Rijo Stephen Cletus: February 2023

Wegovy: what you need to know about this weight loss drug

Jimmy Carter: the American president whose commitment to Africa went beyond his term

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Cocaine Bear review: A B-movie about a drug-crazed bear

In 1985, a US drug dealer threw 40 packages of cocaine out of a small private plane and down into the Tennessee/Georgia forest below. One of those packages was eaten by a black bear, which died of an overdose soon afterwards. If that weren't enough of an indignity, the bear was stuffed and put on display in the Kentucky For Kentucky Fun Mall, which sounds like something Nicole Kidman's character planned to do in the first Paddington film. It's a tawdry tale of humanity's selfish mistreatment of the natural world, but you can see how it might be the basis of a very different type of story: a raucous action comedy about an enormous fanged beast going on a drug-crazed rampage through a national park. And that's what Cocaine Bear is – or what it tries to be, anyway.

Directed by Elizabeth Banks and written by Jimmy Warden, the film opens by introducing the dealer (Matthew Rhys), who is flying high in more ways than one. It isn't entirely clear why he is getting rid of duffel bags whose contents are worth millions of dollars apiece, but it's a rollicking sequence with a hilariously nasty twist ending. Then there's a scene in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Park – an area called Blood Mountain, ominously – featuring a happily engaged pair of European hikers. "We have such good luck in nature," coos one of them when she spots a Baloo lookalike in the distance. But she and her fiancé soon notice that the bear is "demented", and they try desperately to make sense of the ursine code of conduct: "If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lay down."

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'Uncomfortable heritage': how cities are repurposing former slaughterhouses

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Women's rights exist only on paper in Nigeria: Five core issues a new president needs to address urgently

Violence against African women and the widespread violation of their basic human rights is shaped by societal and cultural barriers. In Nigeria, women’s rights appear to be protected. The country is a signatory to many international conventions and norms such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa. Yet this protection is mostly on paper.

In a recent book chapter about African women in politics, I’ve noted that an African woman is too commonly labelled by her marital position as a wife of an African man. She is seen as an appendage of that man, a mere shadow.

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Biologists discovered a new species of tiny owl on the forested island of Pr

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Is the Loch Ness monster real?

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

An amazing and wonderful thing about people is our imagination. Indeed, it’s one of the qualities that makes us human.

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ChatGPT and cheating: 5 ways to change how students are graded

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What Denmark's dead hedgehogs tell us about their lives -- and how we can help them

In Search of the Sacred: Pico Iyer on Our Models of Paradise

“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” Milton wrote in his immortal Paradise Lost. With these human minds, arising from these material bodies, we keep trying to find heaven — to make heaven — in our myths and our mundanities, right here in the place where we are: in this beautiful and troubled world. We give it different names — eden, paradise, nirvana, poetry — but it springs from the selfsame longing: to dwell in beauty and freedom from suffering.

With soulful curiosity channeled in his ever-lyrical prose, Pico Iyer chronicles a lifetime of pilgrimages to some of Earth’s greatest shrines to that longing in The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise (public library).

He begins in Iran, replete with monuments to Omar Khayyām, who built “a paradise of words” with his poems while revolutionizing astronomy — a place of uncommon beauty and uncommon terror, with roots as deep as the history of the written word, and living branches as tangled as the most contradictory impulses of human nature:

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Work-From-Home Regulations Are Coming. Companies Arenâ€™t Ready.

Debates over the trade-offs of remote work arrangements have tended to focus on challenges related to maintaining worker productivity, building company culture, and upholding boundaries between work and home. Now, employers are faced with an additional challenge: complying with a growing set of regulatory frameworks governing remote work.

For most workers, working from home was once a seasonal perk or a special arrangement their employer offered. Now, what started as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic has become routine. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of people working primarily from home increased from 5.7% to 17.95% of all workers in the United States and from 14.6% to 24.4% in Europe.

With new data showing that remote work could save companies up to $10,600 per employee annually, and major employers such as 3M, SAP, and Spotify committing to making remote work programs permanent, the trend looks like it's here to stay.

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The myth of the 'compassionate layoff'

The first wave of large-scale job cuts began with some of the biggest names in technology – including Google, Meta and Twitter – axing thousands of employees in the final months of 2022. And the layoffs have continued into the new year around the globe; tracker Layoffs.fyi has recorded 359 tech companies laying off more than 100,000 employees since January 2023, compared to about 160,000 positions cut in all of 2022. Now, however, layoffs are creeping into other sectors, including finance, media, automotive, retail and more.

As the economy remains precarious, layoffs show few signs of slowing. Many companies are reportedly expected to announce more layoffs due to financial uncertainty and declining revenues; others may likely conduct “copycat layoffs” – the practice of executives following suit when competitors conduct fresh rounds of layoffs.

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Why the promised fourth industrial revolution hasn't happened yet

Brianna Ghey: how vigils help LGBTQ+ communities grieve

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EO: Cinema's ultimate scene-stealers

In a landmark 2009 essay, the influential author John Berger argued that capitalist societies had commodified images of animals, reducing them to pictures of innocence. In our daily lives, he wrote, animals had been consigned to the realms of family or spectacle – most obviously, as pets or in zoos.

EO, the latest feature from the Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, departs from the historically showy, contrived and stunt-packed performances of animals in cinema, from the early caper Bout de Zan Vole un Eléphant (1913), in which a child steals an elephant from a circus, to Fearless Fagan (1952), where a newly enlisted soldier brings his pet lion to the barracks. In his understated and yet emotionally devastating new film, Skolimowski, director of Le Départ (1967), creates instead a more subtly crafted portrayal of an animal's experience. With shots that linger on EO's pensive, wistful eyes and shot-reverse-shots that capture his gaze, the film makes a blisteringly compelling case for what it might be like to experience the world as a donkey.

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Out of the Lab and Into a Product: Microsoftâ€™s Eric Boyd

As a partner with OpenAI â€” the company that recently wowed the tech world and the general public with its DALL-E image generator and ChatGPT chatbot â€” Microsoft helped to make those generative AI tools possible. But Microsoft has long invested in developing its own artificial intelligence technologies, for internal and external customers alike. And even when AI is not the centerpiece of a specific software program, it's often driving how that tool â€” such as the company's Bing search engine â€” works.

As corporate vice president of Microsoft's AI platform, Eric Boyd oversees product and technology teams that build artificial intelligence and machine solutions for the company's Azure platform and its AI services portfolio. Eric joins Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh on this episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast to talk about how Microsoft builds AI tools and embeds the technology in its various products, AI's potential for helping to expand people's creativity, and the democratization of AI.

Eric Boyd leads the AI platform team within Microsoft's Cloud + AI division. This global organization includes Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft Cognitive Services, Azure Cognitive Search, and internal platforms that provide data, experimentation, and graphics processing units cluster management to groups across Microsoft.

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All presidents avoid reporters, but Biden may achieve a record in his press avoidance

Bill Clinton was in a major scandal – based in large part on getting caught in a deception during a media interview – and successfully outsourced his White House press briefings to legal counsel to avoid having his press secretary or himself trapped by tough media questioning.

Barack Obama campaigned on being the most transparent president in history and then prosecuted reporters as criminals.

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Can Gen Z make friends in the pandemic era?

Nayomi Mbunga always wanted to live in a big city, so she was thrilled when she landed a tech job in Toronto. The 24-year-old grew up in Ireland, and was eager to “meet people of all walks of life”, she says. But that was a challenge when she started her job in January 2022, as she spent the first few months working remotely and isolating because of Covid-19 cases.

Mbunga liked her colleagues, but didn’t have much of a chance to get to know them without meeting in person, which they weren’t able to do for months into her starting the job. She got along well with her roommates, one of whom she knew from back home, but she wanted to expand her social circle.

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Genomics has helped identify a new strep A strain in Australia - and what has made it dangerous

Group A streptococci, also known as “strep A”, has been on the rise around the world with a new strain reported in the United Kingdom and Europe. This variant has been linked with surges of scarlet fever and a marked increase in life-threatening invasive strep A infections.

Strep A is a common bacteria carried by people primarily in their throat. It can cause mild illness including sore throat, scarlet fever (named for the red rash it causes) and impetigo (“school sores”). But it can also cause “invasive” disease, such as sepsis. Repeated strep A infections can lead to other serious conditions including acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.

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Britain's most chaotic traditions

Once a year, on the island of South Ronaldsay, off the north coast of Scotland, the community prepares for two traditional events: The Festival of the Horse and the Boys' Ploughing Match. Families reach into cupboards and bring down the richly decorated costumes that the town's girls will wear in a parade through the streets. Passed down through generations, the dresses mimic the trappings of the majestic Clydesdale working horse, with embellished yokes and harnesses, and little woollen fetlocks. Meanwhile, the boys gather on the broad scope of Sands o' Wright beach where, using exquisitely-made miniature ploughs, they carefully draw "furrows" in the sand. The lad with the most finely tilled furrow wins.

The Festival of the Horse dates back to the 1800s, when other Orkney villages performed their own versions; today, South Ronaldsay is the last. It is anything but fading: "When I went there, what I found incredibly moving was that the entire community was involved," says Simon Costin, director of the Museum of British Folklore. "The grandparents, the parents, everyone would be rallying the boys on from the side." The costumes, old but constantly evolving, are another sign of this resilience. "Over the years, they get increasingly embellished – with pieces of jewellery, Christmas decorations, bells; anything that catches the light." says Costin. "They become emblems of how the community chooses to express itself."

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Australia has a new cybersecurity agenda. Two key questions lie at its heart

The federal government is pursuing a new cybersecurity agenda in the wake of last year’s major cyber breaches with Optus and Medibank.

“For businesses these days, cybersecurity is as important as having a lock on the door”, said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in opening the government’s cybersecurity roundtable in Sydney on Monday. There, Minister for Cyber Security Claire O’Neil released a discussion paper that seeks to answer questions about the role the government should play in order to improve Australia’s cyber resilience.

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Cough syrup can harm children: experts warn of contamination risks

The recent deaths of over 300 children in Africa and Asia have prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to warn about the use of “substandard and falsified” medical products. The organisation called for more efforts to protect children from contaminated medicine. Toxicologists Winston Morgan and Shazma Bashir unpack the story.

Over the last five months the WHO has issued three alerts warning people not to use specific over-the-counter medicine for children. The warnings came after the deaths of at least 300 children in various countries including The Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan.

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Can mass atrocities be prevented? This course attempts to answer the question

Mike Brand is affiliated with the University of Connecticut and George Mason University’s Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program.

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

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Seneca on Science, Nature, and the Key to a Fulfilled Human Destiny

Until the word scientist was coined for the polymathic mathematician Mary Somerville, the term for those who devoted their lives to the contemplation and investigation of the wonder of reality was natural philosopher — the study of nature fell within the domain of philosophy and was indivisible from the humanistic concerns of morality.

Two millennia ago, when the universe revolved around an Earth many still considered flat, before anything was known of galaxies or genomes, of atoms or antibodies, the great Stoic philosopher Seneca placed what we now call science — that shimmering systematic curiosity about how nature works — at the heart of a fulfilling life. In a selection of advice to his pupil Lucilius, grouped under the heading Natural Questions and included in Seneca’s altogether indispensable Dialogues and Letters (public library), he considers how the passion to know reality on its own terms — the passion we call science — focuses a life:

For Seneca, the study of nature is the closest we get to a true theology — a way of reclaiming God:

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Why are so many Irish films and filmmakers nominated for Oscars? An expert in Irish cinema explains

Kim Jong-un purges: why North Korea is such a dangerous place to be successful in politics

North Korea celebrated the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army in February. As it showed off 12 of its massive intercontinental ballistic missile in a military parade, expert Korea-watchers spotted there appear to have been some significant changes in the country’s military and political hierarchy.

Choe Ryong-hae, the chairman of the standing committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was reportedly the only member of the politburo presidium not in attendance. But the Workers’ Party of Korea (North Korea’s sole and ruling political party) has reportedly recently replaced five of the 12 officials in the party secretariat and seven of the 17-member politburo. This is according to South Korea’s unification ministry, which exists to promote the reunification of the two countries.

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Join the Counterforce: Thomas Pynchon's postmodern epic Gravity's Rainbow at 50

Books age at variable rates. Some, indexed to topicalities with mayfly longevities, are decrepit before they’re published. Others, lively and seductive on first appearance, are dry husks a decade later. More durable works may still feel noble a century hence, if suspended in aspic.

The rarest, bristling with baffling arcana and elaborate design, make brave bids for immortality. Their fate is the worst of all. It is the fate Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) and Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) discuss in Knives Out:

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Three big numbers that tell the story of secularization in America

According to a 2022 Gallup survey, the percentage of people who believe in God has dropped from 98% in the 1950s to 81% today; among Americans under 30, it is down to an unprecedented 68%.

Up close, the trend looks even more dramatic. Only about half of Americans believe in “God as described in the Bible,” while about a quarter believe in a “higher power or spiritual force,” according to a Pew poll. Just one-third of Generation Z say they believe in God without a doubt.

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Lidia Thorpe's Mardi Gras disruption is the latest in an ongoing debate about acceptable forms of protest at Pride

Independent senator for Victoria Lidia Thorpe’s temporary blocking of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday night has again brought to the surface discussion on the role of protest and police discretion.

Amplification through media is one way of hopefully raising awareness of intractable social issues, such as Indigenous rates of incarceration and the role of police in that process. Peaceful protest, such as temporarily blocking the parade, might be a way to gain rare exposure in a cluttered 24-7 news cycle.

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Cyclone Gabrielle hit NZ's main fruit-growing region hard -- now orchardists face critical climate choices

Hawke’s Bay, one of New Zealand’s most productive regions and the hub of the fruit-growing sector, is among the areas worst hit by Cyclone Gabrielle and ongoing rain.

Horticulture underpins the local economy, with apple earnings alone contributing around NZ$700m annually. The immediate destruction of crops from the heavy wind and rain is obvious. But the full extent of the long-term damage to trees and vines themselves is yet to fully assessed.

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The Unphotographabe: Walt Whitman on Birds Migrating at Midnight

There is singular magic to seeing a mass of creatures move in unison along the vector of a common purpose, as if commanded by a single mind. In those ultimate instances of unselfing, we are reminded that all of nature is one grand synchrony, in which we are mere particles existing in conviviality and consanguinity with every other particle.

A century and a half before Richard Powers painted in words the majestic migration of sandhill cranes, Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) channels one such spectacle of humbling grandeur in Specimen Days (public library) — the exquisite collection of prose fragments that also gave us his reflections on democracy, music, and the wisdom of trees.

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend called me up just after 12 last night to mark the peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In the silence, shadow and delicious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. You could hear the characteristic motion — once or twice “the rush of mighty wings,” but oftener a velvety rustle, long drawn out — sometimes quite near — with continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 12 till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson’s thrush, white-crown’d sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover.

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Disaster survivors need help remaining connected with friends and families - and access to mental health care

The earthquakes that struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria in early February 2023 have killed at least 47,000 people and disrupted everyday life for some 26 million more.

Survivors of big disasters like these earthquakes – among the worst in the region’s history – certainly need food, water, medications, blankets and other goods. But they also need psychological first aid – that is, immediate mental health counseling along with support that strengthens their connections with their friends, relatives and decision-makers.

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Why a temporary flood levy on higher earners would be the fairest way to help pay for Cyclone Gabrielle

Cyclone Gabrielle’s trail of misery and destruction presents a major fiscal and political dilemma for the government: how should the country pay for the recovery? Does it borrow now and spread repayment over generations, or raise taxes in an election year?

Either way, the cost is significant. Finance Minister Grant Robertson has estimated the bill for fixing damaged or destroyed infrastructure at NZ$13 billion – equivalent to 11.5% of tax revenue collected in the year to June 2022.

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How Jimmy Carter integrated his evangelical Christian faith into his political work, despite mockery and misunderstanding

“I am a farmer, an engineer, a businessman, a planner, a scientist, a governor, and a Christian,” Jimmy Carter said while introducing himself to national political reporters when he announced his campaign to be the 39th president of the United States in December 1974.

As journalists and historians consider Carter’s legacy, this prelude to Carter’s campaign offers insight into how he wanted to be known and how he might like to be remembered.

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Threatened species recover in fenced safe havens. But their safety is only temporary

If you want to see some of Australia’s most charismatic threatened mammals such as bilbies, boodies and stick-nest rats, chances are you’ll have to go to a zoo – or a safe haven.

What’s a safe haven? An area safe from feral predators, such as islands too far offshore for foxes to swim to, or mainland sites ringed with cat- and fox-proof fences.

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How to improve the migration system for the good of temporary migrants -

The biggest review of Australia’s migration system in decades is due to be delivered to the federal government.

Commissioned by the Albanese government last September, its task is to identify reforms that will increase economic productivity, address challenges such as an ageing population, and make Australia a more desirable destination for highly skilled migrants.

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Can eating poppy seeds affect drug test results? An addiction and pain medicine specialist explains

The U.S. Defense Department issued a memo on Feb. 17, 2023, warning service members to avoid eating poppy seeds because doing so may result in a positive urine test for the opiate codeine. Addiction and pain medicine specialist Gary Reisfield explains what affects the opiate content of poppy seeds and how they could influence drug tests.

Poppy seeds come from a species of poppy plant called Papaver somniferum. “Somniferum” is Latin for “sleep-bringing,” which hints that it might contain opiates – powerful compounds that depress the central nervous system and can induce drowsiness and sleep.

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What happens if the government goes against the advice of the Voice to Parliament?

We asked our readers what they would like to know about the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament. In the lead-up to the referendum, our expert authors will answer those questions. You can read the other questions and answers here.

If the government disagrees with representations made by the Voice, the short answer is that the government prevails. Governments and parliaments are elected to represent all the people, not just one group of the people. This means they have to take into account a broad range of considerations, including how to manage the budget and the economy, ensure national security and maintain the social wellbeing of the whole country.

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Considering going off antidepressants? Here's what to think about first

Mental health is key to health and wellbeing. Yet two in five Australians aged 16 to 85 (44%) experience a mental illness during their lifetime, commonly anxiety or depression. And more than 32 million antidepressant prescriptions are dispensed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme each year for these diagnoses.

Use of antidepressants has increased since the beginning of the COVID pandemic at a greater rate than past decades. As we return to some semblance of normality, people may well be thinking about going off their mental health medicines, particularly antidepressants.

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Albanese government to hike tax on earnings from big super balances - but not until 2025-26

The tax rate on earnings from superannuation balances above $3 million will double to 30% from 2025-26.

The pre-budget decision – approved by the government’s expenditure review committee on Monday and ticked by the cabinet on Tuesday morning – cuts off what was becoming a potentially damaging debate for the government.

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Emergency department crowding has gone beyond hallways onto ambulance ramps. Now there's nowhere left to wait.

A hospital’s emergency department (ED) has long been considered the canary in the coal mine for the health-care system: when it’s congested, the whole hospital is congested.

Routine and prolonged ED congestion has since led to declarations that patients waiting in an ambulance outside the ED are the new canaries in the coal mine.

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For some LGBTQ+ older people, events like World Pride can be isolating - we need to better understand how to support them

World Pride has come to Sydney, with the annual Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday having returned to its Oxford Street home for the first time in three years.

The 17-day festival is expected to host 500,000 participants over more than 300 events. It is an opportunity to celebrate all things queer, and a good time to take stock of the changes LGBTQ+ older people have experienced, and the challenges they continue to face.

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Tax-free super for the super rich is a bad deal for the rest of us - and Morrison said it first

Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

From 2025 he will double the tax rate on earnings from superannuation balances above A$3 million, lifting it from 15% to 30%.

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Pill testing is coming to Queensland. Here's what can we learn from programs overseas

David Caldicott has been the recipient of an NH&MRC Partnership Grant.He is the Clinical Lead for Pill Testing Australia and CanTEST.

Queensland will become the second Australian jurisdiction to offer pill testing. While the timeline is yet to be announced, once up and running, Queenslanders who use illicit drugs can have them checked to see what they actually contain before taking them.

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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)â€”Representative George Santos hastily removed an entry from his rÃ©sumÃ© indicating that he had worked at a biological laboratory in Wuhan, China, the congressman's office has confirmed.

The entry, which said that Santos worked at the lab in late 2019, disappeared with no explanation in the early hours of Monday morning.

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Could Joe Biden be the most consequential American president of our times?

Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne

Speculation over US President Joe Biden’s intention to run for office again is reaching fever pitch. Biden is, reportedly, on the verge of announcing he will indeed seek reelection. Opinion pieces are being churned out at a rapid clip. Polls are being commissioned with a feverish intensity.

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Plant and animal species that adapt quickly to city life are more likely to survive

A dogwalker gives us a suspicious glance as they walk by. Traps now set and open, we wait. This effort is to investigate how animals respond to urbanization and what traits enable them to colonize and persist in cities.

Yet these cities are challenging places for wildlife and plants. Cities are hot, noisy and polluted. The numerous buildings, cars, pets and, of course, people going about their business pose many dangers to the species that increasingly share our living quarters.

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Your questions answered on the Voice to Parliament

We asked readers what they would like to know about the Voice to Parliament. In the lead-up to the referendum we’ll be asking our experts to answer your questions. Thanks to the more than 9,000 of you who took part in the survey. We’ll update this page as answers come in.

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Climate change is fuelling the rise of superbugs. What can we do to save ourselves?

The next time you need to take antibiotics, they may not work. So you may be prescribed a different antibiotic, which also may not work. Maybe nothing works.

This is what happens when bacteria develop resistance to drugs designed to kill them, putting modern medicine at risk, and making everyday infections deadly.

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Are Western sanctions on Iran making a difference?

The Iranian Islamic regime has been seriously challenged since the start of public protests last September. The government has sought to contain and suppress the protesters – even resorting to executions – but has been unable to stop them.

There are continuing reports of mass demonstrations in various parts of the country, including in the capital Tehran and other major cities in recent weeks.

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Politics with Michelle Grattan: Greens leader Adam Bandt on trying to force Labor's hand on reform

Adam Bandt aspired to power-sharing with a Labor government. That was never going to happen but, possessing the major slice of the balance of power in the Senate, the Greens have considerable potential muscle – at least in theory.

In this podcast, we get a glimpse of the gap between Greens leader Adam Bandt’s aspiration for ambitious reforms and the reality that the government is only giving concessions at the edges to the minor party.

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Sex Magick: this gender-bending, time-travelling play invites you to detangle love and sex

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl and follows her to India. Boy has a transformative tantric sexual experience and realises he might like boys too? Boy, girl and boy live happily ever after.

At its heart, Sex Magick, a new play written by Nicholas Brown, is about subverting expectations, queering desire and digging beneath the surface, taking the audience on a meandering, ultimately thrilling ride filled with laughter, music, sex and dance.

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The Author Who Brought the Montessori Method to Life in Her Fiction

When it was published in 1924, almost a century ago,“The Home-Maker,” a story of radical gender-role reversal by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, was one of the ten best-selling novels of the year. Lester Knapp is a miserably unhappy clerk at the local department store in his small town, hating his job, mumbling poetry to himself to get through every day of tedious and humiliating professional inadequacy. Meanwhile, his wife, Eva, spends her days frantically cleaning their house, brutally policing her children’s every move to teach them good manners, and serving up picture-perfect healthy meals, which her family have trouble eating and digesting. “What was her life?” she thinks, near the beginning of the novel. “A hateful round of housework, which, hurry as she might, was never done. How she loathed housework! The sight of a dishpan full of dishes made her feel like screaming out. And what else did she have? Loneliness; never-ending monotony; blank, grey days, one after another, full of drudgery.”

All three Knapp children suffer under this regime. The older two are constantly terrified of making their mother angry. The youngest, Stephen, an out-of-control five-year-old, is himself prone to volcanic rages. After an accident leaves Lester unable to work, Eva takes a job at the store, Lester becomes the homemaker of the title, and suddenly everyone is happy, parents and children. Eva is a brilliant saleswoman, and Lester loves cooking and spending time with his children. The various ailments that plague the members of the family disappear—Eva’s intractable eczema, her husband’s dyspepsia, their older son’s nausea and vomiting spells.

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Imagination is a spectrum - and 1% of people can't mentally visualise things at all

When you hear someone talk, do you see the words in your mind’s eye? Or do you see what they’re saying as a movie? It’s easy to assume that the way you perceive the world is the same for everyone. But recent studies have revealed that there is a wide spectrum of how people visualise things in their mind’s eye. The vividness of your inner visual imagery can even change throughout your life.

We range from those who are “mind blind” and cannot visualise things mentally to those who have brilliant images in their mind. Some people see shapes in their mind when they hear music, or imagine colours when they see a number (a phenomenon called synaesthesia).

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The next phase of the internet is coming: Here's what you need to know about Web3

The rapid growth of cryptocurrencies and virtual non-fungible tokens have dominated news headlines in recent years. But not many may see how these modish applications connect together in a wider idea being touted by some as the next iteration of the internet — Web3.

There are many misconceptions surrounding this buzzy (and, frankly, fuzzy) term, including the conflation of Web3 with Web 3.0. Here’s what you need to know about these terms.

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Top Things You Canâ€™t Say in New York City

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Why the revolving door between government and lobby firms is spinning a little too fast in some cases

There are numerous factors that influence public trust in government, one in particular is the relationship with people in power and lobby groups. Some of the recent scandals that have damaged public trust in British politics have related to people with private financial interests having far more access to politicians than we might like – and with people connected to politicians getting special treatment.

Most special advisers, who act as senior advisers to ministers in government, are supposed to wait two years before taking a job lobbying government for a new employer but this rule is rarely enforced.

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Why thousands of people who thought they were British could lose their citizenship

Confusion has arisen around the British government’s own understanding of its citizenship laws, following a judgment by the UK’s high court. In a ruling handed down on January 20 2023, in the case of Roehrig v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr Justice Eyre determined that the restrictive approach applied by the Home Office since 2000 to how the children of EU nationals automatically acquire citizenship is the correct interpretation of the law.

The case in question concerns the nationality of Antoine Lucas Roehrig, who was born on October 20 2000 in the UK. His mother is a French national who had lived and worked in the UK under EU law for the five years before he was born. Roehrig claimed he acquired British citizenship at birth by virtue of section 1(1)(b) of the British Nationality Act 1981 because his mother was settled in the UK at the time he was born. The Home Office disputed that his mother met the act’s criteria for being settled and refused his application for a British passport.

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Is there a way to pay content creators whose work is used to train AI? Yes, but it's not foolproof

Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or theft? Perhaps it comes down to the imitator.

Text-to-image artificial intelligence systems such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are trained on huge amounts of image data from the web. As a result, they often generate outputs that resemble real artists’ work and style.

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As uni goes back, here's how teachers and students can use ChatGPT to save time and improve learning

Universities around Australia are starting the academic year under yet another cloud of uncertainty.

After surviving the disruptions of COVID, teachers and students begin this semester under the apparent threat of ChatGPT, which can generate human-like text.

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COVID-19 at Three: Who Got the Pandemic Right?

As the COVID-19 pandemic approaches its fourth year, we can begin to gain some clarity on which countries, and which U.S. states, had the best outcomes over time. In a conversation with David Remnick, Dhruv Khullar, a contributing writer and a practicing physician in New York, explains some of the key factors. Robust testing was key for public-health authorities to make good decisions, unsurprisingly. What also seems clear from a distance, Khullar says, is that social cohesion was a decisive underlying condition. This helps explain why the United States did poorly in its pandemic response, despite a technologically advanced health-care system. Peer pressure, in other words, trumped mandates. Khullar also speaks to Rochelle Walensky, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about how misinformation and political polarization inhibit our country’s efforts in public health.

In the weeks before John Wayne Gacy’s scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Wegovy: what you need to know about this weight loss drug

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