Making news: Cher turns back time, Lizzo pops back to the 1800s as Liz Truss revives the Dark Ages

All the news that's fit to mint.

All the news that's fit to mint.

What's happening in (The) Oz:

🥤 Coke is consciously uncoupling from sugar

🍌 It's getting more expensive to be hot and healthy

🏉 Essendon has a new coach 

🫣 Liz Truss may have to attend another funeral soon

👩🏻‍⚖️ The High Court just got Renaissanced

🔥 Cher turned back time for Balmain 

🎶. Lizzo borrowed a 200-year-old flute from a former president

💣 A political bomb threat in Melbourne

🧙🏻‍♀️ Carrie Bradshaw has reprised her role as a witch

🇷🇺 No one wants to hang out with Putin

♻️ AGL goes green 

Good morning!

Happy Friday/long weekend eve/remember to wind you clocks forward on Sunday.

Inflation is back. In the news anyway. The cost of living across Australia rose to 6.8% throughout the year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in the month of July inflation rose to 7% before dropping down to 6.8% in August.

However fruit and vegetables jumped 18.6% in price from a year ago.

Unlikely heroes

Big soft drink are doing our teeth and waistlines a solid and leaning into Sarah Wilson circa 2010 and quitting sugar.

Companies that own fizzy drinks like Coke and Pepsi have recommitted to reducing sugar content in tipples like full fat Coca Cola to 25%  by 2025, up from the original pledge of 20% the corporations made in 2018. 

"Our sugar reduction pledge signatories are accelerating their sugar reduction target not only because it's the right thing to do, but because they're ahead on their current sugar reduction targets," Australian Beverages Council CEO Geoff Cook told The Oz.

Most of the coolies on shelves now already contain 16% less sugar and have done since January 2015. 

Great Scott

Essendon will be led by new coach Brad Scott in next year's AFL season. 

After short listing 22 others, Scott - a former North Melbourne coach for close to 10 years now working with the AFL in HQ - is their man. 

Game on.

Lizzo made history again

The Emmy and Grammy winning singer, rapper and classically trained flutist is the first person to play the flute owned by play the flute owned by President James Madison.

The instrument is 200 years old.

Lizzo, played it twice this week. Once as apart of her official US tour and also when she was invited by the Congress Library in Washington to peruse the flute collection.

She practiced on the pipe prior to her official show.

A flute @lizzo played in the Main Reading Room Monday (with permission from some lucky researchers who were there!) looks similar to the crystal one she had at her concert, but is actually plexiglass. It is also very rare & was manufactured when the material was first invented.🔊 pic.twitter.com/3i33D9NdQV

— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) September 28, 2022

The flute was made in 1813 by French clock and flutemaker Claude Laurent who gifted the flute to Madison to celebrate his second inauguration, according to the Library of Congress.

Here is the finale.

All rise

Justice Jayne Jagot is our 56th Justice of the High Court and is now the seventh lady appointed to the highest bar in the land.

Justice Jayne Jagot, is the newest addition to the High Court.

Jagot will replace justice Patrick Keane on October 17 as he approaches the mandatory retirement age of 70, which means for the first time the majority of justices on the High Court will be women.

Jagot was appointed to the federal court in 2008. Before that she was a law firm partner, a barrister, a judge of the NSW land and environment court, deputy president of the copyright tribunal and additional judge of the ACT supreme court.

While she doesn't have a huge amount of experience in criminal law, she has spent a chunk of her career working across Native Title cases. 

She is 57 meaning she'll serve for 13 years.

Bombshell (and not the good kind)

Scary times on Spring Street on Thursday when a bomb threat locked down the Victorian Parliament.

An email sent by Clerk of the Parliaments Andrew Young to all MPs shortly before midday stated there had "been an alleged bomb threat to Parliament House". 

"At this stage, the building is in lockdown, so no one can enter or exit the building," the email read.

Victorian Police deemed the building safe after completing a security sweep of the joint just before 12.30pm.

A lot of hot air happened 

But in a good way. As a new gas supply deal has been secured after two months of negotiations between the federal government and Big Gas™️.

Resources Minister Madeleine King said the three major LNG exporters did not sign through "gritted teeth" when they came to an agreement.

It's to ward against what happened during winter when we were told to sit in the dark as gas supplies were running low on the east coast of the country. 

“The natural gas export industry is a complex industry, it is based on tens of billions of dollars of international investments so they have to rightly consider their international partners and long-term foundation contracts. I respect that. Equally, I respect the needs of the Australian people to be able to have a gas supply," King said.

Game, set, Mike Cannon-Brookes

AGL has caved to pressure from its biggest shareholder, Mike Cannon-Brookes and is speeding up it's break up with coal a decade sooner than originally planned when it was announced on Thursday it has accelerated the closure of the Loy Yang A coal-fired power station in Victoria - the biggest energy generator in the state - will be decommissioned in 2035.

King said the lights (probably) won't go out.

“I think there'll be a range of energy sources that will step up into this … AGL's own investment in renewables would be part of that,”King said. 

“There is increasing investment in wind, and solar that will take place over 10 years as they plan the closure of the coal generator. There is not a coal-fired generator in the country without a closing date now. 

“It’s very important for AGL and the relevant state government to work on making sure that plan works so communities continue to have power.”

Keep your hat on Liz

The new UK Prime Minister Liz Truss should keep her mourning attire handy as she may need it again soon. This time for the death of the UK economy.

Poverty looms for about 9 million Britons, power prices have increased by thousands of dollars and her first major call to fix the economy over there appears to have made it worse.

Following the unveiling of the "mini Budget" last week which offered tax cuts to the wealthy (as she campaigned to replace Boris Johnson saying there would be tax cuts), the Bank of England has taken the wheel to control inflation, rising living expenses thanks to the war in Russia, Covid, stagnant wages and the threat of a recession.

Here is a summary of how, what has now been touted as a "kamikaze budget", it's all going for the PM. 

Sweet lord. The PM is literally lost for words on BBC Stoke when questioned about mortgages. pic.twitter.com/BGCv0RfMBR

— Dino Sofos (@dinosofos) September 29, 2022

The national bank buying government debt is going to have huge flow on impacts on many people, including but not limited to - high mortgages, higher import prices and UK institutions like the government, being branded "terrible with money" and copping huge premiums on future borrowing. 

No but seriously, has she turned back time?

Cher. The woman who at 70 boasted about being able to hold a 5-minute plank, stormed the runway at Paris Fashion Week with designer Olivier Rousteing for his new collection for Balmain.

Her ensemble was reminiscent of the outfit she wore in the film clip for her 1989 banger, If I Could Turn Back Time.

Putin has no mates and a dwindling military

As many as 10,000 a day are fleeing Russia thanks to President Putin putting the call out he'll be enacting "partial mobilisation" aka conscription for his war against Ukraine.

Russia has now restricted entry into its border region with Georgia after more than 115,000 men fled to the former Soviet state to escape.

"Officials in the Russian region of North Ossetia, which borders Georgia, ordered a restriction on car travel to the republic on Wednesday. Sergei Menyaylo, head of the region, has put it on high alert," The Times reported.

When Putin made the call he'll be recruiting men off the street to fight, this was the result.

The number of planes from Russia landing in Istanbul and Antalya are breathtaking pic.twitter.com/dnf6YBRTHX

— Nihat Kerem A. (@nka979) September 21, 2022

Somewhere Kim Cattrall is plotting a sassy comment for this

Sarah Jessica Parker, the artist more commonly known as Carrie Bradshaw, has reprised her role in the 1990s cult hit Hocus Pocus. 

In it she plays a ditzy witch that sucks the souls of children for fun, alongside her onscreen "sisters" Bette Midler and Veep's Kathy Najimy.

The sequel drops on Disney+ this weekend.