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Brisbane woman who gave lethal medication to terminally ill husband released on bail after murder charge

David Ronald Mobbs, who had motor neurone disease, had said he didn’t want to live if his illness became intolerable, court hears

A woman who gave a lethal cocktail of medication to her husband who was dying from motor neurone disease has been granted bail after being charged with murder.

Kylie Ellina Truswell‑Mobbs was granted bail on Tuesday after being charged with murdering her 56-year-old husband, who was dying from motor neurone disease.

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‘You’re treated like this is the end’: Meet the dementia rebels – diagnosed and determined to change people’s minds

Few things are more feared than a dementia diagnosis. Now people living with the condition are fighting against damaging stereotypes and demanding proper medical support

When Maxine Linnell, 78, a retired psychotherapist living in Leicestershire, learned that she had dementia four years ago, the diagnosis proved less challenging than some people’s reactions. “What was striking was how many people’s attitudes changed almost immediately … they stop seeing you as a person and see only dementia, some professionals included. Like this is the end and everything after will be devastating.”

The assumption that you go overnight from diagnosis to late-stage dementia isn’t confined to family and friends. Julie Hayden, a nurse and social worker from Yorkshire, was diagnosed nine years ago at the age of 54, long after sensing that something was wrong but being constantly told that it was depression or menopause; her doctors still associated dementia with old age and didn’t consider that she might have had young onset. “At the point of diagnosis,” she recalls, “most of us are told: ‘Well, it’s dementia, nothing we can do about that. Best go away and get your end of life affairs in order.’”

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Ping-pong sponges, ‘black smokers’ and floating somethings: the secrets of the deep sea

The bottom of the ocean has barely been explored, but every journey to the deep reveals wondrous new lifeforms. As underwater mining gains momentum, we risk destroying one of the Earth’s last great wildernesses

On 8 March 2018, at 1.20am, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 veered off its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. An hour later, military radar spotted the plane heading west over the Andaman Sea. Six or seven hours later, it is presumed to have crashed somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, one of the least studied bodies of water in the world.

Just how little we knew about this part of the ocean became clear during the subsequent search for the missing aircraft. Before a proper underwater search could even begin, a vast stretch of seafloor had to be mapped. Over the next three years, a team of ships from Australia, China and Malaysia scanned the bottom with a combination of submersible robots and ship-borne sonar. Together, they charted a swath of ocean roughly 1,500 miles long and 150 miles wide, encompassing an area the size of France. The maps produced from these scans revealed a lost world, full of undersea canyons, crevasses, volcanic plateaux and a single, enormous cliff taller than the Swiss Alps. Even the abyssal plains, thought to be some of the flattest areas on the planet, were home to previously uncharted hills.

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Is Switzerland tired of prosperity? I can think of no other reason for our next foolish referendum | Joseph de Weck

Capping the population at 10 million is a far-right fantasy. It would dismantle the openness that has made the country rich

Zürich on a Sunday morning can feel like the day after Armageddon: so empty, so calm, despite being Switzerland’s biggest city. But then the church bells erupt across the lake basin, and a jogger trots by like a polite deer in aerodynamic sunglasses, and one knows that all is fine in this proudly impeccable place, where little is left to chance and the authorities even track the city’s pigeons with GPS.

Swiss people know they are lucky. A highly diversified economy keeps salaries high and income inequality comparatively low. A British friend once remarked that our supermarkets feel like the gourmet hall at Harrods. The state makes business easy. Hiking paths are maintained by armies of volunteers. The flip side is our reputation for being a nation of humourless control freaks, but there are benefits to trains running on time. In a restless world, Switzerland remains a place where one can exhale.

Joseph de Weck is an associate fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations and writes for Guardian Europe from Zürich and Paris

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‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs

Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden guitarist has lived in Seattle, a city infamously addicted to coffee, for more than four decades, but only started drinking the stuff himself during lockdown. “I was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,” he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. “My girlfriend in the 80s and 90s even worked at the original branch of Starbucks and made coffee with a French press every morning. But I drank tea, because my parents are Indian.”

Thayil’s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and bassist Hiro Yamamoto formed Soundgarden in 1984, the group was “two-thirds Asian”, and that “as liberal and accepting as the punk scene was, it was still largely white, and I was ever aware of that”. Nevertheless, Soundgarden went on to become pioneers of Seattle’s grunge movement, a multiplatinum-selling, critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning group whose breakthrough hit, Black Hole Sun, transcended their gnarly milieu to become an enduring anthem.

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NBA finals: Wembanyama silences Garden’s party as Spurs beat Knicks in Game 3

The spectacle at Madison Square Garden on Monday night was such that the basketball almost took a back seat to everything else. The president in the suites. The mayor in the crowd. Movie stars along the sideline. The culmination of days of talk over $10,000 tickets, heightened security and cancelled watch parties alongside the anticipation for New York City’s first home NBA finals game since 25 June 1999.

By the end of the game, Victor Wembanyama had given New York something fresh to talk about. The San Antonio Spurs snapped the Knicks’ 13-game postseason winning streak with a 115-111 victory, playing spoiler to the Garden’s party and cutting the deficit to 2-1 in this year’s finals. Game 4 is Wednesday in New York.

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Een kettingreactie aan tegenslagen door bezuinigingen op de zorg: ‘De kans op financiële problemen is reëel’

De beoogde miljardenbezuinigingen op zorg en sociale zekerheid gaan mensen met een beperking of chronische ziekte flink raken, berekende het Nibud. Veel van hen zijn afhankelijk van meerdere regelingen, waardoor maatregelen „in elkaar grijpen”. Duizenden verontruste leden van belangenorganisaties hebben zich gemeld.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Op verre vakantie? Dit zijn de bestemmingen waarvoor een reisprik écht verstandig is

Met de zomervakantie in zicht groeit ook de stroom reizigers naar verre bestemmingen — en daarmee de vraag wanneer een bezoek aan de reisvaccinatiekliniek echt nodig is. Het Landelijk Coördinatiecentrum Reizigersadvisering (LCR) en de GGD adviseren reizigers om uiterlijk zes tot acht weken vóór vertrek een afspraak te maken, en bij langere of risicovollere reizen zelfs een half jaar van tevoren.

Voor vrijwel alle bestemmingen buiten Europa worden DTP (difterie, tetanus, polio) en Hepatitis A standaard aanbevolen, ook bij korte vakanties van één of twee weken (GGD Reisvaccinaties; Thuisvaccinatie). DTP biedt ongeveer tien jaar bescherming; wie buiten die termijn valt, kan een booster vrijwel niet overslaan voor landen waar polio of difterie nog circuleert. Voor Afrika en delen van Zuid-Amerika komen daar afhankelijk van de bestemming gele koorts, buiktyfus, hepatitis B en rabiës bij, en in malariagebieden ook profylactische tabletten.

Nieuw is dat ook door muggen overgedragen ziekten zoals dengue en chikungunya steeds vaker op het vaccinatieadvies staan — onlangs nog na een uitbraak in Suriname, aldus internist-infectioloog Els van Nood van het Erasmus MC ( Algemeen Dagblad). Reisorganisaties wijzen er bovendien op dat de Aziatische tijgermug oprukt richting Zuid-Europa en zelfs incidenteel in Nederland wordt gesignaleerd.

Eén waarschuwing voor de portemonnee: een volledig vaccinatiepakket kost bij GGD Amsterdam ruim €600, tegenover €464 in Dordrecht — een verschil van meer dan €136 per volwassene voor identieke prikken. Zorgverzekeraars vergoeden reisvaccinaties zelden volledig.


Wat de angst voor een onvoldoende mij leerde over cijfers geven: niet doen - De Correspondent

Als kind leerde ik met veel plezier, tot de leraar op een dag zei: ‘Volgende week krijgen jullie een toets, voor een cijfer.’ Als leraar vraag ik me nu af: waarom laten we kinderen in hun meest vormende jaren van toets naar toets leven, met oppervlakkig leren tot gevolg?

Weer iets onafhankelijker van big tech: onze domeinnaam is nu in Europese handen - De Correspondent

Bij De Correspondent gebruiken we elke dag diensten van grote Amerikaanse techbedrijven. Dat willen we veranderen, maar dat gaat niet van de ene op de andere dag. Op deze plek houd ik je op de hoogte van onze ontkoppeling. Aflevering 2: de overstap naar een andere domeinnaambeheerder.