By Francesca Kurghan, PhD Candidate, University of Waikato
Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Gender, University of Waikato
For countless people, social media has become a go-to source of advice on how to look, eat and exercise.
On Instagram and TikTok, wellness influencers push their own strict diet and workout regimens, while peddling everything from activewear to protein powders.
Invariably, they’re young, beautiful, thin and toned. Influencers such as Sommer Ray, Tammy Hembrow and Kayla Itsines have attracted
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By Olivia Maurice, Cognitive Neuroscientist, Western Sydney University; University of Sydney
Every morning, millions of people wake up hoping to look, think and feel younger than they did yesterday.
The anti-ageing industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, promising everything from “miracle” supplements to gene therapies. Few people embody this pursuit more visibly than entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, whose quest to slow ageing…
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By Jane Gilmore, PhD candidate, Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Hub, Monash University
The NSW government is moving to curb rape myths in trials to reduce the impact on victim-survivors and increase the likelihood of justice being done.
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Former women political prisoners in Myanmar and their families reported the dangerous and sometimes deadly denial of prenatal and obstetric medical care to pregnant women. © 2026 Human Rights Watch (Bangkok) – The Myanmar military junta subjects women political prisoners to torture, sexual violence, and life-threatening denial of medical care, Human Rights Watch said today.Among the over 30,000 political prisoners detained since the junta’s February 2021 coup are about 6,600 women and 640 children. Former prisoners and their families have reported beatings,…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BN) chairman and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on February 14, 2026. © 2026 MD Abu Sufian Jewel/NurPhoto via AP Photo (London, September 23, 2026) – Three laws approved in September 2026 by the Bangladeshi parliament have reversed human rights protections and broken the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) commitments to reform, Human Rights Watch said today. The legislation removes safeguards created by the interim government, which ruled Bangladesh between August 2024 and February 2026, reducing protections…
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By Amnesty International
One year after the publication of the report “It was the military. I Saw Them“, which documented the enforced disappearance of 10 people from the Ecuadorian coast, including six children, in the context of President Daniel Noboa’s so-called “Plan Fenix”, some progress has been made. Nevertheless, the lack of cooperation by the Armed Forces in […] The post Ecuador: Militarization Continues and the Armed Forces Still Refuse to Cooperate appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
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By Olabisi Oyelana, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Nursing, MacEwan University
There is a persistent gap between institutional commitments to equity and diversity and the realities students encounter in Canadian higher education.
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By Vincent Hurley, Lecturer in Criminology (police & policing). School of International Studies, Macquarie University
Four domestic violence-related deaths in one weekend in New South Wales have reignited questions about what more can be done to protect vulnerable people, two years after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese labelled domestic and gender-based violence a “national crisis”.
Last weekend, four…
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By Kyllie Cripps, Director of Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, Chief Investigator for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies, School of Social Sciences (SOSS), Monash University
Heather Douglas, Professor of Law and Deputy Director of the Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW), The University of Melbourne
Samantha O'Donnell, Research Fellow, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW), The University of Melbourne
In inquiries and reviews, governments endlessly ask Indigenous communities what should be done, but rarely act on it. It’s time that changed.
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By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, UNSW
Earlier this month, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic after just four months. In an announcement on X, he stated:
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.
A senior member of Anthropic’s staff, Evan Hubinger, actually agreed with Coxon, adding he personally thinks the chance of this happening in the next decade is…
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