The legendary daredevil, best known for his record-breaking jump from the stratosphere, lost control of his paraglider and crashed into a hotel pool.
Renowned extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, most famous for jumping from a record 39 kilometres (24 miles) at the edge of space in the 2012 Red Bull Stratos project, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy on Thursday.
The 56-year-old Austrian crashed his paraglider in Porto Sant’Elpidio, situated on the Italian Adriatic coast, after losing control and plunged into a wooden structure next to a swimming pool of the Le Mimose Family Camping Village, according to Italian media reports.
A female hotel employee was injured by a piece of debris and taken to hospital with neck injuries.
Baumgartner died at the scene of the accident, and investigations into the circumstances of the accident are under way.
Italian media reported that Baumgartner had already lost consciousness in the air.
The city’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, confirmed Baumgartner’s death in a social media post.
“Our community is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a figure of global prominence, a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flight,” the mayor said.
Just two hours before his deadly crash, he posted on the social media platform Instagram with the foreboding caption “too much wind”.
The famous 2012 jump from the edge of space that propelled Felix Baumgartner to global fame [Handout/Red Bull Content/Pool via Reuters]
From skydiving to the stratosphere
Born in Salzburg, Baumgartner completed his first parachute jump at the age of 16 and later became a parachutist in the Austrian military.
Baumgartner’s reputation as an extreme sports athlete grew exponentially when he turned his hand to the sport of base jumping in the 1990s.
He set a new world record for the highest base jump from a building with his leap from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1999. Later that year, he completed a base jump from the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
On July 31, 2003, Baumgartner again made global headlines for his base jumping feats when he became the first person to cross the English Channel in free fall after jumping out of a plane equipped with specially developed wings made of carbon.
But it was Baumgartner’s record-breaking free fall from space in 2012 that shot the Austrian to worldwide fame.
Over the desert of New Mexico, he jumped from a helium balloon almost 39km (24 miles) above the planet and became the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall.
Baumgartner set three world records for his jump: He reached a maximum speed of 1,357.6 kilometres per hour (834mph), or Mach 1.25; completed the highest jump at 38,969 metres; and recorded the longest free fall with a length of 36,402 metres.
His death was confirmed late on Thursday by the energy drink company Red Bull, which sponsored many of Baumgartner’s stunts.
Baumgartner jumps out of a plane above Dover, England, on July 31, 2003, wearing a carbon fibre wing suit [Helmut Tucek/AFP]
Engineering | Environment | News releases | Research
July 17, 2025
From seaweed to structural material: A seaweed called Ulva (righthand petri dish) is dried (center), powdered (left) and then mixed directly in with traditional cement (beaker). The darker cement cube (top center) contains 5% seaweed by weight.Mark Stone/University of Washington
The modern world is built with concrete: Humans use more concrete annually than any other material besides water. Yet cement, the key component of concrete, is the source of as much as 10% of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.
To address this problem, researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft developed a new type of low-carbon concrete by mixing dried, powdered seaweed with cement. The seaweed-fortified cement has a 21% lower global warming potential while retaining its strength. And thanks to an assist from machine learning models, the team arrived at this new formulation in a fraction of the time that such work would ordinarily take.
The team published its findings July 8 in Matter.
“Cement is everywhere — it’s the backbone of modern infrastructure — but it comes with a huge climate cost,” said senior author Eleftheria Roumeli, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “What makes this work exciting is that we show how an abundant, photosynthetic material like green seaweed can be incorporated into cement to cut emissions, without the need for costly processing or sacrificing performance.”
UW doctoral student Meng-Yen Lin casts green cement samples into molds to cure and later test their structural properties.Mark Stone/University of Washington
Producing one kilogram of cement emits nearly a kilogram of CO2. Most of those emissions come from the fossil fuels used to heat raw materials and from a chemical reaction called calcination that occurs during the production process. Seaweed, in contrast, is a carbon sink: It pulls carbon out of the air and stores it while it grows. And, remarkably, it can directly replace some of the cement in concrete, giving the result a dramatically smaller carbon footprint.
Arriving at the ideal mixture of ingredients would have taken five years of trial and error, Roumeli estimated, because any concrete sample takes about a month to fully cure before its properties can be evaluated accurately.
To speed up the process, the team built a custom machine learning model and trained it on an initial set of 24 formulations of cement. They then used the model to predict ideal mixtures to test in the lab. By feeding the results of those tests back into the model, they were able to work in tandem with the model and move through formulations rapidly. The outcome was an optimal mixture of seaweed-enhanced cement with a reduced carbon footprint that passed compressive strength tests, discovered in just 28 days.
UW doctoral student Meng-Yen Lin tests the compressive strength of a cement cube to determine how the addition of seaweed is affecting its performance as a building material.Mark Stone/University of Washington
“Machine learning was integral in helping us dramatically shorten the process — especially important here, because we’re introducing a completely new material into cement,” Roumeli said.
From here, the team plans to deepen their understanding of how seaweed composition and structure affects cement performance. The larger goal is to generalize the work out to different kinds of algae (or even to food waste) so that producers can create local, sustainable cement alternatives around the world — and use machine learning to optimize them rapidly.
“By combining natural materials like algae with modern data tools, we can localize production, reduce emissions, and move faster toward greener infrastructure,” Roumeli said. “It’s an exciting step toward a new generation of sustainable building materials.”
Additional co-authors on this paper are Meng-Yen Lin, a UW doctoral student studying materials science and engineering; Paul Grandgeorge, a former UW postdoctoral researcher in the materials science and engineering department who is now an R&D engineer at the iPrint Institute; and Kristen Severson, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research.
This research was funded by Microsoft Research.
For more information, contact Roumeli at eroumeli@uw.edu.
Tag(s): College of Engineering • Department of Materials Science & Engineering • Eleftheria Roumeli
UC Berkeley’s planned Innovation Zone on the west side of campus gained significant momentum as a result of the approval today (July 17) of a new laboratory building devoted to health and agricultural applications of CRISPR gene editing and growth space for entrepreneurial startups.
The UC Regents approved the Innovative Genomics Institute-Bakar Labs building during a regularly scheduled board meeting in Los Angeles. The seven-story building, supported by private philanthropy, is expected to open during the 2028-29 academic year. It will allow the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), founded 10 years ago by CRISPR co-inventor and UC Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna, to expand in response to ever-growing applications of the revolutionary gene-editing tool. The IGI’s labs are currently located in a building on Berkeley Way, a block from the Innovation Zone.
“The IGI has doubled in size over the past five years, and this new facility represents a critical step in advancing our research capabilities,” said Doudna. “With dedicated space for new research projects and interdisciplinary collaboration, we can tackle increasingly complex questions in genome editing and accelerate the development of CRISPR applications that address real-world challenges.”
Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna founded the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) in 2015.
Glenn Ramit, IGI
The IGI-Bakar Labs building will also provide much-needed space for Bakar Labs startup companies that have successfully outgrown their incubator facilities and are ready to move to larger office and laboratory space, yet want to remain within the Berkeley ecosystem. The IGI-Bakar Labs building will be slightly larger than another Bakar Labs building, approved for the Innovation Zone site last year and scheduled for completion in late 2028, that will be an innovation hub focused on energy and new materials. When the new startup spaces are operating, the Bakar Labs sites will make up the largest incubator hub at any university in the nation. The incubators are open to all startups, not just those founded on UC Berkeley intellectual property.
“Once these buildings are complete, Bakar Labs is going to be over 400,000 square feet, by far the largest university-owned and -operated network of biotech, materials and energy tech incubators in the country,” said Bakar Labs director David Schaffer, a UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.
A startup culture
According to PitchBook, UC Berkeley graduates have founded more venture-backed companies than undergraduate alumni from any other university in the world.
David Schaffer, UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, directs Bakar Labs and QB3.
Majed Abolfazli
“The university is an incredible fountain of discoveries and innovations and inventions, personified by the Innovative Genomics Institute, which has proven genome editing’s potential to transform healthcare, agriculture and climate adaptation,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons. “Bakar Labs is an amazing public-private partnership that is crucial to transitioning Berkeley discoveries into the private sector so that society can benefit. By pairing IGI and Bakar Labs in the same building, we can amplify the successes of both.”
Having IGI research labs in the same building as Bakar Labs’ innovation space will allow crossfertilization and the opportunity for spinoff CRISPR-focused companies to settle nearby in incubator space. Already, IGI has spawned 26 companies that have garnered $4.8 billion in startup funding. Five of them were initially incubated in Bakar Labs’ space in Woo Hon Fai Hall on Bancroft Avenue.
“The Innovative Genomics Institute is a natural partner for the Bakar Labs ecosystem, and sharing the same building is going to expand and amplify that partnership,” Schaffer said. The partnership includes programming and support for entrepreneurs, some of which is provided by QB3, a multicampus UC institute that supports research and innovation and is directed by Schaffer.
Berkeley Innovation Zone
The Berkeley Innovation Zone is a 1.86-acre site between the western edge of the Berkeley campus and downtown Berkeley, The IGI-Bakar Labs building, encompassing about 169,000 gross square feet, will include space for wet labs and research and administrative offices, as well as meeting rooms and interaction areas. The seventh floor will include flexible collaboration and conference space and non-occupied mechanical areas, while the building’s western end will contain a partial, below-grade basement. A courtyard to the south will provide space for informal gathering and group events. The building is designed by a collaboration between DGA, an architectural firm specializing in research and laboratory buildings, and Weiss/Manfredi, an award-winning architectural and landscape design company.
IGI researchers recently announced the success of the first on-demand, personalized CRISPR therapy, which was delivered to a child barely seven months after birth and corrected a hereditary disease that often proves fatal. Earlier this month, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative awarded the IGI a $20 million grant to deliver this treatment to eight new patients and expand its scope to treat eight other hereditary diseases that currently have no treatments.
“I expect a lot of informal but valuable interactions between IGI researchers and startup entrepreneurs in the Bakar Labs space,” said Brad Ringeisen, executive director of the IGI. “Now is the time to step on the accelerator to make sure recent advances in CRISPR have a real impact on healthcare.”
Another emerging field is CRISPR editing of the human and animal microbiomes. IGI researchers are currently targeting gut bacteria in humans to defang those that promote childhood asthma. They’re also targeting the bacteria that inhabit the guts of cows and other ruminants to decrease their production of the greenhouse gas methane.
“CRISPR editing of the microbiome opens up an entirely new class of therapeutics to promote health and treat chronic disease, but also a way to make agriculture and other sectors of the bioeconomy globally competitive and more sustainable, particularly through reduced methane emissions,” Ringeisen said.
Graduation space
Schaffer views the new innovation hub in the IGI-Bakar Labs building as “graduation” space for early-phase startups outgrowing their incubator space in Bakar Labs and, within a few years, the planned Bakar Labs for Energy and Materials. Currently, over 30 startups call Bakar Labs home, with half of them based on UC Berkeley discoveries and numerous others founded by UC Berkeley alumni. Once these companies expand to a few dozen employees, they need larger space that can only be had off-campus.
A future conference room in the Innovative Genomics Institute–Bakar Labs building featuring a panoramic view of the campus.
DGA + Weiss/Manfredi
Yet moving far from Berkeley cuts off access to many of the resources Bakar Labs offers, Schaffer noted. Since Bakar Labs opened in 2021 in the newly renovated Woo Hall, 15 companies have graduated to larger spaces around the Bay Area. In total, Bakar Labs companies have raised more than $630 million and have created over 400 jobs.
“Our incubator is an outstanding venue for a company to start, and eventually, companies get to the point where they want four walls and a door, they want their own contiguous space — which is just natural for a company that’s growing,” Schaffer said. “But when they move off-campus, while they may stay in touch, they lose access to all the resources and people and knowledge that the campus has. This new building is solving that. It’s being designed in a way that we can lease companies 2,500-square-foot modules but also allow them to grow to 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 square feet of space.”
Schaffer said that UC Berkeley has a vested interest in helping these startups succeed, not only because many leverage university discoveries, but also because, in some cases, the university has acquired equity in them. The campus often accepts equity shares in a startup in lieu of up-front licensing fees for use of campus intellectual property. The IGI-Bakar Labs community also benefits from BEVC, a venture fund embedded in the expanding Bakar ecosystem that partners with entrepreneurs to start and finance startup companies, among other VC funds affiliated with UC Berkeley.
“BEVC as well as the university have taken several approaches to invest in Bakar Labs companies,” Schaffer said. “This is positive for the companies, as it provides them resources and demonstrates confidence in their technologies. It also enables the university to further benefit from the long-term growth and success of technologies it often helped invent.”
CRISPR spinoffs are revolutionizing healthcare and agriculture
Since Jennifer Doudna co-invented CRISPR gene editing 13 years ago, UC Berkeley research on this breakthrough technology has generated dozens of innovative new companies. Some of the earliest were co-founded by Doudna — Caribou Biosciences, Mammoth Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics — and now dominate the CRISPR healthcare landscape. Since she founded the Innovative Genomics Institute a decade ago, it has spun off another 26 companies that apply genomic approaches to health, agriculture and more. Among the newest startups from IGI that are or were incubated in Bakar Labs are:
Azalea Therapeutics, currently in Bakar Labs, is developing in vivo delivery and other technologies related to CAR-T cell therapy.
Verinomics, an alumnus of Bakar Labs, uses CRISPR technology to edit the genomes of plants to create specialty crops.
Catena Biosciences, currently a tenant in Bakar Labs, has developed a new way to deliver anticancer drugs, focusing initially on solid tumors.
Editpep, currently in Bakar Labs, uses a peptide-based delivery system to improve the targeting of CRISPR to treat specific diseases.
Felix Baumgartner, who once broke the world record for the highest skydive by jumping from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy.
The 56-year-old fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel while flying over the village of Porto Sant’Elpidio in the eastern Marche region.
The Austrian daredevil made headlines in 2012 when he broke the world record for the highest-ever skydive, jumping from a balloon more than 39km (128,000 ft) up in the stratosphere.
He also set the world record for the highest parachute jump in 1999, when he launched himself from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
Porto Sant’Elpidio’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said reports suggested he may have suffered a sudden medical issue mid-air, and offered the town’s condolences over the death of “a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flights”.
Of course, the trick is that you only send out the warning if there’s an actual earthquake, and not when a truck is passing by. Here, the sheer volume of Android phones sold plays a key role. As a first pass, AEA can simply ignore events that aren’t picked up by a lot of phones in the same area. But we also know a lot about the patterns of shaking that earthquakes produce. Different waves travel at different speeds, cause different types of ground motion, and may be produced at different intensities as the earthquake progresses.
So, the people behind AEA also include a model of earthquakes and seismic wave propagation, and check whether the pattern seen in phones’ accelerometers is consistent with that model. It only triggers an alert when there’s widespread phone activity that matches the pattern expected for an earthquake.
Raising awareness
In practical terms, AEA is distributed as part of the core Android software, and is set to on by default, so it is active in most Android phones. It starts monitoring when the phone has been stationary for a little while, checking for acceleration data that’s consistent with the P or S waves produced by earthquakes. If it gets a match, it forwards the information along with some rough location data (to preserve privacy) to Google servers. Software running on those servers then performs the positional analysis to see if the waves are widespread enough to have been triggered by an earthquake.
If so, it estimates the size and location, and uses that information to estimate the ground motion that will be experienced in different locations. Based on that, AEA sends out one of two alerts, either “be aware” or “take action.” The “be aware” alert is similar to a standard Android notification, but it plays a distinctive sound and is sent to users further from the epicenter. In contrast, the “take action” warning that’s sent to those nearby will display one of two messages in the appropriate language, either “Protect yourself” or “Drop, cover, and hold on.” It ignores any do-not-disturb settings, takes over the entire screen, and also plays a distinct noise.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) finalised an update to its income tax ruling regarding the definition of employee to include guidance on SG obligations. Additionally, it has withdrawn Superannuation Guarantee Ruling (SGR 2005/1),[1] on the same topic.
The Taxation Ruling (TR or Ruling) TR 2023/4[2] addresses who qualifies as an employee for Pay As You Go (PAYG) withholding purposes. This TR also now incorporates a new addendum (TR2023/4A1) (Addendum) as Appendix 2 of TR 2023/4 that provides guidance on when someone is considered an employee under Section 12 of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (SGAA). As such, the finalised ruling now covers the different definitions of an employee for both PAYG and superannuation purposes. This update reflects recent Federal Court rulings that expanded the definition of employee for SG purposes, specifically referencing JMC Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Taxation [3](JMC) and Jamsek v ZG Operations Australia Pty Ltd (No 3) [4] (Jamsek).
Section 12 of the SGAA states that the terms employee and employer carry their ordinary meanings but may be expanded or qualified by other provisions in the section. The key changes in the updated ruling, which differ from SGR 2005/1, are primarily to include discussion and guidance in relation to the expanded definition of employee:
Contracts wholly or principally for the labour of the person (Subsection 12(3))
Entertainers, artists, musicians, sportspersons, et cetera (Subsection 12(8))
The exclusion relating to work wholly or principally of a domestic or private nature (Subsection 12(11))
These changes are explored in further detail below.
Contracts wholly or principally for the labour of the person
The updated TR relies on the same criteria established by the Federal Court in Dental Corporation Pty Ltd v Moffet [5] (Moffet), for the application of Subsection 12(3) of the SGAA, which deems an independent contractor to be an employee if they work under a contract that is wholly or principally for their labour. These are as follows:
There must be a contract.
The person must ‘work’ under that contract.
The contract must be wholly or principally ‘for’ the labour of a person.
Existence of a contract
This requires “a bilateral exchange of promises of labour and payment between two sides of the contract. On one side of the contract, a promise to provide labour and on the other side of the contract, a promise to make payment.”[6]
Notably, the updated TR at [97] provides that a contract can be bilateral even if there are more than two contracting parties. This effectively prevents parties from circumventing the superannuation regime by forming a contract with more than two named parties. The updated TR also clarifies that the focus of Subsection 12(3) of the SGAA is on the rights under the contract, and not the actual performance of the contract.
Performance of work under the contract
The concept of “works under a contract” is one of personal exertion and personal effort. The updated TR clarifies that Subsection 12(3) applies only where the party providing the labour (i.e., the worker) is a natural person who was a party to the contract in their individual capacity and not in any other capacity such as a trustee of a personal services trust or a partner in a partnership.
Therefore, independent contractors engaged through an interposed entity or structure, such as a partnership, personal services trust, or a company, will not be treated as an employee for SG purposes.
Contract wholly or principally ‘for’ the labour of a person
Whether the contract is wholly or principally ‘for’ the labour of a person, is to be assessed from the perspective of the engaging entity and is to be determined by reference to the terms of the contract.
The updated Ruling outlines three scenarios that will support a finding that the contract is not wholly or principally for the labour of the person, in line with the Federal Court’s decisions in Moffet, JMC, and Jamsek. These are as follows:
1. Contracts containing a right to delegate, subcontract, or assign the work
SGR 2005/1 placed emphasis on the performance or the actual exercise of the right to delegate, subcontract, or assign work in order to be excluded from the extended definition of employee under Subsection 12(3) of the SGAA, as opposed to the mere existence of the right.
The updated Ruling distinguishes itself from SGR 2005/1 on this aspect and clarifies that the mere existence of such a right in a contract is sufficient to trigger the exclusion, regardless of whether it is a fettered or unfettered right, and regardless of whether consent of the engaging entity has been obtained or not (unless the provision is considered a sham, is legally incapable of exercise, or is limited in scope). While this arguably expands the scope of the exclusion from Subsection 12(3), it is crucial to note the ATO’s observation in this regard in its Decision Impact Statement in JMC, [7] which noted that the existence of an empty contractual right of delegation may support a finding of sham.
Therefore, businesses will still need to carefully evaluate their delegation, subcontracting, and assignment clauses for each type of contractor engagement they enter into, in order to determine whether the exclusion from Subsection 12(3) applies or not.
2. Contracts for the provision or production of a result, where the worker is paid for the result (results contracts)
Where the substance of the contract is for the achievement of specified results (and not for the provision of labour), the contract will not be wholly or principally for the labour of a worker and will not fall within the extended definition of employee under Subsection 12(3).
The updated Ruling does not deviate from the above position adopted in SGR 2005/1 but provides more clarity on identifying “results contracts” in output-based or non-hourly remuneration models.
The ATO guidance clarifies that piece-rate or output-based payment models are more consistent with an employment relationship where they are simply a natural means to provide remuneration for the task performed due to the presence of one or more of the following factors:
Where the sole duty of the employee is to complete the task
Where it is easier to calculate remuneration based on task completion
Where the amount per task is calculated by reference to the period worked or by reference to time variables (such as effort, speed, and waiting times)
Where paying per task is used as a means to increase productivity
The guidance also provides examples of non-hourly remuneration models that the ATO would consider to be consistent with an employment relationship:
Land salesmen engaged by a firm of land agents and paid by commission
Bicycle couriers paid a flag fall rate per delivery instead of per time period engaged
Fruit pickers paid daily per bin of fruit picked
Interviewers who are paid a fixed rate upon completion of each assignment that is determined by reference to the time expected to complete the assignment
In this regard, the updated TR relevantly refers to the Court’s finding in JMC, which held that being paid an hourly rate was “not inherently incompatible with either an employment or an independent contract relationship.” While the Court inclined toward an independent contractor relationship, this determination was arrived at based on the specific facts of the case — and the ATO Guidance does caution employers to holistically evaluate each of its contractual engagements on a case-by-case basis before making a determination in this regard.
3. Contracts principally for a benefit other than the labour of the worker (such as contracts that are primarily for the provision of equipment or nonlabour components)
The updated TR observes that the use of a substantial capital asset in the provision of services is a factor supporting a conclusion that the contract is not wholly or principally for labour.
Notably, the updated TR at [110], distinguishes between contracts that provide a single integrated benefit, of which the provision of labour forms just one component, such as delivery services (where it may not be appropriate to distinguish between the labour and nonlabour components of the services performed), and contracts that comprise several discrete benefits (for example, labour of a driver and the use of a truck). The updated TR states that regardless of whether a contract is for several discrete benefits or one integrated benefit of which labour is just one component, a quantitative valuation or, where appropriate, a qualitative analysis must be undertaken to determine whether labour is the principal benefit or component contracted for.
Entertainers, artists, musicians, sports persons, promoters, et cetera
Under Subsection 12(8), persons involved in the performing arts, sports persons, entertainers, promotional activities, and the like may be employees for SG purposes.
The updated TR clarifies the tests contained in Paragraphs 12(8)(a) to (c) must be applied on a payment-by-payment basis (where each payment is examined separately) having regard to the substance of the arrangement, rather than merely how the parties have agreed to label the payment.
It further states that Subsection 12(8) is not limited in the way that Subsection 12(3) is limited to contracts wholly or principally for a person’s labour. However, ATO has confirmed that for Subsection 12(8), it is necessary that the particular person is actually paid to provide, perform, or present services rather than for some other purpose. The example provided is that a person engaged to write a script is performing services but one who sells existing scripts is not — they are merely selling property.
Clarifications to Subsection 12(8)(a)
Under Subsection 12(8)(a), payments to individuals are subject to SG where:
They are made to an entertainer, artist, musician, sportsperson, etc.
Such persons are paid to perform, present, or participate in music, play, dance, entertainment, sport, display, promotional activity, or any other similar activity.
Such performance, presentation, or participating involves the exercise of personal skills, such as intellectual, artistic, musical, or physical skills.
In this regard, the updated TR clarifies that the definition of “entertainment” should be construed broadly to mean “an activity that gives amusement or enjoyment” as laid down in General Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd and Commissioner of Taxation. [8] It also clarifies that performance under this provision relates only to the execution of personal skills of the person and not the level of success achieved by such person.
Clarifications to Subsection 12(8)(b) and (c)
Under Subsections 12(8)(b) and (c), payments to individuals are subject to SG where:
They are made for services provided in connection with the activities referred to in Subsection 12(8)(a).
They are made in connection with the making of any film, tape, disc, television, or radio broadcast.
In this regard, the updated TR relevantly clarifies that the term “in connection with” must be construed narrowly, where the services must relate directly to the activity in question and be “bound up or involved in” that activity. That is, the use of the term “in connection with” in Paragraphs 12(8)(b) and (c) is intended to cover persons providing the ‘behind the scenes’ services that enable the relevant activity to occur. For example, a technician engaged to control the sound quality for a concert is not an active participant in any performance. Even though the technician is not within Paragraph 12(8)(a), they are still an employee because they are paid for services in connection with a musical performance which falls within 12(8)(b).
Work of a domestic or private nature
Subsection 12(11) of the SGAA excludes a person who is paid to do work that is wholly or principally of a domestic or private nature for 30 hours or less per week from the definition of employee for SG purposes.
The updated TR clarifies the terms domestic and private by offering examples like cooking, cleaning, shopping, assisting with shopping, bathing, dressing, child-minding, home repairs or maintenance, gardening, and other general household tasks.
In this regard, the ATO guidance relies on the decision in Commissioner of Taxation v Newton[9] to emphasise that the exemption under this provision applies only to a householder ‘for whom’ the work is done and is not to be determined solely with reference to the work that the person performs.
Therefore, there needs to be a direct arrangement between the householder making the payment and the person carrying out the work of a domestic or private nature. A business that pays a worker to perform work of a domestic or private nature for an end-user or client will not be able to rely on the exemption in Subsection 12(11). For example, while some work done in a school, hotel, hospital, or in a retirement village might be characterised as domestic, it cannot be characterised as being of a domestic or private nature, in the context of the SGAA. Whether a person carrying out such work is, however, an employee for superannuation purposes will depend on whether they fall within the other subsections of Section 12.
Conclusion
The updated Taxation Ruling marks a significant step by the ATO in aligning the extended definition of employee for SG purposes with recent common law developments and provides employers with further clarity on the application of Section 12 of the SGAA.
Importantly, the ATO’s clarifications and guidance issued in relation to the assessment to be conducted for the application of Subsection 12(3) serves as a reminder for employers to not arbitrarily rely on delegation, subcontracting, and assignment contractual clauses, output-based payment models, and nonlabour contractual components as reasons for not applying the SG provisions. Employers should instead thoroughly review the updated TR against their current positions and contract templates to assess how their obligations might change as a result of the updated taxation ruling.
We appreciate that the application of SG is technical and complex, and A&M would be happy to help assess your obligations correctly.
Mexican superstar Belinda knew she wouldn’t generate much revenue from her viral song “Heterocomía.” She did it anyway.
In an interview with CNN en Español, the singer revealed that she brokered a costly deal with Disney to secure the rights to the theme from the 1970 animated film “The Aristocats.”
“I don’t think I will see those royalties, ever” said Belinda in the interview with Juan Carlos Arciniegas. “But it was worth it.”
She put her own spin on a 20-second sound bite from the film’s original soundtrack, and used it to kick off her track “Heterocomía” which was released earlier this summer as part of her comeback fifth studio album, “Indómita.”
“[The Aristocats] is a classic,” said Belinda. “And I imagined that introduction because it’s the vibe of the song.”
The Spanish-born singer, who is also of French descent, didn’t stick to the original lyrics sung by Maurice Chevalier. Instead, she added her own flare, puffing up the bourgeois frippery of the original song to meet this modern moment: “Which cats wear Loro Piana? What cats only play golf? Which cats drink Aperol? Naturellement, the Aristocats.”
The song’s fairy-tale introduction quickly devolves into a gloomier tale riddled with deception — and the culminating moment of realization that she had been fooled by a two-faced lover.
“I obsess over the intros in songs and that they sound one way and then completely break off into another song,” said Belinda.
Following the release of her fifth studio album, Belinda drew attention to these lyrics with a homemade TikTok dance video, which has amassed more than 14 million views since its upload on June 8.
Many online fans began to speculate that the song hinted at Belinda’s past romantic relationship with Gonzalo Hevia Baillères, a billionaire heir whose family owns El Palacio de Hierro, Mexico City’s upscale department store and made their fortune mining the country.
Hevia Baillères has heterochromia, a condition in which one’s eyes are two different colors. It is also the namesake for this seething track.
Belinda has not confirmed the validity of these comparisons to the public, but the song’s scorching lyrics might provide some insight: “You are old money, they call you Bunny, and I’ll pass your palace through my booty.”
So while Disney may keep a majority of the royalties from the song, it looks like Belinda is walking away with something that money can’t buy: sweet revenge.
The day before our interview, cinematographer Darius Khondji tells me he went to see a Pablo Picasso exhibit in uptown New York City. And though he would never compare himself to the Spanish painter, Khondji says he found a kinship in the way he described his artistic practice.
“About his style, he said that he was like a chameleon, changing completely from one moment to another, from one situation to another,” Khondji, 69, recalls via Zoom. “This is exactly how I feel. When I’m with a director, I embrace that director completely.”
Backlit, with natural light coming from the large windows behind him on a recent afternoon, Khondji appears shrouded in darkness, at times like an enigmatic silhouette with a halo of sunshine around his fuzzy hair. The Iranian-born cinematographer speaks animatedly, with hand movements accentuating every effusive sentence.
“Sometimes I talk in a very impressionistic way,” Khondji says, apologetically. “I might be confusing but I try to be just honest and say what I feel.”
Khondji’s eclectic resume flaunts an exceptional collection of collaborations, some of the best-looking movies of their moments: David Fincher’s gruesome but gorgeous “Seven,” Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s darkly whimsical and richly textured “Delicatessen” and “The City of Lost Children,” Michael Haneke’s unflinching love story “Amour,” James Gray’s old-school luxurious “The Immigrant,” the Safdie Brothers’ nerve-racking and kinetic “Uncut Gems,” and now Ari Aster’s paranoid big-canvas pandemic saga “Eddington,” in theaters Friday.
Khondji stands simultaneously as a wise member of the old guard and a hopeful champion for the future of film. Sought in decades past by the likes of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci, he’s now lending his lensing genius to a new generation of storytellers with ideas just as biting.
“Darius understands the human soul and he masters the tools to express it,” says filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu via email. “All the technical choices — framing decisions, uses of color and lighting techniques — he is able to apply them, but always subordinated to the director’s vision and, most importantly, to the needs of the film itself.”
Khondji, left, with director Alejandro González Iñárritu on the shoot of 2022’s “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.”
(SeoJu Park / Netflix)
Khondji earned his second Oscar nomination for his work on the Mexican director’s surrealist 2022 film “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths.” The motion picture academy first acknowledged his artistry with a nod for Alan Parker’s sumptuous 1996 musical “Evita.”
“Darius is kind of a poet — everything is feeling-based with him,” says Aster via video call from Los Angeles. “He is an intellectual but he is also decidedly not.”
If you were to dissect the pivotal memories that shaped Khondji’s creative mind, the array of touchstones would include a photograph of Christopher Lee as Dracula that his brother would bring him from London. Also in prime of place: an image of his older sister, Christine, whom he considers an artistic mentor.
You would also find the intense orange color of persimmons squashed in his family’s garden in Tehran during winter — the only sensory memory he has from his early childhood before his family moved to Paris when he was around 3 1/2 years old in the late 1950s.
“Sometimes I look at my granddaughter and grandson and say, ‘OK, they are 3, almost 3 1/2, so this is the amount of language I had, but it was probably mostly in Farsi,’” he says. Khondji returned to Iran only once, as a teenager in the early 1970s, with a Super 8 camera in hand.
He has been watching movies since infancy. His nanny, an avid moviegoer, would take him to the cinema with her. And later, his father, who owned movie theaters in Tehran and would source films through Europe, brought him along to Parisian screening rooms as a kid.
“These are all stories told to me and a mix of impressions and feelings of things that I remember,” Khondji explains. That visceral, heart-first way of perceiving the world around him might be the defining quality of his approach to image-making. It’s always about how something feels.
“Cinema is a strong force,” he says. “You cannot limit it only with aesthetic taste or things that you like or don’t like or rules. You just have to go with the flow and give yourself to it. You need a lot of humility.” At that last thought, Khondji laughs.
Cinematographer Darius Khondji, photographed in France in 2021.
(Ariane Damain Vergallo)
When he started making his own Dracula-inspired short films on Super 8 as a teenager, Khondji had little idea about the distinct roles of a film production. Slowly, he started noticing that the directors of photography for the movies he liked were often the same artists.
“I was discovering that some films looked incredible — they had a very strong atmosphere,” Khondji recalls. “Then I found that the same name of one person was on one movie and then another movie, and I thought, ‘OK, this person really is very important.’” He mentions Gregg Toland, the legendary shooter of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.”
But it wasn’t until Khondji attended NYU for film school that he dropped his aspirations for directing and decided on becoming a cinematographer. His film exercises leaned more toward the experiential than the narrative. He refers to them as “emotional wavelengths.”
“It’s really the director and the actors that trigger my desire to shoot a movie,” says Khondji. “The script is, of course, a great thing, but once I want to work with the director, I really trust them.”
Hearing Khondji speak about directors, it’s clear that he puts them in a privileged light — so much so that he makes a point of creating what he calls a “family” around them to ensure their success. This means he ensures the director feels comfortable with the gaffer, the dolly grip, the key grip, so that there’s no one on set that feels like a stranger.
With Aster, for example, their bond emerged from a shared voraciousness for film. The pair had several hangouts together before a job even entered the equation. Khondji is a defender of the polarizing “Beau Is Afraid,” his favorite of Aster’s movies. “Eddington” finally brought them together as collaborators for the first time.
“Ari and I have a common language,” he says. “We discovered quite early on working together that we have a very similar taste for dark films, not dark in lighting but in storytelling.”
Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in the movie “Eddington.”
(A24)
While scouting locations in Aster’s native New Mexico, he and Khondji came across the small town where the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” was filmed. And though they both revere that arid 2007 thriller, they wanted to get away from anything tied to it, so they pivoted again to the community of Truth or Consequences.
Khondji recalls Aster describing his film, about a self-righteous sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) in a grudge match against the mayor (Pedro Pascal), as “a European psychological thriller on American land.” For the cinematographer, the movie is “a modern western.”
“We wanted the exterior to be very bright, like garishly bright, like the light has almost started to take off the color and the contrast a little bit because it’s so bright, never bright enough,” explains Khondji about shooting in the desert.
For Khondji, working Aster reminded him of his two outings with Austria’s esteemed, ultra-severe Michael Haneke, with which the cinematographer made the American remake of “Funny Games” and “Amour,” the latter on which he discovered a “radically different kind filmmaking” where “everything in the set had to have a grace of realness.”
“‘The color is vivid in a way that it isn’t in any of his other films,” says Aster about the quality that Khondji brought to “Amour,” Haneke’s Oscar-winning film.
Still, after working with some of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers on features, music videos, commercials and a TV show (he shot Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2019 “Too Old to Die Young” and became infatuated with the San Fernando Valley), Khondji prefers to be reinvigorated by younger artists challenging the rules.
“‘Uncut Gems’ was like turning a page for me in filmmaking,” he says, calling out to Josh and Benny Safdie. “These two young filmmakers were making films in a different way. And the fact that I could keep up with them — they are in their 30s — psychologically, it gave me a lot of strength.” Khondji also shot Josh Safdie’s upcoming “Marty Supreme,” out in December.
Is there a visual signature that defines Khondji’s work? Perhaps, even if he doesn’t consciously think of it. A lushness, a preference for olive greens and blacker-than-black shadows. An intense fixation on color in general. There are also aesthetic preferences that Aster noticed from their work on “Eddington.”
“Darius and I hate unmotivated camera movement,” Aster says. “But there are certain things that never would’ve bothered me compositionally that really bothered Darius, and now they’re stuck in my head. For instance, Darius hates it when you cut off somebody’s leg, even if it’s at the ankle. A lot of Darius’s prejudices have gone into my system.”
Khondji concedes to these particularities, yet he doesn’t think in rigid absolutes.
“You have a rule, and then you decide this is the moment to break the rule,” he says, citing the rawness of the films of French director Maurice Pialat or how actor Harriet Andersson looks directly into the camera in Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 “Summer with Monika.”
He recently watched Ryan Coogler’s box-office hit “Sinners” without knowing anything about its premise beforehand. “People who know me know that I don’t like spoilers,” he says. “I’m very cautious with film reviews. They are very important, but at the same time, I don’t want to know the story.”
Khondji had never seen one of Coogler’s films, but was impressed. “I really enjoyed it,” he says. “After I watched it I wanted to know who shot the film, but I enjoyed the actors so much and I love just being a real member of the audience.”
It might surprise some to learn that Khondji’s initial interest in seeing a film is unrelated to how it looks or who shot it.
“When I watch a film people say, ‘Oh, did you notice how it was shot?’ And I don’t really go for that,” he says. “I mostly go to watch a film for the director.”
These days, his wish list includes the opportunity to shoot a proper supernatural horror film (Aster might be handy to stay in touch with) and for a company to make a modern film-stock camera. Khondji is not precious about format but believes shooting on film should stay an option as it is the “natural medium” of cinema.
He tells me how much he loves going to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. “It’s really like a shrine for me,” he says, recalling seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” there on true VistaVision.
“It was an incredible emotion,” he adds. “Like the emotion I had when I grew up with my dad, when they would take me to see big films in the cinemas where the ceiling had stars to make you dream even before the film started.”
That dream is what Khondji is still chasing, in the cinema and on set.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country “deeply regrets that a stray ammunition” hit Gaza’s only Catholic Church, killing three people sheltering there.
“Every innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,”he said in a statement.
The incident happened on Thursday when an Israeli strike hit the Holy Family Church in Gaza City. Several people were also injured, said the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem which oversees the small parish.
Pope Leo XIV said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and injury”, renewing his call for a Gaza ceasefire.
In his statement, Netanyahu said Israel was “investigating the incident and remains committed to protecting civilians and holy sites”.
In a statement later on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “An initial inquiry into reports regarding injured individuals in the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, suggests that fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly. The cause of the incident is under review.
“The IDF directs its strikes solely at military targets and makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and religious structures, and regrets any unintentional damage caused to them,” the statement added.
Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said US President Donald Trump did not have a “positive reaction” to the attack on the church.
Trump called Netanyahu to discuss the incident on Thursday morning. During the call, Netanyahu described the attack as a “mistake”, Leavitt cited him as saying.
The Patriarchate said the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was a part of those who had been injured in the attack.
It said that people found a “sanctuary” in the church “hoping that the horrors of war might at least spare their lives after their homes, possessions, and dignity had already been stripped away”.
It added that the “war must come to a complete end”.
