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New photos of Cleo Smith show insight into her life after kidnapping

<p>Almost three years after being abducted from a campsite, heartwarming new photos show how Cleo Smith is living as a happy school girl and big sister. </p> <p>In October 2021, Cleo Smith, who was four years old at the time, made international headlines after she was snatched from a campsite as she slept alongside her mother, stepfather and baby sister at the Blowholes campsite, about 960km north of Perth, Western Australia.</p> <p>A state-wide police operation was launched in search for Cleo, who was four years old at the time, which led to her dramatic rescue 18 days later.</p> <p>Now, almost three years after the horrific abduction and intense media scrutiny, Cleo, who is now seven years old, is adjusting to a normal life. </p> <p>A collection of photos, shared to Instagram by <em>60 Minutes</em>, showed a beaming Cleo enjoying life with her family, as one photo showed Cleo smiling along with her mother, Ellie Smith, stepdad Jake Gliddon, and little sister, Isla.</p> <p>The snapshots revealed happy moments of young Cleo's life, including a family fishing trip, Isla's first birthday, her seventh birthday and the sisters' first day at school in 2024.</p> <p>"Cleo Smith, all grown up. The seven-year-old is enjoying life in Western Australia, loving school and being a big sister to Isla," <em>60 Minutes</em> wrote.</p> <p>The photos received an overwhelming response from social media users all around the world, with many sharing well wishes for the family and for Cleo. </p> <p>"Beautiful to see the family so happy and healthy," one person wrote. </p> <p>"Bless your heart, so glad you are living your best life," another person commented. </p> <p>A third person wrote, "It's so good to see her happy! I followed her story from Argentina. Keep enjoying life Cleo!"</p> <p><em>Image credits: 60 Minutes / Instagram </em></p>

Family & Pets

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Ally Langdon delivers insight into her own Parental Guidance issues

<p dir="ltr">Ally Langdon has shared insight into her parenting style while hosting the often controversial show, <em>Parental Guidance</em>.</p> <p dir="ltr">Langdon revealed that she has learned a lot from the show, and although her parenting style has "evolved over the years”, she still struggles with staying consistent as she tries balancing out the “good days and bad days.”</p> <p dir="ltr">"One day you get the on the ball, a bit strict mum and then the next day there's a lot going on at work... I'm like, 'You know what? You guys sort it out,'" she said.</p> <p dir="ltr">The show host told <em>9Entertainment </em>that her son, Mack, six is “sweet and delightful, and thoughtful and clever,” while her daughter Scout, four has “got a lot of spunk and she's funny and really affectionate, too.”</p> <p dir="ltr">But, like with every parent, there are times where not everything is fine and dandy and the frustrations take over.</p> <p dir="ltr">"We all have the good days where it's like, 'Gee whizz, I'm so good at this,' and then we come crashing back to earth the next day where they're feral, and you're feeling feral and frustrated and you're short with them," she said.</p> <p dir="ltr">"It's the dance we do, isn't it, as parents? Good days and bad days. The parenting styles we've got on the show this season, they go through exactly the same things as all of us,” she added.</p> <p dir="ltr">Langdon also shared that she learned a lot by watching the families in this season’s <em>Parental Guidance </em>and had moments where she thought “okay, that's how I'm gonna parent, I'm gonna shift, I'm gonna do a little bit more of that,” but there’s not always one solution that fits all.</p> <p dir="ltr">Langdon confessed that she’s worried about the issues of child safety in an increasingly digital world, where children often share personal information while gaming, including their addresses, with some agreeing to meet strangers in person.</p> <p dir="ltr">"I mean if I'm honest I'm a little bit scared of technology... I worry about it. We have some of the parents say they want their kids to be kids and don't want to open that can of worms and I relate to that, I feel the same way," Ally said.</p> <p dir="ltr">"It's confronting, but we need to see it and I think it's a conversation we need to have around the dinner table," she concluded.</p> <p><em>Images: Instagram</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Sam Kerr shares rare insight into romance with rival sports star

<p dir="ltr">Aussie soccer star Sam Kerr has shared a rare insight into her relationship with her US player girlfriend, Kristie Mewis.</p> <p dir="ltr">Speaking to UK online publication <a href="https://gaffer.world/pages/sam-kerr-kristie-mewis#MainContent" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Gaffer</em></a>, the couple confirmed that they first knew of each other back in 2019 while competing in the National Women's Soccer League in the US.</p> <p dir="ltr">The two soccer stars then slid into each other's direct messages on Instagram and sparked a conversation.</p> <p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, due to COVID restrictions, they were "forced" to get to know each other online.</p> <p dir="ltr">"It was about three or four months until we could hang out in person," Kerr said, referring to the first romantic meeting with her now girlfriend.</p> <p dir="ltr">"The first time we ever met there was quarantine so we had to spend two weeks together the first time we met.</p> <p dir="ltr">"I was thinking if I don’t like her this is going to be awkward".</p> <p dir="ltr">But her fears were proven wrong as the couple are still going strong, their relationship close to hitting the two-year mark.</p> <p dir="ltr">"We didn’t share it for ages, then it just got too hard to hide it," Kerr said regarding their sweet relationship.</p> <p dir="ltr">Kerr also shared the story of how the couple first started coming out to their friends.</p> <p dir="ltr">"I remember one time we were with some friends and some fans asked for a picture and then we thought we don’t really want this coming out from someone else. We want to be the ones to share it," she said</p> <p dir="ltr">"Once we told our friends it kind of started getting out there a little bit".</p> <p dir="ltr">Mewis, on the other hand, said she was more eager to go public with their relationship.</p> <p dir="ltr">"I was so proud that she was mine so I wanted to share it. I love her and I was so proud to be her girlfriend".</p> <p dir="ltr">Mewis also shared that she loved sharing their relationship on social media, as she hopes that in publicising their relationship, they can change a few people's lives.</p> <p dir="ltr">"I think just being out and being two girls in love, I think if we can change one or two people’s lives and the way that they feel about each other and how comfortable they feel, then that means a lot to me," she said.</p> <p dir="ltr">"So I think if we can change the way one or two people feel about themselves, they can look at us and see that we're happy and we're trying to be as successful as we can and we're an out gay couple. I think that that's so important".</p> <p dir="ltr">The couple are now one of soccer's power couples and are both "out and proud" in the queer and straight communities.</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Instagram/ Gaffer</em></p>

Relationships

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The first biography of Lachlan Murdoch provides some insights, but leaves important questions unanswered

<p>The title of Paddy Manning’s <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/successor" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch</a> tells us what is good and not so good about this biography.</p> <p>It is a smart play on the title of the much-applauded HBO television series, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/succession" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Succession</a>, which everyone except the show’s creators says is modelled on the decades-long corporate psychodrama within the Murdoch family. The Murdochs have said little about the Emmy Award-winning show, but in a knowing wink they chose to use Succession’s grandly jarring theme music in a tribute to Rupert at his 90th birthday party.</p> <p>I say “Rupert” because he has long since joined the small club of globally famous figures known by their first name. Not so Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s third child but, importantly for him, his eldest son.</p> <p>The book’s subtitle is the giveaway. If a “high-stakes life” was Lachlan Murdoch’s defining feature, would it need to be spelt out? The subtitle of a biography of, say, Don Bradman, does not need to inform us of his “high-stakes” life as a cricketer.</p> <p>Lachlan Murdoch turned 50 last year. He is executive chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation, co-chair of News Corporation, founder of the investment company Illyria Pty Limited, and executive chair of Nova Entertainment. He was in his mid-twenties when he first headed the Australian arm of News Limited, as it was then known. In recent years, after several twists and turns, he has become the anointed heir to Rupert’s global media empire. But he still sits deep in the shadow of his father.</p> <p>In June, the small independent news website Crikey published an <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/29/january-six-hearing-donald-trump-comfirmed-unhinged-traitor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opinion piece</a> arguing the Murdoch-owned Fox Corporation bore at least some responsibility for the January 6 riots at the Capitol in Washington. Many read it as referring to Rupert, but it was Lachlan who <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/08/24/crikey-statement-lachlan-murdoch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued for defamation</a>.</p> <p>The ensuing commentary noted that Rupert has never sued a journalist for defamation and asked whether Lachlan is thin-skinned. It is a fair question, given Lachlan has sued a journalist before for inaccurately reporting his use of the company’s private jet.</p> <p>But it vaults over at least one reason Rupert has not sued: he has an army of his own journalists, who can be deployed to fight battles on his behalf. And they do. A relevant example is what happened to an authorised biographer, who slipped his minders and published a far less flattering portrait than had been anticipated.</p> <p>Rupert gave more than 50 hours of interviews to Michael Wolff and greenlit his access to key senior people in News Corporation, but the resulting biography, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4846256-the-man-who-owns-the-news" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch</a> (2008), reportedly infuriated Murdoch. It revealed, for instance, that the ageing media mogul was dyeing his hair to impress Wendi Deng, who is the same age as his second daughter, and who became his third wife in 1999.</p> <p>The biography was not mentioned in News Corporation’s US outlets until March 2009, when the Murdoch-owned tabloid the New York Post reported Wolff’s marital troubles in its <a href="https://pagesix.com/2009/03/30/bald-truth-divorce-for-wolff/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Page Six gossip column</a>. “The bald, trout-pouted Vanity Fair writer, 55,” as Wolff was described, had been carrying on a “steamy public affair” with a 28-year-old intern, prompting his wife to evict him from their Manhattan apartment. So there.</p> <p>At least a half a dozen biographies have been written about Rupert, but The Successor is the first biography of Lachlan Murdoch. That alone makes it noteworthy. It is unauthorised and Lachlan was not interviewed for it, so it draws primarily on interviews with friends, colleagues and enemies, and on secondary sources, notably a good use of overseas media sources.</p> <p>It draws less heavily on the voluminous academic literature about the Murdoch media, though when it does, Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts’ book <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/26406" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Network Propaganda</a> (2018) is quoted to good effect. Discussing the role of the Fox News television network, they write: “Conspiracy theories that germinate in the nether regions of the internet stay there unless they find an amplification vector”.</p> <p>What do we learn about the person who wields so much media power and influence? About Lachlan himself, not much. About Lachlan as a businessman, a bit more. About how Lachlan compares with Rupert and what that might mean for the media – and us, the audience – a good deal more.</p> <p>The portrait that emerges of Lachlan is drawn in bright colours – he has an adventurous spirit, tattoos, boyish good-looks; he is friendly and easygoing – but it does not have much depth. There are endless descriptions, in real-estate brochure mode, of overlong yachts and stylishly appointed bathrooms in multi-million dollar mansions dotted across the globe. And there are numerous gossipy accounts of parties with Tom and Nicole and Baz.</p> <p>Manning plumbs the standard biographical sources of his subject’s formative years, but they yield little of much import. At several points Joe Cross, a futures trader friend, is wheeled in to provide testimonials that are the verbal equivalent of eyewash. Here he is on Lachlan meeting his future wife, Sarah O’Hare:</p> <blockquote> <p>It was on […] he’s like, hook, line and sinker gone. And fair enough! With Sarah, she’s the whole package, she’s like a completely down-to-earth knockabout Aussie, being a supermodel didn’t hurt, and she loves all the things that Lachlan loved […] and she’s got a whole group of fabulous friends that now come together with his tight group of mates, and everyone gets on.</p> </blockquote> <p>More fruitfully, Manning recounts how Lachlan, for his final year thesis in an arts degree at Princeton, wrote about Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative as inflected by the ideas in the Bhagavad Gita. The thesis was good, according to his supervisor, Professor Beatrice Longuenesse. But what stayed with her, as reported by a journalist who interviewed her many years later, was how Lachlan resembled many other graduates of elite universities, who “glide to the highest reaches of the business world, which they do not tend to disrupt with the lofty ideas they explored as undergraduates”.</p> <h2>Family business</h2> <p>Perhaps the most interesting insight is the extent to which Lachlan is conscious of his family and its history. The family business and the business of the family are pillars around which his life revolves, both by birthright and by choice. He remembers everything negative written about his father, and is fiercely protective of both him and the memory of his grandfather, Keith Murdoch, who for many years headed the Herald and Weekly Times.</p> <p>Surprisingly for an accomplished journalist, Manning tacitly accepts an abiding myth of the Murdoch family – Keith’s heroic role in writing the so-called “Gallipoli letter” during the first world war. Lachlan retold the story when his grandfather was inducted into the Melbourne Press Club’s Hall of Fame in 2012.</p> <p>That Sir Keith’s letter was, in important ways, misleading and sensationalised has been discussed by several journalists and authors, including Les Carlyon in his bestselling book <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781743534229/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gallipoli</a>, Mark Baker in his biography of another Gallipoli correspondent, <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/the-myth-of-keith-murdochs-gallipoli-letter/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Phillip Schuler</a>, and by Tom Roberts in his award-winning 2015 <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-before-rupert-keith-murdoch-and-the-birth-of-a-dynasty-49491" target="_blank" rel="noopener">biography of Keith Murdoch</a>.</p> <p>Not that Lachlan has always deferred to his father. Manning recounts his subject’s fury when, in 1999, Rupert reneged on an agreement with his second wife Anna, Lachlan’s mother, who had “given up her claim to an equal share of Rupert’s fortune precisely to ensure that Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James would not have to share the control or assets of the Murdoch Family Trust with any children from Rupert’s marriage to Wendi Deng”.</p> <p>Manning’s biography shows it is not well known that Lachlan and Anna, whose marriage to Rupert lasted much longer than his other three wives, staved off an attempt by Rupert and Elisabeth to sack James after the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The unfolding scandal overlapped with the period between 2005 and 2014 when Lachlan had left the family company, because his father had not backed him when he was being monstered by executives in the US arm of the business.</p> <p>Manning also recounts scenes from this period seemingly drafted for Succession. The then head of News Limited in Australia, John Hartigan, was forced to mediate between father and son over the amount of access Lachlan could have to the company’s Sydney headquarters. “Don’t let him into the fucking building,” Rupert is reported as saying. “When you’re out, you’re out.”</p> <p>Later, the Murdoch siblings began attending family counselling, where they discussed working together to “hold Rupert to account to be a mentor to James and not undermine him, as he had done with Lachlan so many years before”.</p> <h2>Failures and successes</h2> <p>Even Rupert Murdoch’s foes concede he has been a highly successful media businessman; what about Lachlan?</p> <p>He has had some searing failures. He led News’ role in the 1990s rugby league wars. With James Packer, he made a multi-million dollar losing investment in the internet service provider OneTel. Worst of all, he lost his $150 million investment in Channel Ten, which for a time he headed.</p> <p>He has also had some notable successes. He invested around $10 million early in a standalone online classified advertising site, realestate.com.au, that is today worth billions. He bought a share of an Indian Premier League cricket team, the Rajasthan Royals, whose value increased dramatically. And he bought into Nova Entertainment, successfully re-setting the pitch of its radio stations, notably Smooth FM.</p> <p>On the evidence presented in Manning’s biography, Lachlan is a good businessman, if not in the same league as his father, which is admittedly rarefied air. He was given a start in business few others have enjoyed. Sifting the benefits of privilege from natural ability and hard work is not straightforward, but Manning lays out a telling statistic. In 2022, Lachlan’s wealth was estimated at $3.95 billion in the Australian Financial Review’s annual rich list. The same list gave the wealth of his older sister Prudence at $2.58 billion. She “had not worked a day for their father’s business and had mostly escaped the Murdoch spotlight”.</p> <p>Prudence may well be a savvy investor, and her second husband worked for many years in News Corp. She may also have an eye to what happens to News and Fox in the future. The latest speculation among Murdoch watchers, which Manning discusses, is the possibility that after Rupert Murdoch’s passing, three of the four siblings who retain shares in the family company, Prudence, Elisabeth and James, will combine to oust Lachlan. According to one Wall Street analyst, who has followed News for decades and is privy to the breakdown in the relationship between the siblings, it is “fair to assume Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies”.</p> <h2>Right and wrong</h2> <p>It is hard to know whether this is real or just speculation. It is also not clear how much of the breakdown in family relationships is sibling rivalry and how much is fuelled by ideological differences. James Murdoch has severed ties with News and Fox. He is on the record criticising the company’s reporting on climate change and its coverage of former president Trump’s efforts to reject the electorate’s decision in the 2020 election.</p> <p>The core question The Successor raises in this reader’s mind, though, is how the portrait of Lachlan as a decent, socially progressive family guy in the first half of the book squares with the picture in the second half of a hard-nosed businessman who endorses the extreme, inflammatory opinions broadcast nightly on Fox News. Does he do this because it attracts viewers or because he actually believes Tucker Carlson’s ravings about the racist “great replacement” theory?</p> <p>Where does Lachlan stand on these issues? Like his father, he has an abiding love of newspapers, but appears most engaged with them as a business, where Rupert has always had an almost visceral sense of news, both for itself and for what it can do for him and his companies. Manning reports Lachlan’s speeches espousing the virtues of press freedom and his interviews defending Fox, but the speeches are boilerplate and the comments unconvincing. Asked in one interview about Fox’s role in polarising America, Lachlan pointed to criticism of Fox from the far right, saying: “If you’ve got the left and the right criticising you, you’re doing something right.”</p> <p>Or something profoundly wrong. This is the evidence of several media analyses reported in The Successor. Manning acknowledges that at a key point in the vote-counting for the 2020 presidential election, Fox News correctly called the result. But in the following two weeks the network cast doubt on the result at least 774 times, according to the watchdog group Media Matters.</p> <p>Media Matters is a left-leaning organisation, so its count might be dismissed as partisan, but an investigation earlier this year by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a> of 1100 episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight found that he had amplified the great replacement theory 400 times. The number of guests who disagreed with Carlson was found to be decreasing, while the length of his monologues was increasing to double, even triple their earlier length.</p> <p>When the US congressional hearings into the January 6 riot at the Capitol were held earlier this year, Lachlan, according to Manning, decided to air them not on Fox News, but on the little watched Fox Business channel. This was in stark contrast not only to the prominence other television networks gave to the historic hearings, but to the vast amount of airtime previously given on Fox News to the</p> <blockquote> <p>wild and false claims of a rigged election by Rudy Guiliani and Sidney Powell […] once again calling into question whether the channel was really in the news business at all.</p> </blockquote> <p>Lachlan has argued that, however florid the opinions aired on Fox, the network’s news coverage is professional and balanced. Its coverage of the congressional hearings belied this claim. It was aired late at night, from 11pm. Apart from muted acknowledgement of the force of some of the testimony, Manning writes, “the rest was about sowing doubt and trying to move on”.</p> <p>By this point, most have realised that Lachlan is further to the right than his father, whose primary outlets in America, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, have denounced as shameful former president Trump’s role in the Capitol riot. The effect, then, of the second half of The Successor is to undermine the portrait of Lachlan in first half, rendering it almost meaningless. The two can’t be squared.</p> <p>Ultimately, Lachlan has to take responsibility for what Fox News does and the impact of its broadcasts. If he won’t, there are two multi-billion dollar lawsuits underway to focus his attention. The voting-machine companies, Smartmatic and Dominion, are alleging Fox News knowingly and maliciously spread a false narrative accusing them of election fraud.</p> <p>Lachlan is still young by the family’s standards. His grandmother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, died aged 103, which Rupert described, perhaps apocryphally, as an early death. As the first biography of the current head of a powerful media empire, The Successor is well worth reading. It probably won’t be the last biography; nor should it be, as there is more to know about Lachlan Murdoch, the enterprise he heads, and the siblings who appear to covet it.</p> <p><strong>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-biography-of-lachlan-murdoch-provides-some-insights-but-leaves-important-questions-unanswered-192403" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.</strong></p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Nobel economics prize: insights into financial contagion changed how central banks react during a crisis

<p><em>This year’s <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2022/prize-announcement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nobel prize in economics</a>, known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, has gone to Douglas Diamond, Philip Dybvig and former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke for their work on banks and how they relate to financial crises.</em></p> <p><em>To explain the work and why it matters, we talked to Elena Carletti, a Professor of Finance at Bocconi University in Milan.</em></p> <p><strong>Why have Diamond, Bernanke and Dybvig been awarded the prize?</strong></p> <p>The works by <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2022/10/popular-economicsciencesprize2022.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Diamond and Dybvig</a> essentially explained why banks exist and the role they play in the economy by channelling savings from individuals into productive investments. Essentially, banks play two roles. On the one hand, they monitor borrowers within the economy. On the other, they provide liquidity to individuals, who don’t know what they will need to buy in future, and this can make them averse to depositing money in case it’s not available when they need it. Banks smooth out this aversion by providing us with the assurance that we will be able to take out our money when it’s required.</p> <p>The problem is that by providing this assurance, banks are also vulnerable to crises even at times when their finances are healthy. This occurs when individual depositors worry that many other depositors are removing their money from the bank. This then gives them an incentive to remove money themselves, which can lead to a panic that causes a bank run.</p> <p>Ben Bernanke fed into this by looking at bank behaviour during the great depression of the 1930s, and showed that bank runs during the depression was the decisive factor in making the crisis longer and deeper than it otherwise would have been.</p> <p><strong>The observations behind the Nobel win seem fairly straightforward compared to previous years. Why are they so important?</strong></p> <p>It’s the idea that banks that are otherwise financially sound can nevertheless be vulnerable because of panicking depositors. Or, in cases such as during the global financial crisis of 2007-09, it can be a combination of the two, where there is a problem with a bank’s fundamentals but it is exacerbated by panic.</p> <p>Having recognised the intrinsic vulnerability of healthy banks, it was then possible to start thinking about policies to alleviate that risk, such as depositor insurance and reassuring everyone that the central bank will step in as the lender of last resort.</p> <p>In a bank run caused by liquidity (panic) rather than insolvency, an announcement from the government or central bank is likely to be enough to solve the problem on its own – often without the need for any deposit insurance even being paid out. On the other hand, in a banking crisis caused by insolvency, that’s when you need to pump in money to rescue the institution.</p> <p><strong>What was the consensus about bank runs before Diamond and Dybvig began publishing their work?</strong></p> <p>There had been a lot of bank runs in the past and it was understood that financial crises were linked to them – particularly before the US Federal Reserve was founded in 1913. It was understood that bank runs made financial crises longer by exacerbating them. But the mechanism causing the bank runs wasn’t well understood.</p> <figure class="align-center zoomable"><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489027/original/file-20221010-11-on0vn4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w" alt="Police controlling an angry crowd during a Paris bank in 1904" /></a><figcaption><span class="caption">A bank run in Paris in 1904.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/paris-police-hold-back-crowd-making-242294071" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Everett Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure> <p><strong>How easy is it to tell what kind of bank run you are dealing with?</strong></p> <p>It’s not always easy. For example, in 2008 in Ireland it was thought to be a classic example of bank runs caused by liquidity fears. The state stepped up to give a blanket guarantee to creditors, but it then became apparent that the banks were really insolvent and the government had to inject enormous amounts of money into them, which led to a sovereign debt crisis.</p> <p>Speaking of sovereign debt crises, the work by Diamond and Dybvig also underpins the literature on financial contagion, which is based on a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/262109" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2000 paper</a> by Franklin Allen and Douglas Gale. I worked with Allen and Gale for many years, and all our papers have been based on the work of Diamond, and Diamond and Dybvig.</p> <p>In a similar way to how state reassurances can defuse a bank run caused by liquidity problems, we saw how the then European Central Bank President Mario Draghi was able to defuse the run on government bonds in the eurozone crisis in 2011 by saying that the bank would do “<a href="https://qz.com/1038954/whatever-it-takes-five-years-ago-today-mario-draghi-saved-the-euro-with-a-momentous-speech/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">whatever it takes</a>” to preserve the euro.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tB2CM2ngpQg?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <p><strong>The prize announcement has attracted plenty of people on social media saying we shouldn’t be celebrating Bernanke when he was so involved in the quantitative easing (QE) that has helped to cause today’s global financial problems – what’s your view?</strong></p> <p>I would say that without QE our problems would today be much worse, but also that the prize recognises his achievements as an academic and not as chair of the Fed. Also, Bernanke was only one of the numerous central bankers who resorted to QE after 2008.</p> <p>And it is not only the central bank actions that make banks stable. It’s also worth pointing out that the changes to the rules around the amount of capital that banks have to hold after 2008 have made the financial system much better protected against bank runs than it was beforehand.</p> <p><strong>Should such rules have been introduced when the academics first explained the risks around bank runs and contagion?</strong></p> <p>The literature had certainly hinted at these risks, but regulation-wise, we had to wait until after the global financial crisis to see <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/fsr/art/ecb.fsrart201405_03.en.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reforms such as</a> macro-prudential regulation and more stringent micro-prudential regulation. This shows that regulators were underestimating the risk of financial crises, perhaps also pushed by the banking lobbies that had been traditionally very powerful and managed to convince regulators that risks were well managed.</p> <p><strong>If retail banks become less important in future because of blockchain technology or central bank digital currencies, do you think the threat of financial panic will reduce?</strong></p> <p>If we are heading for a situation where depositors put their money into central banks rather than retail banks, that would diminish the role of retail banking, but I think we are far from that. Central bank digital currencies can be designed in such a way that retail banks are still necessary. But either way, the insights from Diamond and Dybvig about liquidity panics are still relevant because they apply to any context where coordination failures among investors are important, such as sovereign debt crises, currency attacks and so on.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192208/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><span id="docs-internal-guid-b64a001e-7fff-6de9-427e-bf63c137d340">Written by Elena Carletti. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-economics-prize-insights-into-financial-contagion-changed-how-central-banks-react-during-a-crisis-192208" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </span></em></p> <p><em>Image: The Nobel Foundation</em></p>

Money & Banking

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Princess Anne gives touching insight into Queen's final hours

<p dir="ltr">Princess Anne has opened up about her mother’s final 24 hours before she passed away. </p> <p dir="ltr">Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96 on September 8 while under medical supervision due to her deteriorating health. </p> <p dir="ltr">Her daughter Princess Anne was “grateful” to spend the final 24 hours with the late monarch before her tragic death. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I was fortunate to share the last 24 hours of my dearest Mother’s life,” Princess Anne’s statement read.</p> <p dir="ltr">“It has been an honour and a privilege to accompany her on her final journeys. Witnessing the love and respect shown by so many on these journeys has been both humbling and uplifting.”</p> <p dir="ltr">She went on to thank everyone who sent their well wishes to her late mother before acknowledging the understanding given to her brother, King Charles III.</p> <p dir="ltr">“We will all share unique memories. I offer my thanks to each and every one who share our sense of loss,” she wrote.</p> <p dir="ltr">“We may have been reminded how much of her presence and contribution to our national identity we took for granted.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I am also so grateful for the support and understanding offered to my dear brother Charles as he accepts the added responsibilities of The Monarch.</p> <p dir="ltr">“To my mother, The Queen, thank you.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The Queen will be laid to rest on September 19. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Twitter</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Brad Pitt gives rare insight into what's next

<p>Brad Pitt has opened up about his high-profile divorce from Angelina Jolie in a candid new interview. </p> <p>The Oscar-winning actor told <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/brad-pitt-august-cover-profile" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GQ magazine</a> that he felt deep turmoil over the split, but believes deep sadness is a vital part of growth. </p> <p>“I think all our hearts are broken,” Pitt said. </p> <p>“I always felt very alone in my life, alone growing up as a kid, alone even out here, and it’s really not ’til recently that I have had a greater embrace of my friends and family.”</p> <p>Pitt and Jolie, 47, ended their 12-year relationship in 2016, prompting a years-long divorce battle which is yet to be finalised, although they were declared legally single in 2019.</p> <p>The 58-year-old also said he found joy "later in life" after years of "low-grade depression".</p> <p>“I was always moving with the currents, drifting in a way, and onto the next,” he told the publication. </p> <p>“I think I spent years with a low-grade depression, and it’s not until coming to terms with that, trying to embrace all sides of self – the beauty and the ugly – that I’ve been able to catch those moments of joy.”</p> <p>Pitt also revealed that his acting days are numbered, after a decades long career that saw him star in iconic films including <em>Ocean’s Eleven</em>, <em>Fight Club</em>, <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>, and more recently, <em>Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.</em></p> <p>“I consider myself on my last leg,” he said. “This last semester or trimester. What is this section gonna be? And how do I wanna design that?"</p> <div id="ad-block-4x4-1" data-type="unruly" data-ad-size="4x4" data-device-type="web" data-ad-tar="pos=1" data-ad-pos="1" data-google-query-id="CLnHvr6gwvgCFRh6jwodcoMJRQ"> <p>“I’m one of those creatures that speaks through art. I just want to always make. If I’m not making, I’m dying in some way.”</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> </div>

Relationships

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View from the hot seat: Mike Tindall's insight into Prince Louis' antics

<p>Going down as one of the most memorable moments from The Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Mike Tindall has revealed the reason behind young Prince Louis' cheeky behaviour.</p> <p>Tindall says the four-year-old prince had "complete sugar highs" during the Jubilee Pageant on Sunday after consuming handfuls of sweets behind the scenes.</p> <p>In full view of the world's media, Prince Louis was seen putting his hand across his mum's mouth, trying to shush her as she attempted to tell him to sit still, making a funny face and blowing a raspberry in her direction.</p> <p>Kate swiftly put Louis' hand down, before he did it again with his left hand.</p> <p>The little prince was excited throughout the parade, running up and down the seats, pulling his cousin's hair and eventually jumping onto his grandfather Prince Charles' lap, for a quick break.</p> <p>Tindall was photographed jokingly warning Louis that he was watching him from the seats above.</p> <p>Two days earlier Prince Louis stole the show during Trooping the Colour, pulling a series of funny faces as the rest of the royals watched a flypast of aircraft from the palace balcony.</p> <p>Tindall, also revealed the Queen's grandchildren and their families enjoyed a private lunch after Trooping, describing it was one of his highlights from the four-day celebrations.</p> <p>He spoke about the Jubilee and Louis' mischievous antics on his podcast, The Good, The Bad and The Rugby.</p> <p>"Louis, he was just wanting to have fun, and my two [daughters] are always mischievous, so it was trying to keep a lid on," Tindall said.</p> <p>"There was a lot of sweets out back, though, so they had complete sugar highs. It's tough for them. They're all young, so asking them to sit, because it was two 'til five or whatever, it's a long time.</p> <p>As any parent knows, you just do whatever needs to be done."</p> <p>Tindall was seated directly behind the Cambridges at the Pageant with his wife Zara and their children Mia, eight, Lena, three and Lucas, one.</p> <p>Prince William and Kate later joked about their youngest child's actions, writing on social media, "We all had an incredible time, especially Louis".</p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Lip reader reveals insight into THOSE scenes between Kate and Louis

<p>Prince Louis’ adorable antics certainly stole the show at the Platinum Jubilee, however, it seems not everyone was fond of his behaviour.</p> <p>A lip reader captured a serious parenting moment between the Duchess of Cambridge and young Louis, as the family were sitting in the royal box on the final day of celebrations.</p> <p>The Cambridges were enjoying the colourful floats at the pageant and Louis was seen pulling faces and getting tired and restless.</p> <p>According to lip reading expert Jeremy Freeman, Kate had some stern words for her youngest during his grumpy moment.</p> <p>Jeremy says when Kate spotted Louis picking his nose and put his hand down, she said to her son: "You have to."</p> <p>"I don't want to," Louis reportedly answered, before cheekily covering his mum's mouth. Kate then replied: "I said no hands!" and gave him another serious look.</p> <p>The lip reader says Kate once again told Louis to stop with his antics after he stuck his tongue out. "Stop doing that," she said.</p> <p>A sweet moment between Prince Louis and his older cousin Mike Tindall was also caught on camera. While Louis was misbehaving, Mike was seen jokingly warning the young Royal that he was watching him from the seats above, gesturing to his eyes.</p> <p>There were other moments when Louis sat in the lap of dad Prince William and granddad Prince Charles.</p> <p>The Prince of Wales was seen bopping his grandson with his legs and also pointed out parts of the display to him.</p> <p>Prince Louis was also spotted having a great time dancing along to the music as the floats went by.</p> <p>Kate's relatable parenting moment captured the hearts of millions as they watched the Cambridges enjoy the Jubilee carnival.</p> <p>The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge made light of Louis' cheeky behaviour in an Instagram, <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/lifestyle/family-pets/kate-and-will-respond-to-haters-with-unseen-snap-of-louis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sharing ten unseen photos from the Jubilee celebrations</a>. </p> <p>Freeman also caught a precious exchange between the Queen, and her great-grandson during their balcony appearance at Trooping the Colour.</p> <p>Reportedly, Prince Louis looked up to his great-grandmother and asked: "Are the Red Arrows coming?"</p> <p>The Queen replied, "I hope so." At one point, the Queen told Louis to "look at the smoke".</p> <p>The young royal also expressed amazement at the Armed Forces jets, turning to his mother and saying: "Woah."</p> <p>At the end of the display, the monarch told her great-grandson: "Let's go, it's finished now."</p> <p>Body language expert Judi James told the publication that the monarch and Prince Louis shared "childlike excitement" on the balcony.</p> <p>She explained: "Louis stepped in front of the Queen before tilting his head back to engage her in some animated conversation as they waited for the Red Arrows.</p> <p>"Louis made this conversation look like the most natural thing in the world and his lack of anything bordering on fear suggested these two might share a rather close friendship based on shared fun behind the scenes, too."</p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

Family & Pets

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"She’d be furious!": New insight into Betty White and Bea Arthur’s relationship

<p dir="ltr">Just one month after her passing, Hollywood gossips are looking for dirt on beloved actress Betty White - and they have uncovered just how frosty her relationship was with her co-stars.</p><p dir="ltr">Joel Thurm, the casting director for <em>Golden Girls</em>, <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/revealed-golden-girls-co-stars-vicious-insult-to-betty-white/6ENEB66WZQRHQE7YZRZMJ2XO5A/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a> that White’s main co-stars Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan thought little of her and described her using quite colourful language during his appearance on <em><a href="https://theoriginals.libsyn.com/the-originals-24-bad-timing-special" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Originals</a></em> podcast.</p><p dir="ltr">He shocked the podcast hosts with the intensity of Bea Arthur’s language relating to White, saying their fury came after she mocked fellow <em>Golden Girls</em> actress Estelle Getty in front of a live audience when she began to forget her lines.</p><p dir="ltr">“That may seem like a minor transgression, but it really does get to you … I have no idea how Estelle Getty felt, but I know the other two did not like (White) at all,” Thurm said.</p><p dir="ltr">Getty passed away in 2008 from Lewy body dementia after retiring from acting in 2001 due to ailing health.</p><p dir="ltr">Andrew Goldman, the host of <em>The Originals</em>, took to Instagram following the episode.</p><p dir="ltr">“When I got into journalism, maybe I didn’t dream at 49 I wouldn’t be refereeing a fight between deceased sitcom stars,” he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CZz5yr1rTe2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.</p><p dir="ltr">“I’m very happy for the attention my latest episode of ‘The Originals’ is getting because Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan apparently used the ‘c-word’ to describe Betty White.”</p><p dir="ltr">White had previously spoken about her tense relationship with Bea Arthur, revealing that her co-star had little fondness for her during a 2011 interview with Village Voice.</p><p dir="ltr">“Bea had a reserve. She was not that fond of me. She found me a pain in the neck sometimes,” White said at the time.</p><p dir="ltr">“It was my positive attitude - and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she’d be furious!”</p><p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

TV

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Fresh insight into troubled past of Cleo's alleged abductor

<p><em><strong>Content warning: This article contains references to deceased Indigenous individuals. </strong></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Audio has emerged of the woman who raised Terence Darrell Kelly, Cleo Smith’s alleged abductor, revealing that he had a tumultuous early life.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The 36-year-old Carnarvon man was removed from his mother’s care as a two-year-old and was raised by Penny Walker, a respected member of the Indigenous community.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“His mum didn’t want him and she threw him away,” she </span><a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/cleo-smith/cleo-smith-found-accused-kidnapper-terence-darrell-kellys-traumatic-childhood-revealed-c-4476537"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">in an interview from 2019.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I looked down at him and this little boy - God was giving me something back in my life what the welfare took off me - my children.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ms Walker said Mr Kelly’s mother was a drug addict and didn’t want him.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She then took him in and raised him alongside her two grandsons - who she was caring for after her daughter died from multiple sclerosis (MS).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/audio-files-reveal-difficult-upbringing-of-cleo-smith-s-alleged-abductor-terence-kelly-20211108-p596y8.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">interview</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, she also spoke about her own traumatic childhood as a member of the Stolen Generation. She spoke of the poor treatment she received as a child at the Moore River Native Settlement and New Norcia Mission, where she was the victim of sexual abuse and beatings.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ms Walker said this led her to become an alcoholic, which resulted in her six children being taken away. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She then turned her life around and became a respected member of the Indigenous community in Carnarvon.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ms Walker died in 2020, leaving Mr Kelly alone in their Carnarvon home.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When police arrived at the home last week, they found Cleo in a room sitting upright and playing with toys.</span></p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7845436/terence-kelly1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/e959eb1a366f41e8bff36ecb3282bf94" /></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Terence Darrell Kelly boards a plane to Perth, where he will stay in custody until he returns to court in December. Image: Getty Images</span></em></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mr Kelly was then arrested and faced Carnarvon Magistrate’s Court for several </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/news/news/i-m-coming-for-you-suspect-charged-in-cleo-s-alleged-abduction" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">charges</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, including forcibly taking a child under 16.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">His neighbours described Mr Kelly as a “quiet” and “lonely” individual.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The day after his court appearance, he was flown from Carnarvon to Perth and spent his first night in a maximum-security prison.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Detectives have since returned to his home as part of their investigation into Cleo’s abduction.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Police said they don’t believe the alleged abduction was planned and are investigating a theory that Mr Kelly came across Cleo by chance, according to </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/cleo-smith/cleo-smith-found-accused-kidnapper-terence-darrell-kellys-traumatic-childhood-revealed-c-4476537" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">news.com.au</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mr Kelly has been remanded in custody for four weeks and is due to return to court in December.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Getty Images</span></em></p>

Legal

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Windsor Castle's clockmaker shares a royal insight

<p>As the UK enjoyed an extra hour in bed over the weekend to signify the end of daylight savings, royal staff have been busy at work in Windsor Castle. </p> <p>Taking to the Royal Family's Instagram account, a team of horological conservators worked throughout the castle to tweak the 400 clocks of the estate to set the time back one hour. </p> <p>Of the 400 timepieces on the state, 250 are located inside the castle.</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">Offering a glimpse into their many clocks, the Royal Family shared a picture of their chief horologist with the caption, "For those living in the UK, don’t forget that clocks go back an hour tonight."</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">"Did you know there are over 1,000 clocks within Her Majesty’s official residences?"</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">"<span>Each timepiece is conserved by a special horologist and each will be set back an hour this Sunday."</span></p> <p class="mol-para-with-font"><span>The estate's head horological conservator explained that a lot more work is involved to wind the clocks back in the winter than turning them forwards in the summertime.</span></p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">"We have 400 clocks on the estate of which 250 are inside the castle and the rest are distributed around the estate. I go round once a week to wind them up so I get to know every clock very well", he said. </p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">"Just like a car that needs an MOT every now and then a clock will need a service every couple of years, twice a year we have the clock change."</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font">"When we set the clocks backwards in winter it’s a different process for every clock, in summer it’s much easier because every clock just goes forward one hour and each time it takes me about a weekend to set all the clocks to the right time."</p> <p class="mol-para-with-font"><span>The royal estates features musical, astronomical and miniature clocks including 600 at the Queen's official London residence Buckingham Palace and 50 at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Scotland. </span></p> <p>Windsor Castle in Berkshire is where Her Majesty is currently recovering after recent stay in hospital.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images / Instagram @theroyalfamily</em></p>

Technology

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Kevin Bacon shares playful insight into his laundry

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kevin Bacon made an interesting discovery about his wife Kyra Sedgwick while doing their laundry and took to social media to share it with fans.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The 63-year-old shared a photo on Instagram of a lacy G-string belonging to his wife, which has been monogrammed with a cheeky message.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Sometimes doing laundry can be full of surprises,” the actor captioned the photo, with the underwear showing the words “I [heart] KB” bejewelled in rhinestones.</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CUAu6WRpP--/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CUAu6WRpP--/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sedgwick playfully responded in the comments, writing: “Thanks for airing my dirty laundry </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">😉❤️”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fans reacted with their own jokes and comments, with many noticing Bacon’s face reflected in the washing machine dial.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I have that same pair,” one person joked.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Another asked, “where do I get these”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The pair recently celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary, with the Footloose star sharing a sweet post on Instagram to mark the occasion.</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CTaPu97JdAa/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CTaPu97JdAa/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Here’s to dancing through life with you @kyrasedgwickofficial,” he wrote alongside a black and white photo.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Happy anniversary. You are the reason.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bacon and Sedgwick married in 1988 and share two children: 28-year-old actress Sosie and 31-year-old musician Travis.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: kevinbacon / Instagram</span></em></p>

Relationships

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Reporters’ book holds new insights on Trump

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A new book penned by </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Washington Post </span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta has become a source of </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/29/trump-white-house-covid-taskforce-fauci" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">shocking revelations</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> about the Trump administration at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Titled </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/nightmare-scenario-yasmeen-abutalebdamian-paletta" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nightmare Scenario</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic that Changed History</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the authors reported on Trump’s contempt for the COVID taskforce chaired by vice-president Mike Pence, which Trump took to referring as “that f****ing council that Mike has” as the pandemic worsened.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The authors wrote that his derisive term for the taskforce was “a signal that he wished it would go away” and “didn’t want anyone to exert leadership”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Many on the taskforce didn’t want the responsibility either, fearful of the consequences.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The book also revealed that Trump wanted to send Americans infected with the virus to Guantanamo Bay and that he hoped his former aide John Bolton would be “taken out” by COVID-19.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The book also examined the influence of “outside consultants” on Trump that undermined the work of the president’s scientific advisors.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This included unofficial advisor Stephen Moore, who the authors said acted as Trump’s “emissary [from] the conservative establishment” and “strode into the Oval Office to convince the president” to end shutdowns and kickstart the economy as cases continued to spiral and the death toll in the US passed 1,000 people.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Moore is an economist who was nominated to the board of the Federal Reserve in 2019 by Trump, but withdrew after the Guardian and other outlets reported on controversies in his past.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Moore told Abutaleb and Paletta that Trump’s promise to reopen the US economy by Easter 2020 was “the smart thing to do” because “the economic costs of this are mounting and there’s not a lot of evidence that lockdowns are working to stop the spread”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He has also been quoted attacking Dr Anthony Fauci, a former member of the COVID taskforce and the current chief medical advisor to Joe Biden.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Fauci is the villain here,” Moore said. “He has the Napoleon complex, and he thinks he is the dictator who could decide how to run the country.”</span></p>

Books

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Insights from Morocco into how smartphones support migration

<p>For undocumented migrants and refugees travelling to new countries, accurate information is vital. Because of this, smartphones – mobile phones that perform many of the functions of a computer, like accessing the internet – have become an important tool. They give migrants access to applications such as Google maps, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. These can provide them with information from social media and close contacts.</p> <p>In a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.13.1.0062?seq=1">recent study</a>, my colleague Filippo Bignami and I investigated the role of smartphones in irregular migration. We wanted to know how they helped migrants reach their destination and what kind of information migrants accessed using them. Our focus was on sub-Saharan migrants arriving in Morocco, specifically in the city of Fès, on their way to Europe.</p> <p>We found that smartphones supported migration flows by providing migrants with access to online information before and during travel and when they arrived at their destination country. They affected their migration routes and choice of final destination. They also helped migrants to share information with each other.</p> <p>The smartphones were equally used by traffickers. They allowed them to contact prospective irregular migrants and provide them with information.</p> <p>From what we’ve seen, smartphones are being increasingly used to minimise risks and address migration challenges. Policymakers can use this information to better support their journey, and ensure their safety, by engaging them through smartphone applications.</p> <p><strong>Meeting migrants</strong></p> <p>We first investigated how the use of smartphones and social media influenced migration journeys. Then we explored how they influenced decisions regarding their final destinations. Finally we looked at how they affected the financing of migration.</p> <p>To do this, we conducted interviews with 27 migrants from January 2017 until March 2018 and followed them for a period between 4 and 8 months.</p> <p>We met the migrants in the neighbourhoods where they lived, in streets, and cafes. They gave us information about their use of technology, migratory routes, demographic and socio-economic profiles, daily lives, relations with society and their migratory project.</p> <p>It made sense for us to focus our study on Morocco which, since the mid-2000s, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/hundreds-storm-border-fence-spanish-enclave-north-africa-ceuta-spain-migration">has been</a> a transit country for many refugees and African migrants wishing to reach Europe. They do this either through the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, or through the Canary Islands.</p> <p>It’s <a href="https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/125569/Naama_Mbarek_Helsinki.pdf?sequence=1">estimated</a> that migrants come from over 10 countries in Africa, in particular; Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Congo and Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Guinea, Benin, Ghana, Niger, and Cameroon. According to <a href="https://www.hcp.ma/file/217998/">Morocco’s Statistics Office</a>, between 15,000 and 25,000 African migrants enter Morocco each year. Many aren’t able to complete the trip, and stay in Morocco, but each year it’s believed that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40504374">over</a> 8,000 irregular sub-Saharan migrants cross to Spain.</p> <p><strong>Influence of smartphones</strong></p> <p>We found that the intention to migrate was significantly influenced by mobile technologies in addition to the traditional push-factors, such as conflict, civil war, economic hardship, and family impact.</p> <p>Smartphones made the process relatively faster and smoother. They guided migrants in their quest to reach their destinations. For instance, they used Google to access news or maps which provided them with information on the directions to take to reach their destination country. These applications could also show when the best time, or place, was for border crossings.</p> <p>If migrants were in difficulty or lost they could use the phones to ask for help. They used specific applications like WhatsApp or Messenger for communication.</p> <p>These apps were also key for the migrants to stay in touch with family, friends and traffickers. Aside from emotional support, this was an important way in which migrants could continue to finance their travels. As one interviewee stated: <em>“When I need money I make a call to my parents through WhatsApp, and they send it via Western Union really fast.”</em></p> <p>The phones also provided for cooperation and communication between migrants. They helped each other choose the safest routes and share other information.</p> <p>The accessibility of smartphones made some migrants more confident and independent. Because of their access to information, some were making their journeys without smugglers.</p> <p>When they reached their destination, the sharing of news and photos about their journey – and how they managed to cross borders – motivated more young people to migrate.</p> <p>And it’s not just migrants that use them. Smartphones allowed traffickers to recruit prospective immigrants and quickly disseminate information.</p> <p><strong>New opportunities</strong></p> <p>We have seen evidence of how mobile technologies are transforming societies, migration processes, migrants’ lives, their social aspirations, and migration movements.</p> <p>This information could be used to develop policies to protect migrants’ rights and to support migrants’ participation and integration. Such knowledge is a good starting point for policy-making to revise the current regulations, so as to integrate the migrants in education, health care and housing facilities, the job market, and other sectors.</p> <p>Thus, smartphones and social media are reshaping not only migration movements but also migration policies with the daily use of mobile technologies.</p> <p><em>Moha Ennaji‘s most recent books are “Managing Cultural Diversity in the Mediterranean Region” and “Muslim Moroccan Migrants in Europe”.</em></p> <p><em>Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/moha-ennaji-333834">Moha Ennaji</a>, Université Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/insights-from-morocco-into-how-smartphones-support-migration-147513">The Conversation.</a></em></p>

Travel Tips

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How this New Zealand songbird provides insights into cognitive evolution

<p>When we think about animals storing food, the image that usually comes to mind is a squirrel busily hiding nuts for the winter.</p> <p>We don’t usually think of a small songbird taking down an enormous invertebrate, tearing it into pieces and hiding these titbits in the branches of trees to snack on later in the day. But this is also a form of caching behaviour, where food is handled and stored for later consumption.</p> <p>For caching animals, the ability to recall where food is hidden is crucial for survival. My <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982219303252">research</a> into the spatial memory performance of a caching songbird, the New Zealand robin (<em>Petroica longipes</em>), shows male birds with superior memory abilities also have better breeding success.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298439/original/file-20191024-119449-v1ha09.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em> <span class="caption">Male toutouwai with better spacial memory also raise more chicks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-ND</a></span></em></p> <p style="text-align: left;"><strong>Why memory matters</strong></p> <p>There’s no argument that New Zealand is home to a host of unusual birds, including the nocturnal, flightless parrot kākāpō (<em>Strigops habroptila</em>), or the hihi (<em>Notiomystis cincta</em>), the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1474-919X.1996.tb08834.x">only bird in the world known to mate face to face</a>.</p> <p>By outward appearances, the small, grey toutouwai (Māori name for <em>P. longipes</em>) is not particularly remarkable. But its noteworthy behaviour includes <a href="https://www.doc.govt.nz/globalassets/documents/science-and-technical/docts13.pdf">feasting on some of the world’s largest invertebrates</a>. There is only so much of a 30cm earthworm a 30g bird can eat, and rather than waste the leftovers, toutouwai will cache any surplus prey they don’t want to eat immediately.</p> <p style="text-align: right;"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298440/original/file-20191024-119463-1bfg3en.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="caption">Toutouwai are the only known caching species in New Zealand.</span></em></p> <p>An accurate <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110512-135904">spatial memory is therefore crucial</a> for recovering caches and it has long been assumed that spatial memory is under <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2919184">strong selection pressure in caching species</a>.</p> <p>For selection to act on a trait, there must be individual variation that is passed onto offspring and that influences survival and reproduction. While researchers had looked at how spatial memory influences <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982219300077">winter survival in caching mountain chickadees</a>, no one had examined whether memory performance influences reproductive success in any caching species. Our <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960982219303252">research</a> tackles this issue.</p> <p><strong>Measuring memory in the wild</strong></p> <p>We measured the spatial memory performance of 63 wild toutouwai during winter. We gave the birds a circular puzzle that had a mealworm treat hidden inside one of eight compartments. For each bird, we put the puzzle at the same location in their territory several times in a single day, with the food always hidden in the same spot.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/765/spatial_test.gif?1571875385" alt="" width="100%" /> <em><span class="caption">Wild toutouwai looking for a hidden mealworm treat.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> SOURCE </span></span></em></p> <p>Over time, toutouwai learned the location of the hidden treat and began opening fewer compartments to find the mealworm. We then followed these same birds through the next breeding season and looked at whether their spatial memory performance (measured as the number of compartments they had to open to find the mealworm) was linked to their ability to feed chicks, and whether it influenced the survival of their offspring.</p> <p>Our results suggested that spatial memory performance influences reproductive success in toutouwai. Males with more accurate memory performance successfully raised more offspring per nest and fed larger prey to chicks.</p> <p>By contrast, we did not find the same patterns for females. This is the first evidence that spatial memory is linked to reproductive fitness in a food caching species.</p> <p><strong>Evolving intelligence</strong></p> <p>If there is such a great benefit for males in having an accurate recall of locations, why aren’t all males the best they can possibly be in terms of spatial memory performance? In other words, why didn’t all the male toutouwai we tested ace our memory task?</p> <p>Intriguingly, our results suggest a role for conflict between the sexes in maintaining variation in cognitive ability. We found no effect of memory performance on female reproductive success, suggesting that the cognitive abilities that influence reproductive behaviour may well differ for females.</p> <p>Such a difference between the sexes would ultimately constrain the effect of selection on male spatial memory, preventing strong directional selection from giving rise to uniformly exceptional memory in our toutouwai population.</p> <p>Our work produced some tantalising evidence for both the causes and consequences of variation in cognitive ability, but it also raises several more questions. For example, while we’ve shown that memory performance matters for males, we still need to examine how it influences caching behaviour.</p> <p>Another mystery that remains is why spatial memory ability may have less of an influence on female toutouwai fitness. One possibility is that longer-term spatial memory for specific locations (rather than the short-term memory we measured) may matter more for female reproduction, because females do all of the nest building and incubation.</p> <p>So far, we’ve only provided one piece of the puzzle. To get the full picture of how cognition evolves, we have many more avenues left to explore.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125304/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/rachael-shaw-764893">Rachael Shaw</a>, Rutherford Discovery Fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/victoria-university-of-wellington-1200">Victoria University of Wellington</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-small-new-zealand-songbird-that-hides-food-for-later-use-provides-insights-into-cognitive-evolution-125304">original article</a>.</em></p>

Music

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Royal sneak peek: Prince Andrew shares rare insight into the Queen’s Balmoral Castle

<p>Queen Elizabeth is a royal who loves to spend her summer holidays laid back at Balmoral Castle – one of the homes she has relied on for sanctity throughout her time as Queen. </p> <p>Her Majesty arrived to the sprawling estate on Wednesday where she was greeted by members of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, who provide a Royal Guard throughout her time at the Castle. </p> <p>The Scottish retreat finished being built during Queen Victoria’s reign in 1856 and the royal family have been holidaying there ever since. </p> <p>The property is worth a staggering estimate of $200 million. </p> <p>Prince Andrew is one of the many royals who have found peace at the highland haven, and took to Instagram to share a photograph snapped of his parents from 1984 to share his own personal perspective. </p> <p>“Every year, Her Majesty and The Royal Family enjoy spending time at Balmoral in the summer – this photo was taken by The Duke of York in the grounds of the Castle in 1984,” he wrote in a caption. </p> <p>Not often are fans of the British family treated to see life at Balmoral – it was once described by Prince Andrew's daughter Princess Eugenie as “the most beautiful place in the world”.</p> <p>"I think Granny is the most happy there," the princess said. </p> <p>"I think she really, really loves the Highlands."</p> <p>Scroll through the gallery above to see what royal life is like at Balmoral Castle. </p>

Home & Garden

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Duchess Camilla reveals rare insight about Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan's baby

<p>Prince Charles' wife Duchess Camilla could not be more excited about the birth of the new royal baby. According to <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2019032671279/camilla-royal-baby-revelation-cuba-tour/" target="_blank">Hello!</a>, Camilla was speaking to an American tourist who asked her if she was excited about the new baby.</p> <p>Camilla reportedly had a big grin on her face as she replied, “Yes, very much so.”</p> <p>Prince Charles and Camilla were recently on a royal tour of the Caribbean and discussed the new royal baby. This is a rare topic that isn’t usually discussed so publicly.</p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkXs3NhgVq/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" data-instgrm-version="12"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkXs3NhgVq/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" target="_blank">Meanwhile back in the Cayman Islands it’s the last day of our Royal Tour of the Caribbean - Here The Prince of Wales meets Peter the blue iguana as he visits the Queen Elizabeth II Royal Botanic Park in the Cayman Islands today on the final day of TRH Caribbean Tour - Swipe right to see what happened next! #royalvisitcayman</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/chrisjacksongetty/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" target="_blank"> Chris Jackson</a> (@chrisjacksongetty) on Mar 28, 2019 at 3:11pm PDT</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>Despite the anecdote being short and sweet, this is the second time Camilla has spoken about the new royal baby in public.</p> <p>Camilla isn’t the only one excited about the news, as <a rel="noopener" href="https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/2019032671279/camilla-royal-baby-revelation-cuba-tour/" target="_blank">Hello!</a> has reported that Prince Charles is chuffed as well.</p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvck4e1hQmo/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" data-instgrm-version="12"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvck4e1hQmo/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" target="_blank">The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall watch the dancing at the Acosta Dance school in #Havana today #royal</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/chrisjacksongetty/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_medium=loading" target="_blank"> Chris Jackson</a> (@chrisjacksongetty) on Mar 25, 2019 at 2:32pm PDT</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>He was asked if he has toasted to the news of the royal baby, to which he replied:</p> <p>“Oh yes, absolutely… several times at the moment!”</p> <p>It’s clear that excitement is building for the new baby, who is due in the coming weeks. </p>

Family & Pets

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Rare Titanic letter offers insight into life on doomed ship

<p>A rare letter written on-board the Titanic recently went up for auction, giving a glimpse of what life was like on the historic ship.</p> <p>According to auction house Henry Aldridge &amp; Son, the letter was written by Second Class passenger and survivor Kate Buss.</p> <p>The letter, written on April 10, 1912, is addressed to her brother Percy James and was in response to a letter she had received from him while on the historic ship.</p> <p>“I’ve been quite alright — but now feel dead tired and more fit for bed than anything,” Ms Buss wrote.</p> <p>“Have to go to dinner-tea in half an hour.”</p> <p>The letter reveals more about everyday life on the Titanic, which sank on April 15, killing 1503 passengers.</p> <p>“Mr Peters spent about an hour on the vessel and they might easily have spent another without waste of time,” Ms Buss wrote.</p> <p>“The first class apartments are really magnificent and unless you had first seen them you would think the second class were the same.”</p> <p>Ms Buss said the ship had not yet reached Cherbourg, France, but the mail had cleared.</p> <p>“I think I’d best try and get some postcards of the vessel,” she wrote.</p> <p>She also said that the passenger she was sharing her stateroom with had not yet turned up. She was also told by two clergymen sitting opposite her at the table to eat a good lunch.</p> <p>Ms Buss finished her letter by informing her brother that she was putting her letter in the post.</p> <p>“Must clear and have a wash now,” she wrote. “Will pop this in the [mail] in case I’m sea sick tomorrow. PW brought a box of chocolates — shouldn’t wonder if I’m like Jim Buss and get it the other way. Give my love to all enquirers — must go. Much love, Kate.”</p> <p>Ms Buss was travelling to America to marry her fiancé Samuel Willis.</p> <p>She survived the Titanic sinking when the <a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/travel/travel-trouble/2018/04/the-call-that-sealed-the-fate-of-titanic-victims/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Carpathia</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> picked her up</span></strong></a> along with 705 other passengers.</p> <p>Kate Buss and Samuel Willis married on May 11 as planned.</p> <p>She passed away on July 12, 1972 at the age of 96.</p> <p><em>Image credit: Henry Aldridge &amp; Son</em></p>

Cruising

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How a letter reunited estranged twin sisters after 13 years

<p><a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>SBS’s Insight</strong></em></span></a> is generally essential viewing for all involved and Tuesday night’s episode was no exception, featuring an emotional story about how a simple letter led to estranged twin sisters reuniting after 13 years apart.</p> <p>When she was 33, Sandra turned to methamphetamine when she found herself unable to provide for her second child, leaving her sister Tanya abandoned.</p> <p><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FInsightSBS%2Fvideos%2F10156166753045902%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=476" width="476" height="476" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p> <p>“We were pretty close as kids,” Sandra told <em><a href="http://www.news.com.au/" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>News.com.au</strong></span></a></em>.</p> <p>“When I was 22, I moved to Tasmania with my then partner. So Tanya and I went our separate ways then, as she also met a man and started a family. But while we had separation between us, we were still talking.</p> <p>“But after my family broke down in Tasmania, that lead to a breakdown with myself. I walked away from my family, and returned back to South Australia in the year 2000. But I’d come back with a drug addition.”</p> <p>Sandra said her addiction led to her pulling away from everybody around her.</p> <p>“Tanya tried to reach out about a year after I left,” Sandra explained.</p> <p>“Police came to my door, saying there was a missing persons report for me which had come from my sister. She wanted to know if I was OK.</p> <p>“I didn’t want to see anybody, so I told the police that I was all right, but didn’t want to contact her.”</p> <p>“Sandra had become a different person, that’s what happens on horrible drugs,” Tanya told news.com.au.</p> <p>“I thought something bad had happened to Sandra. My head kept saying something was wrong, but my heart was saying she was doing OK.</p> <p>“I just wanted her to know that we weren’t angry with her and we didn’t hate her. But the more drugs she took, the more guilt she felt and that’s when she lost herself.”</p> <p>After more than a decade the Salvation Army got in touch with Sandra, with a handwritten letter from Tanya which you can see below.</p> <p>“Once I opened up to the doctor [about mental health], I then opened the letter and rung the lady [from the Salvos] who sent it to me.</p> <p>“I wanted to change my life ... but I’d never reached out to my family. There was just too much guilt and shame.</p> <p>“One day, I called Nicola from the Salvation Army. When I met with her, we called Tanya. She was only 15 minutes away from where I was, so I went and saw her and have seen her every day since.”</p> <p>The pair were reunited and now they’re stronger than ever.</p> <p>“I remember we just hugged,” Tanya said.</p> <p>“We just embraced each other,” Sandra added.</p> <p>“The first thing Tanya said was: ‘Welcome home,’ and as soon as she said that, I just started crying.</p> <p>“Our relationship is now stronger than it’s ever been. We are having the relationship now that we should’ve had when we were younger.</p> <p>“It was like nothing had happened even though we’d been apart 13 years.”</p> <p>What are your thoughts?</p>

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