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

Adelaide festival apologises to Randa Abdel-Fattah and invites her to participate in 2027 writers’ week

The new Adelaide festival board has issued a public apology to Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, and has promised she will be invited to Adelaide writers’ week in 2027.Abdel-Fattah immediately accepted the apology, posting on Instagram that it was a vindication “of our collective solidarity and mobilisation against anti-Palestinian racism, bullying and censorship”.She said she was still considering the board’s invitation to appear at the 2027 event.In a statement on Thursday morning, Adelaide Festival Corporation acknowledged they had previously said they would exclude Abdel-Fattah from this year’s event “because it would be culturally insensitive to allow her to participate. We retract that statement”

Churchill’s desk and rare artwork among items donated to UK cultural institutions

Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli’s desk, a painting by Vanessa Bell and a rare artwork by Edgar Degas are among the items of cultural importance saved for the nation this year.The items, worth a total of £59.7m, will be allocated to museums, galleries, libraries and archives around the UK as part of Art Council England’s cultural gifts and acceptance in lieu schemes.Some items were accepted for their outstanding rarity, cultural value or technical skills, while others offer insights into the UK’s history through some of the nation’s most renowned public figures.The Regency mahogany standing desk used by Churchill and Disraeli during their times as prime minister has been allocated to the National Trust’s Hughenden Manor, Disraeli’s former country house

Jimmy Kimmel on ICE shooting of Renee Good: ‘They’re investigating the victims instead of the perpetrator’

Late-night hosts responded to the Trump administration’s escalation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action in Minneapolis and its criminal investigation into the Fed chair, Jerome Powell.Jimmy Kimmel opened Tuesday’s monologue with a summary of “another bananas speech” by Donald Trump – this time at the Detroit Economic Club, where he tried to convince attenders that the protests in Minneapolis over the ICE shooting of Renee Good were “fake”.“They’re not riots, they’re real,” Kimmel responded. “First they want us to believe that we did not see what we all saw happen to Renee Good. Now he wants us to believe that the protests aren’t real

‘A very tough moment’: how Trump has put museums in jeopardy

From Times Square to the Washington Monument, America saw in the new year with a bigger bang than usual, celebrating the fact that 2026 marks the nation’s 250th birthday. Yet as the US looks back, precious repositories of the nation’s history are facing an uncertain future.Museum attendances are down. Budgets are precarious. Cuts in federal funding are taking their toll