Half of pre-mixed alcohol features nutritional claims as industry targets young Australians, study finds

Exclusive: Researchers say producers of alcoholic drinks ‘intensively using’ health claims in efforts to reverse declining consumption

The alcohol industry is targeting health-conscious younger Australians with nutritional claims such as “low calorie”, “low sugar” and “gluten free” appearing on half of pre-mixed alcoholic drinks, according to new research.

In the first study to assess how frequently health claims are used by the alcohol industry, researchers analysed 491 pre-mixed products found in three major retailers (Dan Murphy’s, Liquorland, BWS) in Sydney.

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Queensland Royal Flying Doctor Service backers urged to pressure charity as nurses take industrial action

Exclusive: Union says RFDS nurses are paid up to 26% less than colleagues in the state despite their demanding work and conditions

The nurses union is asking donors to the Royal Flying Doctor Service to pressure the organisation as part of industrial action against the charity.

It is the first time it has conducted industrial action against the charity in Queensland.

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Telehealth consultations for voluntary assisted dying are illegal under Australian law, court finds

Federal court rules that the definition of ‘suicide’ under criminal law applies to VAD

Telehealth consultations about voluntary assisted dying are illegal, the federal court has ruled in a judgment on an aspect of law that has long been considered a grey area.

The ruling means doctors might face criminal charges for conducting such consultations, as sections of the Commonwealth Criminal Code make it an offence to use a carriage service such as a telephone, videoconference call, or email to counsel or incite someone to suicide.

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NHS England faces lawsuit over patient privacy fears linked to new data platform

Four groups claim no legal basis exists for setting up the Federated Data Platform which facilitates information sharing

The NHS has been accused of “breaking the law” by creating a massive data platform that will share information about patients.

Four organisations are bringing a lawsuit against NHS England claiming that there is no legal basis for its setting up of the Federated Data Platform (FDP). They plan to seek a judicial review of its decision.

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Genetic data on 500,000 volunteers in UK to be released for scientific study

UK BioBank offers up biggest ever cache of whole-genome sequences for medical research

A new era of medical discoveries, treatments and cures is on the horizon, researchers say, following the announcement that an unprecedented trove of genetic information is to be made available to scientists.

Health researchers from around the world can now apply to study the whole genomes of half a million people enrolled in UK Biobank, a biomedical research project that has compiled detailed health and lifestyle records on individuals since it began 20 years ago.

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Queensland introduces Australian-first law to allow midwives and nurses to prescribe abortion pills

Exclusive: Legislation hailed as big step towards providing fair access to terminations across state

Queensland will become Australia’s first jurisdiction to introduce a law to allow nurses and midwives to dispense pregnancy termination medication in a move expected to improve access in the state’s “huge abortion deserts”.

In August the Therapeutic Goods Administration scrapped restrictions on the prescription of medical abortion pills, known as MS-2 Step, to be used in the early stages of pregnancy. But it is up to individual jurisdictions to determine the specific healthcare practitioner and the appropriate qualifications for prescribing.

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US life expectancy increases but remains below pre-Covid level

CDC researchers say life expectancy has rebounded to 77 years and six months as pandemic wanes but still down on 2019 statistic

US life expectancy rose last year by more than a year but still is not close to what it was before the Covid pandemic.

The 2022 rise was mainly due to the waning pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said on Wednesday. But even with the large increase, US life expectancy is only back to 77 years and six months – about what it was two decades ago.

Life expectancy increased for both men and women, and for every racial and ethnic group.

The decline in Covid deaths drove 84% of the increase in life expectancy. The next largest contributor was a decline in heart disease deaths, credited with about 4% of the increase. But experts note that heart disease deaths increased during Covid-19, and both factored into many pandemic-era deaths.

Changes in life expectancy varied by race and ethnicity. Hispanic Americans and American Indians and Alaska Natives saw life expectancy rise more than two years in 2022. Black life expectancy rose more than one and a half years. Asian American life expectancy rose one year and white life expectancy rose about 10 months.

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Australia politics live: PM delivers national apology to thalidomide survivors; Pocock and Plibersek strike deal on Murray-Darling

Plan will remove a cap on buybacks and extend deadlines for water recovery targets. Follow the day’s news live

For what kinds of crimes would preventive detention be used?

Preventive detention can be used for terrorists or terrorism suspects already (yes, we already do this) so what other crimes will be added to the list? (Not all of the cohort have committed crimes.)

What I can tell you is that we’ll work through the detail of the law over the coming days. We’ve had a high court decision for about 17 hours now.

But the high court decision actually specifically refers to child sexual abuse as one of the grounds on which preventive detention might also be lawful.

We will work through these issues and will do so in a way that is fast but also constitutional. What we have seen on the other side of politics is a pretty torrid history of rushing laws, doing it improperly and writing things that aren’t constitutional, that are later thrown out by the high court and the consequence is that the Australian community is less safe.

We don’t want to make that mistake. We will work through this carefully.

The most important thing to understand from the high court’s ruling is that the high court has said that politicians don’t get to make that decision (indefinite detention).

And so politicians have previously been allowed to hold people in immigration detention for very long periods of time. The high court has told us that that’s not constitutional under these circumstances.

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France to ban smoking on all beaches in effort to create ‘tobacco-free generation’

Public parks, forests and areas near schools will also become smoke-free as part of nationwide move

France is to ban smoking on all beaches, as well as in public parks, forests and near schools, after Emmanuel Macron promised to create “the first tobacco-free generation” by 2032.

“From now on, no-smoking areas will be the norm,” said the health minister, Aurélien Rousseau.

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Contaminated saline products recalled over hospital bacterial outbreak linked to Queensland death

Source of Ralstonia outbreak under investigation with 43 suspected cases across Australia

A bacterial outbreak in hospitals around the nation has been linked to more than 40 people, including an elderly patient who died in Queensland.

Australia’s medical watchdog has issued a quarantine notice for saline products which appear to be contaminated with Ralstonia – a form of bacteria normally found in soil and water.

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Successive Australian generations suffering worse mental health than the one before, study shows

New study which tracks changes in mental health over 20 years finds cohort born in 90s worse off compared to older generations at similar ages

Each successive generation of Australians since the 1950s is suffering worse mental health than the generation which came before them, new research has shown.

A study led by the University of Sydney has found that people born in the 1990s have poorer mental health for their age than any previous generation and are not experiencing better mental health as they age, as earlier generations have.

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Senior doctors in England reach pay deal with government

NHS leaders welcome breakthrough as ‘vital step’ towards halting walkouts by various staff groups

Doctors’ leaders have struck a deal with ministers that could end the strikes by hospital consultants that have badly disrupted NHS care for months.

Grassroots members of the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) in England still have to approve the government’s offer. But if medics accept it in referendums then both unions will call off the industrial action that has led to hundreds of thousands of operations and outpatient appointments being cancelled.

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Andy Burnham claims government note shows Covid tier 3 restrictions imposed on Manchester as ‘punishment beating’ – as it happened

Covid tier system introduced in October 2020 and imposed different restrictions on English regions in effort to contain spread of virus. This live blog is closed

At the Covid inquiry Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said that he was not getting information from the government in February about Covid. He said he was “disappointed” by that.

In late February and early March he was getting information from other cities around the world instead, he said. He said this happened even though his foreign affairs team consisted of just three people.

The government generally does give us information about a variety of things happening. I’m disappointed the government weren’t giving us information in February about what they knew then.

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UK spends more financing inequality in favour of rich than rest of Europe, report finds

Inequalities of income, wealth and power cost UK £106.2bn a year compared with average developed OECD country

The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries.

Inequalities of income, wealth and power cost the UK £106.2bn a year compared with the average developed country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to the Equality Trust’s cost of inequality report.

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Respiratory infection clusters in China not caused by novel virus, says health ministry

Data has been supplied to World Health Organization and China says flu and other known pathogens are culprits

A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and adenovirus, as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

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The heat is on as Britain’s boom in seaside saunas stirs up some local sweat

Hot boxes are popping up on the coast, as well as beside lakes and rivers, but not everyone is happy about the trend

Seaside saunas were just a wisp of a dream until 2018. Now anyone walking along a beach at one of the UK’s main resorts is likely to come across a converted horse box offering heat and steam as a respite from bleak skies and icy winds.

There are now 70 such saunas operating in the UK according to the British Sauna Society, mostly at beaches or lakes, fuelled by the growth in wild swimming and healthy living.

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Climate protesters arrested at Port of Newcastle blockade – as it happened

This blog is now closed

‘The biggest transformation in our country’s history’

Chris Bowen has been talking about Labor’s plans for reducing emissions, but he’s pressed on the fact that the government has been approving new coalmines and gas projects, which add to global emissions.

The way I see this, David, you can enter into a discussion with your international counterparts which we are doing which is us saying to them, “We will continue to be a reliable energy supplier but we want to work with you on your decarbonisation because we have advantages that you don’t have. We can provide renewable energy.” That is an important conversation to have.

Frankly the approach of others is more a slogan than a policy. We are making the biggest transformation in our country’s history and that involves both domestic policies and strong international engagements, as I will be doing over the next couple of weeks and we have been doing all the way through.

It will be treated in the budget statement of risks and liabilities in the normal fashion. But this is the right policy for the right times to ensure emissions come down and reliability goes up.

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‘They thought I had cancer’: painkiller banned in UK linked to Britons’ deaths in Spain

Patients’ group says reactions to metamizole can cause sepsis and organ failure – and British and Irish people are at higher risk

A patients group representing several British victims has launched legal action against the Spanish government over claims it failed to safeguard people against the potentially fatal side effects of one of the country’s most popular painkillers, involved in a series of serious illnesses and deaths.

The drug metamizole, commonly sold in Spain under the brand name Nolotil, is banned in several countries, including Britain, the US, India and Australia. It can cause a condition known as agranulocytosis, which reduces white blood cells, increasing the risk of potentially fatal infection.

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Curbs on migrant workers would be ‘dangerous’ for social care, warns government adviser

Proposals to stop workers bringing dependants should be halted unless jobs are made more appealing to Britons, expert says

Read more: Fears over Tories’ plans to limit immigration

The government’s top immigration adviser has attacked plans to prevent overseas care workers from bringing family members to the UK, warning that to do so could be “very dangerous” for the social care sector.

Prof Brian Bell, who chairs the Migration Advisory Committee, said policies being pushed by immigration minister Robert Jenrick, which also include a cap on overseas care worker numbers, risked worsening the chronic staffing shortage. The end result, he warned, could be “lots of people won’t get care”.

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Bone cows bred in Australia provide base material for dental grafts

Use of cattle from country free of mad cow disease means product is safe, experts say, and patients can still donate blood

Bone cows, specially bred in mad cow-free Australia, are being used instead of human donors for dental and medical bone grafts.

While bovine grafts have been tested for spinal fusion, foot reconstructions and to fix skull traumas, the Australian versions are predominantly used in dental work to strengthen degraded jaws before tooth implants.

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