You’ll NEVER guess what TLC looks like now! Chilli, 51, and T-Boz, 52, have hardly aged as they make rare TV appearance ahead of national RnB Live tour in Australia
By Mary Mrad For Daily Mail Australia
Published: | Updated:
They skyrocketed to fame in the 1990s and went on to become one of the most iconic R&B groups in history.
And on Friday, Rozonda Chilli Thomas, 51, and Tionne T-Boz Watkins, 52, made a rare TV appearance on Channel Nine’s Today show.
The girl group, who appear to have hardly aged a day in two decades, celebrated their 30-year anniversary.
You’ll NEVER guess what TLC looks like now! Chilli, 51, and T-Boz, 52, have hardly aged as they made a rare TV appearance ahead of a national RnB Live tour in Australia. pictured
‘To still be able to be here, selling out and doing tours and living life the way we are, it’s a blessing,’ T-Boz said.
Chilli also said she loves seeing younger generations singing their songs at concerts.
‘I absolutely love people singing our songs. It touches both of us in a way that is hard to explain to see little ones who weren’t born singing our songs,’ she said.
The girl group, who appear to have hardly aged a day in two decades, celebrated their 30-year anniversary during an appearance on Channel Nine’s Today show
TLC will be performing at the Australian RnB Fridayz Live tour in November.
Thrift Shop hitmaker Macklemore, who performed at the 2017 NRL Grand Final in Sydney, is headlining the event and will perform alongside a bevy of other stars.
The huge line-up also includes international superstars like Ashanti and Shaggy and Australia’s own DJ Havana Brown.
TLC were best known as a trio, however third member Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes tragically died aged 30 in a road collision in 2002
American hip hop trio TLC were formed in Atlanta in 1991, and went on to have a string of hits including Waterfalls, No Scrubs and Unpretty.
TLC were best known as a trio, however third member Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes tragically died aged 30 in a road collision in 2002.
In 2020 – almost 18 years after the loss of the rapper – TLC singer Chilli told how there was ‘never ever a thought’ to replace the late star in the group.
Speaking on GMB, she said: ‘We heard from so many people, in the business, that surprised us more than anything. The fans, not so much.
It was never ever a thought to replace her, no one in TLC can be replaced. Nobody can fill those shoes.’
She went on to explain that while she and T-Boz were adament that there would be no new members, it took some time for others to see their point of view.
Chilli added: ‘It took a while for people to get it. But through touring it keeps her memory of her alive, we never mute out her raps of her or anything.’
TLC will be performing at the Australian RnB Fridayz Live tour in November. Thrift Shop hitmaker Macklemore (pictured) is headlining the event and will perform alongside a bevy of other stars
Not that this portends any kind of ‘victory’, moral or otherwise, for the Shark and his Sheikhs. Their claims of reinvigorating golf with a 54-hole format, shotgun starts and team scoring are fatuous.
The Studio 54 tour will gradually gain acceptance and attention, as all past professional breakaways have done over time, but none ever gained the legitimacy that professionals crave and this won’t either. It is simply a cash grab by the players, no different from billions of dollars’ worth of deals Australia and other high-minded countries do with the Saudi devil. As Kim Hughes says, and once did, they are merely gig economy workers taking a job.
Credit:Illustration: Simon Letch
The Shark’s claims of doing this to ‘grow golf’ will fail every conceivable pub test, unless the players get together and pool their sign-on fees to grow the game themselves. Or do something really good with their fabulous riches such as funding medical research or ending world hunger. Please don’t build any of them a spaceship; now that they’re zillionaires, they’ve got to be better than Jeff Bezos.
The shallowness of the exercise is underscored by the lack of explanation of the ’cause’ it is championing. It bears no resemblance to the World Series Cricket or professional tennis breakaways, which were gambits for compensation to justly reflect the income those performers brought to their sports. The golfers mutter darkly about the control the PGA holds over them, its America-first focus, restrictions of trade and the insufficient provision of courtesy cars and off-course snacks, and Norman himself has a historic grudge against the tour.
But then, Norman was once described as a guy who, when he walks into a zoo, will within five minutes be telling them they’re feeding the elephants the wrong kind of peanut. That’s just Norman.
He and his rebels are without a cause that can be easily communicated to anyone outside the private jet they fly around in. Instead of having a real just cause, the jet seems, with people like Reed, Johnson, Koepka, DeChambeau and Garcia aboard, like a flight of the disgruntled, all gathered in one plane to mutter darkly together. Among that bunch, you wouldn’t want to try claiming the window seat with the most legroom.
Smith breaks the mould, and if he joins the breakaway tour it gains not only competitive credibility with the world No.2, aged 28 and still to reach his prime, but also a strong likeability quotient. In the pub, there are increasing murmurs of ‘Well, wouldn’t you take that kind of money? And don’t our cars run on Saudi oil?’
Australian golf spectators, who have been done no great favors by the American PGA tour, would love to see Smith and Sharkie’s crew on our shores. As the outrage wears off, instead of being consigned to the dustbin of history, the rebel players will be essential to a reunited and reformed world tour. The pub may not like it, but history suggests that that is how it will play out.
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Whoever wins, there will be one sure loser, and that is the Saudis, fools who were easily parted from their money. They won’t notice the millions they have pissed away, but at some point, even in that solipsistic world that exists in Riyadh and London, someone will realize that they have not ‘sportswashed’ their reputation but only drawn global attention to their crimes and abuse.
Even when the golf breakaway gains enough leverage to win compromises from the PGA, the Saudis themselves gain nothing. That’s the puzzling thing about it all. There are understandable and even defensible motivations for every actor in this drama except for the rich dopes writing the checks. It is the world’s most futile vanity project. Smith and the rest will eventually be forgiven and pass the pub test again, but their Sheikhs will never be welcome in any pub, anywhere. Shame they don’t drink.
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The attorney of the Irvine dermatologist accused of poisoning her husband with drain cleaner claimed she was pouring Drano into a cup to fix plumbing issues.
Dr. Yue Emily Yu, a 45-year-old Southern Californian dermatologist, was arrested on Aug. 4 on suspicion of poisoning her radiologist husband, Dr. Jack Chen.
Chen submitted three videos captured by a hidden camera in July that allegedly support his claim that his wife had been poisoning him. Screenshots, which were shared with news outlets, show Yu pouring Drano brand drain cleaner into a cup.
However, David Wohl, Yu’s attorney, claimed that she was using Drano for their kitchen’s plumbing issues. Wohl said Yu would pour the drain cleaner into a cup to avoid splashing.
More from NextShark: California poll: Most believe UC, CSU colleges unaffordable; 4-year degree not the only way to succeed
“The idea that my client, who is a 45-year-old well-respected dermatologist in Orange County, would destroy her life, destroy her children’s lives and try to kill her husband is just completely absurd and untrue — and for that matter defamatory ,” Wohl told CBSNews.
“Anytime she poured Drano into a cup it was completely empty,” Wohl added. “It was for facilitating use in the sink or any other part of the house that was clogged as far as the drainage goes, but she never poured any Drano or any chemical into any drink that her husband used or was drinking ever. That’s completely untrue.”
Steven Hittelman, Chen’s lawyer, disputed Wohl’s claim. He said that Yu can be seen pouring Drano into Chen’s lemonade once he leaves the room in the videos captured by a hidden camera.
More from NextShark: Open Society Foundations pledges over $40 million in grants to Asian, Arab, Muslim communities
The videos have not been released to news outlets.
Chen told police that he had been observing a chemical taste in his lemonade. Hittelman said that his client of him was diagnosed with physical issues, including gastritis, stomach ulcers and an inflammation of the esophagus, in March and April.
Yu, who has not been charged, was released on Aug. 5 after posting her bond of $30,000. Chen previously filed for an emergency restraining order, claiming that he and their two children are victims of physical and emotional abuse. He also filed for divorce and is seeking sole custody of their children.
More from NextShark: Man detained for 9 days by Chinese police for sharing ‘insulting’ meme of dog wearing a police hat
“He was desperate to have reasons to gain custody of the children,” Wohl told CBS News. “We completely believe that these claims he made are all part and parcel of that effort.”
Featured Image via CBS Los Angeles
More from NextShark: Korean American Artist Punched in the Face in NYC
As for the cyclical-versus-structural distinction, it’s relevant because, as Lowe never tires of reminding us, monetary policy is capable of dealing only with cyclical problems. Its role is to smooth the ups and downs in demand as the economy moves through the business cycle.
But here’s the problem:
In particular, employees and their unions now have less power to insist on wage rises sufficient to keep up with price rises than they did when last we had a big inflation problem. But big business now has more power to raise its prices.
Credit:Illustration: Matt Davidson
Partly because globalization has moved much manufacturing from the high-wage advanced economies to China and other low-wage economies, and partly because of the decentralization and deregulation of wage-fixing and the decline in union membership, most workers pretty much have to accept whatever inadequate pay rise their chief executive (or premier) chooses to give them.
This is why all the concern about inflation expectations becoming “unanchored” is so silly. Businesses have the power to act on their expectations of higher inflation, but workers no longer do.
This is why the rate of unemployment can fall far below what economists, using data going back decades, estimate to be the NAIRU – “non-accelerating-inflation” rate of unemployment – without wage inflation accelerating.
In concentrated markets, firms can also easily see the effects on their few competitors, and they can watch and follow each other’s behaviour. They are confident that none will break ranks on price rises because there are benefits to be had by all.
When thinking about inflation, macroeconomists – including Lowe, I suspect – often assume our markets are competitive, and that the markets for all goods and services are equally competitive.
But as Rod Sims, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and now a professor at the Australian National University, has written, markets in Australia are generally far from strongly competitive.
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“Many sectors … are dominated by just a few firms – think beer, groceries, energy and telecommunications retailing, resources, elements of the digital economy, banking and many others,” Sims says.
“This means the dominant firms have some degree of market power. That is, they can set prices at higher levels knowing competitors are unlikely to undercut them and take market share from them.
“When there is high inflation, dominant firms often realize they can increase prices above any cost rises because consumers will be more accepting of this. They will often do this subtly over time.”
In concentrated markets, firms can also easily see the effects on their few competitors, and they can watch and follow each other’s behaviour. They are confident that none will break ranks on price rises because there are benefits to be had by all.
Firms with market and pricing power are also less likely to restrain prices in response to interest rate rises, Sims says. This is because it’s not competition, but dominant-firm behaviour, that’s driving pricing decisions.
As well, market power is usually associated with reduced production capacity. How often do we see reductions in combined capacity following a merger of two competitors? When demand increases, there’s then less capacity available to serve it, so we see prices rise more than they otherwise would have.
Interest rates can only do so much to fight against inflation. Credit:Louie Douvis
What all this means is that it may take longer for interest rates to work to slow inflation, so patience may be needed rather than further increases. And, Sims says, there could be a role for publicly exposing high margins, to put pressure on to reduce them.
Another point he makes is this inflation owes much to price shocks in the key, highly regulated gas and electricity industries. In these cases, the best answer is to make their regulations more anti-inflationary, not just jack up interest rates further.
The micro-economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating government have made our economy much less inflation-prone than it was in the days when inflation was last a major problem.
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Meanwhile, however, we’ve allowed the pricing power of big firms to grow as successive governments of both colors have resisted pressure from people like Sims to tighten our merger law, and state governments have maximized the sale price of their electricity businesses by selling them to business interests intent on turning the national electricity market into a three-firm vertically integrated oligopoly. Well done, guys.
Ross Gittins is the economics editor
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How is a physical access attack conducted? You’d see one happen — right?
“An attacker could walk into an organization, plug a flash drive with an advanced strain of ransomware into a computer and then walk around pretending to be a phone repairman or someone working with pest control,” said Bryson Payne, author of Go H*ck Yourself.
Such attacks are not always as easy to detect as one might think — nor as easy to defend against. Organizations need to converge cybersecurity and physical security to fully protect their assets. But, before trying to improve the relationship between the two, it’s important to understand how weak physical security affects cybersecurity and puts an organization’s sensitive data at risk.
Physical security, as the name suggests, is the protection of networks, systems or data from physical actions or events. The threat of physical cybersecurity attacks has increased with remote and hybrid work models that have employees working outside the office and on noncompany-sanctioned devices and networks.
“An employee could be working on their laptop in a coffee shop, and a threat actor could be listening for unencrypted traffic on the free Wi-Fi,” said Payne, a professor and founding director of the Center for Cyber Operations Education (now the Institute for Cyber Operations) at the University of North Georgia. “The employee could get up to order another coffee, and the hacker could sit down at the employee’s computer and, in five seconds, gain access to saved passwords on the device’s browser.”
To better help readers understand the dangers of physical cybersecurity attacks, Payne teaches readers how to hack their own devices in his book. These ethical hacker techniques give readers greater insight into cybersecurity and enable them to better protect themselves from threat actors.
In this excerpt from Chapter 2, “Physical Access Hacks,” Payne explains how to conduct a Sticky Keys hack. This walkthrough demonstrates a hack that involves both cybersecurity and physical security vulnerabilities.
Physical access hacks may sound scary because they can be used maliciously by attackers on stolen or unattended computers. However, they also have constructive applications. Ethical hackers at home and at IT help desks use techniques like the Sticky Keys hack or the Mac root hack to recover files that would otherwise be lost due to a forgotten password. If you have an old computer in the garage or attic with family photos or other important documents that you can’t access because no one remembers the computer’s password, these hacks can help.
Warning: do not perform either of these hacks on your main computer, because they could leave your machine vulnerable to attack. You can usually find an old desktop or laptop if you ask around. Get creative, but stay ethical; be sure to get the owner’s permission before trying out these hacks on someone else’s computer. If you can’t find an extra Windows or Mac computer to practice on, you can still read this chapter to understand the dangers of physical access attacks.
The Sticky Keys Hack
Sticky Keys is a Windows feature that makes it easier to issue certain keyboard commands, like CTRL-C to copy or CTRL-V to paste, by allowing you to press the keys one after another instead of all at once. Sticky Keys is triggered by pressing SHIFT five times and can even be turned on from the Windows login screen, before a username or password has been entered.
For this hack, we’ll replace the Sticky Keys program file with another file, cmd.exe. That way, instead of launching the usual Sticky Keys assistant, pressing SHIFT five times will launch a command prompt. This is a text-based program that lets us enter commands directly into Windows. By launching a command prompt at the login screen (see Figure 2-1), you’ll be able to add a new username and password, give yourself administrator-level access to the computer, and access the computer’s files, all without knowing the login information on that computer!
Since Windows 10 computers that have been updated in 2019 or later are safe from the Sticky Keys hack, you’ll need an older Windows computer to try out the hack for yourself. You’ll also need a Windows 10 installation disc or USB drive. To create one, follow the instructions in Appendix A.
Figure 2-1: The Sticky Keys hack brings up a command prompt window instead of the Sticky Keys assistant.
Booting from a Windows 10 Installation Disc
To replace the Sticky Keys program with the command prompt program, we need to access the hard drive that contains those program files using a Windows 10 installation disc or USB drive. Once you’ve created an installation disc, as described in Appendix A, insert the disc and then restart the computer.
We need to tell the computer to load the operating system (OS) from the disk or USB drive instead of from the computer’s hard drive. To do this, we’ll access either the boot menu or the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), which contains basic settings that control your computer when it starts up. Different PC manufacturers and different versions of Windows cause the instructions to vary a bit, but the following steps combined with a little web searching will get you into most older Windows computers:
On Windows computers, you press a special key to access the boot menu or BIOS. If your startup screen doesn’t show you which key to press just before the Windows startup logo appears, reboot your computer and quickly press ESC, DELETE, F8, F9, F10, F11, or F12 right as it begins to start up. Search online for “boot menu” and the specific make and model of your computer to find the right key.
If the boot menu appears, select the Boot from DVD or Boot from USB option to boot from the Windows installation disc you inserted, then move on to step 5.
If the boot menu doesn’t appear after a few restarts, try entering the BIOS menu instead: turn the computer off and on again, and press DELETE, F2, F9, F10, F12, or ESC. Search online for “BIOS” and your computer model to find the right key.
Once you’re inside the BIOS, find the boot options and change the order or priority of your boot devices (often by using your arrow keys) to make the USB or DVD the top option. Then save the changes and exit the BIOS.
Reboot the computer again. You should briefly see the message Press any key to boot from CD or DVD or Press any key to boot from USB device. Press any key (such as the spacebar) immediately to boot from your DVD or USB.
When the Windows installation disc starts up, click Next>Repair your computer>Troubleshoot>Command Prompt, as shown in Figure 2-2. The menu order or the option names might look different, but look for the Windows command prompt.
Warning:make sure you don’t install Windows 10 — that would wipe out all the files from the PC you’re trying to recover!
Figure 2-2: Use the Windows installation disc to access the command prompt.
Once you’ve reached the Windows command prompt (usually a black, text-based window), type c: and press ENTER to change to the C: drive, as shown here:
X:> c:
Enter the command say to see a list of files and folders on the C: drive. Look for a folder called Windows (it will be marked , short for directory).
C:> dir Volume in drive C is Windows 10 Volume Serial Number is B4EF-FAC7 Directory of C: --snip-- 03/15/2018 02:51 AM <DIR> Users 05/19/2019 10:09 AM <DIR> Windows *1 --snip--
This folder (*1) contains the operating system files, including the command prompt application and the Sticky Keys program file that we need to swap out to perform this hack.
If there’s no Windows directory on the C: drive, try the same process in the D: drive by entering D: and then say. If the D: drive doesn’t have the Windows directory either, keep going through the alphabet (E:, F:, G:, and so on) until you find a drive containing Windows in its listing.
Gaining Administrator-Level Access
Now to replace the sethc.exe Sticky Keys program with the cmd.exe command prompt program. Then we’ll be able to create a new administrator account on the computer.
Enter the following three commands:
C:> cd WindowsSystem32 C:WindowsSystem32> copy sethc.exe sethc.bak C:WindowsSystem32>copy cmd.exe sethc.exe
These commands enter the directory where we can find both sethc.exe and cmd.exe, create a backup copy of the Sticky Keys program, and replace the original Sticky Keys program file with a copy of the command prompt program file. This way, whenever the computer runs sethc.exeit will open a command prompt window in place of the Sticky Keys program.
Figure 2-3: Opening a command prompt window
After the third command, Windows will ask you if you want to overwrite exe. Enter Y to proceed.
Remove the Windows 10 installation DVD or USB and reboot the computer.
When the PC boots to the login screen, press SHIFT five times. Instead of the usual Sticky Keys program, you should see a command prompt window pop up in front of the login screen, as shown in Figure 2-3.
Enter the following two commands into the command prompt window:
C:WindowsSystem32> net user ironman Jarvis /add C:WindowsSystem32> net localgroup administrators ironman /add
The first command adds a user account named Hombre de Hierro with the password Jarvis to the Windows computer. The second command adds the Hombre de Hierro user to the list of local administrators. This means that when we log in as Hombre de Hierrowe’ll have administrator-level access to all the files on the computer.
Figure 2-4: We’ve successfully added a user named ironman as an administrator on this computer.
When you see a success message like the one in Figure 2-4, close the command prompt.
In addition to creating a new user account, you can also reset the password of an existing user from the command prompt window by entering net user followed by the existing username and the new password you want to set — for example, net user bryson Thisisyournewpassword!. However, you should never reset another person’s password without their permission and the permission of the computer’s owner.
Figure 2-5: You can now use the ironman user to log in to this Windows PC
Now You’re an Administrator. Log In!
Congratulations! You now have access to the machine as an administrator. Go ahead and log in. Enter .Hombre de Hierro as the username (or select Hombre de Hierro from the list of accounts, as shown in Figure 2-5). The dot and backslash before ironman tell Windows the account is local to the computer and not stored on a network server. After entering the username, enter the password, Jarvis.
Figure 2-6: As an administrator-level user, you can see all users’ files, not just your own.
Since we made the Hombre de Hierro user a member of the local administrators group, you should have administrator-level access to there files and folders, including all users and documents in C:Usersas shown in Figure 2-6.
When you click into another user’s folder for the first time, you’ll see a pop-up message saying you need permission to open another user’s files, as shown in Figure 2-7. Since you’re an administrator, click Continue to grant yourself permanent access!
The Sticky Keys hack works only on Windows machines. However, computers running macOS are vulnerable to physical access hacks as well.
Figure 2-7: Administrators can give themselves permission to access anyone’s files on the same computer.
Bryson Payne
About the author Bryson Payne is an award-winning cyber coach, author, TEDx speaker and founding director of the Center for Cyber Operations Education(now the Institute for Cyber Operations) at the University of North Georgia (UNG.) He is a tenured professor of computer science at UNG, where he has taught aspiring coders and cyber professionals. In 2017, I have received the University System of Georgia Chancellor’s Service Excellence Leader of the Year Award. He has also been awarded the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Public Service medal from US Army Cadet Command and the Order of Thor medal from the Military Cyber Professionals Association. Payne holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia State University. He is also the author of Teach Your Kids to Code and Learn Java the Easy Waypublished by No Starch Press.
Somewhere between the carpaccio of kingfish and the squid-ink spaghetti, Emma Thompson tucks into the female orgasm.
“Women have to perform orgasms all the time,” she says. “Maybe you don’t want to make loud noises and thrash about like a f—ing electric eel.”
Her mother, and mine and yours, might have advised against discussing such matters at the dining table, but that’s just because “we’re ashamed of it, we’re deeply disrespectful about sex”, she insists.
“Here we are having a meal, and we’ll talk about the food until the kingdom come, but we don’t talk about sex, or at least we don’t talk about pleasure. And I feel it’s a big mistake to cut it so entirely out of our life. I think it leads to a great deal of unhappiness, mental illness, and indeed is part of the problem of violence.”
Thompson first came to Australia in the early 1980s with the Cambridge Footlights comedy revue, and her husband briefly went to school in Sydney, but this is her first visit to Melbourne. “I love it here,” she says.Credit:Justin McManus
Forthright as she is, I suspect not every meal with Dame Emma Thompson, the first and, so far, the only person to win Oscars for both acting and writing, gets so fleshy so fast. And much as I might like to think it owes something to my, ahem, stimulating company, in truth it’s been the topic du jour for the past week and a half, as she has toured the country, done endless media interviews and answered a vast range of questions at Q&A screenings to support her new film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
Thompson doesn’t need to traipse across the world to spruk an English indie comedy-drama, no matter how charming it is. She’s here because she thinks its Australian director, Sophie Hyde (52 Tuesdays, AnimalsSBSseries The Hunting), is an “extraordinary” talent who handled the intimate and very challenging material with great finesse.
“This film could have been so many different things, but I think the reason it’s doing what it’s doing is because of Sophie. She’s just so delicate.”
Thompson plays Nancy in Big Leoa widowed former teacher of religious education who hires a male escort to help tackle a long-standing regret: she’s never had an orgasm.
In fact, it’s just one of the many sex-related things she didn’t experience in her otherwise happy-enough marriage. But with the help of Leo (young Irish actor Daryl McCormack), she sets about tackling the list with a good deal of “will this be on the exam Miss” gusto. Tick it off, move along.
Gnocchi with ragu of pork neck, fennel seeds and leek.Credit:Justin McManus
What she’s really been missing, though, is a sense of ease in her own skin, and that’s where Hyde and screenwriter Katy Brand’s body- and sex-positive arc is leading her, literally. The film ends with the 63-year-old Thompson fully naked, appraising her own body de ella with a hard-won sense of acceptance and, yes, pleasure.
“I felt like I knew exactly who she was,” says Thompson of Nancy. “I think she’s everywhere. She’s in every woman. ”
Is she even in you?
“Nope. I couldn’t do it if it was me. Nancy is so different to me.”
The exciting thing about acting, she says, “is playing someone who’s not like you at all. Sometimes there’s a little bit of cross-hatching, a little bit of a palimpsest, but generally the thrill is to get as far away from yourself as possible.”
Nancy is a pleaser, she says. The real Emma Thompson has more in common with the talk show host she played in the 2019 comedy late night, written by Mindy Kaling. “Independent, interested, a bit irritable, did n’t suffer fools, she said what she meant.”
Thompson with her Leo Grande co-star Daryl McCormack in Sydney last week.Credit:Oscar Coleman
I was told by her publicist that Thompson is exactly as you’d expect, and it’s true. She’s warm, smart, fierce, funny. The discreet-but-unmissable glances from other diners reinforce the fact she’s also a bit of a legend, but her down-to-earth manner de ella, and her earthy sense of humor de ella, make it easy to forget that.
Our lunch date is Thompson’s last interview of an eight-day Australian tour, with just the evening’s screening to follow, and she’s ready to unwind. “I wish I didn’t have to work tonight,” she says as the first sip of a very easy-to-drink drink slides down. “I’d be here for hours.”
Even so, there’s a brief moment when I fear I’ve made a terrible mistake in booking Caterina’s for lunch. It’s not that this gorgeous cellar restaurant in the heart of Melbourne’s legal district isn’t classy enough. It’s just that it specializes in Venetian cuisine – and Thompson and her actor husband Greg Wise have an apartment in Venice, so I fear I’ve accidentally invited her on a busman’s holiday.
But the second she takes her first bite of the baccala – a creamy codfish spread atop a perfectly toasted oval of bread – any chance of that evaporates. “Oh my God, that’s so good,” she says, her whole face squinting in delight. “They’ve got that so right. That’s made me very happy.”
Kingfish Carpaccio with cream, blood orange, citrus oil and radish.Credit:Justin McManus
Thompson doesn’t like fussiness, but she does love food. My entree of gnocchi with a white ragu of pork neck, fennel and leek has her reaching over for a forkful, then later another spoonful, and as our host weaves her hospo magic over us, it’s clear there are two stars in the room. “She’s amazing, Caterina. She she’s super cool, ”Thompson observes. “Ella She’s someone who can really do this, who knows food and knows how to inhabit it but also make it feel light-hearted.”
Thompson’s daughter Gaia is 22 and studying drama, but she’s also a very good cook. “And I keep saying, ‘I know you like acting, but, you know, perhaps running a restaurant can be as exciting’. There’s something very theatrical about restaurants; when you get it right, you feel so happy and lucky to be in it.”
billCredit:Karl Quinn
For sure. But there’s something theatrical about … well, the theater and film and television too, right?
“Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I love my job so much, I’m so lucky to keep being given opportunities to do it. And I’m just about to go back and do theater.”
She’s been working on the stage musical adaptation of her 2005 film Nanny McPhee for about five years now, and can finally see what looks like the finishing line. “I think it’s about 18 months away,” she says. “I’ve done many, many drafts. The composer, Gary Clark, has written many, many songs.”
She gave him just two musical reference points: English cabaret rock band The Tiger Lillies and Tom Waits’ album SwordfishTrombones. “A sort of steampunk Victoriana, that’s what we’re going for,” she says. “Something really muscular and dark and a little bit sinister in that way that makes children very happy.”
Thompson has been developing Nanny McPhee for the stage for about five years, and hopes it will be ready in another 18 months.
With acting credits in more than 90 films and series and writing credits on seven movies – including the Oscar-winning Sense and Sensitivity, Nanny McPhee and its sequel, Bridget Jones’s Baby and Last Christmas – I wonder what it is that makes her most happy, career-wise.
“Acting is more fun,” she says. “You get energy from other people, whereas [with] writing you’re on your own. But I would say my favorites are the ones I’ve written. Because if you’ve started with a blank piece of paper and you’ve ended up in the Curzon [an English cinema chain] it’s just such a journey.
“You can’t really fathom it, but the satisfaction, the sense of purpose for starters, and then disbelief when it actually happens, is so enormous that the pleasure is out of all proportion to any other experience.”
Better than sex even?
“Different,” she says. “It lasts longer. I’m sure there’s other very good gags to be had out of this analogy, but right now I’m pissed, so I’m struggling to think of them.”
As much as it’s the sex, and her nudity, that have grabbed the headlines, Big Leo isn’t just about that. “It’s mostly words,” she says. “The really confronting thing was doing 12 to 15 pages of dialogue a day, so getting your kit off and standing in front of a mirror is quite easy after that.”
The nude scene was filmed at the end of the rapid-fire 19-day shoot, and she concedes it was quite confronting, “because I had made a very conscious decision to use my own body as it is, rather than preparing it in any way to make it fit an expectation that people might have”.
That fits both with the theme of the movie and with her take on the beauty myth, which she sees, per Naomi Wolf, as an oppressive tool that emerged in response to women’s emancipation. “As soon as women got the vote and started to earn money, everyone told them they should be smaller, thinner, take up less space,” she says. “Why not spend all your time and energy thinking about what’s wrong with your body, and spending money on ways to alter it?”
Big Leo won’t upend that construct on its own, but it might help a few people think differently about their bodies, about sex, and indeed about sex work. It might open up a space in which some people might be able to acknowledge that being a parent isn’t always the greatest gift, that fear is such a stifling force, that marriage can be hard work but still worthwhile.
Nancy doesn’t much like her body at the start of her four meetings with sex worker Leo Grande, but by the end she is able to accept and even appreciate it in its full naked glory.
“I always think that phrase ‘failed marriage’ is so cruel,” says Thompson, whose first to Kenneth Branagh lasted six years but whose second, to Greg Wise, is 27 years and counting. “We seem to think of it as some kind of achievable state, which is a bit unfair. Relationships have their time, don’t they, and then they come to an end.”
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So, too, do lunches, and after submitting cheerily to a few selfies she’s off for a post-prandial nap before the evening’s screening. After a couple of days to herself, she it’ll be back to England and whatever comes next.
Goodbye and good luck to you, Emma Thompson. It’s been a pleasure – not faking.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is in cinemas since August 18.
Email the author at [email protected], or follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin.
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The Bend owner Sam Shahin has declared permanent facilities critical to the future of Australian motorsport amid the return of the Adelaide 500.
The Bend Motorsport Park is, for now, Australia’s newest permanent race track, and had briefly been the only South Australian venue on the Supercars calendar.
That changes this year with the return of the Valo Adelaide 500 in December, after the high-profile street circuit event had been unceremoniously axed by the previous state government.
Of course, its sudden dumping and almost as sudden comeback demonstrates that such events exist at the whims of governments.
On the other hand, while those at permanent circuits often enjoy government support also, they are at least underpinned by long-term infrastructure.
Even some of that is under threat, however, with Wakefield Park on life support following a recent New South Wales court decision, and Melbourne’s Sandown teetering on the edge of closure to make way for a residential development.
Queensland will soon enjoy another race track, however, with Townsville’s DriveIt NQ nearing completion.
“I think the broader motorsport public has to be entirely satisfied that permanent facilities like The Bend are making a contribution to promoting and growing the motorsport base in Australia, and I firmly believe that,” Shahin told Speedcafe.com.
“I absolutely believe that permanent facilities are absolutely critical to the sustainability of motorsport in Australia.
“At some point, government support across the country will wane for big motorsport events and the addiction on government support has to remain in the forefront of everybody in motorsport.
“We have to build models that are sustainable in the long-term, and this is the premise that The Bend operates on.
“I’ve built a business and a facility that has to stand on its own two feet and has to participate at the highest level of any discipline of motorsport.
“But, it’s like any relationship, whether it’s a business or a personal one; the best relationships work when each party wants the relationship to be more successful than the other [does].
“That’s the magic of sustainable, long-term relationships.”
The Bend Motorsport Park
Despite that commentary, Shahin is supportive of the move to bring back the Adelaide 500, citing its economic contribution to the state of South Australia and the exposure it attracts for the capital.
He furthermore believes it can coexist with his event, as it had done in the years after The Bend opened in 2018.
“Personally, I thought it was a mistake to let the Adelaide 500 go,” said the Executive Director of the Peregrine Corporation, the state’s largest private employer and owner also of South Australia’s Mallala Motor Sport Park.
“It was a terrific event that, like most large events, just shines the torch at the city of Adelaide and the state of South Australia for a week, and I think there aren’t many events that bring that contribution to a state economy.
“Despite declining patronage, it still was one of the best attended events in the country so, personally, I’m very pleased that the event is back, and I think it can very happily live side by side with The Bend Supercars event.
“The precedent is there, not just in South Australia, but across in other states as well.
“Remember, South Australia hosted Supercars at The Bend, as well as the Adelaide 500 in 2018 and 2019 – pre-COVID – and very successfully.
“Street circuits bring on a different market to permanent circuits.
“There is slight overlap at the corporate end of the market, but I think that they can happily coexist.
“There are multiple events across most other states that I think South Australia can happily provide for two events on the calendar.
The Adelaide 500 is scheduled for December 1-4, while Shahin is confident that The Bend will again feature on the Repco Supercars Championship calendar in 2023.
South Australia’s volunteer firefighters are already attending a growing number of medical emergencies and are not trained to deal with the trauma, according to the head of the Country Fire Service (CFS).
Key points:
Taskforce to examine firefighter assistance during medical call-outs
CFS chief Mark Jones has raised concerns about the plan
Volunteers attended 1,000 medical emergencies in 12 months
CFS chief officer Mark Jones has raised concerns about a state government probe into whether firefighters should attend more medical call-outs as the SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) remains under increasing pressure.
Premier Peter Malinauskas on Thursday launched a taskforce to look into the concept, after a 47-year-old father-of-two died in Plympton while waiting 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.
Mr Jones is not on the panel, however, Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) chief Michael Morgan and South Australia Ambulance Service (SAAS) boss Robert Elliott will be part of the taskforce, along with Health Minister Chris Picton and union representatives.
“I lead a government that is open to ideas about what we can do to relieve pressure [in] any way we can,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“One such measure that is being proposed is drawing on the resources of the MFS to potentially respond in ways that are safe — all options are on the table.”
He said the taskforce had been established “in haste”, but other measures the government wanted to introduce — such as employing more paramedics — would take time.
Mr Malinauskas said on Friday morning that the idea was “worthy of investigation” and would be looked at “thoughtfully and safely”.
“You don’t want to fix one problem and create another, particularly with respect to the work the MFS already do,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
CFS attend 1,000 medical emergencies
Mr Jones said his firefighters were already doing that, attending about 1,000 medical incidents in the past year and 14 this week.
“They attend these with no specialist medical training and no additional mental health support,” he said.
“Additionally, these incidents often happen in small communities, where the volunteers are turning up to an incident where they know the casualty.”
CFS chief officer Mark Jones has raised concerns.(ABCNews)
He said the volunteers responding to medical situations were doing it “outside the scope of their standard duties, in their own time, without pay and without the same support as paramedics.”
“Our volunteers are routinely called upon to attend traumatic events beyond the scope of their firefighting duties and these jobs fall outside of most people’s expectations when they join the service,” he said.
“I have seen the number of SAAS-assist jobs that our volunteers are expected to attend grow significantly.
“This is something that has occurred without any formal agreement or additional support for our volunteers doing an already tough job.”
Mr Jones said volunteers were trained in first aid but there was a “large difference” between providing CPR and addressing the underlying clinical health issues of a patient.
Mr Malinauskas acknowledged that the CFS “have always played an extraordinarily broad role in their communities”.
“The way the CFS responds to call-outs in regional areas very much depends on the other services that are already in place in those other areas,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide on Friday morning.
“And to be clear our CFS officers attend a lot more than fires.
“In some places where we don’t have a SES, the CFS is responding to car accidents, to fires, and other emergencies on a frequent basis.
“So they already do this work and their caseload continues to grow, and that’s why we’ve got to keep an eye on the volunteer base.”
In a statement, an SAAS spokeswoman said the service already worked closely with fire services and police to support South Australians during a medical emergency.
“We are excited about the opportunity to work further with the SA Metropolitan Fire Service on a co-response model for the community here in [South Australia]and hope to grow the program over time,” she said.
“Any initiative that supports early CPR and early defibrillation is potentially life-saving.”
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming is highlighting her role as the top Republican on the Jan. 6 committee in a closing ad for her all but doomed re-election campaign, as polls show her badly trailing her Trump-backed opponent, Harriet Hageman, just five days before the primary.
But the nearly two-and-a-half-minute ad released online Thursday appeared aimed as much at a national audience as at the Republican primary voters in Wyoming who will decide the fate of Ms. Cheney, the state’s lone member of the House.
“The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,” Ms. Cheney said as the ad opens. “It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”
Ms. Cheney, who has been vilified by former President Donald J. Trump and many of his supporters, defended the work of the special House committee that is investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol and efforts by Mr. Trump to overturn the 2020 election results .
Ms. Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the Jan. 6 committee, has acknowledged her political peril. A poll released on Thursday by the University of Wyoming’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center showed Ms. Cheney trailing Ms. Hageman by nearly 30 points.
More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm Elections
She is the last of the 10 House Republicans who voted for Mr. Trump’s impeachment to stand before voters in a primary this year. Three have lost: Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Peter Meijer of Michigan. Two others survived their primaries, and four declined to seek another term.
Titled “The Great Task,” the ad is being promoted on social media, but is not appearing on television, according to Jeremy Adler, a campaign spokesman for Ms. Cheney.
In the ad, Ms. Cheney described Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud as his legacy and said that the nation has an obligation to hold those responsible for fomenting violence.
“History has shown us over and over again how these types of poisonous lies destroy free nations,” Ms. Cheney said of those insisting that Mr. Trump won the election. “No one who understands our nation’s laws, no one with an honest, honorable, genuine commitment to our Constitution would say that. It is a cancer that threatens our great republic.”
Ms. Cheney did not mention Ms. Hageman by name in her ad, but drew a comparison between her opponents in Wyoming and election-denying candidates across the nation. Last week, Ms. Hageman repeated Mr. Trump’s false claim that the election was rigged.
Tim Murtaugh, an adviser for Ms. Hageman’s campaign, accused Ms. Cheney of abandoning Wyoming. “This video is basically an audition tape for CNN or MSNBC,” he said.
Ms. Cheney’s resignation of Mr. Trump — and her vote to impeach him last year — have already come at a political price. The Wyoming Republican Party censored her in February 2021, a month after Ms. Cheney’s impeachment vote. House Republicans later ousted Ms. Cheney as the party’s No. 3 leader in the chamber, replacing her with Representative Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist from New York.
As the ad closed, Ms. Cheney said that she would always seek to preserve peaceful transitions of power, “not violent confrontations, intimidation, and thuggery,” and added, “where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves. ”
High-volume Australian-built vehicles may soon be back on the menu thanks to a new startup aiming to introduce a new electric ute to the market.
Roev (pronounced ‘rove’) wants its finished product on the market by around 2026, having worked on the ute for the past three years.
A design sketch of the ute shows a sleek single-cab design with a cab-chassis tray over the back with a bulging bonnet, LED headlights and slim glasshouse. It will likely feature Roev’s in-house electricals, which it already uses to convert Ford Rangers and Toyota Hiluxes.
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At the moment, those use a single electric motor powering both 4×2 and 4×4 variants, with either a 70kWh or 100kWh (lithium-iron phosphate) battery pack available. The larger will offer up to 300km of range, something Roev believes will be suitable for many fleets. Four-wheel drive vehicles will retain their standard transfer case while the transmission will be a simple reduction gear.
READMORE: * Hybrid for Hilux before Ranger? * Next-gen Triton to be the first major ute with a PHEV option * Kia commits to two all-electric utes by 2027 * Ford’s fork in the road: EV, internal combustion are split
The electrical system will initially be 400 volts – the standard used in most EVs – and will support DC fast-charging capability. Roev will pull its batteries from overseas suppliers at first, before eventually using Australian-made batteries.
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Roev wants to convert Hiluxes and Rangers while he readies his own ute.
It will also support bi-directional charging, helped by Roev’s history in software.
“EV utes are a great start, but the biggest impact will come from running them efficiently with renewable energy and the ability to store and redistribute that energy from their batteries,” CEO Noah Wasmer, a former executive with software giant Atlassian told carsales.
“We see the future of vehicle depots as DC micro-grids, and by testing our V2G technology and EV management software, we can show that it can be done without impacting the driving performance or range requirements for electric vehicles.”
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Roev’s electric ute will be able to feed energy back into houses or the grid itself.
According to the publication, Roev isn’t currently interested in producing hundreds of thousands of vehicles just yet. Instead, it wants to build “micro-factories” that operate profitably on as few as 10,000 vehicles annually.
“If you told me we had such amazing success that we need to build millions of vehicles I’ll tell you that we’re not architected right to build millions of vehicles,” said Wasmer.
Roev isn’t ready to talk pricing or availability just yet, aside from that 2026 goal. There’s also a good chance the specifications will change by the time Roev is ready for production.
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Bryson Payne
