Independent Australian news and analysis across politics, business, technology, world affairs and culture
Few industrialists went from state-backed hero to political liability as quickly as Sanjeev Gupta, and few steel towns felt the whiplash as directly as Whyalla, in South Australia. By 20 February 2025, the Whyalla steelworks had been pushed into administration with unpaid debts of more than A$300 million, according to the Guardian (UK daily newspaper). … Read more
Cooper Woods became Australia’s first gold medallist of the 2026 Milan–Cortina Winter Games when he won the men’s moguls final in February 2026. The victory arrived before he had ever won a World Cup event, and it completed a rise that began late, by alpine-standards, in regional New South Wales. Age: 26 · Birthplace: Cooma, … Read more
The ground rarely gives much warning — Sam Darcy was running a routine line when his left knee buckled and he went to ground clutching it with no opponent, no collision, no mercy from the surface. By the time the scans came back, the Western Bulldogs’ 22-year-old key forward was ruled out for the entire … Read more
Nick Nolte has a face that carries every hard year he’s lived, and a filmography too intelligent to be ditched for tabloid hits. The same actor who, according to Britannica biography, earned Academy Award recognition also became the subject of a very public 2000s legal case — and the gap between those two Noltes is … Read more
Clémence Poésy’s best-known role, Fleur Delacour in the Harry Potter films, sounds like the kind of character who might belong to a witch or a Veela. The person behind that role is easier to pin down: born Clémence Guichard, she works under the surname Poésy, and her career moves between French television, bilingual crime drama, … Read more
The man in the white suit with the goatee, the one whose face launched a thousand buckets of chicken, wasn’t born rich and didn’t die rich the way we think of rich today. Colonel Harland Sanders built Kentucky Fried Chicken from a single gas-station kitchen at age 65, sold it for $2 million in 1964, … Read more
Anyone who has tried to write a poem or a song lyric knows the feeling: you have the perfect line, but the next word just won’t cooperate. Rhyme is one of English’s most playful tools—and one of its trickiest. Rhyme definition: identical stressed vowel + following sounds · English vowel sounds (RP): 20 · English … Read more
Kiefer Sutherland has spent four decades playing men who carry the weight of the world, yet his own life has often been the more complicated story. He is the son of two actors and the grandson of a Canadian political legend, and he found stardom as Jack Bauer in 24 — but he has also … Read more
Marianne Faithfull outlived the 1960s that made her famous—surviving addiction, illness, and exile to release 22 solo albums over five decades. She died on 30 January 2025 in London at 78, with a career still being re-examined (The Guardian (UK daily)). Born: 29 December 1946, London · Died: 30 January 2025, London, age 78 · … Read more
There are certain celebrities who feel like family—and Dolly Parton is one of them, known for songs like “Jolene” and “9 to 5,” the big hair, and the even bigger generosity. But for every fan who adores her, there’s a stack of unanswered questions that this biography tackles with sourced answers. Born: January 19, 1946 … Read more