Open Newswire

Food items including potatoes, onions, lettuce, cabbage, fruit and rice are hit by extreme weather that exceeded historical precedent, raising inflation and prices for consumers, a new report shows. The study is released ahead of an important United Nations food summit, to open on Sunday in Ethiopia.

She is a mother shaped by silence, grief, and prayer—one who has spent eighteen years searching not only for her missing son, but for the meaning of justice itself. What began as a cry for punishment has slowly transformed into a quiet but radical conviction that justice, at its core, must be an act of […] The post ‘An act of love’: Mother’s pursuit of justice in search for missing son appeared first on AlterMidya.

The harassment, detention and deportation of Bengali-speaking migrant workers is merely the first step in identifying and creating a new stateless population in South Asia.   Earlier this year, when the United States of America started deporting undocumented immigrants, India stated quite emphatically that it is working together with the US to identify and receive […] The post Bengali-speaking Indian migrants face hurdles to avoid deportation to Bangladesh appeared first on 360.

Last week, scientists announced the birth of eight healthy babies in the United Kingdom conceived with DNA from three people. Some headlines have called it “three-person IVF”. The embryo uses the DNA from the egg and sperm of the intended father and mother, as well as cells from the egg of a second woman (the donor). This process – known as mitochondrial replacement therapy – allows women with certain genetic disorders to conceive a child without passing on their condition. While it’s raised broader questions about “three-parent” babies, it’s not so simple. Here’s why it’s unlikely this development will transform the diverse ways LGBTQ+ people are already making families. What this technology is – and isn’t The UK became the first country in the world to allow mitochondrial donation for three-person embryos ten years ago, in 2015. In other countries, such donations are banned or strictly controlled. In Australia, a staged approach to allow mitochondrial donation was introduced in 2022. Stage one will involve clinical trials to determine safety and effectiveness, and establish clear ethical guidelines for donations. These restrictions are based on political and ethical concerns about the use of human embryos for research, the unknown health impact on children, and the broader implications of allowing genetic modification of human embryos. There are also concerns about the ethical or legal implications of creating babies with “three parents”. Carefully and slowly considering these ethical issues is clearly important. But it’s inaccurate to suggest this process creates three parents. First, the amount of DNA the donor provides is tiny, only 0.1% of the baby’s DNA. The baby will not share any physical characteristics with the donor. While it is significant that two women’s DNA has been used in creating an embryo, it doesn’t mean lesbian couples will be rushing to access this particular in vitro fertilisation (IVF) technology. This technique is only used for people affected by mitochondrial disease and is closely regulated. It is not available more widely and in Australia, is not yet available even for this use. Second, while biological lineage is an important part of many people’s identity and sense of self, DNA alone does not make a parent. As many adoptive, foster and LGBTQ+ parents will attest, parenting is about love, connection and everyday acts of care for a child. How do rainbow families use IVF? Existing IVF is already expensive and medically invasive. Many fertility services offer a range of additional treatments purported to aid fertility, but extra interventions add more costs and are not universally recommended by doctors. While many lesbian couples and single women use fertility services to access donor sperm, not everyone will need to use IVF. Less invasive fertilisation techniques, such as intrauterine insemination, may be available for women without fertility problems. This means inserting sperm directly into the uterus, rather than fertilising an egg in a clinic and then implanting that embryo. Same-sex couples who have the option to create a baby with a sperm donor they know – rather than from a register – may also choose home-based insemination, the proverbial turkey baster. This is a cheaper and more intimate way to conceive and many women prefer a donor who will have some involvement in their child’s life. In recent years, “reciprocal” IVF has also grown in popularity among lesbian couples. This means an embryo is created using one partner’s egg, and the other partner carries it. Reciprocal IVF’s popularity suggests biology does play a role for LGBTQ+ women in conceiving a baby. When both mothers share a biological connection to the child, it may help overcome stigmatisation of “non-birth” mothers as less legitimate. But biology is by no means the defining feature of rainbow families. LGBTQ+ people are already parents The 2021 census showed 17% of same-sex couples had children living with them; among female same-sex couples it was 28%. This is likely an underestimate, as the census only collects data on couples that live together. Same-sex couples often conceive children using donor sperm or eggs, and this may involve surrogacy. But across the LGBTQ+ community, there are diverse ways people become parents. Same-sex couples are one part of the LGBTQ+ community. Growing numbers of trans and non-binary people are choosing to carry a baby (as gestational parents), as well as single parents who use donors or fertility services. Many others conceive children through sex, including bi+ people or others who conceive within a relationship. While LGBTQ+ people can legally adopt children in Australia, adoption is not common. However, many foster parents are LGBTQ+. When they donate eggs or sperm to others, some LGBTQ+ people may stay involved in the child’s life as a close family friend or co-parent. Connection and care, not DNA While mitochondrial replacement therapy is a remarkable advance in gene technology, it is unlikely to open new pathways to parenthood for LGBTQ+ people in Australia. Asserting the importance of families based on choice – not biology or what technology is available – has been crucial to the LGBTQ+ community’s story and to rainbow families’ fight to be recognised. Decades of research now shows children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as any other child. What matters is parents’ consistency, love and quality of care. Jennifer Power receives funding from the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Aged Care and the Australian Research Council.

Deforestation, urbanization, and the climate crisis are fragmenting the habitats of large carnivores in Romania and Southeastern Europe. A network of European initiatives is working to protect them, promoting peaceful coexistence as well as biodiversity

In Milan, cinemas have drastically decreased, going from 160 in the 1960s to the current 30. But despite the crisis, some independent theaters resist: like Cinema Arlecchino, reborn precisely when it seemed destined to disappear forever

Opera NEO is a first-rate troupe taking exciting and entertaining chances, as with this poetic paean to the first Crusade, "Jerusalem Delivered."

In the next year, the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition plans to give out more grants and incentives to landlords and homeowners. The post The Cleveland coalition tackling lead poisoning plans to ramp up spending to fix hazardous homes  appeared first on Signal Cleveland.

In the heart of Mozambique, a quiet transformation is taking place — powered not by electricity, but by sunlight and faith. Missionaries Rolland and Heidi Baker, for nearly three decades, have been working among some of the most marginalized communities in the country through their organization Iris Global.

The cost of housing segregation, first and foremost, is moral. It shrinks social trust, polarizes our people and limits our future.

Most Americans are worried or alarmed about climate change. This is a reasonable response to rising sea levels, heat waves, bigger wildfires, longer droughts, and stronger storms.

In the backdrop of a burgeoning mental health crisis, AI chatbots are becoming emotional lifelines for many Indians. But they come with massive risks.

San Diego County will see below-average high temperatures through Saturday, with the coast and inland valleys running up to 15 degrees cooler than normal in some areas, according to the National Weather Service.

TL;DROver the last three decades, average monthly meals at home declined overall, while paid meals eaten outside increased, especially among urban middle-income households. In contrast, rural middle-income groups showed no such increase, indicating varying urban-rural outcomes. While the poorest have improved meal access at home, there is significant divergence in discretionary spending like dining out. [...] The post Eating Out: What MoSPI’s Nutrition Survey Reveals About Urban‑Rural Gaps appeared first on FACTLY.

The decision to legalise private two-wheelers for commercial use via aggregators offers a new framework for states grappling with congestion, climate targets and transport demand.   In a significant policy shift, India’s Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued the Motor Vehicles Aggregator Guidelines 2025 which for the first time formally permits private bikes […] The post How new bike-taxi guidelines can solve India’s urban mobility crisis appeared first on 360.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday, blocking a provision in Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law that would have barred Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year. District Court Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a 36-page opinion that Planned Parenthood established “a substantial likelihood of success on their equal protection claim” […]

Former Council Member Bill Spelman died last Thursday at the age of 68 after a series of illnesses including Covid, according to his wife, Niyanta. Spelman, who served on the Austin City Council from 1997 to 2000 and then served again from 2009 to the end of 2014, was well known as the teacher on […] The post Former Council Member Bill Spelman has passed away appeared first on Austin Monitor.

asylun/Shutterstock There are lots of reasons why people work extra hours. In some jobs, it’s the only way to cover the workload. In others, the pay is poor, so people need to work extra time. And in others still, working back late or on weekends is encouraged and rewarded, explicitly and implicitly. Those employees who do the extra hours, willingly and without complaint, are seen as hungry and ambitious. A view expressed in some workplaces is simply “that’s what everyone does”. But what if we discovered that people – at least in heterosexual couple households – can only work long hours at their partner’s expense? Would it still be OK for workplaces to expect people to work longer than our standard full time week, and incentivise them for doing so? Our study, published this month in the journal Social Indicators Research, found in Australian couple households where both partners had jobs, men earned on average $536 more than women every week. In Germany, the weekly gender earnings gap was €400. About half of that income gap in both Australia and Germany was due to men working long hours and women effectively subsidising them to do this by cutting back their own work hours. It’s tough to combine a job with running a household, but one person working extra hours makes this almost impossible. In households, a job with long work hours means someone else must pick up the rest. This includes caring for kids, running the house, walking the dog, cooking dinner and more. What happens when one partner has to pick up the rest One in three Australian employees care for children, and 13% of part-time and 11% of all full-time employees give care to someone else, often an ageing parent. This has knock-on effects which are impacting many people in our workforce. The extra hours don’t come out of nowhere, but they have been invisible in what we think of as fair. In our study, we costed this knock-on in terms of earnings and work hours gaps in households, and what this could mean for equality of income. We studied between 3,000 and 6,000 heterosexual couples from 2002 to 2019 in Australia and in Germany, estimating their weekly earnings and work hour gaps. To understand the dynamics in the household, we used a two-stage instrumental variable Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition – a method that allowed us to model earnings gaps as a function of both partners’ paid and unpaid hours. This helped us estimate what the gender gap in hours and earnings would look like if time weren’t being “borrowed” or “subsidised” within the home. Changing the hours men and women work The results were striking. We showed how one partner’s paid work hours can increase when the other partner does more unpaid (household) work. This ability for partners to “trade” hours was one of the most important drivers of the work hour (and earning) gap. So we re-ran models and recalculated what hours a woman and a man would work if one partner wasn’t “subsidising” the other’s work hours. The model showed women would work more hours and men would work fewer when there was a more even split of home duties. The weekly work hour gap shrank to 5.1 hours in Australia (a 58% reduction) and 6.9 hours in Germany (a 47% reduction). The impact on earnings was just as significant. The gender earnings gap would shrink by 43% in Australia and 25% in Germany. The gender earnings and work hours gaps are well known, and these are not the only countries facing this problem. What hasn’t been shown before is how it works in households to drive gender inequality across the nation. The rest of the earnings gap is largely due to differences in pay across male and female industries and jobs, and the persistent gender pay gap in hourly pay. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average gender gap in hourly pay is 11.1%. This gap reflects the fact, hour for hour, women are generally paid less. The average weekly earnings gap is much larger at 26.4%. As things currently stand in Australia, women earn only three-quarters of what men do, a shortfall similar to that in (Germany). One part of the earnings gap is the gap in the hourly pay rate, but the other is the gap in how many hours are worked. We show how this would shrink if men worked hours that were closer to Australia’s legislated 38-hour week, and workplaces encouraged them to do so. Closing the gap If we stopped the time-shifting to partners that our culture of long working hours relies upon, we estimate that in a heterosexual couple, men’s hours would average closer to 41 a week, and women’s would increase to 36. We could change the long and short hour compromise that so many households have to face. This change could make a huge difference to gender inequality, and women would no longer carry such a large economic cost from their partner’s work. Maybe reining in excess hours should be the new focus for gender equality. Lyndall Strazdins has received funding from the Australian Research Council to undertake research on this topic. She has served as an expert witness on work hours and well-being for the State and Federal Court. Liana Leach receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund. She is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). Tinh Doan receives funding from the Australia ComCare and the Department of Health and Aged Care for other works that are not related to this article.

Speaking in an interview on Friday, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said President Donald Trump’s health care-cutting budget plan was destined to pass Congress, and her decisive vote on the package last month represented the best of a bad pair of options. In a new analysis published Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Republicans’ “big, […]