Meeting the challenge of superbugs with a subscription service

Around the world infections once easily treated are becoming harder — sometimes impossible — to treat, often necessitating drastic surgical interventions. In Australia 100 die from antibiotic resistant superbugs every week and mortality rates are growing around the world, prompting an urgent rethink of how the miracle drugs are dispensed. Dame Sally Davis, the UK’s Special Envoy on Antimicrobial Resistance has come up with a novel subscription based model to encourage big pharma to create new types of antibiotics. Australia’s Iranian diaspora have sounded the alarm over the granting of permanent residency to the daughter of a sanctioned Iranian military leader and close advisor to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Middle-east security expert Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert who spent 804 days in an Tehran prison falsely accused of espionage, says the Australian government needs to reassure the community that she poses no risk. For almost two centuries the gothic romance novel Wuthering Heights has set hearts aflutter with its violent passion and forbidden love. Now the film version, starring Australian actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi is scandalising some reviewers, who say its too light and too lascivious. But Bronte literary critic and biographer Dr. Claire O'Callaghan says they might be taking themselves just a little too seriously.