People have been slow in updating those email signatures to “Department of War”. They’re going to get a proper telling off.

I realise the audience for this would just be "me, and also maybe other foreigners" but I would love to read something on why Brits, who are happy to live in a country where their every movement outside is filmed by CCTV, hate the idea of having ID cards, something plenty of countries happily have

India aims to challenge global shipbuilding giants

Lindsey Halligan, who will prosecute James Comey, is a former Miss Colorado turned insurance lawyer and Trump personal attorney who’s never prosecuted a case in her legal career. More from The Independent:

I'm just going to leave this here... 🤔 www.aei.org/foreign-and-...

India tests a train-launched ballistic missile. economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence...

New argument against AI regulation just dropped. Checkmate, atheists. www.wsj.com/tech/peter-t...

"Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer...known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this...complex. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything..."I'm going to give you marble floors, they're going to give you terrazzo."

The transcript of Trump's UN speech is wild. "All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn't in great shape, she would've fallen. But she's in great shape." www.rev.com/transcripts/...

Wildlife day today. Roos at the dam this morning and this fella at Griffith Nathan campus this arvo.

Morning.

Australia could have a whole new university for $734m a year. But instead our existing universities spend that on consultants. www.afr.com/policy/healt...

Just another day over there.

Hmm

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Another hit to India and to Indians, who generally gets about 70% of H-1B visas every year. New Delhi will not be happy about this. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Of course they do.

Diplomacy 101. Even when your embassy has just been bombed, ensure a bottle of scotch is placed in the minister’s room. From Grant Dooley’s Bomb Season in Jakarta.

ASEAN Sec. Gen. Kao Kim Hourn: The principles of China's Global Governance Initiative (sovereign equality, respect for international law, multilateralism, people-centred development & concrete action) "align closely with ASEAN’s own long-standing commitments." 🤨 #ASEAN #SCO asean.org/wp-content/u...

I guess the next logical step would be to axe the waiver on the S-400 air defence deals with Russia. But this administration isn't logical, of course. And none of this is very helpful. indianexpress.com/article/indi...

👀

Last week, we published our September issue. It includes a special section on how the rise of Asia reshapes international financial affairs, general articles on ghosting diplomacy, pharmaceutical firms' foreign policies and lots more! Read the issue > academic.oup.com/ia/issue/101/5

Not sure I get this argument. There just isn’t a precedent for BJP leader to step down at 75. Vajpayee was PM until he was almost 80. Advani was opposition leader after 80. www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/m...

D and why would anyone think otherwise?

Some eye-popping data on right-wing vs. left-wing violence in the US… from the Cato Institute, no less. www.cato.org/blog/politic...

An interesting test of India-Russia ties. India's Supreme Court has ordered the government to ask Moscow to return to its custody a child allegedly kidnapped with the assistance of Russian diplomats and taken back to Russia. timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-...

Top Trump officials used Charlie Kirk’s death to threaten liberal groups, making unsubstantiated claims about a “domestic terror” movement.

It's darkly amusing that as Musk pitches xAI to investors, businesses, and the Pentagon as some sort of all-knowing synthesis of knowledge, he just openly and publicly manipulates the levers of its flagship product whenever he thinks it's wrong.

The concept of "perquisite maximisation" is new to me, but hits the nail right on the head...

An excellent piece, highlighting the distorting effects of pretending that universities are businesses, without the incentives, discipline and accountability that go with being publicly listed corporations. www.afr.com/work-and-car...

Kash Patel’s FBI puts two pounds of methamphetamine in the incinerator at an animal shelter, sending 14 people to the hospital, and exposing some 75 cats and dogs to the narcotic. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Disrupted, yes. Made a lot of promises, yes. Fulfilled them? Not so much.

Meanwhile, Comedy Central has decided not to re-run the South Park episode “Got a Nut,” which satirized Charlie Kirk—though Kirk himself had said the episode was “hilarious.”

Reason no. 546 why law enforcement officers should be readily recognisable, wearing a uniform.

How do you spell “quid pro quo” in Chinese? Some difficult choices loom for the UK.

We don't yet have any idea what the ideology of the Kirk shooter was. But we do know that the Denver school shooter was a far-right white supremacist. www.denverpost.com/2025/09/11/e...

U.S. and Indian soldiers have been training together in Alaska during the annual Yudh Abhyas exercise, ever as relations have flagged in recent months over the Trump administration's tariff policy and its disputed claim of brokering a Pakistan-India ceasefire. (from @wyattwolson.bsky.social)

Grim.

But will Modi take the call? And under what conditions?

Sensible.

It’s impossible to read this without feeling appalled and deeply moved www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's funny to listen to a news segment calling the SCO an "axis of upheaval" and then hear Wang Yi say that the agenda is to protect the WTO

Meanwhile.

Not now, "supersized, swift-growing, sex-switching" oysters. www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2...

🚨 NEW ISSUE 🚨 🌏 Special section on how the rise of Asia reshapes international financial affairs 🗣️ Articles on ghosting diplomacy, ASEAN and human rights, India's China strategy and more 🤝 Policy paper on China and 'America First' 📚 25 book reviews Read the issue > academic.oup.com/ia/issue/101/5

🇺🇦 Horrific and record attack from Russia overnight on Kyiv. Putin sent 810 Shahed-type drones, 9 Iskander-K cruise missiles, and 4 Iskander-M ballistic missiles. A newborn baby is among Putin's victims.

I know we weren’t going to have a Quad summit in Sept but this hammers the final nail in the coffin, I guess.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

The Jakarta Post mentions some of the symbolism of pink and green in the Indonesian protests: www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/20... Pink for the hijab worn by a now iconic protester and green for the Gojek driver Affan Kurniawan’s jacket - colours cropping up as part of online activism.