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BANANAFEST, the new festival of music, food, fun and family entertainment will rock Coffs Harbour’s iconic The Big Banana on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 May. Three shows over two days will feature Australian music talent, children’s entertainment icons, street performers and a feast of food vendors. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s...

The post Bananafest offers weekend of music, festival vibes, food and freebies appeared first on News Of The Area.

DIVERSITY reigns at May’s Artists in the Garden (AITG) event, with a program covering music, spoken word and visual arts offered on Sunday 7 May at Coffs’ North Coast Regional Botanic Gardens. The Sawtell Ukulele Group will open the music component, bringing their enthusiasm and eclectic fun to entertain for an hour from 12.15pm. Advertise...

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LEARNING about Indigenous ways of life through lived experience, Class 10 students at Chrysalis Steiner School, Thora are taking a trip to Arnhem Land in the far north Northern Territory. The students will be guided by their teacher, Zac Panarettos, who is organising the trip from experience, having participated in past school trips from Lismore...

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The Lever today announced a major expansion of its newsroom, following a series of blockbuster national stories that prompted a surge of new subscribers. The expansion reflects the success of The Lever’s unique reader-supported business model, built on a foundation of tireless non-partisan accountability journalism. “Amid a very difficult

I’m reminded of this interview with Graham after he lost. He’s lying. He just thinks Trump is the best chance for Republican power and he doesn’t care how he does it: Sen. Lindsey Graham told “Axios on HBO” that Donald Trump has a “dark side” but he tries to “harness the magic” because he succeeded where Republican candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney failed. Why it matters: The South Carolina Republican gyrates between support and criticism of the former president, even after Trump harshly criticized McCain — Graham’s longtime friend — and helped spark the Capitol insurrection. “What I’m tryin’ to do is just harness the magic,” Graham told Axios’ Jonathan Swan. “To me, Donald Trump is sort of a cross between Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and P.T. Barnum.” “He could make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know can make it. He can make it bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it,” Graham said.

We often look to history or contemporary events to help explain issues and to seek guidance. Thus Graham Allison went back millennia to explain America’s current drive to war with China in his Thucydides Trap. Recently Gregory Clark joined others in making the natural comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. Analogies are admittedly fraught with danger Continue reading »

Do some states have ‘special responsibilities’ or obligations to help solve collective action problems as a consequence of their position in the international system? Australia should. Policymakers and the general public may find it hard to believe, but academics who study international relations for a living occasionally come up with good ideas. They certainly come Continue reading »

The lethargy in lifting the age of criminal responsibility in Australia from 10 to 14 is scandalous given the numbers of vulnerable children caught up in the brutality of the criminal justice system daily.  It’s called SCAGS, the Standing Committee of Attorney-Generals. For many years now the Commonwealth, state and territory first law officers and Continue reading »

Here’s a rough guide to Westerners visiting Indonesia. Bali gets chosen for its cheap packaged holidays, knock-out rural landscapes and friendly folk; relax for a fortnight, eat lots, drink more and head home. This year the island expects to welcome almost double last year’s 2.3 million. Some get disturbed by cruelty to animals, trashing of beaches, the Continue reading »

Parliamentary representatives of all stripes deserve to have the necessary staffing and means to discharge their duties to constituents. The messy legal proceedings between the sitting Federal Member for Kooyong, Dr Monique Ryan, and former chief staffer Sally Rugg, is instructive on a few levels. While it does relate to an alleged unfair expectation to Continue reading »

Water broke in the wee hours on the day of Headry’s flight back to her homeland Malaysia. She remembered clearly it was 3.40 am. The amniotic fluid flowed down, and her heart sank. “I cried and prayed that my baby could hold and not come out yet.” It was early February 2017. Her gynecologist, who Continue reading »

Over a period of decades, the US has refined and applied its own exceptional version of One Country, Two Systems. What is most curious is that this has materialised within plain sight yet it has largely remained undetected, as such. “One country, two systems” (OCTS) is most widely recognised as the regime applied to ground Continue reading »

And it’s even more dangerous than before Read this thread by Emptywheel and you’ll see what I’m talking about: WaPo’s 1800-word, 4 reporter story on the upcoming decision on whether to charge Hunter or not says it matters bc it’ll affect Biden’s campaign. Here's WaPo's front page, with the Hunter story on it. Can someone point me to where the story on the rape trial, the one in which TRUMP, not his son, is a defendant? How about the news that Trump's long-time digial media guru spent all day before Jack Smith's grand jury yesterday (on a Tuesday)? Now check out story. It's not until ¶¶10 & 11 that WaPo tells you that EVEN IF Hunter is indicted, it's not the stuff that right wing has been drooling abt non-stop for 5 years, it's a charge that Trump's campaign manager, personal lawyer, and OWN CORPORATION were convicted of. HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to say that a Hunter Biden prosecution on tax charges would hurt Biden's reelection campaign, w/o mentioning Trump Org's conviction on tax charges? Trump is mentioned ~11 times.

A new bill proposes a novel way to block access to transition-related treatment — for adults too.

The post Texas GOP Opens Up a New Front in Genocidal Anti-Trans Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

Hey, it’s Me, God. Not to toot My own horn, but I think I’ve been knocking this creation thing out of the park. I mean, I’ve really got it all laid out. You guys are gonna love what I’ve done with the place. Wait until you see the constellations. There are so many different ways to make milk. Plus, you’re never going to believe where cashews come from.

But listen, there’s just one catch: I’ve decided dogs can’t live as long as people.

I know, I know. I spent hours mulling this over and weighing My options. Look, I created man’s best friend, didn’t I? I did that. For you. Because I love you. Can’t we just leave it at that?

You’re thinking, “Jeeze, God, why do elephants and sea turtles get to live so long, but not dogs?” Sure, fair question. At one point, I considered making it so no animals could live as long as people. Ultimately, though, I decided it was a bad idea.

‘The streets of the poor quarters of great cities are, above all, a theatre and a battleground,’ reads the opening card of Helen Levitt’s In The Street. At the Barbican’s Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle, Levitt’s documentary, a loose assembly of footage from the streets of 1935 East Harlem, features alongside Alice Neel’s portraits […]

Despite reminding voters of the need to bring ID with them to the polling station, the Labour councillor forgot to do so himself, reports Catherine Avery

He’s all at sixes and sevens… The Washington Post reports: Tucker Carlson — who was fired by Fox News last week at the height of his popularity and influence in right-wing punditry — has aspirations of moving into a larger role that doesn’t limit him to a single medium, according to people familiar with his thinking. And he is willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle. Most ambitiously, Carlson wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system. The idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer — Fox is hosting the first official primary debate, which Trump has threatened not to attend — if he can manage to make his grandest plan happen.

Speaking with RadioTimes.co, a spokesperson for Doctor Who confirmed that Series 14 is currently "unaffected" by the WGA writers' strike.

April saw a flurry of activity in European cities rapidly advancing their own boycott procedures against Israel, with Barcelona, Liège, and Oslo all chilling their relations with Israel's apartheid government.

The post How European Cities are Breathing New Life into the BDS Movement appeared first on MintPress News.

Latest updates as Byline Times reports on the rollout of mandatory voter ID in England

Karim Khan vowed to turn around his office’s losing record. But if his case against Putin backfires, it could hurt the court’s already-battered reputation.

The post The Polarizing Prosecutor Trying to Nail Putin for War Crimes appeared first on The Intercept.