Human beings did not always believe in progress. At least not in the way we have. These days we say, “It’s 2026!” to express exasperation at a failing piece of technology, a persistent social problem like homelessness or a regressive social attitude. But no one said, “It’s 1148!” in the same way. In ancient and medieval times, people might conceivably have spoken about being on the right side of God but the idea of being on “the right side of history” would have been incomprehensible.

TIME OF MONSTERS

What Future for Liberalism?

WALEED ALY

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing mounting accusations that he ignored warnings ahead of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, as a bitter blame game over one of Israel’s worst security failures emerges in the final weeks of the election campaign.

Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar has filed a defamation suit against Netanyahu, accusing him of falsely blaming intelligence officials for the attack despite receiving repeated alerts about security threats.

The Hamas-led assault killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel, with another 251 taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to the local health authorities.

The newly formed NSW Police Armed Response Command will soon be out on the streets, all in the name of social cohesion. What’s the scam?

The scam is that the police have taken over the ANZAC Range at Malabar, a coastal suburb near Sydney Airport, closing off the much-used and loved Maroubra Beach headland walk for weeks on end.

Social cohesion. Police practise their new machine guns at Sydney beach

by Kim Wingerei

For most of the human story, people who looked a lot like us – but with more interesting hair – wandered around in the forests and savannahs rooting up wild crops and hunting meat.

In the relatively recent past, someone domesticated grains and animals and, with food thus secured, the first towns were born. And with them came something never seen before: a large mob of people.

My view from the news chair: the worst of the mob is coming for us

BY Hugh Riminton

Across cultures and continents, these new mobs generally did two things: they established chiefs or kings to lay down the law and organise defence or attack, and they peeled off a priestly class to conjure up gods and explain what they offered and required.

And that’s how it has been for the past 10,000 years.

For every five plates of food served around the world, roughly one ends up in the bin. That adds up to more than a billion tonnes of food a year.

Meanwhile, 645 million people, about one in 13 of the world’s population, went hungry in 2025, according to the UN.

Which countries waste the most food, and how to reduce waste at home

This World Food Day, 645 million people are going hungry, yet more than a billion tonnes of food is wasted annually.

That gap is the focus of World Food Day on October 16, the annual UN observance marking the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945. This year’s theme, “Innovate today, nourish tomorrow”, calls for food systems that feed more people and waste less.

Australia is pouring billions into US and UK submarine industries while both countries struggle to meet their own naval needs. The risk is that AUKUS leaves Australia without the submarines it was promised.

A classic Ponzi scheme relies on early investors putting up hard cash to sustain a structure built on non-existent or undeliverable assets. The scheme survives only as long as capital keeps flowing and no participant calls time on the underlying insolvency.

Peter Briggs

It's lucky I was in the room for Katie Zacharia’s first White House press briefing - because it seems it might also have been her last appearance in the job.

She seemed very nervous and stilted on Tuesday as she read out prepared remarks about how proud she was to be working for President Trump. It made me wonder why she had rushed to hold a briefing - live on camera - on her second day in the job.

I was in the room for Zacharia's first - and maybe only - White House briefing

BY Sarah Smith

Vladimir Zelensky has emerged from the EU summit in Brussels with fresh promises of support but no deal on the additional €70 billion ($79 billion) he is demanding for Ukraine. Instead, European leaders tasked the European Commission with finding ways to meet Kiev’s growing financial needs, leaving the question of who will foot the bill unanswered.

The Ukrainian leader arrived in Brussels following a bitter public falling-out with US President Donald Trump over Washington’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian diesel supplies. His demands have put further pressure on Kiev’s European backers, who are already struggling with soaring energy costs, strained budgets and the prospect of a difficult winter.

Jim Chalmers won’t admit it, and investors cry foul, but a downturn in real estate prices and an upturn in new house construction is good news for Australians looking for a home. Greg Jericho says tax changes are doing their job.

In 2021, Australia’s housing crisis reached a milestone: for the first time in the post WWII era, a majority of Australians aged 30–34 did not own their home.

It’s working! Tax changes edge 25 years of housing failures into reverse

by Greg Jericho

Since then, the situation has further deteriorated. From June 2021 to June 2026, average dwelling prices across the nation rose 35% – well ahead of the 18% increase in private sector wages.

Vladimir Zelensky’s latest interview with the London-based Financial Times deserves careful attention, because it may prove to be a watershed moment as for perhaps the first time, the Ukrainian leader has openly and directly challenged not merely Donald Trump, but the United States itself.

Zelensky has made his choice, now America must make its own

The US-Ukraine rift goes beyond Trump: Washington’s interests increasingly clash with Kiev’s demands and Europe’s ambitions

BY Sergey Poletaev

California Gov. Gavin Newsom ramped up his opposition to a proposed tax on the state’s billionaire residents on Friday by endorsing a competing ballot measure that would both cancel out the billionaire wealth tax initiative and prohibit any new taxes on the ownership of financial assets or other personal property.

Newsom Endorses Ballot Measure That Would Cancel Out Billionaire Tax—and Ban Future Wealth Taxes

AI companies are warning investors that frontier systems could create catastrophic or existential risks. Governments should impose licensing, independent testing and enforceable safeguards before those companies become even harder to restrain.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, is preparing what could be the largest initial public offering in history, raising more than $100 billion, according to The New York Times, at a valuation near $2 trillion.

In Western thought, dating back to the Greeks, there has been a strong tendency toward binary thinking — yes or no, right or wrong, true or false, God and the devil, and left and right in politics. This dichotomous mindset extends into various aspects of Western ideology, including international relations.

Bridging differences in a divided world

By Alan Macfarlane

Therefore, Western nations often adopt a confrontational posture toward others, viewing interactions as competitions where one side must be right and the other wrong.

Historically, this has led to significant conflicts, such as those between Germany and France.