Author: damazah@gmail.com

Australians should accept substandard housing, Bragg saysYesterday Andrew Bragg announced he would strip the 2,000 page national housing code down to just 80 pages, removing most standards outside health, fire safety and essential structural requirements.It caused a furore among some including the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss), who said it would lock renters into skyrocketing power bills to keep their homes inhabitable.RN Breakfast host Sally Sara asks Bragg if his policy means low-income earners should just accept that they will live in substandard housing. “Yes, definitely”, he replies. double quotation markThere are trade-offs here and I’ve been counselled not…

Thirty women leaders from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal have begun a 12-month leadership programme aimed at strengthening their ability to influence health systems, shape policy and improve maternal and newborn health outcomes across West Africa. The women are participating in the 2026 West Africa Midwifery Leadership Journey, a fully funded initiative by WomenLift Health in partnership with WILAN Global, which opened with a four-day leadership immersion in Lagos. The programme seeks to address the underrepresentation of women in leadership and decision-making positions in the health sector, despite their central role in delivering maternal and newborn healthcare across the…

The law is clear, says Prof Jeannie Paterson. “If I deploy an AI agent and it causes harm to someone else, I am responsible for that harm.“Even if I didn’t intend for that to happen, it was foreseeable, and I should be taking responsibility.”However, the director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for AI and Digital Ethics acknowledges there is also a good deal of scope for legal and ethical “murkiness” around actions perpetrated by automated agents, after Australia’s first known agentic AI “accident”.An agent is an autonomous software system that, tasked with pursuing a goal, can do it without…

The unclassified Pentagon review sheds new light on civilian harm from the US campaign against Yemen’s Houthis.Published On 12 Aug 202612 Aug 2026United States military strikes targeting Yemen’s Houthis killed 153 civilians last year and wounded another 243, according to a Pentagon assessment of the attacks.The numbers were disclosed by a US official on Tuesday, citing the review, which found that all of the civilian deaths and injuries recorded by the US military in 2025 came from three strikes in Yemen in April.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe unclassified assessment was sent to the US Congress as part…

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) can reduce movement problems caused by Parkinson’s disease, and new research is providing a clearer picture of why the treatment works. Scientists have found that its benefits appear to depend on stimulating a specific brain network that communicates primarily through a relatively fast beta rhythm (20 to 35 Hz). The findings come from an interdisciplinary group of neuroscientists and clinicians at the University Hospitals of Cologne and Düsseldorf, Harvard Medical School and Charité Berlin. Published in the journal Brain, the study, ‘The Deep Brain Stimulation Response Network in Parkinson’s Disease Operates in the High Beta Band’,…

The 2026 NFL season is rapidly as the first full week of the NFL preseason kicks off on Thursday. That means Fantasy football draft season is officially here as well. Jahmyr Gibbs, Bijan Robinson and Ja’Marr Chase are the first players off the board, according to the latest Fantasy football ADP, while players like Dalton Schultz (ADP of 168), Jauan Jennings (157) and Braelon Allen (160) are some of the Fantasy football picks going off the board late. Whether you’re hunting for a 2026 Fantasy football top 150 you can trust, potential 2026 Fantasy football breakouts, sleepers, and busts, or position-specific…

It is 23 years since Evanescence released one of the defining debut singles of the 2000s, Bring Me to Life, frontperson Amy Lee’s account of escaping an abusive relationship. Since then, the Arkansas band – essentially Lee’s project – have become a towering force in rock, selling millions of records, winning Grammy awards and reshaping how the genre can sound thanks to their inclusion of classical music and piano-led balladry.In June, the band released their sixth album, Sanctuary, produced by former Bring Me the Horizon member and now metal super-producer Jordan Fish. The album, Lee has said, confronts the political…

For most of my life, I had one goal: don’t get found out. I was a covert stammerer (or stutterer). Nobody realised I had a speech disability, because whenever I felt I was going to get stuck on a word, I switched it or stayed silent. I appeared fluent by avoiding certain sounds, words, situations and people. You’d never catch me on the phone. In restaurants, I ordered what was easier to say, rather than what I wanted. At school, I skipped any class where I might have to read aloud. On top of that, I was a shy, geeky…

Femi Ogbonnikan Monday, August 10 marks the 57th birthday of Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known across political circles and grassroots communities as Yayi, representing Ogun West Senatorial District in the National Assembly. It is a day of immense gratitude, joy, and victory, for attaining this milestone, not by human power or political manoeuvrings, but by grace—the divine grace to navigate the complex trials, fierce storms, and shifting tides of time while many along the way have faltered or fallen. In a country ranked among those with low average life expectancy globally, reaching the age of 57 in good health,…

US Department of Homeland Security is expected to buy up to $20m in gloves amid criticism of the president’s immigration crackdown.Published On 12 Aug 202612 Aug 2026The administration of United States President Donald Trump is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to equip federal immigration agents with gloves capable of delivering electric shocks.According to a notice posted on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security has estimated it will invest between $10m and $20m in such gloves by the end of March 2027.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe devices are known as the CT-G5 G.L.O.V.E., an acronym…