Talk about a transformation!
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Oscar winning actor Meryl Streep has donned a fat suit and an orange face for her latest role – Donald Trump!
Meryl onstage as Donald Trump.
She took to the stage at the Public Theatre 2016 Gala in Central Park, New York to play the American politician.
The real Trump.
She joined Tony-winner Christine Baranski for a duet of Brush Up Your Shakespeare from the musical Kiss me Kate.
WATCH Meryl’s performance below
This maths question was given to 10-year-old Year 5 students at a primary school in Derbyshire, UK, but it’s even stumped adults.
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One dad – who got A-levels in maths and economics, mind you – was completely thrown by his son’s homework.
He posted this pic on Facebook seeking for help with the answer, but everybody was just as bemused as he was!
The question asks to calculate the perimeter of two shapes.
The dad wrote: “My son’s grandma had spent a while helping him with his homework and most of it was straightforward but this one question left her stumped.”
“I then spent an hour or so trying to work it out but found it impossible.
The father continued: “I even sent it to a friend who got a 1st class degree in economics and they were baffled by it as well.
“A couple of friends are maths teachers too so I’ve sent it to them but so far I’ve heard nothing back.
“I really do think it is impossible and it is certainly not something a ten-year-old can answer.
Can you figure it out?
VIDEO: This optical illusion is freaking us out
It’s the third leading cause of death in Australia – but how much do you know about this silent killer?
In Australia, dementia is the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancers. Typically, people with dementia deteriorate gradually and eventually die from complications such as respiratory failure – from pneumonia for instance – or other infections. Dementia will in these cases be registered as the underlying cause of death.
Dementia is a general term for severe disorders with mental decline. Subtypes include Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia (with cerebrovascular disease) and fronto-temporal dementia. Of these types, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common diagnosis of dementia, accounting for 50-75% of all cases. As such, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are often used interchangeably.
As the population ages, the number of people with dementia is expected to rise, as is the number of deaths caused by the disease.
History of Alzheimer’s dementia
Alzheimer’s disease was first reported by German psychiatrist Alöis Alzheimer in 1906. After comparing autopsy reports of some of his patients, he described the presence of two abnormal brain structures made up of accumulated clusters of sticky proteins between nerve cells.
These abnormally accumulated proteins are considered the classic pathological hallmarks of the disease.
About 5% of dementia cases show early onset or familial inheritance, where dementia develops before the age of 65, sometimes in adults as young as 35. However, the disease most commonly presents as the age-related dementia with which we are familiar.
The frequency of the disease is markedly increased in adults over 65. After this age, it doubles every six-and-a-half years. It ultimately affects one-third of those older than 85.
Dementia signs and symptoms
Dementia can take several years to develop. It is often categorised as mild (early stage), moderate (mid stage) and advanced (late stage). Symptoms include:
Cognitive impairment: problems with memory, communication, comprehension and ability to recognise familiar objects and people
Psychiatric or behavioural symptoms: severe depression, delusions and hallucinations (visual and auditory), and increased aimless wandering, agitation and confusion
Dysfunction in daily living activities: in the earlier stages of dementia, the ability to perform routine tasks such as shopping may be disrupted. Dementia in the later stages can affect the ability to perform more basic tasks such as dressing, showering and eating.
People living with dementia may have different symptoms at various times, depending on the person and the parts of the brain affected.
There is no single established screening test to accurately diagnose dementia. Neurologists use reports from physical examinations, memory or cognitive tests, caregiver interviews, questionnaires, medical histories, genetic tests and brain scans.
Risks of dementia include having a family history of the disorder, a history of repeated head trauma and lifestyle factors, such as hypertension, uncontrolled diabetes, high cholesterol, poor cardiovascular fitness and atherosclerosis. Moderate exercise and controlled weight can reduce the risks of cognitive impairment and dementia.
Studies have also shown being female can put you at higher risk of cognitive decline. The exact reasons for this are somewhat controversial. It could be because risk increases with age and women tend to outlive men.
But some evidence shows that the risk increases parallel to a reduction in female hormone production after menopause, so the incidence is slightly higher in women after the age of 75. Female hormones are known to play a protective role in cardiovascular function, cognition and memory.
Disease burden
It is estimated that, in 2015, 47 million people had dementia globally. These numbers are projected to double every two decades and reach 131.5 million by 2050.
In the United States, dementia was the second leading cause of death after heart disease in 2014. While the number of deaths from dementia increased by 119% from the year 2000, rates of deaths from heart disease dropped by 24% over the same period.
The number of Australians living with dementia is more than 353,800 (around 1.5% of the total population). This is projected to increase to 553,000 by 2030. The projections may be conservative as the current number is actually higher than the number (329,243) projected in 2011.
The total direct cost of dementia to the Australian health and aged care system was estimated to be more than $4.9 billion in the 2009-10 financial year. Nearly 59% of residential aged care expenditure was spent on dementia patients in June 2009.
A firm diagnosis usually occurs three years after noticeable symptoms are manifested and noticed by family members. This is often at the early to mid-stage of the disease. From this stage, the only management available is the possible alleviation of symptoms with prescription drugs – although depending on the person and disease severity, these might help little.
It is critical we identify those at risk so that timely medical interventions can be provided before dementia onset, with the possibility of delaying the onset. This would considerably reduce the time people live with dementia and the overall associated disease burden. It’s estimated a delay of dementia onset by five years would reduce the number of cases by a third.
The best current approach to the dementia epidemic is to promote a healthy lifestyle from an early age as poor cardiovascular fitness in teenage years is predicted to increase dementia risk.
This article was written by Siva Purushothuman, NHMRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Neuroscience Research Australia, and was originally published on The Conversation.
Beautiful golden retriever Bretagne was one of the first responders at Ground Zero.
However, the 16-year-old hero was sadly put to sleep at a Texas veterinary hospital on Monday with her loving owner and handler Denise Corliss by her side.
But before that, she was given a guard of honour by a row of fire-fighters who stood to attention while she walked into the building.
“She was really anxious last night and she just wanted to be with me,” Denise told TODAY.
“So I laid down with her, right next to her. When she could feel me, she could settle down and go to sleep. I slept with her like that all night.”
Bretagne’s body was draped in the American flag and now, veterinary experts at Texas A&M University will study her body to see what effects Ground Zero had on her internal organs.
Not only did she help at Ground Zero but also during rescue efforts for hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Rite.
It feels great to slip into a size 10 when you know you’re really a 14 – but is vanity sizing doing you more harm than good?
Every woman in Australia has experienced that heady change room thrill when you slip on something in your usual size, only to find it’s far too big.
You ask for the next size down – sometimes even two sizes – and all of a sudden, your size 14 figure is zipped into a size 10 dress and you’re feeling fantastic as you skip to the register, credit card in hand.
Have you lost weight? Probably not. This is the world of vanity sizing, a practice adopted by hundreds of retailers to give people a buzz when they try on a garment, knowing that buzz often translates to a sale.
A size 12 in different stores can vary by up to 10cm, making shopping – especially online shopping – more difficult but an article on Refinery29 today says the practice has far wider-ranging consequences than mere annoyance.
“Vanity sizing is a psychological attack that can hurt your mind, confidence, and wallet,” the piece says. “Though seemingly inconsequential, vanity sizing affects all of us in a negative way. Even if an individual doesn’t notice the problematic practice, vanity sizing adds fuel to fire in terms of misinformation about weight.
“We aren’t going to change the fabric of our skinny-obsessed culture overnight, but instead piece by piece. We need to look at all the factors that contribute to our skewed perception of size, and neutralise them.
“A piece of fabric with a number on it does not define us, which is why we need to standardise sizes. Clothing sizes are a utility — a measurement of cloth, not the measure of who you are.”
A woman is accused of killing her identical twin sister who was the passenger in her car by driving off a cliff and leaving her to die.
Alexandria Duval has been charged with murder of her sister Anastasia, both 37, when they were travelling on Hana Highway in Maui on May 29. Their car then plunged 200ft off a cliff and crashed into a rock wall.
Anastasia died at the scene and Alexandria was rushed to hospital in a critical condition. She then tried to flee the state last week, but was arrested.
Alexandria Duval in court
Hawaii News Now reports that witnesses at the scene of the crash claim the two sisters were arguing before the car fell off the cliff, with one person saying they saw the passenger pulling the driver’s hair.
“There were hands pulling her head down like this, and her head was jerking,” the witness said.
The crash site
Both women are yoga instructors and live in Florida, US. They were both arrested last year on Christmas Eve for disorderly conduct, reports KHON2.
Trending video: Carrie Bickmore addressed pregnancy rumours on The Project last night
Despite what you might have heard lately, Carrie Bickmore wants you to know that she is NOT pregnant.
After a report from a local magazine claimed that the TV host was indeed pregnant with her third child, the hosts of the much-loved program decided to play a little prank.
As Kool & The Gang’s Celebration began playing mockingly in the background, host Peter Helliar kicked off the prank.
“Big announcement. Big congratulations are in order. Carrie Bickmore, baby number three on its way!” He said while handing the star a large bouquet of flowers.
Watch the hilarious moment for yourself in the video player below! Post continues…
“We also wanted to – we thought this would be great. I hope you don’t mind us giving away it’s a boy. They are sensational!” Gold Logie award-winner Waleed quipped, presenting the blonde beauty with little blue booties and a teeny tiny onesie.
“Industry sources are suggesting that on Logies night you opted for water,” he said to which Carrie quipped, “Vodka does look like water so I could understand that.”
“I had a big focaccia for lunch!” Said the host through laughter.
But all jokes aside, Carrie wanted to clear the air. Speaking directly to her fans and family, she put the rumours to bed.
“If you’re watching at home, mum, no, OK. I just started sleeping! God, that would be a nightmare!”
However the stunt caused an influx of congratulatory tweets, with many viewers tuning in half-way through, missing the set-up and believing that Carrie was indeed pregnant.
This latest stitch-up comes just days after Carrie felt the need to sarcastically apologise for wearing the same outfit twice.
Taking to Instagram, the 35-year-old shared a lengthy statement addressing two separate articles that had called out her outfit repetitions.
For now, Carrie is loving life with son Oliver, eight, and Evie, one.
“Huge apologies. I must have missed the memo (blaming my mum who won’t throw out beautiful dresses she used to wear in the 80’s and can still wear now I might add) I had no idea you are NOT allowed to wear the same dress twice.”
“Here’s the scoop – sometimes I loan outfits to wear on the show that are not even in store yet (Ohhh La la)..sometimes I get gifted outfits to keep (yay), sometimes I wear gowns designed specifically for me (lucky girl)…and sometimes… we run down the street, grab something off the shelf, we buy it and I wear it a few times because I love it.”
“I will continue to operate in this reckless fashion,” penned the Gold Logie winner.
Further proof Carrie can do no wrong!
They’ve been married for an incredible 68 years but have you ever noticed that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are never seen holding hands?
According to royal biographer Gyles Brandreth, who chalks the strength of their relationship to Philip’s ability to make Elizabeth laugh, the reason they don’t hold hands is due to their generations “stoic values.”
Plus, Philip doesn’t consider himself a romantic!
But that’s not to say they don’t have a loving marriage.
“If we regard the Queen’s record-breaking reign as a success — and I think most of us do — Prince Philip is the co-author of that success,” Brandreth told Radio Times.
The Queen and Prince Phillip on their wedding day in 1947.
“The Queen wears the crown, but her husband wears the trousers. He is the power behind the throne — shrewd, steadfast, never-failingly supportive.”
But what’s one romantic activity they regularly engage in?
Singing.
“Her parents loved singing and passed it on,” cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson said in BBC Radio Two’s Our Queen: 90 Musical Years, according to People.
“The Duke of Edinburgh and the rest of the family join in.”
George Pell turns 75 today and as such, tendered his resignation to the Pope, as is custom when Catholic bishops reach the milestone age. But as expected, Pope Francis rejected Pell’s appeal, asking the beleaguered Australian to continue working until 2019.
But is this the best move for the embattled religion? Australian icon Thomas Keneally asks could it be that Pell, champion of the Church, is its worst enemy?
In the past, Australians have seen the error in reading too much into the demeanour of a person under pressure.
Thirty-six years ago, we decided that a young woman whose baby had vanished at Uluru, and who said a dingo had taken her baby, didn’t show what we thought was appropriate grief. And so we witch-hunted her and condemned her, on astoundingly cock-eyed forensic evidence, to life imprisonment. We did not own up fully to our mistake until 32 years had passed.
Is His Eminence Cardinal George Pell – a Ballarat boy, who underwent operations as an infant to remove an abscess from his throat, who signed with Richmond as a star AFL prospect when an adolescent, but who chose to become a priest – also a victim of a witch-hunt?
Pell on his way to give evidence at the Royal Commission.
He has admitted he sometimes feels it. There are a number of commentators who try to tell us that he is. And perhaps he’s just temperamentally leaden, anyway, and doesn’t easily express the depth of his feelings. He can’t surely be blamed for that in itself.
However, I am sad to conclude that he does not deserve the benefit of these excuses. Admittedly, we, the mob, can be wrong. (See the disgrace of Nauru!) But in Pell’s case, I fear we’re right. Even though I come from something of the same sort of background as him and am a fellow old Australian codger, with so many flaws, failures and sins of my own, I think George Pell is a catastrophe.
On the matter of our background: I am 80, some five-and-a-half years older than George Pell. His mother was a Catholic of Irish descent; both my mother and father were, too. The Church was a huge part of our lives in our childhoods and the authority of priests and bishops was close to absolute, and backed up by God’s wrath. Pell went to the Christian Brothers; so did I.
He played Aussie Rules, I was mad for rugby league. Both of us decided about the age of 16 we wanted to be priests.
My motivation was immature, but based in part on the fact that most Catholics I knew were battlers. The Church I admired had a considerable amount to do with social justice – wages, schooling, opportunity for children.
I had never encountered paedophilia in my childhood and the worst scandal during my time in the same seminary that much later produced Tony Abbott, involved the fairly rare case of men who visibly fell for each other. Though a hetero male, I lasted some years in the seminary – I don’t quite believe it myself – and left, in the end, after losing faith in the idea of blind obedience and even in some of “the mysteries of faith”, as doctrines were called.
I lost faith also in the administration, when seminarians who grew mentally or physically ill were simply shuttled off for their families to deal with, some of our superiors suggesting we shouldn’t mix with them. Stuck between belief and scepticism, and genuinely shocked by the lack of justice with which many of the sick and damaged were treated, I suffered a crack-up. Leaving, I felt a failure.
Pell with Pope Benedict.
I was embarrassed, angry and isolated, and did what many people do under stress. I started writing. Writing novels is a very chancy card to play, the last in the pack. Yet it worked for me. Deo gratias, as we used to say. Thank God.
In our day, the Church and Catholics in general were aware that people were prejudiced against them. Born in distant 1935, I grew up in a world the younger Australian women reading this story would find hard to imagine. I knew that, as a Catholic with an Irish name, I belonged to a group which was mistrusted with a level of bigotry which these days is directed at so many honest Muslim families. But we were proud of our Irishness and our faith, brought to Australia by convicts and rebel priests from the Irish uprising of 1798.
One of these priests, Father Dixon, said the first recorded public Mass in Australia in 1803, his vestments of curtain material, his chalice a tin cup. Our forebears had survived political and religious persecution, and the Famine, which between 1845 and 1851 killed 1.5 million Irish and sent another 1.5 million fleeing on immigrant ships of any size and quality. We were confident we were true Australians, though bigots murmured that we were not.
Both my father, who served two-and-a-half years in the Middle East, and my brother-in-law, who was a much decorated member of a Pathfinder squadron, gave as a motivation for their serving the country that they wanted to show that Catholics were just as much Australian citizens as anyone. My brother-in-law was the great-grandson of two Irish convicts, by the way. In any case, in worship and, to an extent, in society, we kept ourselves to ourselves and wore any Church scandals close to our chest. Therefore, we had an instinct not to broadcast news of any priestly scandal.
George Pell grew up in that world and then lived to see Catholics of all backgrounds treated as fully paid up members of society. But obviously the instinct for secrecy is still there, combined with a bishop’s instinct to preserve the Church’s wealth from those seeking damages.
He feels, no doubt, a certain sympathy, which he would like us to see as compassion, but which fails to convince us. He looked upon the Melbourne Response, which he put in place in 1996 to deal with complaints in the Melbourne archdiocese, as a heroic answer to the problem.
He certainly boasted of it in his recent evidence transmitted from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome. Others, including victims and experts, have declared it a process of bullying, secrecy and damage control. I cannot sympathise with Cardinal Pell because he has never quite seen the urgency of addressing paedophilia as fully as he had attacked the supposed sins of laypeople. In his view of the world, we are definitely the fallen, whereas, as he pleaded in his most recent Royal Commission evidence, priests are just human beings. He’s got so much form in the double-standard business.
In Canada, in 2002, he told delegates to World Youth Day, “Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people.” When challenged, he said that, of course, the abuse of young people by priests was a terrible thing. But, still, abortion was worse.
It is worth noticing that he is always being forced to put his rather astounding statements “in context”. Remember, he had to do just that in relation to Father Gerald Ridsdale’s abuse not being of interest to him.
His first statements are often so outrageous that he gets called out by the Commission and has to temper them. But he’s had lots of time to frame what he means and what he means is too often exactly what he says, and is too often appalling.
The sinner he chose to walk beside in fraternity to court in 1993 was the unspeakable Father Ridsdale. When Judgement Day comes, George Pell told the Commission, kindness to “those who are at the bottom of the pile like Ridsdale” would prove important.
Ridsdale wasn’t at the bottom of the pile. His victims were. The truth is that Cardinal Pell favours a structure of church governance which, according to his own evidence, echoes that of the Roman Empire and he himself was a grand figure in that Empire/Church. Cardinal Pell told the Commission that Ridsdale’s abuse was “a sad story” and that “it wasn’t of much interest to me”. He added, “I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated.”
Pell
You could almost hear angels weeping as the Cardinal blandly gave this evidence. When my niece-in-law, Kristina Keneally, a good but not a dumb Catholic, commentating on the Sky News feed from the Commission, appeared on screen, she looked hollowed out and her face showed the shock that most believers in Australia were feeling.
Cardinal Pell has a limited eye for the sins of priests then, but he sure has a full-on one for the sins of the rest of us and of all our poor fellow pilgrims in the wider community. He was one of 13 Cardinals who wrote to the Pope last October accusing him of putting too many liberal-minded churchmen and laypeople into the synods of bishops which had met in Rome to discuss “the family”.
Cardinal Walter Kasper of Germany had seemed to be more lenient towards divorced Catholics – speaking of allowing them, that is, to receive Communion. George Pell could not permit this. “The sooner the wounded, the lukewarm and the outsiders realise that substantial doctrinal and pastoral changes are impossible,” he thundered, “the more the hostile disappointment [which will follow the assertion of doctrine] will be anticipated and dissipated.”
Catholics who are remarried civilly can be permitted to live together as “brother and sister” though, says Cardinal Pell, and if they manage that, they can go to Communion.
Cardinal Pell has held the line on homosexuals, too. Some people think that admirable, but like the line on divorced Catholics, it means there is no place at the altar rails for so many millions. Thus it appears, on his own evidence, that the Cardinal is more open to paedophile priests consecrating the host and taking Communion than he is to anyone divorced or gay, whatever their virtues, talents and goodwill, receiving the host.
The Church then is universal only for Pell and other total believers. Because women who use contraception don’t deserve a place in it either. He is on record (The Sydney Morning Herald, October 11, 2007) as saying that any Catholic who supports contraception, abortion and stem-cell research is guilty of a “Donald Duck heresy”. The Cardinal continued, “Too many Donald Ducks produce the feel-good society which works to remove personal guilt, anything that would make people feel uncomfortable, so that complacent self-satisfaction becomes a virtue.”
I know many women who have used contraception, merely in the sense that they speak frankly of it, and none of them has ever demonstrated the “complacent self-satisfaction” Cardinal Pell always manages to exude, no matter what suggestions of culpability are thrown in his direction.
In 2013, I had the honour of being given an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Australia. I was overwhelmed, having sometimes been critical of the Church, though I had always hung around like a bit of a desperado on its edges.
Just before I received this great honour, I read a piece by Cardinal Pell in which he claimed that only the good works all of those who acted in Christ’s name and within a structure of Catholic faith had any ultimate value. Good works undertaken by secular humanists were marked by unreliable moral relativism, that is, by choosing solutions that did not fit Divine Doctrine. Without faith, all charity was “coarse and uncaring”.
Having seen the work a non-Christian, avowed socialist like Fred Hollows has done in Africa, I know who I’d rather put my money on for delivering authentic human care. Through the lens factories Fred started in Asmara and elsewhere, he restored sight to millions of people who live in the less advantaged world.
Fred, when I knew him, travelled to East Africa while suffering from terminal cancer, sheltering by day from bombers in the Ethiopian Highlands, operating in hospitals I have seen, cave hospitals, where in the evening the generators came on and made surgery possible.
Fred did not believe in eternal life and gave his limited time to those he was connected to only by humane feeling. Whereas Cardinal Pell, who believes in an eternal after-life and does not have to travel on wild night roads in African mountains, could not travel to Australia for people he knew and who had suffered from his self-admitted negligence. I wonder which one will be seen either in the scales of heaven or of earth as the more “coarse and uncaring”.
It is not a surprise that this grand apparatchik of the Church should fail to heal wounds when he gave his evidence. Nor, I fear, is it a surprise that after long callousness, the Vatican itself could not initiate a meaningful meeting between the Pope and these damaged children from Australia.
The children, now grown, are the victims and that can’t be said with too much emphasis and feeling. But having been a seminarian myself, I do think of all the noble priests out there, who perform the sacraments as a humane and gracious exercise, who give sermons that are to do with humane tolerance, who reach from within their tradition to all other traditions and who use Catholicism not, as George Pell does, as an axe to exclude, but as a counsel of respectful love.
I might as well admit I have a book, finished last year, coming out later this year, about a “good” priest I knew, a whistle-blower, as some have been. Because leaders like Cardinal Pell have done so little to stop marauding and abusive clergy, the victims can never quite recover their happiness and wholeness. But due to the same failure, many admirable “ordinary” priests may never recover their repute.
And there are people, over 5 million of them in Australia, who count themselves as Catholics, who endured Cardinal Pell’s testimony. Some are so scandalised by these crimes and the way they have been addressed or otherwise that they walk away in disgust – as has happened so graphically in Ireland.
Other Catholics I know, like Kristina Keneally and the broadcaster Geraldine Doogue, stick to the broad ideals of their faith and say, “It’s our Church too, Pell doesn’t own it”. I admire them. But not all of us are subtle enough to make the subtle distinction between a Cardinal and the Church in which he has such authority. And, therefore, the question is this: could it be that Pell, champion of the Church, is its worst enemy?
Crimes Of The Father, by Thomas Keneally, will be published by Vintage in November.
This story originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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Too bad if you tuned in to The Project last night at the wrong time – you probably would have thought co-host Carrie Bickmore was announcing her pregnancy with her third child.
But unfortunately, the exciting news was all just a farce!
Her co-hosts made it into a cheeky joke based on tabloid rumours that she was expecting, and they made the big ‘announcement’ right after Bickmore read out the news that Netflix binges kill sex drive in couples.
Then Peter Helliar waltzes in carrying a big bunch of flowers, saying: “Speaking of those kinds of activities — big announcement. Big congratulations in order. Carrie Bickmore, baby number three on its way!”
“I hope you don’t mind us giving away it’s a boy,” he continued as the crowd cheered.
But Bickmore jumped in, saying that it wasn’t true and that she had “a big focaccia for lunch.”
Bickmore laughed it off but was quick to shut down the pregnancy rumours.
“If you’re watching at home, mum, no, OK. I just started sleeping! God, that would be a nightmare!” she said.
Carrie has two children with her husband Chris Walker, an eight-year-old boy Oliver, and a one-year-old girl, Evie.
Carrie and her son, Oliver
Little Evie
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