Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and one of the more disturbing possibilities is that future AI systems will become extraordinarily effective at persuading human beings to believe, desire and do things they would otherwise reject. Connor Leahy, the US Executive Director of ControlAI, is among those warning that humani...

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Anthony Dillon are right. Their recent arguments in The Australian; Price's call for Indigenous men to step up against sexual abuse and violence, and Dillon's case that Indigenous patriarchy requires cultural change, cut through the ritual language that has long shielded a devastating reality. Vulnerable Aboriginal wome...

As Australians grow older, tooth loss becomes an increasingly common problem. Decay, gum disease, fractured teeth and decades of wear can leave elderly people facing difficult decisions about their dental health. Modern dentistry offers an impressive range of restorative procedures, particularly dental implants, which are frequently presented as th...

Canada has produced another development in its increasingly controversial medical assistance in dying programme, commonly known as MAID. According to an October 28, 2026, Breitbart report, the Canadian government is considering legislation that would permit euthanasia in certain circumstances after a person has lost the mental capacity to provide i...

Western civilization's physical monuments still inspire awe. Mont-Saint-Michel, St. Peter's, the Colosseum, Westminster Abbey, Neuschwanstein, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, the Library of Congress, these are not merely engineering feats. They are the visible residue of a civilisation that also produced its distincti...

There is much in Elon Musk's public pronouncements that invites criticism. His impulsiveness, occasional overstatements, cultural provocations, and willingness to wade into contested political terrain have supplied critics with ready material for years. Reasonable people can disagree with his views on regulation, speech, demographics, or government...

Recent data points make the pattern hard to ignore. China's fertility rate sits near one child per woman; births fell for a fourth straight year to levels last seen when the country's population was a fraction of its present size. The United States recorded another record low general fertility rate of 53.2 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age...

Every October, Australians are subjected to another imported cultural spectacle: Halloween. Supermarkets fill their shelves with plastic skulls, witches, skeletons, fake blood and grotesque costumes. Children are encouraged to dress as monsters and wander through neighbourhoods demanding sweets. Schools, shopping centres and entertainment businesse...

Victoria's COVID lockdowns inflicted enormous economic and social damage. Businesses were ordered to close, workers lost their livelihoods, families exhausted their savings, and ordinary citizens were subjected to extraordinary restrictions upon their freedom. The government insisted that these sacrifices were necessary for the public good. Yet whi...

In mid-2026 a server rack went live inside the National University of Singapore's Life Sciences Institute. It does not look like ordinary data-centre hardware. Twenty CL1 units, each the size of a shoebox, sit in a standard rack. Inside them, lab-grown human neurons rest on multielectrode arrays. Technicians feed the cultures a nutrient mix every t...

The artificial intelligence revolution is usually presented as an extraordinary technological achievement, promising greater productivity, scientific breakthroughs and a transformation of everyday life. Yet behind the apparently immaterial world of digital information stands an enormous physical infrastructure of computer servers, cooling equipment...

Your employer calls you a human resource. Your bank knows you as an account. Advertisers classify you by what you might buy. Political strategists place you in a demographic. Somewhere, a spreadsheet records your contribution, your preferences, or your probable cost. You can pass through an entire day being measured without anyone asking what your ...

What began in mid-September 2026 as protests over overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, and underfunded high schools in France has grown into the largest youth-led mobilisation in years and spilled across borders. Hundreds of thousands of students, joined by teachers, parents, and later unions and cost-of-living demonstrators, have marched in ...

Sometimes the most useful health discoveries concern ordinary foods that have been consumed for thousands of years. Nuts are a good example. Long before modern nutritional science began investigating their biochemical properties, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and other nuts were valued as concentrated sources of nourishment. Modern research is increa...

British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has set a deadline. Writing in the Telegraph, he argued that the United Kingdom's adversaries could be in a position to attack by 2030, giving the country "a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win." The threat, he said, is not limited to conventional force...

Modern humanity has developed a comforting illusion about civilisation. Because we possess advanced computers, artificial intelligence, satellites, nuclear power, modern medicine and sophisticated industrial systems, we assume that the collapse of civilisation belongs to the distant past. The destruction of ancient cities, the disappearance of empi...

In the final days before Israel's October 27, 2026 election, Israeli media reported an "unprecedented confrontation" at the top of the country's security establishment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Channel 12 and later the New York Times, pressed for military action linked to Iran. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir pushed ba...

India is the world's largest recipient of migrant remittances. World Bank and related figures place the 2025 inflow at roughly $139–151 billion, up from about $57 billion a decade earlier. That sum equals roughly 3.5–3.8 percent of India's nominal GDP. No other country has ever crossed the $100 billion mark in a single year. The money arrives from ...

The University of St Andrews, founded in 1413 and the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world, has issued a house style guide that directs staff and students away from its traditional year-group names. Bejant and bejantine for first-years, semi-bejant for second-years, tertian for third-years, and magistrand for final-year students ar...

Kamala Harris, speaking in mid-October 2026, listed measures a Democratic Congress should pursue: expand the Supreme Court, grant statehood to Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and address housing and health costs. The remarks were not a full platform, but they were explicit enough that veteran strategist James Carville later advised the pa...