Sydney's cocaine consumption took a hit when the initial COVID-19 lockdown was imposed earlier this year, but use of the prohibited party drug quickly recovered. The city has retained its reputation as the cocaine capital of Australia, consuming significantly more than other cities, the latest wastewater drug monitoring report from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has shown. In April, as coronavirus restrictions took hold, cocaine use in Sydney was estimated to be about 950 milligrams for every 1000 people per day. This compared to around 600 milligrams in Melbourne and 500 milligrams in Brisbane. The consumption levels in April were down from summer, when Sydney's use was estimated at just over 2 grams per 1000 people a day in December and just under 1.2 grams in February. By June, following the easing of coronavirus restrictions in NSW, consumption rebounded to about 1.35 grams. The ACIC report said the long-term trend in cocaine use was up, but the pandemic caused a temporary reduction that was most notable in NSW. "After the initial lock-down in April 2020, levels recovered and reached historical highs in some parts of the country," the report found, highlighting the consumption levels in the ACT, Victoria and Western Australia. The ACIC found that increased drug prices during the coronavirus pandemic have not cut demand for some drugs, even as prices reportedly reached $450 for a gram of cocaine, $250 for a gram of ice and $170 for a gram of MDMA in its powdered form. "There have been some price increases, particularly at the wholesale level, although a number of the increases have been within historical ranges," ACIC chief executive Michael Phelan said. "Even in locations where considerable price increases have been reported, consumption of some drugs has increased." While global coronavirus restrictions have slowed the movement of people and goods, the illicit drug market appears to have been resilient. "Operational activity in which the ACIC has been involved with its partners indicates that many serious and organised crime groups in the major drug markets continued to operate on a 'business as usual' basis throughout the pandemic, importing, manufacturing and trafficking illicit drugs," Mr Phelan said.

Speaking to a crowd in Bullhead City, Arizona on Wednesday, with less than a week to go before the election, President Donald Trump commented on the well-known phenomenon of Californians eating spaghetti and meat sauce through their “special masks.” “Boy, you know, when you have spaghetti and meat sauce that mask is not looking,” Trump […]

"Demonic spirits cause health problems, period," Dr. Stella Immanuel told VICE News. "Sex with demons is a very biblical concept." A controversial doctor, pastor and conspiracy theorist who President Trump has touted for her false claims about the coronavirus is speaking at a Trump campaign event in Texas on Wednesday night. Dr. Stella Immanuel is one of three headliners for a Trump Victory phone bank in Houston. The event was promoted on the Republican National Committee’s Trump Victory website, and Immanuel tweeted to promote the event on Tuesday evening. Her claim to fame came when Trump retweeted a late July video that featured her falsely saying that the drug hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for COVID-19, and that face masks did not help stop the spread of the disease.

The hardline adviser is said to be ready to unleash executive orders deemed too extreme for a president seeking re-election

A BBC investigation has revealed that 80 per cent of child abuse images it reported to Facebook were not removed. Facebook responded to the allegations by requesting the BBC send examples of the material to it, then reporting the team to the authorities for sending them.

“He has had very unkind things to say about me and I was just wondering if you all had still kept him working there,” Blackburn said.

With less than a week to go, polling shows Democratic candidate Joe Biden to hold a 7.1 point average lead on incumbent president Donald Trump. Thus, thoughts of what his foreign policy would look like have come to the fore. Yesterday, The New York Times published a long piece discussing the 77-year-old’s plans for Latin America. The Times was hopeful, noting that Biden would seek to “repudiate” Trump’s “hardball approach” to the region, which has caused a great deal of harm, rallying round shared goals of combating climate change. Yet buried deep in the article is perhaps the most eye-opening sentence: "Mr. Biden’s advisers say they would seek to revive the anti-corruption campaign that set off political earthquakes across the Americas starting in 2014, but largely stalled in recent years.”" What the authors are referring to is a continent-wide campaign to unseat progressive leaders that ended in the jailing of Brazilian president Lula da Silva, the impeachment of his successor Dilma Rousseff, and the rise of the far-right authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro. The so-called Operation Car Wash (“Lava Jato” in Portuguese) was ostensibly an attempt to root out corruption at all levels of society. Yet leaked documents and recordings have shown that, from the beginning, it was a naked powerplay attempt by Brazil’s rich elite to retake control of society from the progressive Workers’ Party administrations through legal means.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — which processes U.S. citizenship applications — incorrectly told hundreds of new U.S. citizens in Massachusetts this week that they can't vote in this year’s general election because the state’s registration deadline had passed before they took their citizenship oaths, GBH News has learned. In a statement provided Tuesday night after inquiries by GBH News, USCIS Boston District Director Denis C. Riordan confirmed that some USCIS officials presiding over naturalization ceremonies Monday and Tuesday had informed newly sworn-in citizens that Massachusetts’ Oct. 24 voter registration deadline had already passed, so they would not be able to vote. The agency has since confirmed that in Massachusetts, residents naturalized after that deadline may still register to vote up until 4 p.m. on Nov. 2. Riordan said the officers based their misinformation on a web page maintained by the Massachusetts Secretary of State, which does not mention the exception. The agency is reaching out by phone to some 409 new citizens who received the incomplete information during 36 naturalization ceremonies Monday and Tuesday, Riordan said. GBH News inquired about the ceremonies after being alerted to the erroneous information by Erika Constantine, a Canadian-born resident of North Attleboro who moved to Massachusetts nearly two decades ago and was among hundreds of new citizens naturalized Tuesday. At her ceremony, Constantine says, the presiding USCIS officer told the new citizens they would not be able to vote in the November general election.

Billy Joe Shaver, the outlaw-country music pioneer who wrote some of the genre’s greatest songs, died Wednesday in Waco, Texas, after suffering a stroke. He was 81. Connie Nelson, a friend of Shaver’s, confirmed his death to Rolling Stone. Shaver’s hard-lived career classics included “Honky Tonk Heroes,” “Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” and “Live Forever.” He wrote nine out of the 10 songs on Waylon Jennings’ 1973 outlaw-country breakthrough Honky Tonk Heroes; Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley all recorded his songs; and in 2010, Willie Nelson called him “the greatest living songwriter.”

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the fourth-richest member of Congress with a fortune of roughly $113 million, earns part of his wealth through alleged predatory landlord practices, according to county court records obtained by the Prospect. McCaul’s commercial real estate companies have pursued at least two dozen lawsuits over breaches of lease agreements. Most of the businesses were owned by people of color. Tenants complained about leases being granted under false pretenses, poor conditions in the properties, or hardship events forcing their abandonment, including at least one restaurant closed by law during the coronavirus pandemic. But McCaul’s companies aggressively pursued back rent and expenses anyway.

Hundreds of President Donald Trump's supporters were left in the freezing cold for hours after a rally at an airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday night, with some walking around 3 miles to waiting buses and others being taken away in ambulances. Seven people were taken to area hospitals, suffering from a variety of conditions, and there were a total of 30 "contacted" for medical reasons, the Omaha Police Department said in a statement. The Omaha Airport Authority had a slightly different figure of the

What the contents of our refrigerators say about our politics — and our assumptions.

Americans are increasingly frustrated by the obligation to ride out a global disaster on their own. They have every reason to be.

Folks who insisted they’d post to the social media site aren’t doing it. Those who are posting are posting conspiracy nonsense.

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program.

President Trump will open up all 16.7 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, according to a notice posted Wednesday, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades. As of Thursday, it will be legal for logging companies to build roads and cut and remove timber throughout more than 9.3 million acres of forest — featuring old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and Western hemlock. The relatively-pristine expanse is also home to plentiful salmon runs and imposing fjords. The decision, which will be published in the Federal Register, reverses protections President Bill Clinton put in place in 2001 and is one of the most sweeping public lands rollbacks Trump has enacted.

Recording left by a deceased marijuana candidate says he was recruited to be a spoiler in Second District race.

Horror struck during a raid at an illegal cockfight in the Philippines on Monday when a police chief was killed by a metal blade attached to a rooster. San Jose Police Chief Lt. Christian Bolok died after the blade cut the femoral artery in his left leg, according to authorities. “He was trying to confiscate the roosters but the problem was the rooster’s blade may have been laced with poison,” Governor Edwin Ongchuan of the Northern Samar province told The Associated Press.

New research found ‘autoantibodies’ similar to those in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients. But patients may also benefit from treatments for those autoimmune diseases. Some survivors of Covid-19 carry worrying signs that their immune system has turned on the body, reminiscent of potentially debilitating diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, a new study has found. At some point, the body’s defense system in these patients shifted into attacking itself, rather than the virus, the study suggests. The patients are producing molecules called “autoantibodies” that target genetic material from human cells, instead of from the virus. This misguided immune response may exacerbate severe Covid-19. It may also explain why so-called “long haulers” have lingering problems months after their initial illness has resolved and the virus is gone from their bodies. The findings carry important implications for treatment: Using existing tests that can detect autoantibodies, doctors could identify patients who might benefit from treatments used for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. There is no cure for these diseases, but some treatments decrease the frequency and severity of flare-ups. “It’s possible that you could hit the appropriate patients harder with some of these more aggressive drugs and expect better outcomes,” said Matthew Woodruff, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta and lead author of the work. The results were reported Friday on the preprint server MedRxiv, and have not yet been published in a scientific journal. But other experts said the researchers who carried out the study are known for their careful, meticulous work, and that the findings are not unexpected because other viral illnesses also trigger autoantibodies.

Engineers and advocates of the lowest-ranked caste say that tech companies don't understand caste bias and haven't explicitly prohibited caste-based discrimination. Whenever Benjamin Kaila, a database administrator who immigrated from India to the United States in 1999, applies for a job at a U.S. tech company, he prays that there are no other Indians during the in-person interview. That’s because Kaila is a Dalit, or member of the lowest-ranked castes within India’s system of social hierarchy, formerly referred to as “untouchables.” Silicon Valley’s diversity issues are well documented: It’s still dominated by White and Asian men, and Black and Latino workers remain underrepresented. But for years, as debates about meritocracy raged on, the tech industry’s reliance on Indian engineers allowed another type of discrimination to fester. And Dalit engineers like Kaila say U.S. employers aren’t equipped to address it. In more than 100 job interviews for contract work over the past 20 years, Kaila said he got only one job offer when another Indian interviewed him in person. When members of the interview panel have been Indian, Kaila says, he has faced personal questions that seem to be used to suss out whether he’s a member of an upper caste, like most of the Indians working in the tech industry. “They don’t bring up caste, but they can easily identify us,” Kaila says, rattling off all of the ways he can be outed as potentially being Dalit, including the fact that he has darker skin. The legacy of discrimination from the Indian caste system is rarely discussed as a factor in Silicon Valley’s persistent diversity problems. Decades of tech industry labor practices, such as recruiting candidates from a small cohort of top schools or relying on the H-1B visa system for highly skilled workers, have shaped the racial demographics of its technical workforce. Despite that fact, Dalit engineers and advocates say that tech companies don’t understand caste bias and have not explicitly prohibited caste-based discrimination.