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The increasing number of Grandparents paying private school fees has enabled elite schools to evade Commonwealth parent income tests determining the rate of taxpayer funding that goes to society’s most wealthy and least in need students. Some private schools have acknowledged that many grandparents pay school fees. In effect, this is an admission that they Continue reading »

If you are in Melbourne and travel though the CBD along Collins Street on the 109 tram you pass a nondescript building called Collins House. It looks a bit scruffy and nowadays it is dwarfed by high rise buildings. Yet once Collins House was the centre of a sprawling empire of mining, media and other Continue reading »

Relations between great powers and their neighbouring regions are often fraught. The cases of the United States and Latin America, or the European Union and North Africa, come to mind. For instance, tensions related to immigration from Latin America and North Africa, has led to the rise of right wing populism in the United States Continue reading »

After more than six months, it appears to many that Israel is losing its war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel is fighting Hezbollah on its northern border, relations between Jerusalem and Washington are strained, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing Continue reading »

"73 Yards" is one of the weirdest episodes of Doctor Who in all the best ways possible - and it travels that weird route in a unique way.

With FDA approval on the horizon, an internal document lays out measures to treat PTSD and stanch the suicide crisis.

The post The VA Is Quietly Fast-Tracking MDMA Therapy for Veterans appeared first on The Intercept.

Kevin Drum takes them downtown: The Washington Post reports today that consumer sentiment softened this month. That’s true enough. But they also say this: Come on, folks. Do we have to keep doing this? Nobody has to guess at consumer buying habits by looking at fast food, kitchen renovations, sneakers or afternoon lattes. Why? Because every month the government publishes a nice, tidy summary of all consumer spending. Here it is through March: If the Washington Post thinks the government is rigging the statistics they should say so. But maybe they don’t know about government statistics. Maybe someone should tell them. Kevin concludes: And guess what? The government also publishes lots of other handy statistics! I’ll spare you the charts, but real wage growth has been up steadily; home sales are down from their 2021 boom year but have increased lately; auto sales are up and have been steady lately; and durable goods consumption is up. Inflation has been hovering around 3% for an entire year, which is not especially dire.

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the work for the week, were finished. And so on the seventh day, They slept in until 8:30 a.m. Then They looked upon each other and proclaimed, “Damn, is it time to go to the grocery store again? Didn’t we just do that?!”

All the work They had done to create the delicious chickpea lunch bowl for last week felt like it should have covered Them for several more days. But it did not. And so now They must come up with another equally good idea, though They have no good ideas and the only food They can remember that exists is hot dogs.

And so They began the creation of the week’s meal plan, though They each hoped unto themselves that The Other would proclaim, “Whatever, let’s just get takeout all week and go bowling.”

And so They looked upon each other for the next hour and said, “What do you feel like eating?”

“I don’t know, what do you feel like eating?”

“I asked you first.”

Finally, She suggested bolognese. Thus the Other She exclaimed, “It takes like three hours to cook bolognese. We have pickleball this week, and you’re working late two nights. We need a bunch of easy stuff.”

And it isn’t Joe Biden For many months former president Donald Trump’s henchmen pushed the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as an agent of chaos and a boon to Trump’s latest bid for the presidency. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte presciently called out their strategy in a piece last May called “Of course Steve Bannon and Alex Jones love RFK Jr. — he’s a great weapon for their war on reality.” At that time Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary and it was easy to dismiss the right wing “support” from the likes of Bannon and Jones as well as former Trump admirer and QANON adherent Michael Flynn, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Trump henchman Roger Stone as partisan mischief. But it was more than that. They touted Kennedy as a perfect Trump running mate — a “dream ticket” ostensibly to attract low information, liberal anti-vaxxers and environmentalists to the GOP. Unfortunately for the Trumpers, their tactics appear to have backfired. Bannon worked this idea hard, suggesting that a Trump Kennedy ticket would win in a landslide.

Protecting the in-group from you, the out-group Jonathan Last on Friday made sure readers saw clearly that for Republicans “law and order” has a very, very narrow meaning. Last was commenting on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pardon of Daniel Perry, convicted and sentenced to 25 years for the vigilante murder of Garrett Foster during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. Last recounts the details that put Perry, a racist murderer, behind bars, but the key detail is Abbott’s pardon: There is no legal or moral justification for pardoning Perry. His trial was fair. The jury acted reasonably. The laws he broke were well-defined and serious. He is not a good guy who had one bad moment. There is no indication that he has repented and become a different man than the one who fantasized about murder and then carried it out. The only reason to pardon Perry is political. Pardoning Perry creates political gain for Gov. Abbott because his constituents like Perry. And these voters like Perry precisely because of who he murdered.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he visits the UK, if the warrants are issued

Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job.

In late 2021, I pick up another gig through the cat rescue Facebook group. The couple I work for lives only a few blocks away, so I arrange to drop in twice a day to hang out and feed the cats rather than stay overnight. The couple keeps four long-haired cats in a one-bedroom apartment. They send me photos of each pet along with detailed bios. The cats’ names, slightly altered for anonymity but the same in essence, are King Fluff, Ding Dong, Pilaf, and Freddy.

Also sprach Tom Cotton International alliances are sometimes untidy affairs. Some are built on ideological or cultural common ground. Others on trade or security interests. Or a mix. We Americans like to think of ourselves as the good guys allied with other good guys, but that’s a flattering oversimplification. Our WWII alliance with the Soviet Union under Stalin’s murderous regime was one of strategic necessity that lasted long enough to defeat Nazi Germany, and no longer. When the Saudis murdered and dismembered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Americans expressed appropriate outrage for an appropriate interval and then went about our business. Because the Saudis are good for U.S. business. Now Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists and its toll on civilians in Gaza is straining U.S. relations with its longtime ally. It’s about to get more strained. This is breaking news (New York Times): The International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, said Monday that he had requested arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the Oct.

Hardeep Matharu, Editor of Byline Times, explores why the June 2024 print edition focuses on how 'cruelty is the point', to a point – and what the left must understand about the role of emotion in politics today

Oh my god, hey! How’s it going?

I feel like such a jerk, man. It has been the craziest week. I am literally just seeing this ransom note now.

Ugh, I’m the worst.

Okay, hang on, hang on, I’m just skimming back through—ah, shit. I see you set a meet time two nights ago, right under the old oak tree in Magellan Park. You didn’t end up—

You did? You weren’t waiting long, were you?

A couple of hours? Even though you hadn’t heard from me? Huh, okay. I mean, I would’ve confirmed at least—

No, no, totally fair. I get it, that’s on me.

Wait, that wasn’t the night with all the crazy rain, was it? Man, you must’ve gotten soaked.

How’s my kid holding up, anyway?

Oh, yeah, that sounds like him. Hey, let me ask you a question: Are you giving him a little iPad time at night?

All right, I mean, that’s your call. I know I tried to be a real “no screen time” hardliner at first, but honestly, you’re just punishing yourself. Believe me, I’m not going to tell anyone if he gets a little too much time with Ms. Rachel if it’s going to make your life easier.

The report is expected to proscribe Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action as 'extreme protest groups' and restrict their ability to fundraise and assemble

The MP reported a donation from a company that appears to be inactive in the UK – which his team has now told Byline Times was a mistake