaning the show Identity, a program of two original works, will be delayed by 15 minutes.

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Marvel faces backlash over AI-generated opening credits

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Social media users condemned use of AI -generated opening credits for Secret Invasion premiering this week on Disney+

Marvel’s Secret Invasion, a new television series which launched on Disney+ this week, has received backlash online after it was revealed that its opening credits were generated by artificial intelligence.

In an interview with Polygon on Wednesday, director Ali Selim confirmed that AI operated by a company called Method Studios produced the opening sequence to the new series, which stars Samuel L Jackson as Marvel fixture Nick Fury.

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Barbican apologises after asking speaker to avoid topic of ‘free Palestine’

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A co-founder of the Palestinian station Radio Alhara was due to address the arts centre via a livestream

The Barbican has apologised after asking a Palestinian speaker to avoid discussing “free Palestine” at length during an event, calling the intervention “unacceptable and a serious error of judgment”.

Last week Elias Anastas, a co-founder of the Palestine-based Radio Alhara, was invited to deliver a livestreamed talk remotely on the radical possibilities of radio, exploring how broadcasting could be used as a tool of subversion.

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Translator alleges work on Chinese radical ‘plagiarised’ in British Museum show

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Exclusive: Yilin Wang claims she did not receive any credit for translations of Qiu Jin’s work in the China’s Hidden Century exhibition

The British Museum is removing a segment of its landmark exhibition on China after a writer alleged that her translations of a Chinese revolutionary’s poetry had been “plagiarised”.

Yilin Wang, an award-winning translator, poet and editor who lives in Vancouver, said she did not receive any credit or reimbursement for translations of Qiu Jin’s work that she claims are hers. They appeared in the exhibition and catalogue of the museum’s China’s Hidden Century exhibition.

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Apple TV+ remake of sci-fi classic Metropolis cancelled due to US writers’ strike

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The $188m eight-part series was to be filmed in Melbourne but has been shelved because of ‘push costs and uncertainty’

The $188m Apple TV+ remake of Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis has been cancelled.

The major project was in pre-production in Melbourne when NBCUniversal’s Universal Studio Group announced the eight-part series would not go ahead.

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