Very few young people think about the health risks of drinking but research is proving that alcohol is bad for your health.

Alcohol is linked to everything from cancers, liver and cardiovascular disease, stroke and depression.

Alcoholism is big problem in regional areas where health support is limited and the dangers of drink driving are made worse by distance.

Drinking is part of every gathering in the bush but finding support if you want to go sober can be tough.

.

Connor Drum admits he steals food from the supermarket to supplement the Newstart payments he receives unable to find work, some in the Federal Government say he should leave the support networks he has in Canberra to search for a job in regional Australia.

The BOM says "scraggly" showers moved over the Great Dividing Range with a few millimetres in places like Orange and Dubbo but nowhere near enough to make a difference to the enduring drought.

Residents in a NSW central-west town where the dam has dried up will now receive truckloads of water.

Cave-ins, bottomless pits filled with car bodies and cyanide-laced sandhills are just some of the remnants left behind from Parkes' long gold-rush history.

After Justin Lampe's fencing business folded due to drought, he turned his hand to metal art sculptures and looked to his late father for inspiration.

From Meris Longmeier:  Kudos to Randall McKenzie. The streamlined telework process is AMAZING! It was so quick to review and update the date for the telework agreements. A huge thank you for enriching the experience of that process for all library employees! From Tony Maniaci: THANK YOU to Christine OConnell for walking me through the mail merge […]

Submitted by Casey Cramer: Now that we are living in a time with plenty of video conference calls – and are making these calls from our homes where pets, kids and significant others may appear in the background – we all have heard and seen some funny moments. What is the funniest Zoom moment you […]

Have you ever wondered why everybody in the world doesn't speak the same language? Or at least why we don't all share a common second language? If we did, what language would it be? Listen to why Robert McCrum says that 'Globish', a version of English, is the world's second language. If you like this clip, listen to the full ABC RN documentary by clicking ‘Download Audio' at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/broken-english/3042354 

Bee populations around the world have started vanishing, in a process known as colony collapse disorder. Scientists have many ideas about what causes colony collapse, including one possible culprit: the varroa mite. Australia is one of the last places on Earth unaffected by varroa. Could this mean that Australia could have the last bees on Earth? What can you do to help bee populations?

Find out about the major investment IBM is making in the mid-market. And learn how new incentives, plus expanded Business Partner programs, can help drive growth.

Discover the newly redesigned Express Advantage Web pages on PartnerWorld Express Advantage, providing easier and more intuitive access to products, services, solutions, and key channel enablement--all supporting the Express Advantage strategy and designed to help Business Partners win in the SMB marketplace.

Read how Robert Moffat, Jr. has implemented a sweeping overhaul aimed at simplifying IBM Business Partner compensation and account engagement.

IBM Business Partners can put the power of advertising behind their sales efforts. Take advantage of the 1Q Express Advantage advertising campaign now airing in select U.S. cities. Includes print, radio, Web banners, demand generation, mobile and search.

Now IBM Business Partners can incorporate the Smarter Planet vision and innovative way of thinking into their marketing and Web presence by embedding the new Smarter Planet widget on their site. It's easy, and there's no cost.

Director Chris Bolan, producers Alexa L. Fogel and Brendan Mason and subject Pat Henschel talk about the new Netflix documentary "A Secret Love."

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has tweaked its Oscar eligibility rules in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. During a meeting on Tuesday, the board of governors approved a temporary hold on the requirement that a film needs a seven-day theatrical run in a commercial theater in Los Angeles County to qualify […]

The former “Daily Show” host is serving as the host and emcee of this week’s 2019 Department of Defense Warrior Games in Tampa, where about 300 wounded, ill or injured active-duty and veteran military athletes are competing in 14 adaptive sports.

Dojo: an accessible JavaScript toolkit

Learn how to create accessible documents with IBM Symphony.

Recently, a public-private partnership - the Georgia Alliance for Accessible Technologies - has been formed to help make inclusive travel and tourism a reality in Georgia. Over 60 Georgia-based companies, research and academic institutions, NGOs and public sector organizations have been involved in the initiative, which IBM is co-chairing.

In the six years since Shanghai won its bid to host the 2010 World Expo, China has appeared to be on a mission to revitalize the Fairs' faltering image. Critics of the nearly 160-year tradition claim that technology has rendered the experience obsolete. Why travel to explore humankind's latest achievements when you can get all the insight you need from a quick Google search? Allow the leaders of China's second-largest city to enlighten you: this Expo isn't focused on nature, or the world's oceans or any number of previously selected topics that may or may not be of interest to the average global citizen. It's about you. Where you live. How you live. And the many ways in which governments, businesses and individuals can work together to transform cities into smarter environments that contribute to an overall better quality of life for everyone.

The City of Nettuno worked with IBM Human-Centric Solutions (HCS) to develop an interactive service providing real-time accessibility information via a smartphone application. Called "Accessibility City Tag" (ACT!), the service allows residents or visitors with disabilities to view accessibility information about Nettuno points of interest, filtered by their particular disability type, on their smart phone.

Given enough attention, a browser that closes the digital divide between us and our older generation could soon become a reality.

Faced with a stagnant, 10-year budget forecast, restricted resources and the need to address healthcare and safety needs of a rapidly growing percentage of healthy citizens over the age of 70, city leaders got creative. Partnering with IBM, TIS Innovation Park, the technological park of Bolzano, and Dr. Hein GmbH, the city sponsored the Secure Living project to help seniors safely 'age in place' at home.

Our world is becoming increasingly intelligent, interconnected, and instrumented, resulting in massive amounts of data being collected. This data is a treasure trove of information that can be mined to improve service, increase sales, determine risk, or make operations more efficient.

Analysis of such large amounts of data, often called analytics, is increasingly desired by governments and businesses alike.

The Lille Metropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) has a new Smartphone application called "Tag My LaM" — that describes nearby sculptures when visitors are strolling the extensive outside sculpture garden.

An IBM Smarter Cities team led by the IBM Human Centric Solutions Center partnered with Bolzano city planners to answer the question "Can we use technology to guarantee a good quality of life for our aging population?" And the answer is a resounding "yes."

At the 28th Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference California State University, Northridge (CSUN) conference, IBM brought together accessibility experts from government, major enterprise IT (information technology) providers, mobile OS (operating system) providers, mobile device providers, and industry standards efforts to bring focus and direction to addressing accessibility in one of the most liberating opportunities for people with disabilities in the last decade.

The AFB Leadership Conference was held in Chicago, IL on April 18-20, 2013. The conference had over 400 attendees and covered a wide range of topics over the 3 days. Chieko Asakawa, IBM Fellow, was a keynote speaker.

The desire to connect whenever we want, wherever we are has created a unique opportunity for the private sector to capture new markets as they work to fulfill our desire for ubiquitous connectivity. The growth in mobile ICT technology is profound and shows little signs of slowing down.

The American economy plunged deeper into crisis last month, losing 20.5 million jobs as the unemployment rate jumped to 14.7%, the worst devastation since the Great Depression.The Labor Department's monthly report Friday provided the clearest picture yet of the breadth and depth of the economic damage -- and how swiftly it spread -- as the coronavirus pandemic swept the country.Job losses have encompassed the entire economy, affecting every major industry. Areas like leisure and hospitality had the biggest losses in April, but even health care shed more than 1 million jobs. Low-wage workers, including many women and members of racial and ethnic minorities, have been hit especially hard."It's literally off the charts," said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America. "What would typically take months or quarters to play out in a recession happened in a matter of weeks this time."From almost any vantage point, it was a bleak report. The share of the adult population with a job, at 51.3%, was the lowest on record. Nearly 11 million people reported working part time because they couldn't find full-time work, up from about 4 million before the pandemic.If anything, the numbers probably understate the economic distress.Millions more Americans have filed unemployment claims since the data was collected in mid-April. What's more, because of issues with the way workers are classified, the Labor Department said the actual unemployment rate last month might have been closer to 20%.It remains possible that the recovery, too, will be swift, and that as the pandemic retreats, businesses that were fundamentally healthy before the virus will reopen, rehire and return more or less to normal. The one bright spot in Friday's report was that nearly 80% of the unemployed said they had been temporarily laid off and expected to return to their jobs in the coming months.President Donald Trump endorsed this view in an interview Friday morning on Fox News. "Those jobs will all be back, and they'll be back very soon," Trump said, "and next year we're going to have a phenomenal year."But Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, said that such optimism was misplaced, and that many of the jobs could not be recovered."This is going to be a hard reality," Swonk said. "These furloughs are permanent, not temporary."Many businesses have indicated that employees can work from home throughout the summer, hurting sales at downtown restaurants. Meetings and conferences have been put off as well, reducing demand at hotels and other gathering places. And the longer the pandemic lasts, the more businesses will fail, deepening the downturn.The broad nature of the job cuts, too, means it will take longer for the labor market to recover than if the losses were confined to one or two areas."There is no safe place in the labor market right now," said Martha Gimbel, an economist and labor market expert at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative. "Once people are unemployed, once they've lost their jobs, once their spending has been sucked out of the economy, it takes so long to come back from that."Carrie Hines, a managing director at an advertising firm in Austin, Texas, had the kind of professional job -- adaptable to working from home -- that seemed insulated from the pandemic's effects. But her firm worked closely with companies in the airline, hotel and amusement park industries. When their business evaporated as a result of the outbreak, it was only a matter of time before Hines' firm felt the impact. She was laid off April 20."I was shocked," she said. "I've never had a gap in work since college."Hines and her husband are cutting back where they can, and they have canceled plans to send their three children to summer camp. "I never imagined this kind of job market where the entire advertising industry has been crushed," she said.The scale of the job losses last month alone far exceed the 8.7 million lost in the last recession, when unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009."I thought the Great Recession was once in a lifetime, but this is much worse," said Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at S&P Global.The only comparable period is when unemployment reached about 25% in 1933, before the government began publishing official statistics. Then, as now, workers from a variety of backgrounds found themselves with few prospects for quickly landing a new job.The government's official definition of unemployment typically requires people to be actively looking for work, making the measure ill-suited to a crisis in which the government is encouraging people to stay home. Some 6.4 million people left the labor force entirely in April, meaning they were neither working nor looking for work.Joblessness -- by any measure -- could be even higher in the report for May, which will reflect conditions next week. Some economists say the unemployment rate should fall over the summer as people begin to return to work. Several states have begun to reopen their economies, and others are expected to do so in coming weeks.But with the virus untamed, it's not clear how quickly customers will return to businesses. And epidemiologists and economists warn that if states move too quickly, they could risk a second wave of infections, imperiling public health and the economy."That would stop people from shopping and cause austerity," Bovino said.For businesses, the uncertainty about the path of the pandemic and about consumers' response to it is making planning difficult.When Austin Ramirez heard about the coronavirus earlier this year, his initial concern was for his supply chain. Ramirez runs Husco International, a manufacturer of hydraulic and electromechanical components for cars and other equipment. The company has a factory in China and receives parts from suppliers there and around the world.By April, virtually the entire U.S. auto industry was shut down, Husco included. (The company's nonautomotive production continued at a reduced rate.) Ramirez said he didn't know when business would bounce back. His goal is to weather the storm."There's no visibility or certainty on what the future demand is going to look like," he said. "We can't build a business model that relies on there being a big recovery six months from now."While most of Husco's roughly 750 North American workers have been furloughed during the crisis, the company has mostly avoided large-scale, permanent job cuts. Ramirez said he expected that most of his workers would come back when he needs them.But particularly in industries like retail and hospitality, layoffs that were initially temporary might not remain so as bankruptcies mount and business owners confront shifts in consumer behavior.Most forecasters expect the unemployment rate to remain elevated at least through 2021, and probably longer. That means that it will be years before workers enjoy the bargaining power that was beginning to bring them faster wage gains and better benefits before the crisis.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Airport temperature screenings mark latest discord between Trump administration and CDC over federal coronavirus response and science of public health

Many collectors and enthusiasts continue to travel aboard gas-guzzling airplane to see art.